@Mustoe You can usually tell the difference pretty easily:
When there is massive uproar BEFORE a game is even released and anyone has played it, it's usually a sign that the crazies are out in force.
They have to be organised online as they often pour into comments sections en masse within minutes of each other and then linger to cause a stink.
Additionally their arguments are often worded almost identically, cribbed from their source and lacking much unique thought, yet they have the temerity to call others 'sheep'.
When you actually play the game and get to the offending section it's usually a relative nothingburger. Mountains out of molehills. All that hate for this? What a way to live.
@themightyant to your 4th point - I played TLOU2 a bit later, but I had managed to avoid any spoilers beforehand. I only knew the game was controversial, but I didn't know why.
Then I played it.
And then I still didn't know why the game was controversial.
I had to look it up and boy was I disappointed.
Been getting a lot of #4 with Veilguard. Even had a regular here completely misrepresent what is going om with Emrrich's necromancy. Then complain that you can't call them out for stuff they aren't doing in the first place.
When I point out that he isn't actually forcibly binding human souls to bodies. They dismiss it as a lore quibble and that their point still stands. Their point being that you should be able to call him out for his morally questionable practice of binding human souls to bodies. Which he doesn't do.
@Belgarath Unfortunately we are living in a world where facts, details, and the truth seemingly don't matter. As long as you believe what you say it and say it confidently, other people will believe you.
Look no further than the current state of politics in the United States.
@themightyant "When you actually play the game and get to the offending section it's usually a relative nothingburger. Mountains out of molehills. All that hate for this? What a way to live."
To this point, didn't the initial wave of complaints based on the leaks mistakenly label Abby as lesbian and/or transgender? I remember people being upset that Joel was killed by a slur and that the series went woke and had agendas and yadda yadda.
That's always the big indicator. Once people start talking about "wokeness" or agendas, you know you're not havinga productive conversation.
There's also the argument along the lines of, "it's not about wokeness, agendas, etc BUT..." That was a big one with the Heretic reveal. People criticizing the reveal by saying it had nothing to do with the character's race, ethnicity, gender, or potential sexual orientation, the problem was that the character and their design was "uninteresting." Right....
@scottyp180 100% the disingenuous twisting of anything to make it seem like they are being reasonable, but usually they just want to be a bigot without seeming like a bigot.
A recent one is claiming ābad writingā, for example if a woman is strong and capable and able to handle herself, how itās suddenly unrealistic as if every male protagonist before hasnāt handled longer odds. I think Nathan Drake might have murdered 1000 people across all the games and, ludonarrative dissonance aside, no one ever complained about how unrealistic that was. Double standards everywhere. Itās usually so blatantly transparent.
@themightyant "Bad/lazy" writing is a go to cop out. Not that it doesn't exist. Plenty of examples of bad writing. It's just ironic how people will conveniently ignore bad writing and story telling when there is no sign of "wokeness" and "agendas."
Where things get tricky is when that venn diagram of bad writing and "wokeness" crossover. The MCU for the past 3-4 years comes to mind. There are legitimate reasons to criticize recent MCU movies and shows, unfortunately there is a portion of the audience who's convinced it's due to Disney/Marvel going woke.
@scottyp180 I agree there is some actual bad writing but thatās not really what I mean. Itās more the double standard of it all. Iāll give an example.
The Amazon show Reacher is a big hit, and I thoroughly enjoy it for what it is, a cheesy fun fuk-yeah action romp. Buts letās be honest here the writing is pretty atrocious and most of the acting is wooden. But it gets a pass because big hard as nails dude.
But if it was a female Reacher with terrible writing it wouldnāt be held to the same standard it would be eviscerated online and used as an example of āwoke agendasā. The same rules donāt apply evenly. It has to be better with a female protagonist to get the same praise, doubly so it itās LGBT.
The reality is there is PLENTY of atrocious writing in the MCU but itās only really pointed out in certain movies / tv shows because of gender or sexuality. That is a problem, tar them all with the same brush.
@themightyant "I agree there is some actual bad writing but thatās not really what I mean. Itās more the double standard of it all. Iāll give an example."
I completely agree. It's ironic, the people who will call out things for having agendas seem to only call out things when it fits THEIR agenda.
I was just pointing out that things get dicey when there's both bad writing and an opportunity to call out "wokeness." For example, two people can be calling out the MCU for it's bad writing but their reasoning could be completely different. It can quickly go from, "that person's right, the writing is awful" to "oh they're just focusing on the diverse characters...we aren't actually making the same point."
What's funny is when they're not sure how to react. In Deadpool and Wolverine there was a joke that referenced the "woke mob" or something along those lines, and a friend of mine wasn't sure which side they were making fun of, the studios that push "wokeness" or the people who call out the "wokeness." He didn't know if he should laugh at the joke or be slightly offended (yeah, I have friends who's views don't always align with mine).
@themightyant You will also find many of "them" complaining that the actress isn't hot enough to play Ellie, who is supposed to be 14 years old in the first game.
@Mustoe It is fascinating how both the hard right and hard left agree on one thing: they dislike the creative director. The reasons couldn't be more different but they do have very strong opinions on everything Naughty Dog.
Good. People can like or dislike a creative work, that is their right. If they don't like it, they can like something else, also their right. What isn't a right is hurling abuse at creators when they don't like the creation. Move on, like something else, life is short.
@kangarootoo Agreed. We all enjoy discussing things we like and dislike, but there's an appropriate way to go about doing it.
A lot of people have poor social skills these days. You can tellthey've had little experience having in person discussions and debates, especially with people who have opposing views.
I mean most people who are familiar with that plot point will probably care more about what Season 3 throws at them and most that aren't will also probably be in the same boat as Ellie is the core focus of the series after all. I was never on board with the harassments and death threats because of this game but I do find it odd Druckmann is curious about what people think of that plot line rather than expanding upon it since that surely would be the main focus right?
@Adam_The_Actor I'm not sure if season 3 is going to be the second half of the game, I've got a feeling that they may have both sides of the story play out together, rather than having the Ellie half and Abby half. Comments a few days ago did say that they were changing how they introduce Abby and what the view knows, so I'm thinking that could be the reason
@steviepunk I did read on another game site (forgot which one) that they were gonna introduce Abby from the get go, at the start of season 2, and that viewers would know immediately who she is (and probably what she's after eventually). I believe they said the whole section with Abby running through the snow and fighting for her life worked in the game, but would not work for television.
Been curious about that too. We all know how the folks in the gaming space reacted to the story in Part 2 (both the reasonable and the.. not so reasonable) but I do wonder how it will go over with the general public who don't play games and are just experiencing if for the first time on TV. It feels like some of the changes they have made (and are planning to make) may shift feelings a bit as well.
Plus, while the TV only audience won't have the exact same attachment to Joel that players did given that they didn't play an entire game in his shoes, he is played by a very well liked actor so that will engender a different but similar level of attachment.
I can't see the exact same sort of response (or at least I hope there isn't the same sort of response), but I wouldn't be shocked to see at least some loud reactions.
What I do have control over is the crafting of the thing that's in front of me and leading a team to do that. So I want to make sure that we make something we're extremely proud of, that we're very thoughtful in making. And then we put it out into the world and the reaction is not up to us. That's up to our fans and how they react.
Bang on the money and if you want a clear example of what caring too much about the fans' reaction just look at the Sequel trilogy of Star Wars.
A mess of a trilogy with no clear vision from the get go that changed direction throughout the films based on audience reactions.
- The Force Awakens releases. Still a great movie (I'll die on that hill) and a promising start to the trilogy. So, what was the film's main criticism? It's a rehash of A New Hope and plays it too safe.
- The Last Jedi is released and in response to those criticisms, it goes on a different direction and takes creative risks with its characters and narratives. Don't need to tell you the clusterfuck of a reaction surrounded that movie. Awful movie, ruined Luke (it didn't), RUINED Star Wars even!
- So Rise of Skywalker is released and what it does? Undoes everything The Last Jedi did and goes the safest, most predictable route to keep everyone happy which blew on their face.
Want to take creative risks? Okay, but commit to them. Don't half ass it and get cold feet when you get a less than positive reaction, big or small. Otherwise you're just making things worse like JJ and Lucasfilms did in Rise of Skywalker.
Neil and Naughty Dog understand this and it's why people thinking Joel is going to survive in the show are in for a rude awakening.
The "elephant in the room" with TLOU2 for me was always Neil Druckmann's statement that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans. Reading that before the game and then seeing how cartoonishly evil the cultists are really soured me on his writing. Not surprised he hasn't been talking about that angle on TLOU2 in relation to Season 2 but it shocked me how he was never pulled up on how shitty his analogy is in the context of the game that was delivered
@Lalaland Where do I read "Neil Druckmann's statement that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans"?
I've seen this mentioned before - by you? - but I'm unable to find such a statement myself, making me think if it was invented to support a certain point.
@jespersoerensen He never said that. It's a narrative people came up from this quote where Druckmann used as inspiration for the story.
The argument is that the Wolves represent Israel and the Seraphites represent Palestine.
@35antonio I recently saw a tweet from Sam White the author of the GQ piece who said that he felt bad at how often that one paragraph has been misinterpreted in bad faith.
@35antonio Difficult to escape that interpretation when the game repeatedly alludes to itself, the Seattle residents are not native to Seattle but are explicitly framed in the notes as survivors who gathered there. The notes in the bank draw heavily on the history of the British Mandate in Palestine when the British would pretend to be "caught in the middle" of two unreasonable groups. And he chose to bring it up independently, combine that with how the way the cult is portrayed aligns very heavily with the propaganda of one side without the other getting the same treatment it feels like a very pointed quote indeed
@Lalaland The Wolves are portrayed as terrorists that resort to violence to reach their goals and spread fear. Notes from FEDRA talk about the Wolves seizing Seattle and throughout the game you see them torturing and executing people in cold blood.
Not to mention the fascist ideology of the us vs them that results in Abby turning on them during the Wolves' invasion of the Scars territory, meant to wipe them all out and put an end to the conflict, and being labeled a traitor.
You're seeing what you want to see and all it took was reading "growing up in an Israeli settlement". It's as simple as that.
@35antonio I would disagree, terrorism is and always has been in the eye of the beholder, I'm Irish and we won our freedom though terrorism and murder as viewed through the lens of our occupiers. Labeling someone as terrorist isn't actually all that revealing but I agree that the cult are represented as uniformly bad which when coupled with Druckmann's claim to want to analyse hate is very odd.
Hate is one dimensional, "my enemies are so bad that any measure taken to destroy them is justified". The central characters Abby and Ellie do a great job of exploring this theme and the complexities of Joel's past and the things he did soften the initial shock of that opening scene that is set up to allow the player to hate Abby. Then we get to see all of Abby's backstory and what brought her to that place, what she gave up to enact revenge on the target of her hatred. Ellie's story is all about what you lose on that hateful journey, I honestly feel the game would have been far stronger ending on Ellie in the farmhouse and skipping the whole California epilogue . This central story is an excellent exploration of that theme and is complex in ways that an exploration of hate has to be to deliver a message better than "bad people bad"
By contrast the Wolves/Seattle split is simple to an extreme, the Wolves have no depth, we don't get to have any conversations with them, we only see them through the lens of their worst excesses. This is a cult that has survived just as long as the Seattle commune but somehow have nothing positive just a mindless devotion to their martyr and killing. I'm honestly not sure what having them in the game at all brought to the table, would Yara and Lev have made any less sense as runaways from a common or garden bigoted member of the Seattle commune?
Now the cult would have been the weakest part of the game to me anyway without Neil specifically bringing up Israel/Palestine but he chose to do that and it adds a whole other layer of weird to the portrayal. The extreme transphobia of the cult is an ugly trait shared by multiple groups in both societies but tolerance towards LGBTQ+ has been claimed as a solely Israeli trait in propaganda. We do get multiple sides to the Seattle commune but the cultists are uniformly hostile in away only the zombies are justifying the extreme violence of the Seattle commune in the end. I'm not sure why he chose to add this whole thing to his game but when it doesn't feed into the theme of his central story but frankly dropping in entirely would have been the better bet (and made for a tighter run time also).
If you want a deeper dive on the politics of the game I recommend the VICE article by Emanuel Maiberg The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of āThe Last of Us Part IIā
@MattBoothDev Your knowledge of history is shallow, the Irish Republic was borne of just those types of people, murderers who killed men in their beds, blew up them up with bike bombs, etc. The IRA and IRB were in many ways even more vicious than later incarnations and upon getting independence they promptly unleashed that hate on each other in our civil war where we promptly hung more IRA men that the UK ever did. The IRA has been many things over the years and the process of phone warnings (as imperfect and incomplete as it was) was a feature of the Provisional IRA campaigns in Northern Ireland and mainland UK during The Troubles. That campaign is a whole other thing and my example is about the Republic of Ireland, oddly enough like all liberation campaigns from colonial powers our occupier was reluctant to let us form a standing army and drill with artillery and such to fight them in pitched battle so terrorism it was.
@Lalaland yeah, that's a lot of words to try and justify murdering people. Like I said, what you said was sketchy as fuck. Plenty of ways to get to them point you were making without tacitly ok-ing civilians getting killed. Doesn't really matter whose side you're on, civilians aren't military targets.
@MattBoothDev Yet they are frequently targeted by the military, civilian casualties aren't solely the product of terrorism. "Legitimate" militaries of multiple nations (and I'm not singling Israel out here, this is common to all COIN ops) feel justified in taking strikes that will cause civilian casualties because they feel their target is especially dangerous. Holding irregular forces to higher standards than the "good guys" inherently concedes the "good guys" are not that good.
I don't endorse or condone the killing or wounding of civilians in any context but you don't have to look too closely at any conflict with terrorists to see equally sketchy actions from the state forces at which point civilian casualties aren't a good metric for deciding which side is "right"
At this point someone could state his birthday with a copy of his birth certificate and I would question how much they are making up stuff. It has reached that level.
@Lalaland he did not say that.
What he said:
the storyline were inspired by his own childhood growing up in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In particular, he recalled an October 2000 incident in which a crowd in Ramallah lynched two Israel Defense Forces reservists who had accidentally entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city.
Druckmann remembered āfeeling intense hatred for the people that committed the lynching,ā he told Sam White of GQ Magazine in 2020, a feeling that he later came to regret. Still, that brief desire for revenge drove him to create a game that tackles āthe thirst for retributionā and the endless cycles of vengeance that intense grief can inspire
@Akshay Arrison Thanks for finding the quotes, he chose to raise the analogy and in the game there is little balance given to the cult you encounter. The Seattle residents are portrayed as being many things, there are multiple sympathetic as well as alienating characters. The cult has two survivors who escaped from sexual exploitation imposed by their own parent, the only cult members we encounter are hunting the player regardless of who they are playing.
This is not the writing of a man who has recognised his own unjustified hate and wants to show that there is more to the targets of hatred than the narrow lens he once had. It feels like an attempt to say "look with religious nuts what are you gonna do? No talking with them". The opening bank section when you are gathering up notes from the notFEMA prior to them abandoning Seattle notes that they too could not deal with these nutters in a way redolent of the attitudes of a lot of officers of the British Mandate in Palestine (particularly thinking of that prick Orde Wingate).
TLOU2 is not a game interested in exploring unjustified hate, it presents an objectively awful cult whose members sacrifice their own kids to it's teachings and ultimately cannot be reasoned with, just escaped from or destroyed. The only time the game shows the Seattle residents as committing evil acts is right at the end with the sequence where they wipe out the village but without showing any other side of the cult except evil it's an ambiguous sequence at best.
The only time the game shows the Seattle residents as committing evil acts is right at the end
Not looking to dispute your entire comment, but just an observation: when Abby goes to meet Isaac, you see that he and other WLF members torture Seraphites on the regular while also keeping them in cages; over the city they are shooting people on sight without asking questions, and are pretty nonchalant when talking about killing 'Scars'.
It's true that we see too little of the other side (although there are several notes in Seattle and the Island that fleshes out their way of living), but I guess that's the point of Yara and Lev, and how Abby, Owen and even Mel come to see them later on.
It seems they'll expand on that in the second season of the show, at least.
@Lalaland The point he was making was about exploring "universal hate". When you hate something or someone so much you lose yourself and you think about and do things you never thought you'd be capable to, that you end later up regretting.
You say "Thank you for the quote" like it proves your point, that Neil Druckmann's said "that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans", yet nowhere in that quote even alludes to what you said Neil supposedly said.
@35antonio My bad that wasn't what I was trying to convey with that thanks, it was meant in a "thanks for sharing the quote so folks can review it for themselves" sense
@Lalaland the WLF are not sympathetic though. They're warmongers. at the end of the game they're decimated. Abbys friends are sympathetic because we spend time with them. But cultists Lev and Yara are the most sympathetic in the entire game.
I think it would be a mistake to delay the elephant until the third season, I think a big part of the second game focuses on revenge, and you see it play out full circle. Without that in the second series I worry that there will just be lots of filler, to make sure that they get a few more series out of it.
Similar to how they made the lord of the rings 3 epic films based on 3 huge books, and then made 3 epic films based on the hobbit even though it isn't as big as even one of those books
@Scott Holland totally with you, hello fellow reader. Whenever I think of things like that it always reminds me of the first series of game of thrones, where there is a pretty big battle in the book that culminates in Jamie getting captured by the Starks, I was really looking forward to that bit, and burst out laughing when it was essentially, Rob on a horse talking about the upcoming battle, then fade to black, next scene is Rob sat on the same horse covered in mud, talking about how well the battle went, and they captured Jamie too.
@Dannyxtra TBF I love the Jackson movies but the best thing to ever come out of the WB LOTR universe was Sexy Shelob from Shadow of War. A true moment of insanity and disregard for lore but absolutely hilarious.
If it happens, it'll happen at the end of season 2.
They could easily get two seasons out of Part 2 and if they run it in a linear fashion, it'll front load all the back story for Abbie and the stuff that happens between Joel and Ellie.
I know they've said they've rearranged Abbie's story, so it lends so clout to what I've been saying since they announced it and you end up with two paralell seasons for Abbie and Ellie. And hopefully more of a slow burn with that character development for Ellie.
@Monkeychris it will happen at the end of the season, because Druckman has no balls to off him in the first episode, just like in the game. Lesson learned I guess. And it's too bad. I really wanted to see the reaction of all people that didn't play the game to get hit with a reality golf club in the first minutes of the second season. That would be something. But he is afraid to do it again.
@Monkeychris would be cool if they alternated the episodes, with each one being the other main character, like Ellie one episode, Abby the other.
With how much they overlap in the game, would be cool to see little details. Like, in one, a soldier takes a crap in a hole and then in the next episode a different gang's soldier is like "who shit in my hole?!" (I'm not a writer š¤£)
They won't do the "event" as I will call it until the next season. I think this will be more of a filler between the two games with a lot of flash backs. I will say the mid of season 3 (they already said they are doing 4) will be the "event" and even then I think they will cop out and not make it the same as the game. Without doing it. The whole concept of the game and Ellie's growth as a character can't happen unless that event unfolds.
@Scott Holland I love the second game because it is supposed to make you hate Abby. You then get out into Abby's shoes and you realise Ellie and her are not all that different. Abby did what she did as revenge for her father. Ellie then is basically after the same thing with Joel. The reason she doesn't kill her at the end is she realised she had become her and getting revenge will not solve anything. Then when she gets back and Dina has gone. Her obsession for revenge has cost her everything. What Joel said her constantly is you have to let things go "Kiddo". If Joel doesn't die this development can never happen and thus the story is not being told.
@Scott Holland "It had to happen. He literally doomed humanity"
That part's debatable. I don't think there is any indication that they were guaranteed to find a cure from the procedure.
Here's the important thing: the Fireflies were going to go through with the procedure even if there was less than a 1% chance of finding a cure, while Joel wasn't going to allow it to happen even if there was a 100% guarantee they would extract a cure.
Also important to note, whether you agree with the Fireflies or not, they at least we're doing it for the greater good of saving humanity. Joel's decision was a bit more selfish in that, if it was any other kid or person going through the procedure, he probably wouldn't have cared, but because it's Ellie/his surrogate daughter, it changes everything.
But that's what makes it such a great moral dilemma because you can't really say either side is completely right or wrong.
@scottyp180 or more likely it will be the cliff hanger of season 2. Then the beginning of season 3 will do Abby's back story then end of season 3 they will possibly do it but I think they will just do loads of filler and flash backs to pad it out as they know it will be a shock to most people and potentially put them off watching future episodes. Then they will do him as an on going hallucination to Ellie. Similar to the game trailer when Joel turns up when she's playing the guitar but at that time he is already dead.
@Pye To me, that's what makes things so interesting. There are a lot of different directions they can go to tell the story effectively and there are ways to meaningfully add to the story without it feeling like filler.
That said, they can also go in directions that are less effective while adding filler just to pad out the seasons.
Either way, as a fan of the game, I like that I don't know what to expect, even though I know what to expect.
Only a fool would think they would put the golfing scene in this season that's completely out of the question. The audience would completely revolt and turn right off if they did that right off the bat.
(Or should I say off the club) But yeah I would think maybe the end of the season they might actually do it or just keep doing time jumps (both forward and backward and between different characters) and avoid it entirely until next season. If they do it this season at all I'll at least give it to Neil for that.
I would honestly say if he actually follows through with it this season I would respect the heck out of that.
Want to join the discussion? Sign in or register!
@Mustoe You can usually tell the difference pretty easily:
@themightyant to your 4th point - I played TLOU2 a bit later, but I had managed to avoid any spoilers beforehand. I only knew the game was controversial, but I didn't know why.
Then I played it.
And then I still didn't know why the game was controversial.
I had to look it up and boy was I disappointed.
@themightyant
Been getting a lot of #4 with Veilguard. Even had a regular here completely misrepresent what is going om with Emrrich's necromancy. Then complain that you can't call them out for stuff they aren't doing in the first place.
When I point out that he isn't actually forcibly binding human souls to bodies. They dismiss it as a lore quibble and that their point still stands. Their point being that you should be able to call him out for his morally questionable practice of binding human souls to bodies. Which he doesn't do.
@Belgarath Unfortunately we are living in a world where facts, details, and the truth seemingly don't matter. As long as you believe what you say it and say it confidently, other people will believe you.
Look no further than the current state of politics in the United States.
@Belgarath Right He literally brings it up once or twice the moment you get him in your team. It is actually a pretty fascinating faction.
@themightyant "When you actually play the game and get to the offending section it's usually a relative nothingburger. Mountains out of molehills. All that hate for this? What a way to live."
To this point, didn't the initial wave of complaints based on the leaks mistakenly label Abby as lesbian and/or transgender? I remember people being upset that Joel was killed by a slur and that the series went woke and had agendas and yadda yadda.
That's always the big indicator. Once people start talking about "wokeness" or agendas, you know you're not havinga productive conversation.
There's also the argument along the lines of, "it's not about wokeness, agendas, etc BUT..." That was a big one with the Heretic reveal. People criticizing the reveal by saying it had nothing to do with the character's race, ethnicity, gender, or potential sexual orientation, the problem was that the character and their design was "uninteresting." Right....
@scottyp180 100% the disingenuous twisting of anything to make it seem like they are being reasonable, but usually they just want to be a bigot without seeming like a bigot.
A recent one is claiming ābad writingā, for example if a woman is strong and capable and able to handle herself, how itās suddenly unrealistic as if every male protagonist before hasnāt handled longer odds. I think Nathan Drake might have murdered 1000 people across all the games and, ludonarrative dissonance aside, no one ever complained about how unrealistic that was. Double standards everywhere. Itās usually so blatantly transparent.
@themightyant "Bad/lazy" writing is a go to cop out. Not that it doesn't exist. Plenty of examples of bad writing. It's just ironic how people will conveniently ignore bad writing and story telling when there is no sign of "wokeness" and "agendas."
Where things get tricky is when that venn diagram of bad writing and "wokeness" crossover. The MCU for the past 3-4 years comes to mind. There are legitimate reasons to criticize recent MCU movies and shows, unfortunately there is a portion of the audience who's convinced it's due to Disney/Marvel going woke.
@scottyp180 I agree there is some actual bad writing but thatās not really what I mean. Itās more the double standard of it all. Iāll give an example.
The Amazon show Reacher is a big hit, and I thoroughly enjoy it for what it is, a cheesy fun fuk-yeah action romp. Buts letās be honest here the writing is pretty atrocious and most of the acting is wooden. But it gets a pass because big hard as nails dude.
But if it was a female Reacher with terrible writing it wouldnāt be held to the same standard it would be eviscerated online and used as an example of āwoke agendasā. The same rules donāt apply evenly. It has to be better with a female protagonist to get the same praise, doubly so it itās LGBT.
The reality is there is PLENTY of atrocious writing in the MCU but itās only really pointed out in certain movies / tv shows because of gender or sexuality. That is a problem, tar them all with the same brush.
@themightyant "I agree there is some actual bad writing but thatās not really what I mean. Itās more the double standard of it all. Iāll give an example."
I completely agree. It's ironic, the people who will call out things for having agendas seem to only call out things when it fits THEIR agenda.
I was just pointing out that things get dicey when there's both bad writing and an opportunity to call out "wokeness." For example, two people can be calling out the MCU for it's bad writing but their reasoning could be completely different. It can quickly go from, "that person's right, the writing is awful" to "oh they're just focusing on the diverse characters...we aren't actually making the same point."
What's funny is when they're not sure how to react. In Deadpool and Wolverine there was a joke that referenced the "woke mob" or something along those lines, and a friend of mine wasn't sure which side they were making fun of, the studios that push "wokeness" or the people who call out the "wokeness." He didn't know if he should laugh at the joke or be slightly offended (yeah, I have friends who's views don't always align with mine).
@themightyant You will also find many of "them" complaining that the actress isn't hot enough to play Ellie, who is supposed to be 14 years old in the first game.
@Mustoe It is fascinating how both the hard right and hard left agree on one thing: they dislike the creative director. The reasons couldn't be more different but they do have very strong opinions on everything Naughty Dog.
Good. People can like or dislike a creative work, that is their right. If they don't like it, they can like something else, also their right. What isn't a right is hurling abuse at creators when they don't like the creation. Move on, like something else, life is short.
@kangarootoo Agreed. We all enjoy discussing things we like and dislike, but there's an appropriate way to go about doing it.
A lot of people have poor social skills these days. You can tellthey've had little experience having in person discussions and debates, especially with people who have opposing views.
I mean most people who are familiar with that plot point will probably care more about what Season 3 throws at them and most that aren't will also probably be in the same boat as Ellie is the core focus of the series after all. I was never on board with the harassments and death threats because of this game but I do find it odd Druckmann is curious about what people think of that plot line rather than expanding upon it since that surely would be the main focus right?
@Adam_The_Actor I'm not sure if season 3 is going to be the second half of the game, I've got a feeling that they may have both sides of the story play out together, rather than having the Ellie half and Abby half. Comments a few days ago did say that they were changing how they introduce Abby and what the view knows, so I'm thinking that could be the reason
@steviepunk I did read on another game site (forgot which one) that they were gonna introduce Abby from the get go, at the start of season 2, and that viewers would know immediately who she is (and probably what she's after eventually). I believe they said the whole section with Abby running through the snow and fighting for her life worked in the game, but would not work for television.
Been curious about that too. We all know how the folks in the gaming space reacted to the story in Part 2 (both the reasonable and the.. not so reasonable) but I do wonder how it will go over with the general public who don't play games and are just experiencing if for the first time on TV. It feels like some of the changes they have made (and are planning to make) may shift feelings a bit as well.
Plus, while the TV only audience won't have the exact same attachment to Joel that players did given that they didn't play an entire game in his shoes, he is played by a very well liked actor so that will engender a different but similar level of attachment.
I can't see the exact same sort of response (or at least I hope there isn't the same sort of response), but I wouldn't be shocked to see at least some loud reactions.
Bang on the money and if you want a clear example of what caring too much about the fans' reaction just look at the Sequel trilogy of Star Wars.
A mess of a trilogy with no clear vision from the get go that changed direction throughout the films based on audience reactions.
- The Force Awakens releases. Still a great movie (I'll die on that hill) and a promising start to the trilogy. So, what was the film's main criticism? It's a rehash of A New Hope and plays it too safe.
- The Last Jedi is released and in response to those criticisms, it goes on a different direction and takes creative risks with its characters and narratives. Don't need to tell you the clusterfuck of a reaction surrounded that movie. Awful movie, ruined Luke (it didn't), RUINED Star Wars even!
- So Rise of Skywalker is released and what it does? Undoes everything The Last Jedi did and goes the safest, most predictable route to keep everyone happy which blew on their face.
Want to take creative risks? Okay, but commit to them. Don't half ass it and get cold feet when you get a less than positive reaction, big or small. Otherwise you're just making things worse like JJ and Lucasfilms did in Rise of Skywalker.
Neil and Naughty Dog understand this and it's why people thinking Joel is going to survive in the show are in for a rude awakening.
Neil Druckmann is "really curious"
Okay
The "elephant in the room" with TLOU2 for me was always Neil Druckmann's statement that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans. Reading that before the game and then seeing how cartoonishly evil the cultists are really soured me on his writing. Not surprised he hasn't been talking about that angle on TLOU2 in relation to Season 2 but it shocked me how he was never pulled up on how shitty his analogy is in the context of the game that was delivered
@Lalaland Where do I read "Neil Druckmann's statement that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans"?
I've seen this mentioned before - by you? - but I'm unable to find such a statement myself, making me think if it was invented to support a certain point.
@jespersoerensen He never said that. It's a narrative people came up from this quote where Druckmann used as inspiration for the story.
The argument is that the Wolves represent Israel and the Seraphites represent Palestine.
@35antonio I recently saw a tweet from Sam White the author of the GQ piece who said that he felt bad at how often that one paragraph has been misinterpreted in bad faith.
@35antonio Difficult to escape that interpretation when the game repeatedly alludes to itself, the Seattle residents are not native to Seattle but are explicitly framed in the notes as survivors who gathered there. The notes in the bank draw heavily on the history of the British Mandate in Palestine when the British would pretend to be "caught in the middle" of two unreasonable groups. And he chose to bring it up independently, combine that with how the way the cult is portrayed aligns very heavily with the propaganda of one side without the other getting the same treatment it feels like a very pointed quote indeed
@Lalaland The Wolves are portrayed as terrorists that resort to violence to reach their goals and spread fear. Notes from FEDRA talk about the Wolves seizing Seattle and throughout the game you see them torturing and executing people in cold blood.
Not to mention the fascist ideology of the us vs them that results in Abby turning on them during the Wolves' invasion of the Scars territory, meant to wipe them all out and put an end to the conflict, and being labeled a traitor.
You're seeing what you want to see and all it took was reading "growing up in an Israeli settlement". It's as simple as that.
@35antonio I would disagree, terrorism is and always has been in the eye of the beholder, I'm Irish and we won our freedom though terrorism and murder as viewed through the lens of our occupiers. Labeling someone as terrorist isn't actually all that revealing but I agree that the cult are represented as uniformly bad which when coupled with Druckmann's claim to want to analyse hate is very odd.
Hate is one dimensional, "my enemies are so bad that any measure taken to destroy them is justified". The central characters Abby and Ellie do a great job of exploring this theme and the complexities of Joel's past and the things he did soften the initial shock of that opening scene that is set up to allow the player to hate Abby. Then we get to see all of Abby's backstory and what brought her to that place, what she gave up to enact revenge on the target of her hatred. Ellie's story is all about what you lose on that hateful journey, I honestly feel the game would have been far stronger ending on Ellie in the farmhouse and skipping the whole California epilogue . This central story is an excellent exploration of that theme and is complex in ways that an exploration of hate has to be to deliver a message better than "bad people bad"
By contrast the Wolves/Seattle split is simple to an extreme, the Wolves have no depth, we don't get to have any conversations with them, we only see them through the lens of their worst excesses. This is a cult that has survived just as long as the Seattle commune but somehow have nothing positive just a mindless devotion to their martyr and killing. I'm honestly not sure what having them in the game at all brought to the table, would Yara and Lev have made any less sense as runaways from a common or garden bigoted member of the Seattle commune?
Now the cult would have been the weakest part of the game to me anyway without Neil specifically bringing up Israel/Palestine but he chose to do that and it adds a whole other layer of weird to the portrayal. The extreme transphobia of the cult is an ugly trait shared by multiple groups in both societies but tolerance towards LGBTQ+ has been claimed as a solely Israeli trait in propaganda. We do get multiple sides to the Seattle commune but the cultists are uniformly hostile in away only the zombies are justifying the extreme violence of the Seattle commune in the end. I'm not sure why he chose to add this whole thing to his game but when it doesn't feed into the theme of his central story but frankly dropping in entirely would have been the better bet (and made for a tighter run time also).
If you want a deeper dive on the politics of the game I recommend the VICE article by Emanuel Maiberg The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of āThe Last of Us Part IIā
@Lalaland
That's sketchy as fuck. The IRAs only minor saving grace was they often warned ahead of time about bombs, which allowed evacuations.
@Lalaland
This is one of the most unhinged takes I have ever seen. Terrorism is terrorism. Even if you think it is justified. It is still terrorism.
@MattBoothDev Your knowledge of history is shallow, the Irish Republic was borne of just those types of people, murderers who killed men in their beds, blew up them up with bike bombs, etc. The IRA and IRB were in many ways even more vicious than later incarnations and upon getting independence they promptly unleashed that hate on each other in our civil war where we promptly hung more IRA men that the UK ever did. The IRA has been many things over the years and the process of phone warnings (as imperfect and incomplete as it was) was a feature of the Provisional IRA campaigns in Northern Ireland and mainland UK during The Troubles. That campaign is a whole other thing and my example is about the Republic of Ireland, oddly enough like all liberation campaigns from colonial powers our occupier was reluctant to let us form a standing army and drill with artillery and such to fight them in pitched battle so terrorism it was.
@Lalaland yeah, that's a lot of words to try and justify murdering people. Like I said, what you said was sketchy as fuck. Plenty of ways to get to them point you were making without tacitly ok-ing civilians getting killed. Doesn't really matter whose side you're on, civilians aren't military targets.
@MattBoothDev Yet they are frequently targeted by the military, civilian casualties aren't solely the product of terrorism. "Legitimate" militaries of multiple nations (and I'm not singling Israel out here, this is common to all COIN ops) feel justified in taking strikes that will cause civilian casualties because they feel their target is especially dangerous. Holding irregular forces to higher standards than the "good guys" inherently concedes the "good guys" are not that good.
I don't endorse or condone the killing or wounding of civilians in any context but you don't have to look too closely at any conflict with terrorists to see equally sketchy actions from the state forces at which point civilian casualties aren't a good metric for deciding which side is "right"
@jespersoerensen
This seems to happen often when it comes to Druckman. Won't say that the guy is perfect, no one is, but it feels weird.
@HelderCH
At this point someone could state his birthday with a copy of his birth certificate and I would question how much they are making up stuff. It has reached that level.
@Lalaland
What? Where did he say that?
@Lalaland he did not say that.
What he said:
the storyline were inspired by his own childhood growing up in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In particular, he recalled an October 2000 incident in which a crowd in Ramallah lynched two Israel Defense Forces reservists who had accidentally entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city.
Druckmann remembered āfeeling intense hatred for the people that committed the lynching,ā he told Sam White of GQ Magazine in 2020, a feeling that he later came to regret. Still, that brief desire for revenge drove him to create a game that tackles āthe thirst for retributionā and the endless cycles of vengeance that intense grief can inspire
@Akshay Arrison Thanks for finding the quotes, he chose to raise the analogy and in the game there is little balance given to the cult you encounter. The Seattle residents are portrayed as being many things, there are multiple sympathetic as well as alienating characters. The cult has two survivors who escaped from sexual exploitation imposed by their own parent, the only cult members we encounter are hunting the player regardless of who they are playing.
This is not the writing of a man who has recognised his own unjustified hate and wants to show that there is more to the targets of hatred than the narrow lens he once had. It feels like an attempt to say "look with religious nuts what are you gonna do? No talking with them". The opening bank section when you are gathering up notes from the notFEMA prior to them abandoning Seattle notes that they too could not deal with these nutters in a way redolent of the attitudes of a lot of officers of the British Mandate in Palestine (particularly thinking of that prick Orde Wingate).
TLOU2 is not a game interested in exploring unjustified hate, it presents an objectively awful cult whose members sacrifice their own kids to it's teachings and ultimately cannot be reasoned with, just escaped from or destroyed. The only time the game shows the Seattle residents as committing evil acts is right at the end with the sequence where they wipe out the village but without showing any other side of the cult except evil it's an ambiguous sequence at best.
@Lalaland
Not looking to dispute your entire comment, but just an observation: when Abby goes to meet Isaac, you see that he and other WLF members torture Seraphites on the regular while also keeping them in cages; over the city they are shooting people on sight without asking questions, and are pretty nonchalant when talking about killing 'Scars'.
It's true that we see too little of the other side (although there are several notes in Seattle and the Island that fleshes out their way of living), but I guess that's the point of Yara and Lev, and how Abby, Owen and even Mel come to see them later on.
It seems they'll expand on that in the second season of the show, at least.
@Lalaland The point he was making was about exploring "universal hate". When you hate something or someone so much you lose yourself and you think about and do things you never thought you'd be capable to, that you end later up regretting.
You say "Thank you for the quote" like it proves your point, that Neil Druckmann's said "that the whole setting of Seattle is meant to be analogous to Israeli settlers vs Palestinans", yet nowhere in that quote even alludes to what you said Neil supposedly said.
@35antonio My bad that wasn't what I was trying to convey with that thanks, it was meant in a "thanks for sharing the quote so folks can review it for themselves" sense
@HelderCH Fair point, I'd forgotten about that sequence
@Lalaland the WLF are not sympathetic though. They're warmongers. at the end of the game they're decimated. Abbys friends are sympathetic because we spend time with them. But cultists Lev and Yara are the most sympathetic in the entire game.
I think it would be a mistake to delay the elephant until the third season, I think a big part of the second game focuses on revenge, and you see it play out full circle. Without that in the second series I worry that there will just be lots of filler, to make sure that they get a few more series out of it.
Similar to how they made the lord of the rings 3 epic films based on 3 huge books, and then made 3 epic films based on the hobbit even though it isn't as big as even one of those books
@Dannyxtra on a tangent, the battle for helms deep was actually tiny in the books. A couple of chapters if memory serves me right.
They actually slipped the most interesting parts of that book to make it grandiose which was a shame.
@Scott Holland totally with you, hello fellow reader. Whenever I think of things like that it always reminds me of the first series of game of thrones, where there is a pretty big battle in the book that culminates in Jamie getting captured by the Starks, I was really looking forward to that bit, and burst out laughing when it was essentially, Rob on a horse talking about the upcoming battle, then fade to black, next scene is Rob sat on the same horse covered in mud, talking about how well the battle went, and they captured Jamie too.
@Dannyxtra TBF I love the Jackson movies but the best thing to ever come out of the WB LOTR universe was Sexy Shelob from Shadow of War. A true moment of insanity and disregard for lore but absolutely hilarious.
If it happens, it'll happen at the end of season 2.
They could easily get two seasons out of Part 2 and if they run it in a linear fashion, it'll front load all the back story for Abbie and the stuff that happens between Joel and Ellie.
I know they've said they've rearranged Abbie's story, so it lends so clout to what I've been saying since they announced it and you end up with two paralell seasons for Abbie and Ellie. And hopefully more of a slow burn with that character development for Ellie.
@Monkeychris it will happen at the end of the season, because Druckman has no balls to off him in the first episode, just like in the game. Lesson learned I guess. And it's too bad. I really wanted to see the reaction of all people that didn't play the game to get hit with a reality golf club in the first minutes of the second season. That would be something. But he is afraid to do it again.
@Monkeychris would be cool if they alternated the episodes, with each one being the other main character, like Ellie one episode, Abby the other.
With how much they overlap in the game, would be cool to see little details. Like, in one, a soldier takes a crap in a hole and then in the next episode a different gang's soldier is like "who shit in my hole?!" (I'm not a writer š¤£)
They won't do the "event" as I will call it until the next season. I think this will be more of a filler between the two games with a lot of flash backs. I will say the mid of season 3 (they already said they are doing 4) will be the "event" and even then I think they will cop out and not make it the same as the game. Without doing it. The whole concept of the game and Ellie's growth as a character can't happen unless that event unfolds.
@Pye I've never understood the uproar about it.
It had to happen. He literally doomed humanity
I take it that it's because of the person who did it and that just riled up the basement dwellers.
@Scott Holland I love the second game because it is supposed to make you hate Abby. You then get out into Abby's shoes and you realise Ellie and her are not all that different. Abby did what she did as revenge for her father. Ellie then is basically after the same thing with Joel. The reason she doesn't kill her at the end is she realised she had become her and getting revenge will not solve anything. Then when she gets back and Dina has gone. Her obsession for revenge has cost her everything. What Joel said her constantly is you have to let things go "Kiddo". If Joel doesn't die this development can never happen and thus the story is not being told.
@Pye so yeah, it's just because a woman kills him.
I feel they should do it in the shower inside the first 10 minutes just to annoy all the incells
@Scott Holland "It had to happen. He literally doomed humanity"
That part's debatable. I don't think there is any indication that they were guaranteed to find a cure from the procedure.
Here's the important thing: the Fireflies were going to go through with the procedure even if there was less than a 1% chance of finding a cure, while Joel wasn't going to allow it to happen even if there was a 100% guarantee they would extract a cure.
Also important to note, whether you agree with the Fireflies or not, they at least we're doing it for the greater good of saving humanity. Joel's decision was a bit more selfish in that, if it was any other kid or person going through the procedure, he probably wouldn't have cared, but because it's Ellie/his surrogate daughter, it changes everything.
But that's what makes it such a great moral dilemma because you can't really say either side is completely right or wrong.
@scottyp180 you do raise some good points.
I wish the discord around these games was actually about this and not Abby killing Joel. It raises some brilliant moral dilemmas
@Scott Holland But the best part is she doesn't give a damn about the world. He killed her father and friends. That's all she needed.
@Mustoe but that's where the dilemma comes in because they're all going to die anyway.
I agree, it's so engaging because of stuff like this and it's refreshing that people on here haven't resorted to just being basement dwellers.
@Pye I think if it happens this season, it'll be right at the end. It'll be like a knife to the gut for audiences before the long wait until season 3.
@scottyp180 or more likely it will be the cliff hanger of season 2. Then the beginning of season 3 will do Abby's back story then end of season 3 they will possibly do it but I think they will just do loads of filler and flash backs to pad it out as they know it will be a shock to most people and potentially put them off watching future episodes. Then they will do him as an on going hallucination to Ellie. Similar to the game trailer when Joel turns up when she's playing the guitar but at that time he is already dead.
@Pye To me, that's what makes things so interesting. There are a lot of different directions they can go to tell the story effectively and there are ways to meaningfully add to the story without it feeling like filler.
That said, they can also go in directions that are less effective while adding filler just to pad out the seasons.
Either way, as a fan of the game, I like that I don't know what to expect, even though I know what to expect.
@Pye the event will happen early on and the end of season 2 will be just as another character becomes the POV character.
Being vague is hard š
Thank you for not spoiling anything, in the headline or the body of the text :)
@Anrkist if you're gonna play the game first... There's spoilers in that too š
@MattBoothDev iām not gonna play the game, or watch the telly show. Gotta avoid the spoilers at all costs!
Only a fool would think they would put the golfing scene in this season that's completely out of the question. The audience would completely revolt and turn right off if they did that right off the bat.
(Or should I say off the club) But yeah I would think maybe the end of the season they might actually do it or just keep doing time jumps (both forward and backward and between different characters) and avoid it entirely until next season. If they do it this season at all I'll at least give it to Neil for that.
I would honestly say if he actually follows through with it this season I would respect the heck out of that.
It definitely needs a lot of shuffling to be impactful. I thought the story was structured really badly.