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    The Last of Us | Abby (photo mode on PS4 Pro)

    September 07, 2021

    The Last of Us | Abby (photo mode on PS4 Pro)

    Abby (photo mode on PS4 Pro)

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:41 AM PDT

    Finally got both platinums for my favorite series of all time

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:12 AM PDT

    My Clicker mask

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:55 PM PDT

    I just realised that different people turn at different rates

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:05 PM PDT

    When Ellie is in Hillcrest you can enter the garage full of runners which Boris locked in there and then later when you're at his house you see that Boris is a stalker. If you read the notes you find out that Boris locked everyone in the spored garage and got bit at the same time meaning that they would all turn at a similar time but Boris is a stalker and the rest are runners.

    submitted by /u/obiwan585
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    Joel and Clicker 1/6 Scale!

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 03:00 AM PDT

    A picture of Dina to brighten your day

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 04:04 AM PDT

    “Dr Daniela Star is pretty..-“ “She’s a savage” “What she does to Captain Ryan in that death match…” “Yeah I mean, he definitely deserved it, but…” “It was a nice twist how they escaped though.” [Loved this parallel.] Found it on Facebook lol

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:40 AM PDT

    Photomode session #??

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 08:07 AM PDT

    Adding more details to the Ellie painting ✌️��✨

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 02:09 PM PDT

    Turned Tess’ iconic scene into a dramatic monologue for my portfolio. I’m my own worst critic but I hope other’s think it’s decent!

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:31 PM PDT

    Dina in noir

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:47 AM PDT

    Protector

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:55 AM PDT

    [SPOILERS] Some thoughts on Dina

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 08:31 PM PDT

    Been thinking about Dina recently. I have always been pretty neutral with her just because I don't think she's in it enough.

    Now I'm realizing that I really wish they developed her more. Like she is a really cool character, but she's just so…static? Sure she changes a little with the whole blind following of Ellie everywhere to not going to Santa Barbara, but that isn't a crazy development. It was only a matter of time until Dina couldn't live with Ellie's obsession, especially with all of the stresses of her own. I don't know, anyway, I have been wondering why I never really cared about her since she is so unique and has what seems like such an interesting background.

    Not sure what the point of this post is, but I do hope she is in future games. I mean just her backstory, Tommy's backstory, Maria's backstory, even more of Joel's backstory. They all have had crazy lives and I would love to see all of that.

    Ok I'm rambling now, thanks for reading

    submitted by /u/thekatieoc
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    i like Ellie’s freckles and acne scars

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 08:59 AM PDT

    Abby did exactly what Joel did to…

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 07:34 PM PDT

    The Fireflies. What's so interesting about Part II is Abby's choices lead down a similar path of Joel's, where they're essentially pitted against a once friendly organization and end up killing the highest leaders.

    In Part I, Joel kills Jerry and Marlene along with a bunch of other Fireflies during a pivotal moment for the group, leading to the dissolution of the Fireflies. In Part II, though Abby doesn't directly kill Isaac, Yara kills him to protect her; this was during a pivotal invasion of the Seraphites island. In the confusion of the loss of leadership, the entire WLF infantry was annihilated. Defenseless, the WLF base in the stadium would have likely been sieged by Seraphites and turned into Temple Mount after the first crusades. Though their circumstances were different, Abby and Joel came from the same mold

    submitted by /u/_mrpinkdonttip_
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    Long time no see dudes, how're you doin' with Dina & Ellie?

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:27 AM PDT

    Needed some new backgrounds

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:56 AM PDT

    Ellie confronts Nora told in facial expressions

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:35 PM PDT

    why do people think that both games gameplay are "virtually the same"

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:35 PM PDT

    of all the frustrating comments i've heard on the last of us part 2 i think none bother me more than when people try to tell me the gameplay in the last of us and the last of us part 2 is barely different. people genuinely played part 2 and thought "wow after 7 years naughty dog did nothing to improve or tweak the gameplay or mechanics, it's still the exact same."

    i struggle seeing how it's possible to view it that way when all it takes is one watch of the gameplay trailer for the game to see just how much is new.

    weapons/tools/upgrade: this alone is enough of a tweak to render the argument that the gameplay is the same as useless. in this part 2 they give you so many more tools and weapons to help you in combat. things such as silencers, trapmines, bomb arrows, the smg, and smoke bombs. these all contribute to the revamped gameplay in unique ways. now you can set your enemies up to walk right into a trap or stun enemies and fight loudly. not to mention now you don't have to craft shivs so stealth is more accessible. your silencer and arrows serve two different purposes and allow for more stealth options from a distance. and that's not to mention abbys part with her crossbow, pipe bomb, craftable ammo, and different shotgun ammo types.

    there's also a revamped upgrade system. in your first play through i'm not sure it's possible to unlock every upgrade as there are so many. different unlockable categories that correlate to different play styles. you have to be strategic with these and upgrade according to how you like to play.

    movement/environments: this is, in my opinion, the largest change that part 2 made. the first thing i noticed in these encounters was how much more complex the environments in which they take place are. there are many different paths and routes you can take to complete a section. you have many more movement options with the ability to jump now and to go prone. this allows for more replay-ability as depending on your resources and difficulty the same encounter can play, feel, and look completely different each time you re-try it. combine this with the new weapons and items you have and every encounter becomes full of new approaches and interesting decisions that the player will have to choose between.

    the ai: i won't talk about this too much because i honestly don't know much about it but i can tell it's improved. enemies calling each other's names or informing each other about things they notice is more than just a gimmick or a story telling element. i often use these auditory clues to let me know where i should go and who i need to kill before they alert the others that someone killed their dog.

    i just needed to rant about this because it is extremely annoying that people want to say that tlou2 has the same. exact. gameplay. as part 1. i would like to hear what everyone thinks about the take of the gameplay being the same

    submitted by /u/goavsgo29
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    Day 2 Stalkers

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:11 PM PDT

    Replaying for the first time since it’s initial release…

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:10 PM PDT

    …still not sure how anyone who was a fan of Part 1 could hate this game. Yeah, I wish the story went in a different direction. I'm still not a fan of switching POV to Abby for half of the game. I still wish I could kill her in the end…

    But the gameplay is air tight and while the story might not be the one I wanted to hear, it's what they gave us. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but TLOU2 is a damn fine game and I'm thoroughly enjoying replaying on PS5.

    submitted by /u/--Turd--Ferguson--
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    Recommend me Some Challenges for Last Of Us Part 2.

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:27 PM PDT

    I just want recommendations for challenges like Using only one gun finishing the game without guns

    you ll can add modifiers like unlimited ammo or any other thing present in the game.

    submitted by /u/Xrash009
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    I got mad at the video about Part II by The Closer Look and wrote a long thing talking about why. tl;dr included near the top.

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:35 AM PDT

    hhhhhhhhh pretty much the title. Yeah this is my throwaway, just because I feel like it. I don't even remember why I made this account, but I know I have it because every day I get one of those little reddit emails—nevermind.

    I guess you'd call this an essay? Who's to say.

    So, if you haven't already seen it, don't watch the video essay "How to Divide a Fanbase" on TLOUII by YouTuber The Closer Look.

    I'm going to break down why I think it's bad. I'm not going to mention stuff that I think is either too underdeveloped to break down or just doesn't warrant attention because if I did, I'd be here all day. I'm also going to focus on the first 45 minutes of the video—the introduction, and the two sections he titles Druckmann's Biggest Mistake and The Autopsy—because I honestly got so ground down by the time he got to his proposal for a better story that I couldn't be fucked to watch it.

    Tl;dr: the essay is flawed because its premise is that audience expectations > any other factor in the artistic process, up to and including creative control and intent over your own work. All must fall in service of the fans. He definitely didn't need to go on for an hour (most of the video) about his fan fic version. He takes evidence from both games in bad faith. He takes evidence in general in bad faith. He uses this bad faith evidence to make bad arguments (I spend a lot of time on this, specific examples, etc). He appears to have refused to engage in the work he's critiquing on a fundamental level, and so it is impossible for him to have interesting or even sound arguments. Frankly, I'm not even sure he played the game.

    I want to stress that these are just my thoughts on it, it's subjective, yada yada yada. However, I would argue that, while many of my conclusions certainly are more objective, much of the stuff I point out about this video—including some wild contradictions and what are essentially flat-out admissions that TCL did not at all engage with the story he was critiquing enough to understand even its most basic structural facts—isn't. The video is real and it really says this stuff, I'm just unpacking what it says through my particular lens.

    1. I think the essay's premise, at heart, is poor. His main argument is that, because some fans were "alienated" by the story of Part II, ND inherently failed as writers/developers/artists/etc. He basically creates a dichotomy wherein alienating any part of the fanbase is bad, and the only good sequels are those that pander to the fanbase and make them happy. Art? Creative control? Taking risks in the hope they pay off? In this essay, none of that matters. All that matters is that the fans be happy. And I think this is an incredibly poor way to interpret art. It puts the subjective emotions of a random assortment of millions of people ahead of any other possible meaning that could be derived from art. He even says so himself, that the actual quality of the story being told in TLOUII does not matter, only that it should have pandered to as many people as possible. I think part of why I'm so upset by this premise is that, as someone who aspires to be A Creative someday, it's ridiculously disheartening to hear someone who's even as minor a successful creative as TCL say that they personally believe that pandering to an audience is vastly more important than artistic, creative freedom on the part of the artist. I'll also admit I'm not happy that it's essentially capitalist above all else (i.e. you have to pander to the audience because they are your consumers and what's more important than a consumer) but I won't get into that here.

    2. I'm also not a fan of the idea that part of the work of explaining why something was bad is to explain how you think it could have been better. For those of you who aren't familiar with the video, it's over an hour and forty-five minutes long. Only the first forty-five of those minutes are spent on any sort of story analysis (and I'd even argue that a few minutes should be cleaved off of that measure because he does an introduction and an ad read during that time). The remaining hour is spent creating what is essentially a fan fic narrative of what TLOUII should have been, according to him, based on the eleven "major problems" he cites as reasons why TLOUII's story failed. I'll decide later whether I care enough to comment on that part, too, but needless to say that if you spend the majority of your video essay pitching your fan fic, maybe you're focusing on/marketing this video as the wrong thing. You wouldn't want to alienate the portion of your audience that only cares for essays, would you? Because, of course, that would make the video inherently bad.

    3. He claims the game is all bleak hell, but I would disagree—Abby's story is a narrative of personal growth and redemption, and there is hope in this game in general. It's also interesting that, when he talks about the previous game being about "this heartwarming tale of paternal love" that he ignores everything that made that game bleak—the countless people (Including Sarah, Joel, Tess, Marlene, Ellie, Bill, Sam, Henry, David, etc.) who are all going through hell, who die or get infected, who are barely scraping by enough to survive and hope for any potential way out back to a "normal life." The first game, I would argue, is bleak. Not as bleak as Part II, not by a long shot, but to claim that the first game was exclusively heartwarming and hopeful while the second game was anything but is ignoring large swaths of both games in order to make a flimsy point. And there's one part where he gets so close, where he says something like "if the first game was about a depraved old man meeting a young girl and dragging her down to his level, then the second game would be more consistent" and it's like… that's not what the first game was, but that's not not what the first game was. In many ways, Joel was a bit depraved and certainly depressed in the start of the first game, and he did bring Ellie down from the place of happiness and general naïveté she began the game in to a place of somber maturity. The first game was about the harsh realities of a depressing world, and Ellie's emotional journey as she comes to terms with those realities. And so, yeah, it's not too far off for the second game to be a mixture of darkness and light, because that's who Joel and Ellie were in the first game.

    4. There is also the implication, when he argues that ND aimed to hurt their fanbase, that anybody who liked both games only did so because there was a fluke of luck in "target audiences" of people who like both heartwarming tales and bleak hellscapes, which, I don't know, feels rather reductionist, but I don't feel like my thoughts on this particular point are well-developed enough to talk further.

    5. This is small, and I just find it funny, but he says (paraphrasing) "every story has flaws, this is just me pointing out what this one's are, and it just happens that there are so many of them I had to make the video this long as it is" like there's not an unnecessary hour tacked onto the back and the analysis is 45 minutes at the start.

    6. So in the tl;dr I cite that TCL uses a lot of bad faith evidence, and getting now into the autopsy, I'll explain what I mean a few times (not every time, I'd probably be here all day). In the beginning of this part, he talks about the story structure, which is fine, but the way he phrases it almost sets you the viewer up to feel the same way. He says, essentially, that the story follows "Ellie in the present day, and Abby three days in the past… the whole thing is interlaced with dozens upon dozens of flashbacks." Let's unpack that. First, his description of the general structure of Ellie's and Abby's days, while true to how the game feels, seems more confusing when he explains it like that. He makes it sound like, while Ellie is experiencing Thursday, Abby is experiencing Monday. And, later on in the video, he makes it clear that he believes that's exactly what's happening. He says later that you follow Abby "for three days before Ellie's plot has even started." I'm sorry, but if you're so unengaged with a piece Second, "dozens upon dozens" is a wild overestimation of the number of flashbacks in the game. I counted. Including Abby's dream sequences, there are eight flashbacks. (The Birthday Gift, Finding Strings, St. Mary's Hospital, Tracking Lesson, The Aquarium, Winter Visit, Abby Dream 1, Abby Dream 2.) Now, granted, his larger point is about how the structure is somewhat confusing, which, okay, I can understand that argument. It can be hard to keep track of what's happening when given the fairly minor title cards the game provides. But this is bad faith evidence, and even though it's not the main thrust of TCL's argument about the structure, this evidence is part of its basis. By using this evidence, TCL has created an argument that is flawed because the logic on which he is building his argument is flat-out incorrect. Any argument he makes using this evidence can't stand because it has no evidence to stand on. I want to make this clear: he is basing his first real argument as to why the game itself, regardless of any paratextual factors, is bad on lies.

    7. The main thrust of his structure argument is that the cut to Abby in the middle of the game is bad because it releases any and all tension built up by the Ellie section. Which, no. I mean, no. It does not. Yes, it releases some of the tension, but even objectively, from a story telling standpoint, because it cuts off right before the theatre fight, there is still tension. Even if you don't care for Abby, you're desperate to get back to the theatre, because what the fuck happens next. He also argues that, because Abby's story apparently feels like side quests (i.e. she's not working towards a discrete, concrete goal like Kill Ellie or Get Ellie to the Fireflies so she can be killed for Science) there's no tension, narrative or otherwise, in her side of the story. I can't imagine the kind of hatred you'd have to have for Abby to feel no tension at all for half of the story, including two of the most visceral chapters in the game (Ground Zero aka Der Rattenkoning and The Island aka Everything Is Burning Down Now). In general, TCL argues for intertwining the two stories, which would also, somehow, eliminate the need for the "second climax" in Santa Barbara? He doesn't really make arguments for that, just throws it out there, and I can't imagine how, if you were confused by the stories in isolation, constantly switching back and forth would be anything but more confusing (especially in terms of gameplay—Abby and Ellie have such different gameplay styles that, as much as I would love to see an intertwined version of the game for the hell of it, I'd imagine it'd be incredibly frustrating to play because of the constant need to be switching between playstyles). He also argues the midpoint is bad because a midpoint is supposed to be about changing up the dynamic of the story, something TLOUII doesn't do, which… does playing as Abby for 10 hours after trying to kill her for 10 hours not change up the dynamic of the story enough for ya?!

    7.25 I'd like to talk more about that "apparently feels like side quests" thing I mentioned earlier. TCL harps for a good chunk of the autopsy about how Abby has no goals in her story therefore no plot therefore she is bad. Uh, just one thing, chief, saving Yara and Lev as part of a larger quest to personal redemption after the revenge she sought for her father for four years didn't fill the gaping void in her heart is her plot. In fact, as many people have pointed out, it's a plot very similar to that heartwarming story about personal growth and redemption called The Last of Us. Just because Abby does state "I want to better myself as a person" or "I want to save those kids" does not mean that Abby's section has no plot. The plot is there, and if you look for even a fraction of a second, you'll find it. You can not like that an action-adventure-stealth video has a largely character-driven plot, and that's fine. But, oh no, so did the first game, and I suppose that if ND had provided something else, they wouldn't have been living up to fan expectations and instead would have alienated the fan base who wanted that kind of character and emotion driven game out of part two and the game would have been inherently bad. (I'm harping on this point about alienation=bad game a lot because of how fundamentally flawed it is and how it is impossible to achieve—someone is always going to dislike your sequel because it doesn't capture some je ne se qua from the first entry, and that alienation doesn't mean that the sequel is inherently bad, just that one person didn't like it.)

    7.5 I also want to just quickly mention how beautifully ironic this section of the video is—he argues that you should never split up parallel stories like TLOUII does because it's nigh impossible to maintain tension across two separated plots like that, then argues that The Lord of the Rings did it better by cutting between the Sam/Frodo/Gollum plot and the Aragon/Legolas/Dwarves plot. I call this beautifully ironic because, while that's true for the movies, the books actually follow a plot much more similar to TLOUII: they have long periods (about 150 pages each) of just following ALD's plot, and then switching to SFG and back again, and TCL seems blissfully unawares of this. I love my critiques with a side of ignorance about the evidence being quoted from. (I'm sure there's more of this in the video, but I just don't have enough familiarity with the other outside properties he brings up to know of any distinct contradictions/fallacies/whatever.)

    7.75 In terms of more, just, blissful ignorance on the part of TCL, he refers to Yara as "the woman with the broken arm." Not even "the woman with compartment syndrome" or "Yara, who has a broken arm," just "the woman with the broken arm." He couldn't even be bothered to learn the names of characters. He also, as far as I can tell, didn't learn Lev, Owen, or Mel's names, so.

    1. At this point (20 minutes into the video) he goes through three arguments—about how the flashbacks are redundant, about how they kill the pacing, and about how the pacing would have been saved if only Joel had been killed at the end of the story—without elaborating on any of them at all. Like he literally just throws out his takes and doesn't dissect or discuss them. At this point, I'm starting to even lose interest in discussing the autopsy part of the video because he's stopped making arguments and has started making complaints, the difference being that you would at least try to support an argument, whereas a complaint is just stated. He comes close when he said that Joel dying at the beginning was stupid, and that if Joel had died at the end, and the game had been about the progression and deterioration of Joel and Ellie's relationship, then the game would have been better, but he doesn't explain his argument, he just states it. It feels like the introductory paragraph at a debate. It's a summary of an argument TCL can't make, not really. In order for him to make that argument, he would have to explain why his proposed game would be objectively better than the game ND created, and he can't really do that without getting into extremely subjective territory. Look, I know a lot of what I'm saying could probably be deemed subjective, and hell, it probably all is, but I think a major difference between me and TCL is that, while I am framing many of my arguments as subjective (particularly those that don't discuss his poorly thought-out, random arguments), TCL very rarely posits that any of what he's saying is subjective. Instead, he presents it, largely, as objective fact. He does make a couple disclaimers, but he always makes sure to make it clear that the vast majority of the time, his word should be taken as gospel. For example, TCL argues that neither Abby nor Ellie is a sympathetic character, and that this makes the entire story unengaging. However, this argument is based on entirely personal/subjective opinions, specifically whether or not Abby and/or Ellie are sympathetic characters. I felt sympathy for both, so much that by the end of the game I was practically begging it to let me let Abby go during the fight on the beach. I wanted both of them to live, and to be happy. I understood both of them thoroughly and loved them both. Buuuut that's entirely subjective, so I can't base an argument on that fact and frame it as objective, which is exactly what TCL is doing here, but in reverse. He has the same sort of problem with his following argument that the revenge plot is a bad plot for this kind of story, i.e. that if you want a story where two protagonists are pitted against each other then a revenge story in which one of them needs to die in order for the story to be satisfying is a poor kind of story to choose because it means that the revenge doesn't feel satisfying, and, again, I am left feeling that this entire argument is subjective, and that any attempt to argue against it would result in me arguing against emotions which feels utterly futile. Especially re: that the revenge doesn't feel satisfying. Man, it's almost like ND set out to tell a revenge story about how utterly unsatisfying revenge is, that it doesn't ultimately fix or even comfort the problem at its root, and wanted instead to explore where our desire for revenge comes from and how we might be able to take different actions instead of revenge to fill the hole we think needs to be revenge'ed to be filled. It's almost like ND wanted you to care about both, at least a little, so that the grander story they were trying to tell would make sense and be cohesive. Imagine trying to tell this particular story without Abby's side. You can't do it, in no small part because Abby's side answers the question posed by Ellie's side. Ellie's side asks, What happens when we go on revenge, and why is it so unfulfilling? And Abby's side answers, Because at heart, our desire for revenge is not about revenge, it's about the trauma we feel because we couldn't save the person we loved when they needed us. Our desire for revenge is our answer to the undeniable fact that the person we love is dead and gone, and we are powerless agents, unable to have saved them, and that crushes us, so we search for revenge, the next best thing, but really, killing someone doesn't heal us like saving someone does, and so we're left even more broken than before, and maybe the only thing that can make it better is making sure nobody else has to die as long as we can stop it.

    8.5 Okay he makes the batshit argument that a story in which two protagonists are competing against each other/are each other's antagonist is great because there's a lot of fun dramatic irony in it but then says that a revenge plot is the only exception in the universe, as if the fact that it's a revenge plot means that all the dramatic irony that could exist were negated because "Ellie kill Abby please." Like, you can't eat your cake and keep it too. You can't argue that this type of plot is great because of all the juicy ways it opens up interesting dynamics between the characters and the audience and then say that TLOUII/a revenge story is some magical exception. Well, I mean, I guess you can, but it'd be a shitty, ad hominem argument.

    1. At various points, he argues that neither Ellie nor Abby have arcs, which… I can't even be bothered to explain how wrong that feels. Like, did Ellie not go from being a generally happy but somewhat discontented Jacksonite, to a revenge-driven madwoman on a murder spree, to realizing that hey, maybe this isn't worth it, to then becoming so broken down by PTSD that even though she knows it's not worth it, she feels she needs to go after Abby once again or else suffer for the rest of her life, and then she nearly succeeds in killing Abby only, in the last moments, to realize that this isn't going to help, that she doesn't hate Abby but, in fact, hates herself because she wasn't able to save Joel, wasted her time with Joel while she still had a chance, and she hates herself every day for that and wants only to have been able to save Joel and that killing Abby won't do that, but she finally has the power to be able to say "I could have. I could have saved Joel" when she's choking Abby to death in the water and that is enough for her both to forgive herself for not being able to save Joel and to feel as though she could have saved him if she needed to, and that's what's important? Did that not occur? Was that not the main story? If that's not an arc, what is?

    9.5 He pulls the same shit again with Tommy, saying at the beginning he was against revenge and then at the end he wasn't and there was nothing to motivate that change like, huh, I wonder if it's not clear from the fact that he's the first one to leave Jackson for revenge that maybe he wasn't all that against revenge initially and just didn't want Ellie to go, and then maybe it's not clear that by the end of the game Abby has shot Tommy through the head which might, I don't know, give him a pretty clear reason to find revenge? I wonder if none of that is made clear in the game. Alternatively, if it is, I wonder why TCL apparently didn't pick up on any of it.

    1. He harps on the same, tired old point that characters weren't acting like they should be, which, I mean, whatever. That's your opinion. Stop trying to pose it like it's a fact, it's not, it's your opinion, but fine. If you think that, whatever. I give up. But, I do find it hysterical that as he's narrating how it's out of character for Joel to trust strangers and tell people his name when he apparently knows everyone in the world is looking to kill him (?), he shows footage of Joel and Henry talking in the first game, which, to be clear, is a scenario in which Joel trusted strangers and told people his name. If he'd just, I don't know, turned on subtitles or volume in the scene, maybe he would have figured that out? Anyways. He also calls Abby bloodthirsty and remorseless, and criticizes her for attacking the WLF who were actively hunting her on Scar Island. He ignores all the times she showed a lot of inner conflict and remorse over her actions, ignores that Joel's death clearly wasn't that fulfilling or fun, ignores all of the context around her actions on the island, ignores everything that could possibly counter his point so that he can make his point. And, yeah, Abby does some shitty stuff during the game, and so does Ellie, but his description of these characters is utter hyperbole focusing on only their worst traits. The hyperbole goes so far as to say that Abby never expressed guilt, which is just—does Abby not feel guilty for leaving Lev and Yara to fend for themselves, and go back to save them? Does Abby not feel guilty she wasn't able to save her father? Does Abby not feel guilty for Owen's and Mel's deaths in the same way she did her father's, thus causing her to hunt for Ellie again?

    And it's at this point now that we come to my last point (I'm not watching his fan fic section, I'm sorry, I would rather shoot myself, but if he answers/elaborates on some of what I say in that section, be sure to roast me in the comments, I'll read every word):

    1. I'm not convinced TCL actually played the game he's critiquing. Probably the first odd thing I noticed was a blip I mentioned early on—that he seems to believe that Abby's three days occur chronologically before Ellie's three days, rather than concurrent with them. Surely, even someone helplessly confused by the timeline of the game would realize that those two periods were concurrent. Surely they would know? It's weird that he didn't. Then I started to notice other things, little telling things, like the fact that he doesn't know the names of any side characters in Abby's portion of the game, or the fact that he called Yara's compartment syndrome "that woman with the broken arm." Or how about the fact that he talks about the game only in the broadest strokes, never mentioning details of the game or its plot and their affect on the larger whole? What about the fact that he almost never uses gameplay footage during his arguments, or even discusses how the game feels to play> Sure, he is a narrative channel, but you'd think in his discussion of a video game, he would address, at least in passing, the game elements of it. Better yet, look at the title of the video—he calls the game The Last of Us 2. Sure, that's not a big thing, but wouldn't you call it by it's real name, The Last of Us Part II? How hard is it to make those extra, what, five strokes on the keyboard for the sake of accuracy? Then you look at his channel in general—he is largely a movie man (only two other videos are about video games), and he doesn't mention a single video game outside TLOU franchise and the most recent God of War in his video, and even God of War is mentioned once in passing. In terms of TLOU, he doesn't even mention or use footage from Left Behind. It gets worse. He doesn't even seem to understand many of the broad strokes of the game. Never mind that he doesn't seem to understand the themes and how the game's particular plot reinforces them, there are point where he actively ignores "evidence" for his "arguments" that would make them stronger. E.G., at one point he criticizes certain characters for having plot armor, and mentions specifically Ellie and Dina, but doesn't mention the fact that Tommy got shot through the head and survived. He even shows footage of Tommy in his last appearance with one eye missing around this point, but he never mentions Tommy's plot armor, which, if you're going to argue that anyone has plot armor, surely the character that got shot through the head and survived would be the first piece of evidence in your argument? It's not like that's easy to miss—the game makes pretty clear exactly what's happening. So how would he miss one of the most obvious and easy pieces of evidence for an argument he's making? It's almost as if TCL didn't notice that because he couldn't've noticed it, because he didn't play the game. I'm not going to try to claim I have undeniable proof that he didn't play the game himself, but I definitely don't believe he did beyond a reasonable doubt.

    And it's at this point, as I look back on all that I've written, something strikes me. This isn't a video essay about deconstructing TLOUII and why it doesn't work. It fails on pretty much all of those fronts, as it both fails to deconstruct or explain why the game fails. And honestly, it didn't claim to be. Even in the beginning, it claimed not to be about the story, however bad or good it was, but about how failing to pander to an established audience with new content is inherently a poor creative decision and makes for a bad game/movie/book/whatever, no matter the content of the game/movie/book… or video essay? See, his initial argument sets up a dichotomy—if you alienate an established audience, you are doing something wrong, but if you don't, if you instead embrace them and give the fans exactly what they want, you're doing the right thing. And I wonder, is this video his proof? The video itself, I mean. It's a video that's playing into the general trend of "TLOUII sucks" essays, giving the audience exactly what they want. And the response to the video (at least on YouTube itself) is overwhelmingly positive—74k like to 4k dislikes, there are comments with thousands of their own likes praising the video, praising the story presented therein, etc. He put out an essay pandering to an audience, and as far as you can tell just based on the YouTube page of the video itself, the response is overwhelmingly positive, no matter how shoddy the video itself is. It doesn't matter to the people who like it that few of the arguments make even a shred of sense when examined for a minute, they got the story they wanted in TCL's rewrite of the video and that, clearly, is all that matters. The most disheartening thing about TCL's axiom that audience expectations > all other factors in the creative process is that he is proven right by his own video.

    Now, it is abundantly clear to me that this is probably not intentional. I'm probably just searching for even a shred of evidence that this video is anything other than a bad faith take on a game TCL may not have even played. But, at the very least, I think it's indicative of... something, that this is such a beloved video in the anti-fandom for part II specifically because it does exactly what it says it will: panders unapologetically, and damn if anything else matters at all.

    I do wish that, somewhere out there, there were a good faith critique of the game, explaining why it's not that good, or elaborating on the flaws it has in a way that's not both entertaining and enriching, but I just don't think there's any hope we're going to get it. Who would make it? My gut response is: Hbomberguy could probably do something good, but even he, in his video on Fallout: New Vegas, made jokes about how bad The Last of Us Part II is. If anyone were going to give TLOUII the shake down it deserves, it would be him, but he won't. Even in a video about the depth and complexity of a video game, he won't give TLOUII more than a passing thought and a basic, reactionary examination. So who will? I'd love to know, really. I want someone to come along and poke holes in my love of this game, because I think it would be an interesting exercise to go through and actually have that conversation, to try to be convinced that maybe there's some things about this game that aren't that great actually. But it's subjectivity all the way down, I guess.

    Alright, that's enough writing for today. I probably need to go outside and look at a flower or two. If you actually read the above monstrosity, thanks, I guess. May your survival be long.

    submitted by /u/tlou2throwaway1122
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    Anyone get mad when they realize just how much easier it is to stealth for certain levels when u replay the game?

    Posted: 06 Sep 2021 07:35 AM PDT

    Abby in Seattle Day three when her n lev are in the building right after Yara has been killed. First two replays I killed all the damn WLF….this time through literally just got to where the stairs were….swam straight ahead n shoved guy blocking the door….took 30 damn seconds n I was friggin upset lol.

    submitted by /u/Iggysfinest05
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