Okay, so I just finished this game after giving it a rest for a couple weeks because I needed a break from this game. Now that I can finished it can I say this was $60 bucks well spent?
Not really.
That is pretty sad for me to say coming from someone who adored and LOVED the first game. I still own my original copy for the PS3, and I have probably replayed the remastered on my PS4 more than I have replayed any other game ever. I'm normally not the biggest fan of the post-apocalypse setting in video games because they can get boring pretty quickly, but there is always the very rare exceptions where a writer can create a refreshing and fascinating world with complex and an intriguing set of characters to follow throughout the game. That was TLOU1 and Telltale TWD to me. Meaningful stories and great characters. Going into this game I had my expectations set high. Probably too high, and this game did not meet the standard of narrative storytelling of the original game.
The pacing and overall storytelling was horrendous to play. My suspension of disbelief was pretty much out the window after about playing 2 hours of this near 30 hour monster. I couldn't get into the story because the pacing was all over the place. Main or side characters get killed for SHOCK VALUE and then it would go into a random flashback to explain who the character is or to explain why those out of nowhere events happened to justify the scene that just happened in the original timeline. Then there would flashback in within flashback to justify those previous flashback and--- it's just a mess. I can't tell you how much I DETEST the use of flashbacks in media, because it's the laziest route a writer can use to try and validate their story. It's one of the reasons why I could never get into this game. Sometimes you're playing in the flashback for so long that you forget what you were even doing in the original timeline. This was done too much in Abby's portion of the game. They kept using flashbacks of her doing 'good' things like petting dogs (that you later kill as Ellie) to justify who she is in the present timeline. It's contrived as hell.
If you can't write your characters in a way that can convince your audience that they are who you desperately want me to believe who they really are and consistently need to use flashbacks to build characters and develop the plot, then you have probably became lazy.
Also, this game focuses too much on 'theme' than the actual 'story.' It's main theme I suppose is that 'revenge is bad' but the plot is so contradictory of itself, because if revenge is so bad, then why did Abby seek revenge for killing her NPC nurse dad that was about to kill yet another innocent immune person for a fruitless vaccine for a fungal infection? Doesn't that completely spoil the point?
It wasn't hard for this game to become boring because it turned to that quickly. I played on hard to start off, but then I had to change the difficulty to make it tougher because I was getting so tired of the game. The exploration didn't feel like anything new, and with a story as laughable as it is, things felt too repetitive too quickly.
With the subject manner of the characters, I am extremely disappointed with ALL of the characters in the game. Joel was ruined, and no it's not him dying that is completely the point. It's HOW he was killed that was stupid coming from someone who just finished playing the original game before getting my hands on Pt 2. A complete mis-characterization. Ellie has become a murderous moron. Spent the entire time hunting Abby's group, killing hundreds on her way including a pregnant woman and a couple of dogs (I will forever HATE this game for forcing me to kill dogs), sacrifices her life with Dina and JJ, and just SPARES Abby after everything she has done to her emotionally. Tommy has been nerfed. He gives away his identity, his location, and becomes a frivolous idiot who just leaves, returns, and tells Ellie to go seek revenge after telling her the entire game to let things go.
As for the new characters, aside from Jesse who is absolutely RUINED by the game since he is just killed and the game never mentions him again even though he is the father of Dina's baby, NONE of the new characters are any good. Dina is Ellie's girlfriend, but I didn't really care for her much because she's barely a character which sucks because she seems like a good character, but she has no development. Owen is a cheating scumbag that deserved to go. I CHEERED when Manny died because he is a complete a** that always screams 'pandejo' as if we couldn't figure out he is Hispanic already but to hammer home the point. Mel annoyed me. She is heavily pregnant, yet she always puts herself on the very risky front lines. She cares about her baby right? So why is she putting her life on the line like this. Actually, this goes for both Mel and Dina. You guys are literally PREGNANT! Stay in your safe zones until you give birth and THEN put yourselves on the line of fire. And I'm sorry if I'm forgetting any other characters, but it's hard to remember characters names when you really don't give a da*n about 90% of them.
And then there's Abby... All I can say to everyone is this. You want me to sympathize with her? To LIKE her? Then don't make my first impression of her killing one of the greatest PS4 characters of all time because there was never one moment I did feel for her. After playing as Abby for a draining 12 hours, I felt pretty numb. Basically they tried to paint her as extremely altruistic showing that she's a good person. On the way she has an extremly cringy and awkward love story with Owen that I covered my ears from and just read the subtitles because of how forced the dialouge in those "romance" scenes are. She saves a bunch of people from rival cultist which leads to her meeting Lev who becomes her companion, and on the way she's losing all of her friends to Ellie's killing rampage which leads her to (understandably) hunt Ellie down and finish her herself. So, what is the problem I have with Abby other than how she offed Joel? It's because of how her entire character orgin is contrived. They made Abby the daughter of some NPC surgeon that we killed as Joel to save Ellie in the OG game. They couldnt have made her a Firefly or close friend of Marlene seeking revenge on Joel for massacaring the Fireflies. But they made her the daughter of some NPC to drive this entire story which is sucha rediculous plot choice that goes against everything from what we knew in the OG game. However, that being said, her gameplay was easily one of the best parts of this game. Messing with her combat was great. I know people have critiques about her extra muscular physique in a world where that logically wouldn't be possible unless she found a bunch of steroids, but beating enemies by fist was fun to do.
Alright, rant over.
Everything from a technical aspect is beautiful. The graphic visuals were phenomenal, and I liked how the environment in the game reacted to any changes you make in it. Like in the snow settings whenever the characters walked around, they'd leave footprints. The music was the soul best part of the game to be. Gustavo is always a genius, and I bought the soundtrack already. Mocap was great as usual. Voice acting was amazing as well.
So, in summary, this game is not worth a replay and is really disappointing to any fans of the original game. It really tainted the core part of it's universe which was it's characters. Ellie and Joel were some of my favorite characters ever and I'm upset to see how far they have fallen from who they once were. Nuanced and breathtakingly well written characters. If I had known this was how the story would wind up, I would've never wished or asked for a sequel. It's such a damn shame. This game has also shone light on the problems with the studio in general. I won't ever buy another game by Naughty Dog because of how poorly they have treated their staff and the team working on this.
Great job Neil Druckman. You have entered the bad writers Hall of Fame and now join the ranks of David Benioff and D.B Weiss for Game of Thrones, and JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson for Star Wars. But on the hind sight, Johnson has redeemed himself with Knives Out. Maybe someday you'll redeem yourself. But until then, screw you for writing a terrible story, mistreating your staff, and wasting people's time and money. People asked for a good game with a well written story and compelling characters, not the 'themes.'
Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna go finish Ghost of Tsushima and try to forget the writing of this game.
Final Rating- 5.1/10
Not really.
That is pretty sad for me to say coming from someone who adored and LOVED the first game. I still own my original copy for the PS3, and I have probably replayed the remastered on my PS4 more than I have replayed any other game ever. I'm normally not the biggest fan of the post-apocalypse setting in video games because they can get boring pretty quickly, but there is always the very rare exceptions where a writer can create a refreshing and fascinating world with complex and an intriguing set of characters to follow throughout the game. That was TLOU1 and Telltale TWD to me. Meaningful stories and great characters. Going into this game I had my expectations set high. Probably too high, and this game did not meet the standard of narrative storytelling of the original game.
The pacing and overall storytelling was horrendous to play. My suspension of disbelief was pretty much out the window after about playing 2 hours of this near 30 hour monster. I couldn't get into the story because the pacing was all over the place. Main or side characters get killed for SHOCK VALUE and then it would go into a random flashback to explain who the character is or to explain why those out of nowhere events happened to justify the scene that just happened in the original timeline. Then there would flashback in within flashback to justify those previous flashback and--- it's just a mess. I can't tell you how much I DETEST the use of flashbacks in media, because it's the laziest route a writer can use to try and validate their story. It's one of the reasons why I could never get into this game. Sometimes you're playing in the flashback for so long that you forget what you were even doing in the original timeline. This was done too much in Abby's portion of the game. They kept using flashbacks of her doing 'good' things like petting dogs (that you later kill as Ellie) to justify who she is in the present timeline. It's contrived as hell.
If you can't write your characters in a way that can convince your audience that they are who you desperately want me to believe who they really are and consistently need to use flashbacks to build characters and develop the plot, then you have probably became lazy.
Also, this game focuses too much on 'theme' than the actual 'story.' It's main theme I suppose is that 'revenge is bad' but the plot is so contradictory of itself, because if revenge is so bad, then why did Abby seek revenge for killing her NPC nurse dad that was about to kill yet another innocent immune person for a fruitless vaccine for a fungal infection? Doesn't that completely spoil the point?
It wasn't hard for this game to become boring because it turned to that quickly. I played on hard to start off, but then I had to change the difficulty to make it tougher because I was getting so tired of the game. The exploration didn't feel like anything new, and with a story as laughable as it is, things felt too repetitive too quickly.
With the subject manner of the characters, I am extremely disappointed with ALL of the characters in the game. Joel was ruined, and no it's not him dying that is completely the point. It's HOW he was killed that was stupid coming from someone who just finished playing the original game before getting my hands on Pt 2. A complete mis-characterization. Ellie has become a murderous moron. Spent the entire time hunting Abby's group, killing hundreds on her way including a pregnant woman and a couple of dogs (I will forever HATE this game for forcing me to kill dogs), sacrifices her life with Dina and JJ, and just SPARES Abby after everything she has done to her emotionally. Tommy has been nerfed. He gives away his identity, his location, and becomes a frivolous idiot who just leaves, returns, and tells Ellie to go seek revenge after telling her the entire game to let things go.
As for the new characters, aside from Jesse who is absolutely RUINED by the game since he is just killed and the game never mentions him again even though he is the father of Dina's baby, NONE of the new characters are any good. Dina is Ellie's girlfriend, but I didn't really care for her much because she's barely a character which sucks because she seems like a good character, but she has no development. Owen is a cheating scumbag that deserved to go. I CHEERED when Manny died because he is a complete a** that always screams 'pandejo' as if we couldn't figure out he is Hispanic already but to hammer home the point. Mel annoyed me. She is heavily pregnant, yet she always puts herself on the very risky front lines. She cares about her baby right? So why is she putting her life on the line like this. Actually, this goes for both Mel and Dina. You guys are literally PREGNANT! Stay in your safe zones until you give birth and THEN put yourselves on the line of fire. And I'm sorry if I'm forgetting any other characters, but it's hard to remember characters names when you really don't give a da*n about 90% of them.
And then there's Abby... All I can say to everyone is this. You want me to sympathize with her? To LIKE her? Then don't make my first impression of her killing one of the greatest PS4 characters of all time because there was never one moment I did feel for her. After playing as Abby for a draining 12 hours, I felt pretty numb. Basically they tried to paint her as extremely altruistic showing that she's a good person. On the way she has an extremly cringy and awkward love story with Owen that I covered my ears from and just read the subtitles because of how forced the dialouge in those "romance" scenes are. She saves a bunch of people from rival cultist which leads to her meeting Lev who becomes her companion, and on the way she's losing all of her friends to Ellie's killing rampage which leads her to (understandably) hunt Ellie down and finish her herself. So, what is the problem I have with Abby other than how she offed Joel? It's because of how her entire character orgin is contrived. They made Abby the daughter of some NPC surgeon that we killed as Joel to save Ellie in the OG game. They couldnt have made her a Firefly or close friend of Marlene seeking revenge on Joel for massacaring the Fireflies. But they made her the daughter of some NPC to drive this entire story which is sucha rediculous plot choice that goes against everything from what we knew in the OG game. However, that being said, her gameplay was easily one of the best parts of this game. Messing with her combat was great. I know people have critiques about her extra muscular physique in a world where that logically wouldn't be possible unless she found a bunch of steroids, but beating enemies by fist was fun to do.
Alright, rant over.
Everything from a technical aspect is beautiful. The graphic visuals were phenomenal, and I liked how the environment in the game reacted to any changes you make in it. Like in the snow settings whenever the characters walked around, they'd leave footprints. The music was the soul best part of the game to be. Gustavo is always a genius, and I bought the soundtrack already. Mocap was great as usual. Voice acting was amazing as well.
So, in summary, this game is not worth a replay and is really disappointing to any fans of the original game. It really tainted the core part of it's universe which was it's characters. Ellie and Joel were some of my favorite characters ever and I'm upset to see how far they have fallen from who they once were. Nuanced and breathtakingly well written characters. If I had known this was how the story would wind up, I would've never wished or asked for a sequel. It's such a damn shame. This game has also shone light on the problems with the studio in general. I won't ever buy another game by Naughty Dog because of how poorly they have treated their staff and the team working on this.
Great job Neil Druckman. You have entered the bad writers Hall of Fame and now join the ranks of David Benioff and D.B Weiss for Game of Thrones, and JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson for Star Wars. But on the hind sight, Johnson has redeemed himself with Knives Out. Maybe someday you'll redeem yourself. But until then, screw you for writing a terrible story, mistreating your staff, and wasting people's time and money. People asked for a good game with a well written story and compelling characters, not the 'themes.'
Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna go finish Ghost of Tsushima and try to forget the writing of this game.
Final Rating- 5.1/10