henke on 12/6/2018 at 05:15
[video=youtube;btmN-bWwv0A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btmN-bWwv0A[/video]
Looks like the main things that have been added is the ability to go prone, and a melee system with dodging.
Looks great! Captures the same brutal, by-the-skin-of-your-teeth brawls that the original had.
Sulphur on 12/6/2018 at 05:38
I really find the contextless violence jarring in these trailers, but I guess there's no way to present this better without spoiling the game or taking a much longer time.
Having said that, Spider-Man and this really stood out in terms of visuals. Given a narrow enough scope, these games look close enough to honest to goodness CGI quality movies.
Judith on 12/6/2018 at 06:45
So it's more or less as I thought, violence is only there to impress players, as some other things too, like the lesbian theme. Just to look appealing to more broad demographics. Just ticking the bullet points on the corporate sheet. The violence would be more meaningful, if there were fewer acts of it, and if the combat didn't mean slaughtering people by the numbers. And it all falls further apart, when she gets shot, and she reacts to it as if it was a moskito sting, and not something really serious. Everything Naughty Dog built here is only to add to a new level of titillation for the players. I bet one of the devs stumbled onto something like Blood Meridian by Cormack McCarthy, and thought "OMG, this is so cool, we have to have something like that in our video game". This is a childish excitement.
Sulphur on 12/6/2018 at 07:03
^ That's what I mean by contextless. As a bonus, people who aren't aware of the first game's themes or characters and prone to jumping to conclusions will end up leaping to them instead.
Judith on 12/6/2018 at 07:54
Not sure if playing the context card is enough excuse any longer. That might have been true for the teaser trailer. The gameplay itself tells a story, and the way systems work does that too. No elaborate backstory would explain the disconnect here. Seems like someone's pretending to be serious to get better shock value. Even juxtaposition of the two scenes shows that, it's almost feels desperate. The only thing here is, that they have a great budget and production, so everything looks phenomenal. But that doesn't mean that it's clever or mature.
Sulphur on 12/6/2018 at 08:00
I'm not saying the trailer wasn't chosen for its shock and titillation factor, but the original The Last of Us presentation pulled the exact same crap - it looked like violence for the sake of it. Turned out you could, in fact, stealth through a decent portion of the game, and the game more than made amends for the sins of shallowness in its initial trailer by pulling off one of the best character-driven stories in video games I've ever experienced.
I'm willing to extend TLoU 2 the same benefit of a doubt because of that context. It's important like that.
Thirith on 12/6/2018 at 08:35
I'm with Sulphur on this one, based on Naughty Dog's work on the original The Last of Us. That's enough for me to give them the benefit of the doubt: because exactly the same thing happened with the first game.
Renault on 14/6/2018 at 18:16
I still don't get how people are complaining that this game/trailer is too violent. There are other games with far more violence and gore (Resident Evil, Manhunt, Condemned, Dead Space all come to mind). I think part of it is because they are showing off a very realistic world, with believable characters and settings. This makes the the violence seems very real, unlike other games which end up more gamey and cartoonlike, or just plain over the top. But don't tell me there aren't hundreds of games where the protagonist is shot and they just shake it off like it's nothing, or where bad guys are slaughtered by the numbers. Anyone who claims that is just kidding themselves.
Sorry guys, I love you all, and maybe it's because you have kids now or something, but you're all just sounding like a bunch of giant pansies.
Judith on 14/6/2018 at 18:46
Quote:
I think part of it is because they are showing off a very realistic world, with believable characters and settings. This makes the the violence seems very real, unlike other games which end up more gamey and cartoonlike, or just plain over the top.
Yup, the biggest thing here I guess is the animations. It looks like every character has their weight and momentum, and they took extra care to create these moments of agony, when characters are stabbed to death. That looks disturbing and with all the fidelity it looks like it would fit into some serious narrative. Like a really good book, or movie, where violence is dosed carefuly, and killing someone carries its weight, so there's like one or two dead bodies for the whole story. But here it's just a dressing to typical shooty bang-bang. Audiovisual department is hanging out with the big dogs, but gameplay design team is still a bunch of puppies.
Aja on 14/6/2018 at 19:14
I'm getting a little tired of the gratuitous violence, too. It's hard to try to defend video games as art when the phrase "brutal takedown" is becoming an increasingly more common descriptor of game mechanics.
That said, I haven't played either of the lasts of us, and if they're as good as you all say, I guess I should give them a try when I inevitably get a PS4.
