The Last of Us Part II (PS4, June 19, 2020) Video Game • Page 30

He doesn’t need to look like Joel who cares. He’s gonna kill it.

 

Yeah I looked at some more pictures and I will say I’m fully on board. I will pretend that I never had any doubts

 

I will say I was on board with Mahershala Ali when he was rumored for Joel a few hours prior to this news, and can't help but feel I'd rather him than Pedro. That being said, I think he's got the chops for it, and am curious to see set photos/trailers in the next year or so.

 

I would be happy with either.

LETS FUCKING GO!

 

I'm most interested as to how they'll format the series. Will the journey across the U.S. last multiple seasons? If it doesn't, will they recast Ellie, so they can do the events of Part II during a second season, or just fill in the time between Part I and II with original content, until the actors are the right age?

 

I have faith they'll both nail the characters

 

Obviously Ali has Blade, and some other projects. Though I like to think he read up on how terrible people were to the voice actors on Part II, and said fuck it.

 

fuck yeah, love Pedro

 

Wouldn’t shock me. The vitriol the game gets from incels and neckbeards is insane.

 

I was hoping for Justin Theroux, but Pascal is cool

 

David will be quite the casting I’m sure

 

john hawkes pls

 

It's shouldn't be too difficult to plan things out in time for TLOUp3 (a trilogy for the Joel/Ellie arc seems likely at this point). The events of the each game covered via two seasons at six-ten episodes each, hiatuses as needed for time and getting the cast to look the part for the events of part 2 and 3. Screenplays of game stories rarely change much in development for budgetary reasons, so the first of the last two of the six season run could easily be timed to launch w/ the next game. Overall it seems pretty doable. Druckmann and the writers will probably expand on/tweak the story to better suit TV format as well.

 

Holy shit, I just finished this and I don’t think I’ve ever been so in awe of (and heartbroken by) a game. I’m not sure a game has ever made me actually full on cry like this did (and on more than one occasion). I managed to avoid pretty much all spoilers, so when I first started playing Abby’s section I was feeling a little bit like ok let’s just get this over with and get back to Ellie, until the point I realized it was going to be the whole second half of the game, which is also when I realized how special it was what they were doing. It definitely didn’t hurt that, like I’ve seen some other people say, Abby’s sections had some of the best gameplay and level design. The skyscraper, ground zero, and basically the whole island section were all amazing and unnerving. When Ellie was leaving the farm I was pleading at the screen telling her not to. I did unfortunately see a spoiler that Ellie didn’t go through with killing Abby a few hours before I finished the game (I was trying to gauge how much time was left to make sure I could finish tonight if kept going at that point), but even then I legitimately struggled to follow through with the final fight. No part of me wanted to take part in that. They pushed Ellie’s character right to the edge without crossing the line to irredeemable. I only hope she can find some peace now (preferably with Dina).
This is pretty easily the most invested I’ve ever been in a game’s story. I totally get why someone would be off put by how dark and depressing it gets (by the last third I’m not sure if I was playing nonstop because I loved the game or because I simply needed it to be over lol) But to me, this story doesn’t just justify the sequel’s existence, but proves that it was necessary.

Long story short, I’m deeply moved. I think it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played, and really one of the best stories I’ve experienced in any medium. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while.

 

Wonderfully said and I agree 100%. I recently went back and played LOU 1 after this and it almost feels like a quick and fun romp through America compared to this one.

 

Just finished my second playthrough and agree entirely. Other game stories feel amateurish now, with the exception of RDR 2

 

Haha I'm very intrigued how the first game will feel in context to the sequel when I get around to playing it again. Of course the second game's ambition would not have worked if the first game didn't make me love Joel and Ellie so much to begin with. It's vital that you feel the pain the characters felt. But it's truly wild that the first seems light and breezy in comparison, considering how dark that game already was.

Fully agreed. I'm curious how even my favorite game stories will hold up. I still haven't played RDR2. I've got to get to that one, but first I need to play something more lighthearted for a little while.

 

Just spent the morning reading this thread, and I apologize since I'm about to basically retread conversations that have already been had, but I just can't stop thinking about this game so a few additional thoughts :

-This is at no one particular person or anything, but I disagree that this is violence for violence's sake. When I think of that, I think of things like Gears of War or American Horror Story. The violence here felt like an important part of the story. It represents Ellie's loss of innocence and is the catalyst for Abby's growth. It also seems meant to exhaust the player so that they're just as tired as the characters by the end of the game.
-That very final scene with Joel and Ellie is so powerful in the way it completely reframes what this was really all about. It's not just that Abby killed Joel; it's that Abby stole Ellie's chance to ever make peace with Joel, just when she had decided to try. I think they struck a perfect balance between leaving the issues between them unresolved, while also giving just enough to Joel that he didn't die thinking Ellie hated him. But not being able to play the guitar, her last real connection to Joel... just why-It actually is mind blowing to me that there are people that would still want to see Ellie kill Abby at the end of this. Even if you just don't like Abby, I don't get how you could be rooting for more violence at that point.

Ok I'm done for now - if/when part 3 comes out I will not be waiting this long to play lol

But on a completely different note, I think Pedro Pascal is a perfect fit for Joel. I'm very excited to see how this turns out and to be able to share this story with non-gaming friends. I'm really really happy they chose to do a tv show instead of a movie.

 

Games like TLOU2 and The Last Guardian are a reminder of how far game stories need to go to impact us as much as a good film or show. If you took the writing and acting of even more beloved story-driven stuff like Horizon, Final Fantasy, The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect and transplanted it in any show or movie you'd feel insulted, so it's always weird to me how content gamers still are with it.

I strongly feel the potential of games as an artform is reached using the viscera of interactivity to evoke genuine range of emotions beyond amusement in the player. TLOU and TLG are proof of this. I think the potential for this is even better in games than in movies. This will be more apparent once VR improves and visuals gain the ability to authentically emulate life and live action cinema via photogrammetry tech.

My ONLY real beef with this game is the amount of killing Ellie does and the expectation that the player will still root for her in the later chapters. I wish most of the combat in the Ellie sections was between her and infected, and stealth was prioritized everywhere else. The TV show will hopefully limit her kill list to the people responsible for Joel's death instead of the hundreds she mows down in this game. It's all a bit ridiculous in an otherwise serious anti-violence story imho.

 

There's a passage in Ellie's notebook after the synagogue part and it always stuck out to me as beautifully simple and heartbreakingly sad...

Did she die alone?
Was her God with her?
Was He with you in the end?
Was he with Joel? Did I make it worse for Joel, being there?
Or was I company?
He/him More than I was with him?

 

Ya I get that to an extent. It's definitely one of the weirder parts of trying to reckon between the larger story and the fact that this is still a videogame. But I'm also not entirely sure you are still supposed to be rooting for Ellie, particularly in the last chapter. I was rooting for her in the sense that I wanted her to turn away from the path she was on, but I was not rooting for her success while on that path. It's also partially a product of the world they live in. I mean this girl first started killing when she was 14, and was no stranger to violence long before that. It's not a shock she's pretty desensitized to it all. I expect her reckoning with the path of destruction she's left to play a part in the inevitable Part III. But still, I hear you, it's all a little jarring. I'm curious how I'll feel about that on a second playthrough.

Also you brought up Mass Effect, and that games been one on my mind as I think of how I reframe other videogame stories after playing this. Definitely is one of my favorite stories in gaming, but it's also hard to deny that the story is more held back by being a game, vs. being enhanced by being a game as this one was.

 

Gustavo confirmed he’s doing the soundtrack for the series!

 

This was my experience. I was definitely not rooting for her and was taken aback by that fact when we meet her again after the Abby portion of the game. I was practically begging for the violence to quit when she was on the beach and wanted her to leave it all behind.

 

For clarification I meant not just rooting for her revenge but her redemption, yeah. It seems like how invested you are in her character hinges on doing both, but I couldn't help but stop caring somewhere between the halfway point (the Aquarium, I think) and epoligue chapters.

It's one thing to kill people for survival, as she and Joel mostly did in part one, and another to kill up to hundreds more solely for revenge, though to its credit the game is always aware of how reckless, futile and empty that vengeance is and will be.

I get it, it's a kill or be killed world, but factoring in those in-game deaths it was a bit beyond what I could relate to to say the least. I have the same issue with RDR2 and to a lesser extent the Uncharted series. It's an issue that's been undermining otherwise quality game stories for a while now.

It would work a million times better though if she didn't constantly risk life and limb by going up against literal armies worth of people and zombies for revenge and instead went down a list of those directly responsible for Joel's death, similar to Arya in GoT. Pretty sure this is what we'll see in the TV adaptation.

 

In other words, she was so far gone at that point, you saw no path of redemption for her? I can justify it by knowing they were shooting on sight too, plus a little suspension of disbelief, but I get why it's an issue for you. The more serious subject matter a game tries to tackle, the more strange those kinds of disconnects are.