(POSSIBLE SPOILERS INSIDE) The agenda and political discussion of Naughty Dog

[DonFerrari]

Hiku said:

padib said:

I truly haven't, I watched a number of portions of the game, and I appreciated what I saw. But I did not play it myself.

Spoiler!

However when it comes to the way Joel was killed and what he had to do for it to happen, I feel like it's out of character for the protagonist of the first game, I feel like it was forced into the story. If it happened later, at least players would have appreciated playing as Joel for a bit longer. Also, if what happened was done at the hands of an antagonist that would have been very difficult to watch, but at least the players would not have to play as the character who did that vile thing. Still, it felt cheap and of course it had to be done at the hands of a girl, which makes it even nastier. You know, we saw Ned Stark die at the hands of Geoffrey Baratheon, that worked because Geoffrey was a piece of shit and it only made his character more detestable. But here, Abby is the protagonist of the game, and it felt like girl power being forced into yet another game, and I personally see through it and, while I'm not a fan of TLOU (though I respect the game), it makes me angry that this kind of thing is creeping into media and entertainment.

I see.
I'll give a similar answer to Eric below, so I'll type it there.

EricHiggin said:

That probably would have helped a little, but it would all get out their quickly and the worst scenario would still get a similar reaction. While it's way too late now, some of this character development should have been foreshadowed or hinted at in the very least in TLOU, and then expanded upon in Part II. Then some of the story (narrative) of Part II should have been saved for Part III. It doesn't flow well and almost feels rushed.

The fact it's called Part II just makes it worse. You automatically expect it's simply a continuation of everything you've known from the first. When it doesn't turn out to be that way, or is considerably different, you're almost always going to get a negative reaction. Killing off a beloved main character is tough to do period, but if you're going to do it, it has to be in an acceptable manner to the story as told/known. If you want people to be able to swallow it that is.

While it's not quite the same equivalence, imagine if at the start of Horizon II, that Aloy get's brutally murdered by some new character, and then you play as Sylens to go after them. Whether that new character had previously 'legitimate' unknown reasons to the player, like Abby did, it would still be ridiculous and many people would not like it.

There are times stories can shift a bit, and points in the story for shock and awe, but I think ND messed up this time around.

I think people point out 'what' happened, but not 'why, they're commonly missing what TLOU2 tried to do that was unique to it unlike other revenge stories. Finding out the motive of an antagonist not unusual. Being able to play as them likewise.

Some of what makes TLOU2 unique in this regard could only have been achieved this way. Not if this was foreshadowed more in other parts, split into two games, or saved for Part 3, etc.

The first key factor is how Abby was introduced.
The second is the timing of the events.
And the third is the way Abby and Ellie are explored after that.

Spoiler!

Joel meets a very brutal and pathetic end for such a developed and beloved character. We barely got to see much of him before it happened. And it was at the hands of an almost completely undeveloped new character. With a very imposing stature as well. All these things mattered, as they made it that much easier to hate Abby.

If we had previously been introduced to her in TLOU1, or if we got to play as her more before this event happened, and this scene occurred near the middle or end of the game instead, or if she was just a cute scrawny little 14 year old like Ellie was, we'd be more sympathetic to her, and the purpose of the scene wouldn't have been as effective.
The goal here was to make people hate Abby, and this whole situation, as much as possible. Even questioning Naughty Dog's writing. And it worked.

I wanted to see her beaten to death with a golf club. I saw more than one person make that exact same remark. I can't recall feeling that strongly about killing a character before.
People were angry, sad, even nauseated.

It soon became apparent that they were going to try to make us sympathize with Abby, through flashbacks and by playing the game from her perspective.
And I was quickly resigned to the idea that no matter what they show, I'm not going to think that what happened in that scene was ok. How it happened. And when it happened. I never considered that that could have been the point.

I've watched a few Youtubers since to see their reaction, and I commonly saw the same reaction to when they started playing as Abby. "I get that they want me to feel for Abby, but..."
There was always this reservation because of how and when that initial scene played out. Even when we got happy flashbacks of Joel and Ellie, there was a dark cloud looming over it. You can't forget what happened.

Finding out Abby's motivation still didn't change much about how I felt. And I don't think that was the point. It's everything that happened while we were busy thinking about how nothing will make that scene ok.
Because that scene occurred very early in the game, it gave us that much more time to get to know the killer after already hating her with a passion. That's why it happened so early. And that's something I haven't experienced before when being able to play as the antagonist.

I initially thought of anything in Abby's story unrelated to Joel as more of a distraction from the most important issue. And because of that, before I realized it, I was invested in a separate storyline with new characters I cared about such as Yara and Lev.
And this character I initially hated with a passion and wanted to see killed with a golfclub, I did not want that any more.

I now also began to view Ellie as more antagonistic. Yet another thing that was not on my Bingo card when I first booted up this game. In the boss fight against Ellie, she's the cowardly boss with the gun while you're unarmed and have to try to sneak up on her. Mirroring the fight against David in the first game.

The more extreme that initial scene was, the more heavily the game could challenge our views.
It started with Ellie and Abby on the opposite ends of two extremes. And as you kept playing, they slowly began to drift towards the same center. Abby more and more clearly became a counterpart to Ellie. She went through very similar things. Ellie went to a museum with Joel. Abby went to an aquarium. Ellie lost her father. Abby lost her father. They both did shitty things, and they both did good things. Neither one was either good or evil.
How everyone ends up feeling about each character depends on the person. But I don't recall experiencing something like this anywhere else.
And that's something I can take away from this game.

Another theme they highlighted with this game is the regret of staying mad at your loved ones when you don't know how much time you have with them.
Ellie was mad at Joel for years, even though she loved him and she knew he loved her. And they had just began to patch things up right before this happened.
Because Ellie and Joel are such established and beloved characters, and we waited 7 years for a sequel, Naughty Dog were able to hammer home this point a lot harder than most stories possibly could. And that last flashback scene of them trying to patch things up was so powerful.

I will say though that I think the writing majorly falters at the final act. Before that, seeing Ellie, Joel, Abby or anyone else as both good or evil depending on who's perspective you're looking from made perfect sense in this kind of world. And I'm glad Naughty Dog decided to explore that, while challenging our established views of these characters.
However, I could not buy that Tommy would be this petty, vindictive and manipulative person that he is in the end. Both in this game and the first one they mention that Tommy has done some bad things, so you can say it was foreshadowed. But foreshadowing is not development.

Likewise, I also could not believe that Ellie would accept the proposal to once again go after Abby. After already killing so many of Abby's friends, and Abby letting her live, twice? Killing so many of Abby's friends should have been enough. "It has to be", as both her and Tommy decided earlier when they planned to turn back and go home. And that was before Abby let her live for the second time.

Ellie losing everything in the end, facing her worst possible nightmare of being alone, not even being able to play the guitar that Joel gave her, was the price for pursuing vengeance. If her motivations in the final act had felt more in character, I could have appreciated this part more.

I did understand the killing of Joel from the beggining and didn't hate Abby because of it. But because of the grouping and torturing.

After finishing the game it became clear that Abby wasn't bad but consumed by hate. Owen was just doing it because he loved her and Mel had a grudge but didn't had on her to really do it. But the rest of the people there were really bad people and you can see it from the convos.

Dante9 said:

Hiku said:

I think since Nathan is the type of character that comes out of conflicts with entire armies alive, I don't really think about how much his battles make sense any more.
Though I think with Nadine they were presenting him with the challenge of a martial arts expert, which to my recollection Nate hasn't dealt with before. He usually solves his problems with guns. So when facing someone excelling at hand to hand combat, Nate is like a fish out of the water.
It reminded me a bit of how James Bond started getting beat up in humiliating ways by Jaws, after always looking like the cool guy before that.

And I think it can be charming to see our heroes fall flat on their butt a few times.

The thing is that martial arts are really not that effective in real life confrontations, this has been put to the test in recent years especially. On top of that, it is one woman against two men who are not strangers to physical challenges themselves. This was a clear statement and it tastes like the crap that it is. For me, it was just a little blemish in a great game, nothing major but totally unnecessary. Also, they just might have pulled their punches a little because she was a woman, imagine the uproar if they actually kicked the shit out of a woman.. Interesting how this whole equality thing works.

Where did you take that real martial arts aren't effective? If that was the case they wouldn't have been developed by millenia for confrontation and war. You may say that martial arts aren't effective against a gun pointed to your head, but to say a regular joe on the street would kick Anderson Silva as on his prime is totally wrong, sure if we were talking about 20 people kicking him then probably he wouldn't stand a chance.

You know BJJ? In Brazil during the 80s and early 90s they had a very bad reputation because a lot of their pratictioners used to go to nightclubs to provoke fights and smack opponents. One of the Gracie was well know for participating in street fighting, and during the early 20th century their dojo was famous to do public challenges and dojo hunting.

Dante9 said:

DonFerrari said:

You are questioning John hating the story, I have done some convo with him and it have about 0 to do with what you think. You are just making straw man and dishing out personal attacks based on your own assumptions of why they don't like, while you yourself doesn't like. If we were to do like you we could say you don't like Naughty Dog games because they featured white males until now and you defend TLOU2 because it feature females, probably I would be wrong by over a country mile, but that is exactly the type of argument you are using.

There is no denying that ND is going for a progressive agenda, key people in the company already confirmed it. The point is have it ruined their work? For majority it doesn't seem like it, but some people don't like where they are taking the studio.

And since you don't like the original and didn't play the second, so your understanding of the IP is likely much smaller than the ones that are showing why they don't like what was done, yet you are acting like you know better than then not only about the game but also about what is going inside their mind.

Why are the people who have no attachment to the first game even speaking on this? They don't seem to be able to relate to why people loved Joel and why the sequel seems bad to them. Just defending the agenda, no matter what.

For me it seems exactly like this, since if gives portrayal of minority them it needs defense even if you don't like or care and anyone that likes or care but is complaining is automatically wrong.

Seems like I liked how the second game was done and you don't, I could overlook the agenda since the game was well put together, but for you it was off-putting. But we can talk civil about why and how we like or dislike and based on the merits of the game.

Dante9 said:

EricHiggin said:

Situations like these are actually hurting the cause just as much if not more than it would otherwise. One of the biggest problems is the idea of taking something that is well known and popular, dismantling it, and building something considerably different from it. People hate change in general, and they hate it even more the faster it happens, which tends to lead to significant backlash.

The reason this approach is taken in the first place, is because it's extremely difficult to start something fresh and original and turn it into something widely popular, or at the very least takes a considerable amount of time to come to fruition. Not to mention, considering the agenda's and narrative's they wish to portray in these cases, it's likely to take even longer because of what type and how much change is being asked of people.

I mean just look at vehicles for example as something simple and not all that personal. The more recent Dodge Dart did not do well and was discontinued quickly because if you knew what the old Dodge Dart was and what it stood for, you didn't want anything to do with the new one. That car got a lot of backlash and had a lot of negativity towards it. It's the same reason why the more recent Dodge Challenger is accepted and does reasonably well, because it's a fairly minor deviation from what it once was.

Trying to take things like Star Wars or TLOU and turn them into something they weren't, especially in the way it's been done, is way too much change to quickly. People are not only being pushed to hard to fast, or somewhere they just won't go period, but at the same time, to them, something they love or hold dear is being ruined. To some it even seems like they're almost being given an ultimatum. Change quickly and agree or what you enjoy will be torn down. This approach isn't exactly working out they way it was meant to, unless of course tearing everything down is actually part of the agenda.

In today's world, while tech may change and advance quickly in just a few years time, people do not change at that same pace. Not even close. Younger generations have a harder time understanding this though and are under the impression that personal changes to people's thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, should change just as quickly. The older you get, the more set in your ways you become, which is tough to understand when you're younger and more malleable.

While I don't have the exact answer if there is one, it's been one step forward, two steps back for quite a while now, so if they actually want to make positive forward progress, they've got to either find another way, or just let off the gas for a while and coast and see where that get's them. People are way more open to a Sunday drive vs jumping into a race car at the track. ND should have at the very least, saved some of this story narrative for Part III. It would have been more palatable for everyone all around and presumably wouldn't have received near as much backlash.

Yeah. Look, take any other game or movie that people loved because of the dynamics of the two main characters and their journey together. Bad Boys with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence comes to mind off the top of my head(yeah, it's ancient because I'm ancient, I know, although the third movie came out this year). Imagine people waiting for 7 years to get that second movie and then suddenly Mike or Marcus is brutally killed like 10 minutes into the film. Then the killer takes over the movie and never faces real consequences of what he has done. What the hell is that? The heart of the thing would have been destroyed and you would expect people to just love it and applaud the bold new direction? Well, apparently some people would. I mean, I accept now that Druckmann simply wanted to do something unexpected and controversial and that's his right of course. I just didn't find it appealing and I'm not alone.

Did you watch the second movie? Because that is almost what happens. And Abby had very real and direct immediate consequences. Actually Joel was the one that gone without consequence for a long time and you were ok with it because you liked him since you played with him. That is probably why people often like and sides with criminals if they are close enough.