(SPOILER ALERT) Free discussion of TLOU2 with story included

[Jaicee]

DonFerrari said:

Jaicee said:

I'll be 100 percent: I grew up back when there were Senate hearings over bloody content in video games because apparently they were just supposed to be for young children. I'm pretty immune to that whole frame of debate at this point.

I feel like TLOU2 does what is feasible to humanize most of its characters, including even a lot of the enemy NPCs, forces you to do a lot of things you don't want to to make a larger, philosophical point, and I don't feel tempted to go on a mass murder spree as a result of playing through it so much as to reflect on the direction of my approach to life.

The NPC convo with one another to show they are all regular human beings.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of the notes and stuff that you find along the way, but I do think that at least some of the exchanges between soldiers add little touches of humanity as well, although smaller in general. Not enough to stop me from doing what it's practical to do, but cumulatively it adds up.

I mean I was just using the Doom franchise as one example of "gore porn" before. There are plenty of others. Like Mortal Kombat. The main appeal of Mortal Kombat is the blood and gore, and those are mostly humanoid characters you're bowdering into oblivion. My point though was that TLOU2 has, overall, a different reason for including violent content. I mean not always. There's stuff like that part where you're driving and shooting about everything that moves in a way that's obviously inspired by the Lost World arcade game from back in the day; in a way that's obviously intended to be simply thrilling and indulgent, in other words. And admittedly I enjoyed that like I was intended to because my moral compass is not always flawless. It was another fun allusion to Jurassic Park. But overall there's a point to most of it. That's what I mean.

It's not an accident that you run across someone who's playing Hotline Miami. It's cute, but it's also intentional that that was the game in that scene. I feel like the developers were saying with that that they're aiming for a similar vibe and essence with The Last of Us Part II. Hotline Miami is a game that sort of tries to have its cake and eat it too in a way. It's a really violent, bloody, and well-made game that's narratively about making you question why it is you enjoy doing this. I think the inclusion of the Hotline Miami reference there was Naughty Dog's way of saying that they're trying to do something similar with this game, but in a AAA format.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 05 July 2020