JuliusHackebeil said:
Perhaps I am just biased because I hate the story so much, but the Rat King fight did not impress me. Neither did the island battle. Sure, the setting was different, but you did not really do anything differently. Sneaking around, riding on a horse, shooting people, same old as far as I can remember. And the seraphites whisteling with each other was in the first gameplay reveal, so no surprise for me and not really something that would change my gameplay anyways. And I cannot really speak on a lot else of part 2s gameplay, since little left an impression. There was an awesome rope, but used as sparingly as possible. But part 1? The sniper comes to mind where you had to stay under cover and inch closer. Part 2 had that aswell, but same old. In part 1 though, after you succeed stopping the sniper, you can become the sniper to help your friends. Or you hang upside down and have to fend of infected running towards you and Ellie. You have to navigate Bills booby traps while fighting the infected. You have to push the car to start it in a very high tension moment. Your escape while pierced by a metal rod, moving slow and losing conciousness, and then the section while still very hurt and weak, trying to get to Ellie. Ellie giving you sniper cover while you pick the hunters off one by one. Ellie herself played very differently and her scenarios where also different to account for that. Avoiding the patrol in the beginning at night. Fleeing from the panzer/car. Breaking out of a zone with Henry and his brother. Defending the dam against a raid. ... I think I could go on. These are wildly different locations, objectives and even some different interactions. Again, perhaps my hate towards part 2 clouds my judgement on its gameplay (that is admittedly refined and all around better than part 1 in its moment to moment interactions and choices), but I found the scenarios lacking in variety, especially gameplay variety (even for short bursts to mix things up, like in examples above). Ultimately though, its gameplay scenario variety was not what broke part 2 for me. I could have stomached this step back if everything else was not so ass. It's always fun though to see people like it so much, even more than part 1! Certainly one of the most devicive games ever made. And the reviews don't reflect that at all. I hope I can get behind part 3 (should that ever see the light of day), but I doubt it. |
I came back to the start of the post because it turned huge, and I don't expect to make you read it all, nor expect you to reply to everything, specially since you don't like the game to begin with, so no problem if its a pain to read or reply, don't feel obliged just because I wrote a lot, lol, anyway now it starts.
There is also a sniper section on 2, much longer than on 1, and it ends with a impressive plot twist to top it off.
The whole section in Bill's town and the school is amazing on 1, it ending in with the first bloater appearence and fight is also great.
The university section in 1 is also pretty good, we have some tight sections where we can fight 2 bloaters and it's pretty nervous to do, and yeah, how it ends and marks the start of the winter is also insanely good.
The gameplay parts with Henry and Sam are not as great even if they are good, the story is the centerpiece on those parts, including the sniper part previously mentioned. Many of the story pieces like the sewers and after the sniper section are really damn good.
You mention the Winter section on 1 with Ellie because it plays different, but we literally play 2 different games with Ellie and Abby on 2, and the way the story is constructed for several scenarios where they almost meet until it actually happens in so, so good.
I think 1 is really great too, it seated as my second favorite game of all time until recently because of how high its highs are, I just recently accepted 2 as being better than 1, even as I played both in 2013 and 2020, when they released. I just can't justify 1 over 2 anymore, most of the time anyway lol. Can't blame anyone that thinks so either.
Now about gameplay scenarios on 2, we have stuff like the partially sunken mall where you can approach enemies in many ways both on ground on navigating underwater to pick them up stealthly. It literally provides you 2 distinct ways to play or even mix both.
We have some horror focused sections like when we first met Lev and Yara as Abby and we have to go throught a pitch black forest while carrying a torch and being chased by infected, until we reach an abandoned house to fight them off, it's really cool to be almost completely out of light and have to deal with them.
We also have the stalkers buliding part with Ellie, where they were not as well used on 1, they were a lot more intelligent on 2, and fighting a whole bunch of them in the building while they hide and chase us, until we fall to the sewers, is a pretty nervous situation.
We also have to go down the hotel with Abby, after we almost falling to death because of her fear of heights, while infected may even pop up from walls and you have to look for a gas mask for Lev because you only have yours and they don't usually go into infected places because they navigate on top of buildings.
We have the open space with Ellie and Dina early on where we can choose where to go and even find a new weapon we'll find only later if we choose to go down in the bank's vault even though we have no reason for doing so storywise.
We even have the rattler's gang in the end of the game where we invade their place to find Abby, where they keep infected chained alive as a defense mechanism, and we can free the infected to cause a mess for them while we fight our way in, because Ellie is the safest person in the world to push it off. Fusing narrative into how we can approach gameplay.
And many other scenarios.
The game is REALLY creative and has a lot of diversity on how to approach different gameplay scenarios.
I didn't want to comment on anything else other than gameplay, because everyone can view the game in different ways, but I'll add one thing about it, regarding your comment over moral victories, questionable character motivations, and regarding Lev and the Seraphites.
The Seraphites, or Scars, are first viewed as a blind murder cult where their followers are insane and Lev is wanted dead because Lev doesn't want to be like other women and bear children to some old man, to the point where Lev's mom rather kill Lev than accept it.
We are first shown it as a classic "religion bad" and its fanatism, but that's not the only way it is portaited, neither how all the characters of this world see it, not even Lev, which is victim to it.
Spending time with Lev convices Abby, which hated Scars, that their Prophet actually just wanted people to live a simple life in that dying world. Owen ultimately died because of understanding it and not wanting to fight it anymore, so he had to hide from the WLF, they were not all just fanactics, the same conclusion Abby reached to protect Lev and leave the WLF, as well as the same conclusion lots of other WLF members reached before and made them choose to become Seraphites themselves. We learn that WLF itself was spreading propaganda to make paint them as bad, after capturing their prophet and not finding a justification to hate her, some even befriended her. Just like fanatism overtook the remaining of the Seraphites Elders teachings once she died as they used her as a martyr to be what they weren't in the start.
Even a subject as complex and religion and fanatism, which are likely to be centerpiece in Intergalactic, was approached as complex thing, where individuals could give different meanings to it.
Just as well as Abby's group, some of them never wanted to do anything else other than help Abby get revenge for her father, and all of them had actual lives and different motivations to be how they were. We learn about Owen, Mel, Manny, Norah, etc. None of them are one dimmensional or lacking motivations.
I really don't agree with those remarks even as I can understand everyone will view the game its own way, as it is with everything else, the motivations were there and were presented, some quite directly and others by piecing the story based on what it purposedly choose to present us for to limit our knowledge of it until the right moment. One thing the game does is going back and forth with the story to let you know just what you need when you need. That sure can confuse people but was genius IMO.
