Ah yes, limit me to a privileged person that can have no valid opinion. Oh I'm a white male, by the way, do I lose more points now?

And by the way, I grew up with two very UNPRIVILEGED parents. Both had lower class or lower middle class jobs. Both were let go when my older brother and I were babies. My mom took us to the mall to shop to give us the illusion that we were okay financially, and would just not buy things for us. You cannot claim I grew up privileged or my family. My mother got harassed in the street as a child growing up in the City all the time. My grandpa was a butcher for 38 years after serving in the Korean war. Not one of my parents or grandparents were wealthy, or even decently middle classes, until my parents got close to retirement age. Why do people assume someone is privileged just because they have a thought that may differ with theirs? You don't know me, my family, or anything we've dealt with.

Woke person: I'm going to think what I want! Hurray for free speech!

Non woke person: Hey, good for you! I'm also going to think what I want even though we may differ in opinion. Hurray for free speech!

Woke person: You suck for your views!

Okay. First of all, I'm sorry about lashing out the other day. My Facebook wall is an absolute nightmare to even look at right now over this game and I guarantee you it's coming from one direction pretty exclusively. I'm also tired of, for months and months now, just wanting to catch more stuff about TLOU2 on YouTube, more info (at earlier points), interviews, theories, that sort of thing, and being recommended nothing but insufferably petty grievance videos with titles like "Joel Deserved Better" and "Is TLOU2 a Masterpiece? ABSOLUTELY NOT!" and a bunch of ludicrous, Gamergate-style conspiracy videos about how Anita Saarkesian really made this game, how Laura Bailey supposedly had sex with Druckmann, how Sony absolutely paid off the critics, and other "legitimate criticisms" like that. So you'll forgive me if my temper seems short. I'm absolutely sick and tired of this! I'm sick and tired of EVERYTHING being turned into a "Did you vote for Trump or Crooked Killary?" culture war, and let's face it, that's exactly what this is. At this point I wish this game were never even made because, for as much as I've loved it, it's existence isn't worth the real-world social consequences. *sigh* Anyway, looking back, I overreacted. I was trying to apologize just there, but I think that might've gotten lost somewhere along the way.

So anyway, you say that I "minimize[d] the issue on the other side". Let's look back to your preceding reply to me to see what "issue on the other side" you're referring to. Here it is, quote:

"...Between people being banned from forums for voicing a negative opinion about the game, to journalists like Jason Schreier being shamed on twitter, to users on vgchartz having to endure the typical witch hunt, the only conclusion is that people are not allowed to say things against the game."

I'll highlight the "users on vgchartz having to endure the typical witch hunt" part in particular because it stands out here as symptomatic of a persecution complex. I offered a 19-paragraph commentary on the game not too long ago that included several paragraphs of criticisms. I was not banned or attacked, but up-voted by six people as a result. In fact, there is an *official* VG Chartz review of the game up now scoring it a mere 7 out of 10, which is much lower than most other professional reviews. Or just look at the average level of up-votes you see on this thread. Who gets more on average: supporters of this game or detractors? The latter, by a margin of like 2 to 1. You are NOT being marginalized and persecuted here on VG Chartz! The fact that you believe you are shows how warped your perspective is. You literally don't know what marginalization is.

I find that I'm permitted to voice a number of opinions openly here on VGC that have gotten whole subreddits closed of late. I don't feel that this is an unreasonably restrictive place. To that end, I strongly suspect that anyone who may have been banned in connection to comments about this game on the forums (I haven't been following that to know, I'm afraid) proooooobably was banned for something much more than just whether they liked or didn't like The Last of Us Part II.

Point being: Unless we're specifically talking about the board policies of ResetEra, which is a place that I don't join precisely because I feel like I wouldn't make it 24 hours there without being permabanned anyway owing to their ludicrous volume of rules, I'm just not seeing any real case here for 'TLOU2 haters are being persecuted off the internetz!', considering that they pretty much ARE the internetz. There is a real social censorship problem out there. I hear you on that. Your treatment/pedestal here ain't it though. There IS, however, a very, very real toxicity (and in particular, misogyny) problem going on around this game that comes pretty much exclusively from one direction.

The view today is that if you are a white male you ARE priviledged because you start the race ahead of others, no matter what shit you and your family has been through or how hard you worked to achieve it. Unless, while being a white male, you at the same time belong to some minority like lgbt or have some for of physical or mental problem. Also you automatically are racist and need to fight against it everyday. Yep it sucks but it is the world we live in. And dont try to argument against it, because that would be bigotry and you might be cancelled.

I think I'm just playing on normal. I'll give it another try in a year or two after I've forgotten a lot. Even now, I think the ai is pretty great but I can tell they're trying to turn their back to me on purpose to make things easier on me.

I would like to have had something more like Hitman where the NPCs are living a kinda normal life until you do something to raise their attention. In TLoU2, it usually feels like they go from kinda looking for... somebody to REALLY looking for somebody, and that's it. I did like the one girl just playing her Vita. She felt like more than just "cannon fodder". More stuff like that would have been welcomed.

Well most of the people you encounter are doing patrol or hunting instead of living off (you don't go to their camp, you go for their perimeter zone).

But yes it is cool in Yakuza where you can see that all NPC have their own life and are doing their own stuff most of the time until you interact with them.

Most of the time they were just attacked my somebody else and they're looking for that person. My character just happens to be passing through. Other times they're like "Let's clear this area" and I happen to be passing through. And a few times, unless I missed some context, people are just walking around aimlessly but still looking for random Intruders. I guess it'd make for a boring game but, I don't know.

And in reference to my earlier post, I'm doing everything I can to beat the game today. It just keeps going and going...but I'm actually enjoying it more than I did before. It's pretty engaging. Hope it ends strong.

^I'm feeling this post so hard, thumbs up from me.

I get so sick and darn tired of these modern politically correct types acting like all white people are privileged oppressors. Both of my parents grew up poor, my mother in a family with 4 kids being supported solely by the Air Force income of my grandfather (Enlisted, not Officer), my father raised by just a mother because my grandfather walked out on them. My mother's parents did their best to save enough for my mom to go to college and finally managed to send her, but she got screwed out of a class she needed to get her degree due to the class being cancelled her final semester, and my grandparents couldn't afford to send her another semester, so she got stuck working as a waitress and later a cashier. My dad didn't get to go to college at all; because he grew up poor and had learning disabilities, he ended up dropping out of high school (later got his G.E.D.), and ended up first working in a poultry plant, and later doing 12 hour shifts as a printing press technician. As such, me and my brother grew up quite poor for the early part of our lives; we lived in a trailer park until I was 5. My parents managed to get a starter home through a USDA loan when I was 5, and things were going much better for my family for awhile, but then a surgeon nearly killed my mother during a routine gallbladder surgery, and left her in such bad shape that she was unable to work again, turning my family into a single income family. There were many paychecks growing up which just weren't enough, with my family having to carefully ration food to get by. My brother managed to work his way through community college, while I ended up not going to college at all.

And don't feed me this hogwash about the other privileges that white people have that other races don't either. Cops can harass white people just as easily as they can people of other races, just ask my uncle who was hounded by police for much of his life, just because he was poor. Or ask my white neighbor when I was a kid, who was constantly hounded by the school resource officer just because his family was poor. White people can be the targets of racism just as easily as other races can, my father was chased through the streets and beat up by a gang of older black kids while trying to walk to school in kindergarten, just because he was white. I myself have been called racist names by members of other races, both online and in person.

Exactly! My mom being harassed in the city was by black kids all because she was the white girl when she was young. Thank you for your story. When my wife and I got married we were dirt poor living in an apartment literally losing money every month despite a tight budget. We had to work our way into much more successful situations that we have now, and that was after 3+ generations of those that came before us being poor/lower middle class.

This is an important point. A lot of people that demands equality wants it right now, while increasing you quality of life is something that takes generations to happen. My family is a mix of former slaves and italian immigrants. Both freaking poor to the point my mother refuses to talk about her childhood and my father says he had to sell stuff inside trains and polish other people shoes to survive. My father was thrown away from his house when my mother got pregnant as he was going to live with a black woman. My mother had to leave school when I got born. Also he used to sleep only 4 hours per day due to work and commuting. At some point one one of them could go to university so my mother was paying for my father university as he had more chance to make more money. Pretty miserable life in a miserable place. But due to hard work, making the right decisions, understanding their situation and how to get out of it they are able to become very successful in life and understanding they would have to let go of their youth years if they wanted to get somewhere. They had to make the decision of not studying what they wanted, but what would provide them a better life. My childhood was good but never got access to toys, travels, good clothes, nice food, nothing like that. My brother which is 8 years old had a much better life. I was able to keep the pace, making the right decisions and studying and achieving my own milestones despite being brown or mixed. I have a very good life today and my kids will have an even better one.

From a family of Italians fleeing the famine and former slaves, on the fourth generation we achieved a good life and only the fifth will start since the begginning in a good situation, already with some heritage money and some "status". And of course, it takes one generation of stupid decisions to burn through all that was conquered.