Naughty Dog made a game that felt more like a political statement. So we killed off Joel, because of course, he's the worst. Old white middle aged guy with his views, bah! Ellie and her girlfriend as a main point of the story with use of the word 'bigot' quite often, got to name and shame those bigots right, they're everywhere these days. We had our trans character, a nice diverse range of ethnicities etc. And wasn't it wonderful for Abby to get her revenge on that horrible, horrible man. Big push on pregnancy... not really sure why? Was that the next level shock after Sarah in TLOU 1? And of course, let's punish Ellie for wanting her own revenge because you know, for Abby it's cool, she's strong and progressive and she's mean and masculine, but for Ellie it's completely wrong to have revenge because, you know.
Well actually, I don't know. Why was it perfectly fine for Abby to have her revenge but wrong for Ellie? And what the fuck was that last part of the game where our heroine who fought like a one woman army up until this point was brought down by a bunch of bitches? It literally felt like after the encounter between Abby and Ellie the game was being held together by sellotape.
Now I have to make it clear, I try not to judge people. Only when I know them and can form a fair opinion of them, just for being gay or trans etc I couldn't really care. Treat me like a human and I'll do the same to you. I have gay members of my family and I could relate to a lot of the topics in this game.
But this was supposed to be the second part of a game series that absolutely fucking blew me away in 2013. A game that made me genuinely cry on more than one occasion and had me so angry in the climax that I had to be told that I was gritting my teeth loudly and squeezing the pad when I went to save Ellie. I wanted a sequel to that game which felt like that game.
What TLOU Pt 2 feels like is a tick box exercise for every left leaning person in the world to champion and consider a boon for progressiveness. We ticked every single diversity box we could, make sure we used clear queues in conversations to really drive our points home. I didn't feel like I was playing a game when I did play this game, I felt like this was an attempt to appease a particular type of person and that's why I lost interest in the story. They could have gone anywhere with the story after the first game but they had to do the really cliché thing of having Abby's father as a scientist in the lab who's life in sunshine and rainbows and it shows how horrible he's hard done to, by a man who literally experienced what that world was like.
There was no burning anger or hatred towards Joel. He lied to Ellie at the end of the first game and it was very clear that he was not a very nice person in many ways. But I didn't care about that because I emphasised with the fact that he grew to love Ellie like his own little girl, irrespective of their differences and he would have done anything to keep her safe, absolutely anything. Now that I related too. Especially as a parent. But the second game felt forced. I admit the visuals were astoundingly good, the game was well polished and the animation was fantastic but did I get lost in the story like I did the island of Tsushima? No. Did I enjoy exploring the world as much? No. Did I care about the characters as much as I cared for Sensei Ishkawa, Taka or Lord Shimura? No I didn't.
Ghost was a joy to play and explore. It was everything a game was supposed to be and it was very much that, it was a video game. The Last of Us Part II felt like a video game that was secretly a thinly veiled political statement that was trying to cater to a specific audience without voicing it.
The world of Ghost of Tsushima was beautiful, traversing it didn't feel like a chore. The combat was fun and engaging. The performance from the actors was fantastic in Japanese and English. Collecting wasn't made to feel dull. The plot and story were enchanting. The relationships and characters were fantastic. Nobody felt out of place of out of character. The game always felt like it was a passive enjoyable experience, not something to be taken seriously and there wasn't any kind of forced or hidden messaging.
Honestly I didn't care about the characters or the world. The religious cult fighting the soldiers, just no empathy. Didn't care about the pregnancy plot lines because that's clearly supposed to be the next level shock to the system after watching a child killed, accidentally or otherwise. I couldn't care less about Abby, loathed playing as her. Didn't like her friends. I didn't mind Ellie and her friends as much, I genuinely felt sad for her when she returned to the farm and Dina was gone. The baby's father being killed I predicted and knew it was coming. There was just so much about that game that was predictable or dull or just plain graceless and inelegant. I've played plenty of games where the characters religion, race, sexuality etc are better represented but also feel like they're actually a part of who they are and not a tick box exercise.
Plus they did the worst thing they possibly could for me. The one thing that ruined the game and they did it very, very early on. They killed Joel. You just don't do that and certainly not by turning him into a cliché.
