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The Last of Us Pt II |OT| Oh Ellie...I think they should be terrified of you

Cracklox

Member
Something I don't see mentioned alot amonst all the crap surrounding this game is just how well everything runs. I'm no graphics aficionado or anything but I've barely seen anything like frame drops, screen tearing, textures taking a while to load or any of that other stuff that seems to plague other highly detailed games these days (on console at least).

Also, the load times. Holy shit does it feel like a breath of fresh air these days to have absolutely minimal loading. One decent load into the game, then really only super quick reloads when you die.

But we don't talk about that stuff, that once upon a time would have been considered a real positive for a game I guess.

Day 5 of TLOU2 criticism. It now apparently has no gameplay.

What will Day 6 bring? The Seraphites remind me of that one BLM group who tried to have a mini civilization?

Personally, I'm outraged that this game, that features Lesbians, has scissors in the game world. It makes me think impure thoughts. Anyone else with me?
 

TissueBox

Member
The lengthiness of the gameplay sequences are going to have essays written about them for years to come, and I only mean that half-ironically.

I want to get to the story bits; I wish to see the ending. I wish to have my playing be rewarded with story. To have me sit down and think about it, and tear up at, yes, the inevitably emotional characterizations and retrospectively compelling story moments on my chair in my bedroom for no reason like I'm sure ND is planning.

And honestly, this is not how I 'wish' the game had to be.

Whether I am trying to speed through a game or taking my time and soaking in the sights, in this case, the issue is not the approach the player takes with TLOUPII, imo -- it is the game's approach with the player. Human combat is superb, and the traversal and general gameplay mechanics feel great. But are these elements and strengths being used in service to the story, or in service to 'big'-ness, which in turn feels... inconsequential?

For those who are privy, this game will hit hardest after the credits have rolled; once you're able to talk about it and mull over its themes. And oh, it'll dig deep -- it'll elicit quiet power and feeling.

But it'll do that once you're done playing it. Once all the padding is over with. And the fun parts will be great to re-play on their own, but this might be a bit too strenuous for a full re-play for many, even those who liked it.

In other words, as great as this game has been on both a technical and visceral level, it also tends to feel long just for the sake of it sometimes. And the way that narrative momentum is upheld is through gameplay sequences that bridge each cutscene so obligatorily that each story beat, gameplay loop, and mini-setpiece become monotone, because you see so much of the same thing in different variations in contexts that are mobilized by a story that only advances with cutscenes while you are here jumping from point A to point B as if to get to the next one, to the point of losing your suspension of disbelief (or, rather, mine, anyway). While the writing is weaker than in the original TLOU, the cinematic storytelling here beats everyone in the AAA-spsace except for Rockstar after their work on RDRII, and it's one of the game's greatest strengths. But it game-ifies it and pigeonholes it into such a formula that, whether you're taking your time or moving breezily through the thing, it starts to feel like a carrot and stick slog. The actual gameplay has good character building moments, combat, and dialogue -- but the problem is that all things begin to crack when you stretch them out. TLOUPII's writing team just aren't able to give this wider dish the according amount of meat to really get that delicious juicy full-course gobbler down our gullets. Instead, we get a big wide silver platter with some bits of steak and then a holy scrabble-ton of lettuce. Which is fine, and healthy, great for the body. But come on, everybody just wants the steak. (Not literally speaking for everybody here, of course -- I'm aware that plenty of people love the story and both what it does and how it does it.)

Anyway, sorry, just some impromptu two cents. Can't wait to reach the finale, as I am of the belief that it will deliver, and make everything before this worth it. It's just that this could've been narrowed down, and, well -- it still would've been 'worth it', is all. *grungy shrug* I may just change my mind about all of this yet. Who knows, maybe future me is scoffing at that whole paragraph as we speak.
 
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GymWolf

Member
So, I have a question for all the level headed and honest people out there. I'm considering buying the game today and would like to hear a couple opinions first. Is it likely I will enjoy this game?

My background is that I love stealth games. Personally, I didn't like the first TLOU at all. I wasn't compelled by the gameplay or the story. I'm not really compelled by the story here either, though I don't completely hate what I saw in the spoilers.

I'm interested in buying this basically just for the gameplay. I want to explore and stealth kill people in a AAA game. Is the satisfaction of stealth and brutal melee kills enough for the purchase do you think?
Probably the most brutal and satisfying stealth kill in any game ever, if that is your kink, you can't go wrong.

Yeah the stealth is still very basic with just a few options and the ia even with some improvements is still a little bit retarded and exploitable sometimes, but there is no other game with better stealth kills, both melee or ranged, the headshots are sublime.

Like you i only bought the game for the brutal gameplay and i'm enjoying the shit out of it.
 
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Jon Neu

Banned
Something I don't see mentioned alot amonst all the crap surrounding this game is just how well everything runs. I'm no graphics aficionado or anything but I've barely seen anything like frame drops, screen tearing, textures taking a while to load or any of that other stuff that seems to plague other highly detailed games these days (on console at least).

Weird, I’ve seen huge dropping of frames in cutscenes and plenty of times I’ve entered a room or a new area and some assets and textures weren’t fully loaded yet.
 

psorcerer

Banned
Weird, I’ve seen huge dropping of frames in cutscenes and plenty of times I’ve entered a room or a new area and some assets and textures weren’t fully loaded yet.

That's HDD speed. On Pro it plays on fixed 30. Like really fixed, no problems whatsoever.
Cutscenes are used to hide the loading of new areas, i.e. it's probably HDD too in your case...
 

GymWolf

Member
Weird, I’ve seen huge dropping of frames in cutscenes and plenty of times I’ve entered a room or a new area and some assets and textures weren’t fully loaded yet.
The only thing i noticed are some grass pop in when you are in some locations with a lot of grass, rdr2 was better in this aspect with no visible pop in, and very rare 1 second slowdown maybe during internal loading of an area, leaving these aside it is a pretty flawless game in the performance department.
 
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ksdixon

Member
Gameplay wise I'm loving it.

Hopefully I just have to power through this early cutscene / forced walk and talk / odd bit of scavenging and infected encounters part of Seattle.

I mean I Haven't even got to the first set of human enemies yet.

But the early-game story/pacing isn't exactly grabbing my attention, and I'm dreading the story beats to come.
 

GymWolf

Member
RDR2 has flat terrain and low poly indoors. High price for that "smoothness".
I was talking about grass pop in mostly, it is very rare to see that in rdr2.
And the game is a full fledged open world with far more stuff on screen than tlou2, some low res texture is forgiveable looking at the scope and details the game has, for me it is still the pinnacle of graphics for thos gen with tlou2 being in top 3.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
Just finished the game on Hard clocking in at just under 44 hours with most of the trophies done. I took my time to soak in the world Naughty Dog built and such a brutal, haunting world it was. The later acts of the game are really much better than the first act, so much so that it greatly improved my opinion of the plot.

Now that I'm done, I can firmly say that the drama or controversy surrounding the game is ridiculous. Its a fantastic game that starts off slow but once the plot finds its footing you just can't put it down.
 

GymWolf

Member
Because it's much less dense graphically.
Like at least 10x



No it's not, it simpler. Graphically. Because it's open world.
Maybe you don't have the same grass density but you have npc with kinda advanced ia routine, the most advanced animal ecosystem in a game ever etc. These things are not free to render for the console.
And even if the grass close to you is more dense you still have less on screen overall because like you said, rdr2 is an open world and the areas are always bigger and more free to navigate without artificial walls to limit your view.
To me is more impressive that an open world game has virtually no pop in compared to a wide linear game with a lot of grass but with pop in.

And hear me out, i prefer less grass that doesn't pop in constantly every time i turn the camera, it is a bit immersion breaking for people who care about this stuff.

Don't put on screen more than you can chew, also lol at that 10x more dense...have you ever played rdr2?!
 
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Keihart

Member
Talk about grass, i love TLoU2 grass specifically becaue it bends correctly...i haven't seen that done since MGS3 i think? there were some similar effects that looked way shittier. There is the bend like effect of most games where the grass just slightly tilt to one side or the expensive Ghost Recon Wildlands nvidia effect where it replaces the texture leaving marks. I just like how it bends in TLoU because it looks way less sillier when you hide in it.

Thinking about it, the game has so much MGS in it, it's kinda nuts.
 
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GymWolf

Member
Talk about grass, i love TLoU2 grass specifically becaue it bends correctly...i haven't seen that done since MGS3 i think? there were some similar effects that looked way shittier bend like effect of most games where the grass just slightly tilt to one side or the expesive Ghost Recon Wildlands nvidia effect where it replaces the texture leaving marks. I just like how it bends in TLoU because it makes way less sillier when you hide in it.
Tsushima seems another game with good bending grass from the footage.
Botw has some nice grass too.
 
I have this feeling like this game is a modern take on the pre-rendered backgrounds we saw back on PSX for the Final Fantasy games.

Can anyone else see that? Like all the scenes are mostly static. No moving GI, nothing moves. The thing that made me notice this is the ever so slightly visible difference in a car that parked after driving next to some other static cars that look visibly superior because they were pre-baked.

I cannot wait to see this kind of graphical fidelity in an interactive world with dynamic times of day. I truly think that even though it’s mostly sort of pre-baked it looks so spectacular it doesn’t matter. It works for what it’s trying to do and it’s working around the limitations of the hardware with incredible finesse but it would be so damn awesome to be able to go to places I can see and should be able to reach but can’t because they didn’t program a grab on that ledge or whatever. I want physics in this world. I want to cut or break something that will cause a large object to fall and break through a wall if I can’t figure a way out. I want physics based puzzles and I truly cannot wait until we have games that can do that kind of stuff with graphical fidelity of that level and I’m truly hoping that’s going to happen next gen.

It will also be awesome if ND could make a choice pathway system for their games. Let you make different choices as the character rather than being forced into certain things and therefore change the outcome of the story so completely because of them. Do or don’t kill this character and it’s branching effects etc. Alas I’m not sure that’s ND’s style.

Heck I’m hoping we’ll see a sneak peak of those ideas in Witcher 3.
 

Psykodad

Banned
Just a quick question for those that have already beaten the game:

How far am I when
I just did the ferries part, where Tommy and Jesse caught up with me?

Just want to finish up the story.
 

TissueBox

Member
To the folks who've completed this she-bang, one smaaall question:

Does Riley get mentioned in-game at all?

(Spoiler tags pls! And thx. ^^')
 

Chromata

Member
To the folks who've completed this she-bang, one smaaall question:

Does Riley get mentioned in-game at all?

(Spoiler tags pls! And thx. ^^')

Not really a spoiler but I put it in spoiler tags anyway just in case:

Played through it all and read every piece of lore I found, never found any direct mention of Riley. It's possible I missed something but I guess you can at least assume it isn't mentioned in any major way. The only thing I found that mentions the DLC in any way is
one journal entry where Ellie mentions that she's kissed another girl before. Ellie also mentions that she doesn't like a Halloween store, which is a DLC reference, but not really a Riley reference.
 
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Psykodad

Banned
I'd say you're about halfway.
Thnx.

There's so much I love about the game, but for some reason, I can't be bothered too much with the gameplay.
This is the first time ever that I've set a game's difficulty to the easiest level, just so I can casually enjoy the story.

Maybe it's just my excitement for next-gen that kinda kills part of the fun, but on Pro there are so much framedrops, it's just not funny.
Production values are though the roof though and the atmosphere is amazing.

AAnyway, I'm out again. Don't want to get spoiled. Lol
 

Hostile_18

Banned
I never get excited about difficulty levels but Naughty Dog games really do come alive on the harder difficulties. I can't wait for Grounded.

Just up to near the hospital. Loving it but no idea where it rates just yet... I don't think I'll even know that till I play it through twice.

So far my order is; (from amazing to good)

Uncharted 4
The Last of Us
The Lost Legacy
Uncharted 2
Uncharted 3
Uncharted

The game will have to do alot to knock Uncharted 4 off the top spot but I'm not sure it can just because of its varied and colourful locations. But we shall see! 😁
 

Chromata

Member
Thnx.

There's so much I love about the game, but for some reason, I can't be bothered too much with the gameplay.
This is the first time ever that I've set a game's difficulty to the easiest level, just so I can casually enjoy the story.

Maybe it's just my excitement for next-gen that kinda kills part of the fun, but on Pro there are so much framedrops, it's just not funny.
Production values are though the roof though and the atmosphere is amazing.

AAnyway, I'm out again. Don't want to get spoiled. Lol

Hope you enjoy the rest and yup be careful, spoilers are everywhere!
 
Can’t quite put my finger on it but I’m bored playing it. In Seattle and leaving downtown. I just don’t feel compelled to play On. Like I’ll enjoy it but want to stop after an hour or so rather than play on. So far tlou1 was way better at the start.
 
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TissueBox

Member
Not really a spoiler but I put it in spoiler tags anyway just in case:

Played through it all and read every piece of lore I found, never found any direct mention of Riley. It's possible I missed something but I guess you can at least assume it isn't mentioned in any major way. The only thing I found that mentions the DLC in any way is
one journal entry where Ellie mentions that she's kissed another girl before. Ellie also mentions that she doesn't like a Halloween store, which is a DLC reference, but not really a Riley reference.

[Major early-game spoiler below!]

ARGH really? Honestly so much about Part II is hinged around Ellie and the original TLOU that the fact that such a pivotal figure in her life is barely referred to feels uncharacteristic to me. She's lost a lot of people close to her, but after her mom and Joel, Riley is definitely next up on the list (as we know of).

Aka, this feels like painting Left Behind as an informative but unnecessary trifle. Which is fine, of course. But when some of it is referenced in the TLOU base game and it also acts as the story of Ellie realizing her sexual identity, which is a huge component of TLOUPII, well, who knows what to think. It's a great DLC, caught somewhere between essential and nonessential material.

Thx!!
 
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JimiNutz

Banned
Can’t quite put my finger on it but I’m bored playing it. In Seattle and leaving downtown. I just don’t feel compelled to play On. Like I’ll enjoy it but want to stop after an hour or so rather than play on. So far tlou1 was way better at the start.

It does have a bit of a slow start yeah.
In terms of gameplay, specifically the combat encounters, it does improve quite significantly. Some of the later setpieces and environments are awesome.
 

Chromata

Member
ARGH really? Honestly so much about Part II is hinged around Ellie and the original TLOU that the fact that such a pivotal figure in her life is barely referred to feels uncharacteristic to me. She's lost a lot of people close to her, but after her mom and Joel, Riley is definitely next up on the list (before TLOUPII that is, and as we know of).

Aka, this feels like painting Left Behind as an informative but unnecessary trifle. Which is fine, of course. But when some of it is referenced in the TLOU base game and it also acts as the story of Ellie realizing her sexual identity, which is a huge component of TLOUPII, well, who knows what to think. It's a great DLC, caught somewhere between essential and nonessential material.

Thx!!

Np :)

Yeah I agree that the DLC is in this awkward position where it's essential regarding Ellie's sexual identity but it also doesn't directly have anything to do with TLOU2, you learn about Ellie's sexual identity in TLOU2 anyways. I guess they didn't want anyone who didn't play the DLC to feel.......left behind.......
I'll show myself out :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
S

Steve.1981

Unconfirmed Member
Heavily pregnant woman going out on missions in this incredibly dangerous world.

The game makes sure to tell you that the father has no say in this.

Not even 1 minute into the mission & all hell breaks loose, bullets flying, molotovs getting tossed & the heavily pregnant woman is getting tossed around the bed of the truck.

ylXiNhu.jpg
 

Woodchipper

Member
HOW LONG IS THIS FUCKING GAME?!

It’s getting ridiculous. I was just about to say the end was worth it, but no, it fucking keeps going! Oh man...
 
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I like everything about the gameplay of this game. The story is a shit fucking show. Trash. Garbage. Joel, who was a badass character in the first game, is put aside as if he never existed - oh but I forgot, The fucking flashbacks, Or I should say, Flashbacks: The Game.

Man, I really feel bad for all the pissed fans :messenger_beaming:

Oh, and Naughty Dog manipulated all the trailers to make you think the game is about a Journey again, with Joel. Damn, where is Sony to check wtf ND is doing :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Holy shit I highly suggest checking out models in model viewer after finishing the game and zoom in. Death stranding might have a rival. Wow
BTW. If people have doubts about playing further but like the gameplay enough to keep playing... Keep playing...
 
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Honest question but why would you spend money on a game you know you will hate?
Because i'm rich.

Seriously now. I already know all the twists and turns. I'm already disappointed. It can't get any worse than that. And i might enjoy the game for what it is.
Besides i need a new game.

HOW LONG IS THIS FUCKING GAME?!

It’s getting ridiculous. I was just about to say the end was worth it, but no, it fucking keeps going! Oh man...
I hear it's 25 hours average.
 
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Keihart

Member
Thnx.

There's so much I love about the game, but for some reason, I can't be bothered too much with the gameplay.
This is the first time ever that I've set a game's difficulty to the easiest level, just so I can casually enjoy the story.

Maybe it's just my excitement for next-gen that kinda kills part of the fun, but on Pro there are so much framedrops, it's just not funny.
Production values are though the roof though and the atmosphere is amazing.

AAnyway, I'm out again. Don't want to get spoiled. Lol
There are some posts talking about frame pacing problemas on pro.
On base PS4 hasn't even hitched almost for me, not even during combat.
 
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