No more pallet puzzles: THE LAST OF US PART II

02/21/2020!

spoiler alert, joel is actually dead in this one

Guess I should link this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II5UsqP2JAk

This is a much lower key reaction than I expected.

i’m trying to remain as spoiler-free as possible tbh

i thought the first one was genuinely masterful so i’m looking forward to this one a lot

joel is actually dead in this one

i’m trying to remain as spoiler-free as possible tbh

if it turns out joel is dead in this one i’m gonna be upset at spoiling myself, just to be clear

Honestly, seeing the early teases for the second one (even though I haven't played the first one yet!) is what made me want to get a PS4, iirc. I figure by the time I get through the first one, the second one will be discounted.

CMON PLAY ITTTT JOSH (bizarro is proving no fun).

jks

What new information does the Sony Worldwide president have about this hotly anticipated release? pic.twitter.com/bh9Revorkp

— Onion Gamers Network (@OnionGamers) October 9, 2019

delayed to may 29

i'm actually happy whenever a title gets delayed at this point in my life. crush those bugs

The Abby boss is straight out of John Carpenter's The Thing

lol at an earlier post itt

So I've reached the point where you play as a different character, which as game design seems to risky! I get that Naughty Dog wants you to view the character as a fleshed out person, but the timing of the POV switch isn't great: I'm Ellie, facing a narrative climax, and all of a sudden we change time and place and I feel like I've been sent back to square one -- it's frustrating!

I agree, but it doesn’t take long to get into it. It is very uncanny though. Different skill trees, different crafting options. I’m always starting to feel a little bit like “fuck that Ellie bitch”

always already

And like... for a game it’s risky, I get that, but it just shows how low the bar is creatively. “you and I, we are not so different” was already pretty hackneyed when John Woo was doing it

Can we assume anyone reading this has beaten the game yet? I guess it's only been two weeks, but...

There's a lot of ideas in this game that can be described so simply, but I think the game deserves more credit. (For instance, I think it goes far beyond "Revenge is bad!" but I'm still collecting my thoughts.) I loved that twist, though I also felt a bit annoyed at the time - gameplay-wise it was sort of a Metroid-esque skill reset. In the Abby run I think you lose all your stuff twice, even.

And yeah, that Abby boss is amazing, the most disgusting creature in a game full of horrible things.

Spoiler warnings of course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh5gzGs-63Y
Also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/video-games/news/the-last-of-us-part-2-ellie-evolution/

Here's my #hottake that you all have been waiting for:

The ending was pretty bleak, maybe about as bleak as I expected, had shades of Children of Men ending (boat in fog with characters questionably surviving). I could see why some people were expecting a twist of them joining forces ("common enemies!") but that was already used once between Lev & Abby and might have been stale or less impactful if done again.

some bullets:

-way too much scavenging, would prefer loot drops after kills
-the infected basically being reduced to background scenery for long sections of the game was a letdown
+the hunting pistol completely overperformed my expectations (esp. after spec'ed out with scope et al), maybe the best weapon in the game?
-OTOH the silenced (!) SMG was such a letdown, good thing you barely have time to use it so your excitement upon finding it is tempered
+the "safecracking" hack that was leaked made crafting trees incredibly easier to obtain (just turn your volume up and listen for the telling "click")
+i liked the fact the game was so PC (strong LGBTQ and/or female characters, thrown in with hints of polyamory, + quite a few non-caucasian supporting roles)
-...but the gratuitous sex scene was just so OTT cringe and unnecessary
+the graphics were amazing, post apocalypse water-ravaged Seattle was incredible
+i thought the story was fine, some people (lacking empathy?) couldn't vibe with Abby's MO but I thought the psychological/moral struggles were presented and delivered convincingly.

I'm in the middle of Abby day 2 and the much needed LEVITY (do you see?) is refreshing and definitely echoes the odd couple dynamic from the first game.

https://youtu.be/6kkXif1_dm4

so in pt iii you're going to play as an infected right

nice

in part iii you play the cop who shot joel's daughter at the opening of part i, though you actually play his first days on the force. it is set in 2003 and there are no zombies.

in part iv you will play an ant infected with the cordyceps fungus in the real present day world. it plays out in real time with a deliberately oblique control scheme taking heavy influence from death stranding.

in part v you are a crafting bench.

in part vi you are a an environmental artist at naughty dog, crafting a series of tiny environemtal psychodramas about survivors at the end of things. you are forced into working a series of 14-hour shifts and 7-day weeks via less and less soft pressure; if the player stops playing, their real world credit rating will slowly decline. pressing L2 opens an inventory wheel in which you find a memo from management, telling you they anticipate your adjusting to "the naughty dog way of doing things", and a picture of your daughter. you do not see your daughter.

Ok so some initial gameplay thoughts.

Combat is fun and polished, with more depth than cover shooters, and more forgiveness than stealth shooters when you got spotted. For a long while this is what sustained me.

Rat King LOL OMG WTF. I knew that this was going to be something horrible, especially since its level is a very clear echo of the hotel basement he in Part 1, but the pure fear it inspires is on a different level, since you have actually have to engage with this big boy rather than make a mad dash for the exit. Is beating this thing what people feel when they beat a boss in From Soft games?

The Ellie boss fight otoh was quite a lot harder, and by how frustrated I got, she was the hardest boss of the game. I didn't upgrade Abby's listen mode much (mostly because you don't even have listen mode on Grounded in Part 1 and I have/had aspirations of beating Part 2 on the hardest difficulty), so as often as the Rat King ripped me apart, Ellie shivved me probably twice as many times.

I thought Santa Barbara was going to be a quick epilogue! So I kept powering through it because I thought the end was just around the corner.

Semi automatic guns are a tease! I never unlocked that ability for Abby's rifle because Rat King aside, when will you even have the ammo to unload on enemies, much less fight enemies that can soak up that kind of damage?

Oops, not initial obviously!

Two really great set pieces too: the on be where Jesse drives and you shoot infected and Wolves, and the one where you ride through the burning Seraphite village.

When I read criticisms that the end game is pointless, I thought they meant that it was nihilist and that Ellie was on an inevitable path of killing Abby (am end which I approached with dread), when those same criticisms were in fact voiced because they *wanted* that to happen.

check out this maniac

The Last of Us 2 photo mode tips & tricks thread:

Let's start with a simple portrait. This particular room/spot has a nice, soft, bloomy light. Finding good lights & shadows make about 95% of your shot. This thread can hopefully help you with the remaining 5%.

01/20 pic.twitter.com/FZwRW86yU8

— Petri Levälahti (@Berduu) July 5, 2020

that's awesome

Something that for me worked exceptionally was how the emotional/ethical peril is treated as equally as the physical peril. I was fighting against Ellie in the final showdown even as I played as her, and I was on the edge of my seat until she decided to let Abby live.

At the farmhouse when Ellie is preparing to go, and like, I love this game and want to keep playing it, on the other hand, Ellie wtf is wrong with you, hate you right now, don’t want to be you

Also: wow they did Yara dirty

Beat it.

It will be immense on “hard” when I come back to this in a year or two. (I think there are slightly too many materials available on normal mode.)

I imagine the final Santa Barbara hacienda shoot-out ought to be a bit better of a send-off on hard, too.

I feel bad about not using the flamethrower more.

When you come back to the aquarium as Abby and find the dead dog is one of the great “oh, fuck” moments in any videogame.

Incredible game.

I think there are slightly too many materials available on normal mode.

Yeah, I was actually kind of pissed that I was maxed out on resources and had to leave loot behind.

I'm kind of toying with the thought of replaying on Survivor, which is almost definitely overly ambitious.

Also OMG at the banner image here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastOfUs2/

So what about the annoying things in this game?

- You get to use the flamethrower like twice
- You get to use the silenced submachine gun for the last scene only
- On 'normal' you never have to worry about health or supplies
- Big resource drops spoiling the tension of upcoming confrontations
- Proximity bombs never needed. In fact, you rarely need to do much more than switch between silenced weapons, long-range weapons and the shotgun. Maybe this is different on hard/survivor - you actually have to plan your attacks and how you're going to switch up the damage you deal?
- Easy finale in Santa Barbara
- THEY DID YARA DIRTY I mean honest to fuck. Yara is like the whole thing for Abby. Yara's what inspires her to go rogue. She risks her life to pay Yara back. Now I'm not saying Yara shouldn't have bitten it, fine, that's an artistic choice. But after it happens, not one scene of Lev grieving for her? For the sister who saved his life again and again? Not one scene where Abby remembers her? I know, they have to escape, but what about after that?

JFC: https://kotaku.com/new-the-last-of-us-part-ii-trophies-tease-grounded-mode-1844678713

Who are these people who think this game isn't hard enough?

Permadeath is an insane option

It’s not quite hard enough on “normal” thi though, as documented in this thread

I thought it was, but ok, for argument's sake, sure - there's already a million adjustable difficulty options to make the game that much harder

Yeah - for me the sweet spot was making resources a bit more scarce.

God knows how I'd ever beat the section where you're escaping from the house with Lev and Yara on the other side of the door if all the difficulties were ramped up including enemy damage etc

oh man, this game

just watched a playthrough. I could not play this game; too violent and scary to actually inhabit the controller & feel all those deaths, and I definitely tabbed through a lot of the puzzle / assault sequences. but being able to tab through -- well, I definitely get the crossover hype / interest in non-gamers, this is a form of narrative more effective than anything television is capable of right now. this game totally takes advantage of 70 years of art film vocabulary like Tarkovsky / Rivette / Akerman and flips it all back over into Romero mainstream narrative storytelling

still a lot to figure out, but yeah, cried twice

Did you play the first one Milton?

skimmed the first 35 minutes of a playthrough. yikes!

only three games I've actually played myself in the last 30 years are Katamari Damacy, Journey, Monument Valley. I don't like holding the controller for first person shooters, but certainly have seen friends playing things like Bioshock etc as the games slowly evolved into whatever this is

I get what the Melanie Lynskey character was there for, I just didn't think she deserved 1 1/2 episodes at the expense of time with our central characters. Again, it's the weight of time spent with them that forms our emotional connection. The first season felt, on one hand, like one of those exercises where the first draft of something is cut down to its barest, starkest minimum, yet at the same time, on the other hand, a whole bunch of other extraneous stuff was added in. Bill & Frank, Melanie Lynskey, their stories are not ineffective, just secondary to the story being told, imo. Clearly fans of the show have been onboard regardless, but the show, as much as I like it, isn't quite connecting with me the same way the game did; whenever it hits certain emotional beats I find myself drifting back to the game version, and that is weirdly where my own emotional reactions have been coming from, from memories of the game sparked by their depiction in the show rather than from this particular show itself.

The same sort simultaneous story compression/expansion process is already kinda going on with this season as well. The Jackson Hole battle was exciting, but had afaict nothing to do with the story being or going to be told; given Ellie will be leaving it behind, is the show really going to keep flashing back from Ellie's quest to the rebuilding of Jackson Hole?

I think re: casting, part of it is not just allegiance to the game, it's that the voice actors in the game got it perfect. It'd be like recasting Indiana Jones or Han Solo. Sure, you could, but Ford pretty much nailed those roles. Of course, you can't cast animated video game characters in a live action TV show, so there's no winning there. I think Dever will be great and there might be something to your theory of inverting the way Abby and Ellie are portrayed in the game; Dever's depiction is more traditionally feminine, while Ramsay's is ever more tomboy than Ellie is in the game. Of course going forward the show will be more explicitly addressing notions of appearance and identity, I wonder how people will react to that in an atmosphere even more heightened than when the game came out?

Thank you for reminding me about the podcast, the first season podcast was great.

Wow, I had no idea Kaitlyn Dever was Cassie Drake in "Uncharted 4."

Was just listening to the S2E3 podcast, and I think it finally captured, for me, the (very relative!) failings of this show. I loved the games, wouldn't change a thing about them, I don't think, and therein lies the challenge for the showrunners: if there is nothing wrong with the story in the game, but you can't tell that story the same way, you are essentially *forced* to make changes. Yet any deviation you take may end up working to the detriment of the story *even if* you have a good reason for making the changes you made. Druckmann and Mazin have clearly thought a lot about the story as show, and they talk a lot about their thought process, but to my ears they sometimes seem to have thought *too much* about the retelling of this story, leading them to make choices that make sense but don't always work. There has been an accumulation of adjustments and changes (some bigger than others), but imo none of them have made the story better, just different, which occasionally has made the story worse.

For example, in the podcast Druckmann mentions the economy of the game, conveying feelings and information through pauses and silence, but the show seems to be going too far the other direction, making explicit what is already implicit, saying things out loud that we already know or are thinking or will see or think soon enough. I find it less effective, or less impactful. Compare, say, Ellie alone in Joel's house, conveying her private hurt, going through his stuff, vs the townhall meeting, which just says everything out loud, or really any of the stuff with Catherine O'Hara. Good scenes on their own, but imo superfluous to the story being told. I suspect future episodes will reflect or belatedly address some of this ground setting, but it still seems unnecessary to me. Same with some of said changes (like a lot of the Dina and Tommy stuff), I guess we'll see what comes of them.

yeah this is dragggging compared to the game which after Joel's death was almost a straight ffwd in medias res to Seattle, you don't see Tommy for days, only his path/wake of destruction...

whereas all this, "3 MONTHS LATER, "smile while we rebuild Fort Jackson together", Ellie recovery in ~Rivendell~, Ellie's shrink visit, the town hall council, bureaucratic chin scratching, little league game's endless exposition, Clint Eastwood is Dirty Harry... for what?

why waste precious time for all this trifling filler ... maybe they can't afford location budget so they have to settle on dull interior scenes or rely on prebuilt sets for exterior shots? therefore Jackson becomes this MAJOR setting whereas it's just a brief waypoint in the game. Then finally 45 mins later after all this fluff, they finally leave and then only at the end you get to see Seattle in all its CGI glory.

also THAT is how you learn about the Seraphites rather than the slow reveal of their creepy propaganda, not their stealthiness nor their harshness... the TV-ness of this is starting to show through.

Every important plot dynamic gets spoonfed on a silver platter and hand-holds the game's complex moral philosophy via dumbed-down exposition, and then on top of that so much time is wasted so much time on inessential non-canon goofy plotlines/fan-fic for so-called "re-telling"?

feels like the showmakers are treating the show as a way to gapfill backstory like a MCU prequel...

worst ep yet.

There's a real end of the "Searchers" quality to Ellie in "TLOU2," explicitly so, which is one reason the Jackson stuff kind of bugs me. We don't need to see what Ellie might be leaving behind. There is *nothing* that would convince Ellie otherwise, which of course leads to the story's powerful, lonely, broken, truly tragic conclusion. So all this world building is indeed a waste of time, since it's pretty irrelevant to Ellie's story. Don't know what to make of them shaking up Dina and Tommy's roles from the game, either. At least, I don't know what is gained. On the podcast they hint that Dina might have a backstory to drop. We'll see.

The way she reacted to the dead Seraphites made me wonder if she is gonna turn out to be a former member who ran off or something. Obviously the lack of scars maybe rules that out but that scene felt odd.

I just thought it that the smell of death (which she acknowledged) triggered her morning sickness.

xpost Yeah, without spoiling anything, in the off chance you're posting on the wrong thread, iirc in the game she reacts the same way to Tommy's dead horse, for the same reason.

The podcast implied there might be something to Dina messing with Ellie for no apparent reason. In the game they depart as a couple.

Ah yeah of course, the whole pregnancy thing! Played the game when it first came out so my memory of the timeline is definitely patchy. I wonder why they’ve decided (presumably) to have Tommy chasing after E&D rather than the other way round. I do get why they wanted to build the E&D relationship for viewers rather than just have them as a couple right off the bat.

Be interested to see if we get a few Abby episodes to get people ‘on her side’ a bit, or whether they’re gonna simplify things and just follow Ellie the whole time

Supposedly that's why they revealed her motive so early, but at some point they'll have to spend a lot more time with her. I wonder where in the game this season will leave them, given all the fast forwarding. Probably the porch conversation with Joel. Eagle eyes noticed the guitar made it back to Ellie, so we know they had that final meeting.

Just read (or maybe I knew?) that some of the actors have played the game, and some have not. I wonder how that does or does not affect their acting choices?

If the show chooses to skip Ellie's bday trip to the museum in favor of Catherine O'Hara chugging homebrew and smoking blunts in the outfield or some other fanfic, I will ~probably~ stop watching.

I doubt they'll skip it, because it is one of the scant excuses to bring back Pedro.

Good points, Josh and Steve! Thanks for those.

I loved the games, wouldn't change a thing about them

Same here! Just my speculation of course, but knowing that (1) some gamers didn't like TLOU2 for various reasons (some clearly bigoted) and that (2) the showrunners have to appeal to a much wider demographic with the TV show compared with the game, they might feel pushed toward certain changes. (I'm not defending it - just offering reasons why.) They might also be feeling "damned if you do, damned if you don't" regarding diverging from the game. I remember in one of the podcast episodes where Craig discusses certain parts that are exactly like they are in the game, and pre-emptively defending them from potential accusations of "fan service" by saying essentially "I'm a fan myself! And these parts worked well."

Regarding the "why" of having the Jackson Hole siege - when I was watching, I really didn't think about how that would serve the story and was just enjoying the spectacle. They might have wanted to have something like that early in Season Two to keep people watching. But then afterwards, when thinking about it, I thought that by spending more time with Tommy, they're offering him as a proxy for Joel after Joel's death, and the "middle-aged man" viewing demographic could have Tommy as a relatable character to latch onto. Anyway, it's still early in Season 2, so maybe there's some grand plan we're not aware of yet.

Regarding what Steve said about how the Seraphites are revealed - yes, agree with you there. I didn't feel like the timing was right there. But again, maybe the showrunner want to do introductions earlier rather than later, to allow time to gain sympathy.

It'd be like recasting Indiana Jones or Han Solo. Sure, you could, but Ford pretty much nailed those roles.

Hilariously enough, the voice actor for Joel in the games, Troy Baker, plays Indiana Jones in the Great Circle that just came out and got surprisingly great reviews.

Yeah, I didn't even consider that, but that is ironic!

Re: TV demo, if I had to guess I'd say they are not going to change a thing about the more "controversial" elements of the game and instead will double down, make everything more amplified and explicit. There will be, say, an entire episode dedicated to Lev's backstory, and the showrunners will be very smug about it.

Re: Tommy, I got no idea what they are up to. In the game he is as vengeance driven as Ellie.

I entirely disagree with the general sentiment here so far m to me season 2 is trying very hard to be its own thing and I think that's to the show's credit. Season 1 just felt so superfluous to the game because of the combination of how closely it hewed to the game and how relatively short it was -- 10 episodes made things feel too perfunctory. Add in the fact at how the game's narration already uses the vocabulary of prestige television and film, and season 1 felt like the Gus Van Sant Psycho.

And while I liked Part 2, a lot of times I didn't enjoy playing it (not too say the experience was devoid of thrills: the rat king fight!), even though it did move me in a lot of ways. So seeing Dina and Ellie just vibing and doing the totally relatable Band ABCs was lovely, and I think it's an effective way of leading up to and balancing out the coming brutality. It might end up saying the same thing as the game in the end, but I can appreciate it getting there by a different path.

Also the show SHOULD give Lev a proper story, he's barely more than a plot device in the game, especially compared to Abby and Ellie.

Iirc there is a lot of Dina and Ellie chilling on a horse at the start of the game, when they get to Seattle. I think the show was very close, because I remember the same feeling playing the game as watching the show, when you get to the first signs of Seattle civilization and your first instinct is that you are going to get ambushed.

In fact, so far I actually think the general narrative of this season has been very similar to the game, just mixing up a bit of the who-did-what-and-when stuff from the game (which may be important), and throwing in a couple of new characters and set pieces (which haven't been important). I agree that there are a lot of different ways the show could go, and we won't know if the choices being made are good or bad until we get to the end. The fact that they are splitting the game up into at least two seasons gives them a lot of flexibility. (I believe they even implied there's been some thought of making the second game into *three* seasons.)

I think it's possible to show Lev's backstory in a thoughtful and non-pandering way. But it may be tricky (but maybe also liberating) going from the 1st person perspective of the game to the 3rd person perspective. Like in the game, there's that exchange between Abby and Lev, where Lev is like "Are you wondering why they called me Lily?" and Abby's like "Well, do you want to talk about it?" and then Lev is like "No, not really." Like, when you're playing as Abby, it's having you respect that privacy.

I entirely disagree with the general sentiment here so far m to me season 2 is trying very hard to be its own thing and I think that's to the show's credit.

Yes, it does need to be its own thing, I agree - we don't want a repeat of the game, but some of the criticism here is in the ways they're diverging or expounding. Like, I think everybody absolutely loved the S1 Bill/Frank episode (again, speculation here, but that rapturous praise may be influencing their approach with Season 2.)

I remember finishing the games for the first time and feeling absolutely emotionally drained - I personally thoroughly enjoyed Season 1, but it didn't have that level of impact - that alone isn't how we should measure things of course, but I gotta think about why that is.

Oh yeah, I take back what I said about not changing a thing about the game - I would change just one thing: remove the Abby sex scene. Totally did not feel necessary. (The TLOU2 game podcast discusses this - they said that their philosophy for explicitness in a sex scene is to show just what is needed by the story. Even though they said that, I disagree that it was necessary. Not a prude but it didn't feel right. They could have ended the scene earlier. But maybe they just wanted to show off their expertise in CGI nipple technology.)

Totally forgot about that, at the very least the relative explicitness of that scene does stick out as unnecessary, though perhaps Druckmann was going for the same sort of heavy-handed juxtaposition that the end of Spielberg's "Munich" aimed for. I know that movie was in the mix as inspiration.

I liked the new episode. A good example of how to remain faithful to the game and yet go about things a different way. Also an example of how to pare things down without losing anything.

Just adding that Isabela Merced is doing a lot of work this season, but also that her monologue about liking boys and girls was a good example of reduntantly doubling down on what we were talking about. Like, clearly her character likes boys and girls. She's been with Jesse but has also been flirting hard with Ellie. So why the need to talk about it explicitly? Show don't tell.

On the other hand, a good example of changes from the game made for the better is the revelation of Ellie's immunity to Dina. Iirc in the game she's exposed to spores and has to explain to Dina why she's not getting infected. In this episode, she's bitten, and we get to see Dina's more visceral reaction, as she calculates whether she needs to kill Ellie. Same outcome, different path, one perhaps better suited to television.

Oh, also, reading reactions online, I think I agree with some criticisms that they've made Ellie too ... nice? Or at least, not quite yet a relentlessly driven rage beast. I'm sure she'll get there, but for now she does not seem like someone that would pursue her goals at all costs, even if it means losing Dina.

I listened to the latest podcast episode, and I've got to admit, the guys are sounding a bit smug. But imo the show they are describing and the strategic decisions they are touting are not really translating as well as they should this season. Craig and Neil are so smart, but strangely I don't think they are making the smartest choices. Show is still good, of course, just falls short of the game; I watched a couple of cutscenes from the TLOU2, and the acting and faces of the animated scenes were imo more powerful than the equivalent in the show. Like the acting/writing/direction here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEt2CtJ_Rk

The way they've neutered all the strong females in the show is quite problematic, and because they've already established this as a male-dominated adaption that they need to commercialize in a post-Hillary/Kamala world... so that when all hope is ending, of course you need to rewrite bring in some deus ex machina non-game-event man to the save the day. So instead of Dina and Ellie saving Jesse's life from certain death and bringing him to safe harbor, he comes in like JOHN RAMBO ESQ of course.

also lol I double taked at Nora because I thought "there's no way they're already introducing Lev" before I remembered her from the earlier ep.

I can only imagine the horror of someone buying this game based on this mickey mouse TV show and queuing up the game only to play as Ellie (and Abby) vengefully brutalizing and massacring hundreds (thousands?) of not just infected but humans when they expected some smarmy rosy buddy/chickflick set in a patriarchy of the show's universe.

I'd been approaching the show like it was telling the story of the game but in a different way, but now I sort of feel like it is telling a slightly different story than the game, albeit with many of the same beats. I'm still frustrated that there are scenes and sequences that take longer in the game that the show rushes through, and less consequential elements of the game that the show inflates unproductively. The show seems a lot more interested in how society works or doesn't work than the game did, for better or for worse, though I can see why they went that direction. In the game, almost everything is incidental to the separate quests, with you learning about things as they do, but TV tells its stories differently. I would prefer more show and less tell, but I also get why they can't match what the game does. It needs to be entertaining as well as compelling,

Anyway, I didn't have a problem with this episode, except it seems like it's in a hurry to get back on track with elements of the game it inexplicably deviated from in the first place. Though one key change I totally understand is not killing so many animals. It appears that Shimmer may emerge unscathed, and by this point in the game killing dogs has become second nature. Of course, that sets up one of the game's saddest reveals that one person's evil dog is another person's kind pet, but again, this show seems to be going for something different from the game's endless parade of misery.

Love when certain sets look exactly like the game. Not sure I love how Dina and Ellie always have clean clothes and great hair.

Incidentally, on the ILE no-game thread, some folks have complained about echoes of "The Walking Dead," and it got me thinking. I didn't get "Walking Dead" vibes from the game *at all*, and I've been trying to pinpoint whether the TV show is doing anything specific to point it in that direction or if it's just that TV is a fundamentally different medium that doesn't lend itself well to the story (or the way the story is told) in the game. It could be simply that much of the game is more or less solo (or maybe paired up) sequences and exploration, but the show doesn't want to do things that way, even though a long stretch of just Ellie would benefit both show and character, just as more time with only Joel and Ellie in S1 would have been better, too.

I do think the way Ellie is being written/portrayed is wrong, not just because it is different from the game but because it's at odds with the ostensible themes and story. In the show they are not doing a good job establishing her as a relentless killing machine, and in fact having her and Dina on the same page (per Dina's monologue) might further impair some of the saddest, most tragic parts of the game, when Ellie chooses revenge over Dina. Saw this somewhere else and it further summed up some of my reservations as well:

On paper, the show is telling the story of two reckless, revenge-driven young women who are too focused on avenging Joel to think rationally. But, in practice, Dina and Ellie come across too cool, calm, and collected for that idea to land. They still get caught up in high-stakes “I love you”s and sweeping pre-battle kisses, but they’re self-aware about their own recklessness in a way that makes that recklessness less interesting to watch.

The game suffered slightly from Wisecrack Syndrome - Ellie and Abby both coming out with the same style of gallows humour in the face of horror, clearly from the same pen. That's as far as I'll go in criticising the game though. In other respects it showed how utterly shattered they were, and trauma was the overriding vibe. I haven't seen the show and likely never will but yeah, it seems pretty core to the story that Ellie has been traumatised and that has changed something funamental inside her, broken an important part of her that not even the power of redemptive narrative can fully heal.

Re: Walking Dead that's another show I'll never see but I do remember when the first LoU came out, thinking, oh great, another post-apocalyptic zombie game. And it is another post-apocalyptic zombie game. Yet it's so fully itself, so artfully made, that somehow all the comparisons just fall away.

I know what you mean about the wisecracking but I think that stuff is important, because by the end Ellie has nothing left, no Joel, no Dina, no community, no nothing, not even that tiny spark of mirth those wisecracks revealed. She's just empty and alone. Which - and I know you haven't seen it - the most recent episode of the TV once again literally tells rather than shows when they get to an abandoned warehouse:

Ellie: “It’s haunted but empty.”
Dina: “Oh, just like us.”

It's meant as a wisecrack, but it's so on the nose it's unavoidable. Esp. because the show has yet to depict either character with that degree of resigned nihilism.

Lol that is kind of funny though.

Was just reading some fan/internet thoughts on the show, and ... yeah, they're pretty mixed at best, and often similar to my thoughts. I think this show has made some inexplicable mistakes (most notably revealing Abby's backstory/impetus early and neutralizing any suspenseful/mysterious "why?" element) that do nothing but hinder the story. And whether or not the show is telling a different story or telling that story differently, then ... what story *is* it trying to tell? Because we only have two episodes left, and at least one looks like it will be flashback and the last will likely be the confrontation between Ellie and Abby, but if you told me the show was about the cycle of violence or Ellie's descent into empty-soul rage, this show is absolutely not doing that, or at least not well, which is one reason, say, the confrontation with Nora came off more mechanical in the show than it does in the game, where iirc it was one of the first major disturbing "why are you making me do this?" player moments.

I really can't figure out *why* the show is going wrong in this way, given Druckmann's involvement and Mazin's respect for the source material. All I can think of is that Druckmann is doing his best to remain hands off and hand the reigns to Mazin, or maybe he's totally checked out after so much time spent so close to the material (or distracted by work on the new game). Or maybe Mazin (who, as a reminder, was credited with almost nothing but shit before "Chernobyl") is either not up for the task or, maybe more likely, so set on proving himself an auteur that he is awkwardly reshaping the story into something it's not, or can't be? And Druckmann, maybe intrigued by the changes, has convinced himself that they are smart, or ... I dunno. Just kind of frustrating to see it fall so short of the games.* It's like we've all digested a complete director's cut masterpiece but are now being retroactively delivered a rough draft.

*(as good as much of the show often still is!)

the show is a kidz bop version of the game

I don't think it's that bad, because it's pretty gruesome and gritty at times (we just saw a guy lynched and eviscerated), but it's still pulling its punches, emotionally and narratively. Playing it too safe, speeding through story beats without letting them breathe or, more importantly, build.

Saw this discussion on reddit (I know...) that helped key in a bit more on what doesn't seem right about this season and/or show:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/1kobqd7/why_is_show_ellie_stupid/

OK, now this is interesting. I thought this new episode was good, but also mostly because it's really faithful to the game, with a few exceptions (in the form of additions). I did notice at the very beginning of the ep the *three* writing credits: Mazin, Druckmann and ... Hailey Gross, who of course co-wrote the second game. At first I thought, oh, they gave her credit *because* so much of this episode is drawn directly from the game, but then I thought, no, this wasn't a "based on" or "adapted from" sort of credit, I think she's just a really good writer and better at adapting the game to TV than Mazin. Like, the Joel childhood backstory or Eugene? I bet that was Mazin. But Gross was the real MVP and I see she's also credited on next week's season finale, which is promising.

Anyway, this episode underscores what's been off with the rest. It takes its time, it lets characters think and stew, it's not in a hurry to get to some action sequence, and so on. It still says out loud too many things that could have been more subtle, but hey, it's TV. Something I am very curious about is that if next week is indeed the inevitable Ellie/Abby confrontation in the theatre, then next *season*, S3, will be focused largely on Abby's journey, with I assume bits of Ellie and Dina at the farm in there. That's going to be a pretty big shift for the show, and maybe even *less* successful if they try to speed though it. My suspicion, something hinted at by the runners, is that the Part 2 adaptation will indeed need and get another season.

OK, now this is interesting. I thought this new episode was good, but also mostly because it's really faithful to the game

ok you lost me.

this was the first ep i didn't finish and honestly i'm not in any hurry to pick it back up. the only faithful part was the birthday scene which in the game is one of the highlights and even that was given the backseat to more of this non-canon "character development" rewriting/reimagining that is on par with Dick Tremayne/James&Evelyn/Windham Earle in terms of steep S2 drop-offs.

maybe i should finish the ep before i disparage your "really faithful" claim tho 😅

Ha. I mean, much of the episode - the visit to the museum, the porch scene - was pretty close to the game equivalent, and didn't add too much BS, and those two scenes are what people will take away from the ep. A lot of other stuff was more unnecessary - the Joel origin story with Tony Dalton, the scene with Joey Pants - but at least they were well acted, so I had no problem with them as an episode. Now, I do think putting the porch scene here, as much as I understand why they did it (putting it at the end, as it is in the game, would meaning making game-casual viewers literally wait years for the flashback) was a mistake, which robs it of power/impact. It also does the thing I think I noted above, changing things from the game to no appreciable narrative benefit, because now they have to find a new way to end the show, which I saw Druckmann concede in an interview.

Also saw a interview with Mazin that makes me think he is truly full of shit. In it he claims he was shocked no one online seemed to take issue with Dina and Joel going to the lodge, not Tommy and Joel, but tons of people did. Same with postponing Dina and Ellie's relationship, which was also pointless and also throws off the rhythm of the story.

But yeah, long story short, I liked this episode, did what it had to do even if I wasn't 100% on board with how/when it did it. And no matter how I feel about specific episodes, I'm really bummed that this season is making the same mistakes as the first, but bigger and more (negatively) impactful. I wonder if any of it plays poorly for those unfamilair with the game? Maybe.

I think this season is proving Mazin to be a hack who got lucky with Chernobyl more than the right director to realize this vision. Watching this season does nothing more than make me want to play the game again, which I probably will now (just bought the PS5 upgrade for $10).

play it on grounded 🙏

proving Mazin to be a hack who got lucky with Chernobyl

not lucky enough to not get locked out of the edit room on Chernobyl due to his behaviour during production

tbf it did leave him free time to try to get elected to VP of the WGA so he could union-bust it from the inside

Oh wtf?!!!

I would agree that Mazin maybe lucky, except that Druckmann is also involved here and so is, on a couple of episodes, Halley Gross. So how, with the game and its story and its look and its characters all right there, they kind of bobbled the ball in this way ... I just don't get it. Everything is rushed, changes made have not generally been for the better and, for that matter, even when they don't make things worse don't add much, either. I just ... I dunno. The episodes are too short, cutting out too much good stuff, and there are too few of them, forcing more rushing. The production design, the cast in general, it's all making this better than it could have been, but I'm still pretty bummed. There's only so much they can do to make up for scripts that seem to have been shaved down to their bare minimum when the story and characters deserve so much more. Makes me want to play the game again, which is so good that I suspect I would feel just as strongly about it the second time as I did the first.

Also, piggybacking off the ILE thread where I guess maybe my comments have not been welcome, I have no problem with changes, but they should be for a good reason, and imo the changes being made here have not always been for good reasons, especially when the changes made seem to undercut the themes of the game. So, sure, you can change things, but if you're going to mess around enough with the game just because you can, then why even tell the same story, or largely the same story? I think there is room for all the stuff they've done, they've just done it at the expense of what they should have focused on first. (Again, imo.) That is, Bill and Frank in the first season, there's nothing wrong with that episode other than that its run time and budget comes at the expense of other stuff that might have made the season better, as good as that episode might have been. Same with Melanie Lynskey in S1, whose character added up to nothing, or Gail and Eugene in this season, who largely served to emphasize or make explicit ideas that were already implicit. And there's nothing wrong with Bella Ramsey, per se, just that she doesn't seem to be quite good enough to improve the not good enough material or character development being handed to her, as opposed to Merced, who lights up here scenes.

So, again, back to the other thread. Sure, people comparing things to the game might seem annoying, but ... it's an adaptation of the game! So it's fair game, so to speak, imo. But also, the problems people seem to be having with this season in particular ... it's largely *because* of those changes!!

OTM. I think the Gail and Eugene bits were added to replace the flashback scene where Ellie goes back to SLC and listens to the tape recording. They needed a mechanism in place for Ellie to know for sure what Joel had done. In that sense I get it, but it's not as powerful as Ellie going to the scene of the crime and seeing what Joel did herself as she did in the game, but in this case I bet it was budget that led to this narrative change.

Two other changes in the finale bugged the hell out of me which I felt totally detracted from the story, and there are some interesting, if extremely unsatisfying, answers from the show runners. First, Ellie's visit to the Seraphite Island - this felt like some rushed, cheap mechanism to attempt to dumb-splain an audience where the WLF was attacking that night. Here's Druckman's explanation:

Neil Druckmann: I will, just to add to that, because, you know, sometimes in adding something that was cut from the game requires you to remove something that was in the game. So, here that sequence where Ellie like drifts to the Seraphite Island and almost gets lynched herself was something we used to have in the game and cut it for just production pacing purposes. And then now- now we had like three horrible things in a row, we had like that sequence, Alice and then Mel. And in our conversation, we're like this, probably one, one too many.

Perhaps it was cut from the game for a reason? You know ... production pacing? Which its addition in the show mars? That whole day 3 approach to the aquarium was just perfect in the game as is. There was no need for such a side quest! So what did they cut then to balance? Alice, the other change that really had me scratching my head. Here's the justification for that from Mazin:

“In the game, when Ellie arrives in the aquarium, a dog attacks her and she stabs it to death, and we don’t know this dog,” said Mazin. “I won’t get into what happens later, because there’s referring to what’s next season, but we had a situation where a number of horrible things were happening. Plus, because it’s live action, the nature of violence becomes much more graphic. It’s more graphic because it’s not like there’s an animation between you and it, it’s people, and it’s very disturbing. We knew what was going to happen to Mel was disturbing, and to Owen, and also what had just happened to Ellie was disturbing.

I felt Alice and the gruesome and ruthless nature of Owen and Mel's deaths really highlighted how dark Ellie had truly become, and really amplifies these moments' importance after you go through Abby's perspective and build empathy for them. Ellie's actions and ruthlessness mirror Abby perfectly, and I feel the show is trying to maintain a semblance of moral superiority or "innocence" within Ellie here that not only feels off with the story, but even at odds with the character as portrayed by Bella Ramsey.

Ultimately this post is just repeatedly underlying your point, Josh, in that the changes made seem to undercut the themes of the game.

It's like they took out some of "the juice". Alas.

That's the bummer of it all. The fundamentals of the game are still there, they've just been ... weakened or watered down, I guess. Which is the prerogative of any adaptation, but then why adapt something if you are going to denature it? This show feels sort of like one of those awkward or wayward director's cuts of a movie, a new version that fundamentally changes things by putting stuff back in but also takes important stuff out. I feel like it would benefit greatly from the "Lord of the Rings" extended version treatment, longer and with more details and character beats and moments that made the source material what it is. Gail and Eugene, Bill and Frank, that sort of stuff is what should have been *added* to an extended cut, which could have made the story even better.

I do like Kaitlyn Dever a lot, and look forward to watching her in S3, but after this season I may have changed my mind and no longer see how they can do four seasons without focusing on a bunch of War in Seattle BS, though the overlapping nature of the story implies that, yes, we're going to get that epic island battle between the Wolves and the Scars. So are we going to get the Santa Barbara epilogue? Probably. Are we going to get Ellie and Dina at the farm? Probably. But have they depicted Ellie as a relentless revenge machine to the degree that would drive her to the game's final conflict. Imo no, and that was the failure of this season and maybe the crux of it all: how do you make your lead protagonist an unlikeable monster? There was no avoiding doing that for Abby, but Ellie's poor choices this season have been depicted as products of immaturity, or impatience, or, less generously, ignorance, yet in the game she knows exactly what she is doing.

From the AVClub review:

Which isn’t to say that I needed this finale to wrap up everything in a nice, neat bow. But I did want it to deliver a sense of thematic finality—to clarify the emotional beginning, middle, and end of the season, even if there’s still more plot to unspool. “What has Ellie’s revenge mission wrought?” could have been a powerful emotional button if this episode had lingered on the tragedy of Jesse’s death. “How has Seattle changed Ellie and Dina?” could have been another, if Isabela Merced weren’t so weirdly sidelined this week.

But “What did a character we don’t really know do for the last three days?” is basically at the bottom of the list of things I care about right now—the sort of hook that only exists because this show is adapted from pre-existing source material and needs to get ahead of fan explainers that would spoil that structural twist in the long gap between seasons. A good cliffhanger leaves you wanting more. This one just kind of made me shrug, especially because we already know much more about Abby’s motivations than gamers did when the POV shift happened.

HBO’s “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale aired to half the audience that tuned into the Season 1 finale of the video game adaptation, as Sunday’s season closer saw 3.7 million cross-platform viewers. That’s down 55% from the Season 1 finale, which scored 8.2 million cross-platform viewers, then an impressive feat given that it aired opposite the Oscars.

Season 2 premiered to 5.3 million cross-platform viewers.

HBO cautions that “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale viewership is expected to grow due to low tune-ins on the holiday weekend, and stressed that the franchise overall has seen 90 million viewers since Season 1 ended. Season 2 is tallying nearly 37 million global viewers per episode.

Ellie's poor choices this season have been depicted as products of immaturity, or impatience, or, less generously, ignorance, yet in the game she knows exactly what she is doing.

Couldn't have said it better myself

https://i.imgur.com/NZirtHu.png

💀💀💀