Naughty Dog's Game Design is Outdated

the last of us part two has made me feel like an insane person for the last couple months not necessarily just because of the game itself no uh but because of all the cat piss surrounding it these two frequently extreme camps of hey this game is a profound 10 out of 10 masterpiece work of art that belongs in the goddamn smithsonian and camp b this game broke into my house it bonked me on my forehead and physically assaulted me this video belongs to neither the extreme opinion of 10 out of 10 masterpiece or i'm gonna commit a crime now so if that's what you're looking for there are plenty of other dog [ __ ] extreme videos on this website that can satisfy that hunger trust me they have existed since long before the game even actually came out even though i've always been aware of some of their shortcomings and faults naughty dogs games have consistently provided me with quality entertainment visual spectacle and comfort for the past 13 years since i first rented uncharted 1 at a hollywood video and even longer if you count their ps2 and ps1 games the first last of us is one of my favorite games ever and i also personally know people that worked on both part one and part two that i'm very fond of and very proud of because they crunched like a billion dog years a week to make a thing that looks like this you know who you are and i wish i could come to la and kiss you on your forehead and i just think it's really important for you to know all that context of me being a pretty big fan of naughty dog before i say what i'm unfortunately about to say i think that while extremely beautiful technically impressive and wonderfully accessible the last of us part two is a game that attempts to say a lot of things and ask a lot of questions using the medium of video games but ultimately remarkably fails to find the language to say much at all while also being an often outdated and hypocritical parody of itself i think much like how red dead redemption 2 was the straw to break the back of rockstar's aaa open world game design camel the last of us part 2 is the straw to break the back of naughty dog's aaa linear game design camel for me and i also think that when i finished this game it made me feel very similar to when i finished the game released in 2013. and that game is bioshock infinite to anyone that hasn't played these games yet this is your point of no return i will be spoiling the absolute living [ __ ] out of both last of us games and also loki the ending of uncharted 4 because there's this really dumb joke that i apparently feel is worth keeping in so if you don't want to be spoiled please perform a high precision backflip away from your device right okay now do the flip do the flip or don't stick around if you're not doing the flip but if you're going you gotta do a flip now but anyways maybe grab some snacks maybe grab some bevy's and maybe get nice and crazy with a blanket because this one is a doozy i think it's important that we first talk about why so many people myself included love the first last of this game so much among my favorite games ever there's very few that i hold in high regard for their story or characters typically i am like 100 motivated by gameplay because i have a special medical condition that me and my brother isaac refer to as goopy goblin gamer brain goopy goblin gamer brain basically means that you have little to no patience for anything that isn't fun or engaging second to second gameplay unskippable cutscenes long shitty tutorials limited movement trailing missions slow-ass scripted prestige gameplay where you have to suffer through a boring ass stealth section as a character that isn't spider-man you know the type of monotonous [ __ ] that more and more games have that take away control from the player just to service some mediocre ass story while you just sit there being like okay but can't we get back to the fun part where i blow up cars that's goopy goblin gamer break and because of that a lot of my favorite games you know breath of the wild mario 64 bloodborne skate two yeah technically all these games have some sort of story uh paul rodriguez is dying of a very skateboard related illness and the only cure so you gotta go do a bunch of pop shove it really they just have motivators you know a thing to push you along to get you to experience whatever the gameplay mechanics have to offer for breath of the wild the initial motivator is as simple as beat ganon and even though the game barely has a story at all that's enough to get you going because then the game is frequently filled with all these little motivators like hey don't you want to climb on some stuff and find cool new outfits hey don't you want to shoot guys in slow motion hey don't you want to start some grass on fire the goopy goblin in my brain is like hell yeah but behind all that [ __ ] they're still always the initial motivator of beat gannons you never stop and ask yourself what's the point while exploring and lose immersion because almost everything you do is building toward that central goal of beat gannon even in a game like tony starks the motivator is as simple as hey do this list of random ass things in two minute increments because [ __ ] you we said so but you never stop and ask hey why am i picking up glowing skate letters because the gameplay is so ridiculously fun but with the last of us unlike my other favorite games the characters in storytelling actually are the main motivators for my goblin ass brain don't get me wrong the gameplay is good and sometimes even great but none of the uncharted or last of us games have extremely engaging deep gameplay systems that the devs can rely on for hours and hours and hours of countless entertainment like mario 64 or halo 3 or phantom pain like there is a long laundry list of games that do shooting and platforming and stealth and melee combat and survival horror and puzzles much better and have much more interesting and rewarding gameplay than uncharted or the last of us at least i think but because naughty dog is typically so good at pacing out those bombastic pudding in your pants action set pieces with quiet moments and puzzles and now they're gonna talk and climb for a while and now we're in the snow ooh bird and now we're in madagascar oh it's hot here and now we're on a train and now we're falling out of the plane and now elaine is here yes i like her she's so cool and funny and oh she's my mom now she's my mom now she hasn't drank us by dad yes yes they kind of criss angel mind freak your ass into thinking that the core gameplay throughout the whole game is deeper than it actually is when in reality i think they're just really good at playing to all of their different strengths equally and pacing them out in a very cinematic way that nobody else seems to really be able to perfectly replicate like only naughty dog makes naughty dog games for better or worse also the uncharted for drake and elena being my mom and dad bit was the one that spoils the end of uncharted 4. leave a comment in the comments down below if you don't think it was worth it also the reason i said for better or worse about 10 seconds ago is because without the first uncharted a lot of these aaa cinematic third-person action games that take very clear and heavy inspiration from movies and tv for their storytelling methods and presentation they might not exist at least not in the same way because while i enjoy a lot of these games that have taken very clear inspiration from naughty dog unfortunately they also have taken things from naughty dog games that the goop covered goblin in my brain dislikes on pinterest like mindless quick time event button prompts or mindless fake climbing or stupid uh now you can't run and you're forced to slowly walk because we want to show you how pretty our game is for the billionth time and i'm just like yeah [ __ ] it sure i don't care just let me use the grappling hook again please for the love of god some of you might remember that in my rockstars game design video i referred to naughty dog games as linear roller coasters where the player is on a set path with a set story and is going to experience that set story in a predetermined sequence of events that the dog has curated for the player i also talked about legos sorry lego a lot saying that i like my open world games to have more freedom like a lego bucket versus more linear lego set type games like uncharted 2 or portal 2 or whatever the hell i was saying man i'm always typing out words mostly wingdings and comic sans but in this video i want to slightly pivot that analogy from a roller coaster or a lego set to a water slide because who doesn't like get wet with a couple of games and every summer when i see a new water slide i love going down on that thing just like i love going down on a new naughty dog game every time one comes out but if i go down that water slide more than once it's gameplay is still kind of fun but it's usually not nearly as much fun as that first time where i didn't know exactly where that slide was taking me because now it's incredibly apparent just how much of that water slide isn't the fast-paced combat arenas where you maybe get to do a bunch of fun stuff but instead boring-ass fake-ass climbing sequences where i'm doing close to nothing except holding up on the analog stick and listening to people talk which look elena i'm sorry i know you're gonna be my mom later and everything but like your graphics are still really very good like especially your hair but to get back to the thing i'm really trying to talk about that first last of us game is the exception for me when it comes to naughty dog games because no matter how many times i go down on that slide and i've gone down on that slide a lot i even went down on that slide on grounded mode which jesus christ that slide is full of broken bottles and bricks and gave me multiple lacerations on my hip bones i always feel engaged and entertained by joel and ellie i just don't get tired of them i don't know if it's neil's writing or the chemistry between troy baker and ashley johnson or the power of the cell processor inside the sony playstation 3 but god damn it naughty dog you freaking snipe my butt you got a sniper spree and these two characters could literally talk about anything and i am here for it so even though a lot of the gameplay in the first last of us is slowly opening drawers and cabinets by pressing triangle and moving ladders and platters by pressing triangle and opening the gate by pressing triangle and starting the generator by pressing triangle in the chronicles of riddick where he presses triangle a bunch in aaa cinematic third-person games where you just press triangle all the [ __ ] time it's joel ellie and their relationship that is the motivator to keep the goopy goblin in my brain happy and covered in copious amounts of beat and even though the initial motivator of hey take this immune girl across the country to the fireflies because she could be the key to saving the world it's kind of cliche and the real motivator becomes the blooming father-daughter relationship of ellie and joel that hey take this girl across the country motivator still serves its purpose to make all these other moments along the way feel like they matter and have some forward momentum your motivation and drive is almost always in tandem with the characters you're spending time with so you don't really stop during gameplay to ask hey what's the point of me looting supplies and picking up a 2x4 and bonking a guy in the head with said 2x4 in the middle of pittsburgh because you know damn well while you're blocking pittsburgh games with a 2x4 you're trying to get this girl to the fireflies and these guys are in your path and trying to kill you so you better head on over to menards and pick up some more two by fours save big money and menards now if you're not from the midwest you're not gonna know what the hell just happened or what menards is but that's just something we all gotta we all gotta work through together in the uncharted games there's a major case of something called ludo narrative dissonance that i'm sure some of you have already heard of and are really tired of talking about it's a term used to describe a situation where the story being told during gameplay conflicts with the story being told during cut scenes easiest example nathan drake literally slaughters thousands of people throughout the series and not once do the games ever attempt to start a serious conversation about how maybe the game's titles should be uncharted drake's unfortunate turn of events uncharted 2 among a bunch of [ __ ] dead bodies that i killed uncharted 3 drake's what the [ __ ] is the third game called drake's decision to kill a billion man men uncharted 4. a thief's ending of other people's lives [ __ ] and that's because the uncharted games want to be gears of war and embiamba jones at the same damn time it's kind of this unspoken thing where the game doesn't bring it up and it's just like hey man look uh if you don't tell anyone i won't tell anyone neither it'll be fine to be a little secret just like this gator i keep under my bed but with the last of us naughty dog made a very clear effort to address that disconnect with game director bruce straley even confirming this in an interview they want to talk about the gator under the bed in this game and from the beginning moments where he denies a family help on the road to the final combat arenas where he's slaughtering firefly soldiers with a volunteer fire department fireman's axe all of that is joel to a capital italicized really colorful way too big times new roman jay because joel is a selfish protective and violent psalm [ __ ] that will always protect his tribe no matter what which a makes him a perfect candidate for a third-person shooter game where you brutally murder people during gameplay and cut scenes and b helps to make him a more compelling anti-hero because although he is a major piece of [ __ ] he also has this super tender daddy energy that comes out that you can empathize with and because you play as joel and spend time with him before you and joel meet ellie at the same time that growth between the two characters really resonates with the player as well and you genuinely care about them which is a really [ __ ] hard thing to pull off in video games empathy is one of the most difficult emotions for video games to get right because unlike movies tv shows or books video game stories can't just be like hey the main character cares about this character for reasons x y and z and so should you and just be done with it because you the player usually are the main character so in far cry 3 jason might love his girlfriend but i don't give a [ __ ] about them i don't know them i don't love them i don't care for them in the game didn't spend the proper amount of time letting me get to know that person because the focus is on shooting and stabbing people in the neck bone and lighting animals on fire which is fine because my goopy goblin brain loves all that [ __ ] but don't expect me to care about someone just because you said so do people remember far cry 3 for jason's girlfriend whose name i can't even remember no they remember it for vos because i the player was actually there for the development of that relationship and the game showed me reasons to care and pay attention and didn't just [ __ ] tell me but all of this is to say that it is so [ __ ] impressive when a game like the last of us actually does get you to care about its characters and it does get you to care about its universe and you feel completely immersed in that world and you don't stop to realize just how [ __ ] boring the actual gameplay of looting and mindlessly pressing triangle at everything is because joel says we should look around for supplies so it feels like you should look around for supplies and it feels urgent and real and grounded pun intended i wrote that in my script everything is planned even this even this snake noise and even though a lot of the gameplay is that very boring press triangle type beat the game is consistent enough with the limited ways you do interact with the world and it ends up using those simple mechanics in clever ways like when ellie sees the giraffes and knocks down the ladder at this point you've done the whole ladder business with ellie like a gajillion times so it's very likely in this surprising moment that joel and the players share the same emotion of oh [ __ ] what's going on i gotta get up there which is such a simple thing but it ends up being so effective because that emotion was communicated using the actual interactive game mechanics and not just a cut scene while also still being a fun shooter game where you throw bricks at people's jaw bones because remember at its core these are all still gears of war the last of us is just a much more interesting and well-written excuse to go shoot bad guys than uncharted or gears of war because you get to go buy two by fours at menards save big money i think for most players even if you disagreed with some of joel's decisions throughout the course of the game you could at least understand them or see the motivation behind them so you never felt super conflicted while controlling joel but at the very end of the game that changes the last of us forces you to do something you really might not want to do kill the surgeon that's going to harvest ellie's immune brain in an attempt to create a vaccine that could potentially change the world just so you can save the life of your now surrogate daughter and i think it completely earns that moment 100 because even if you disagree with capital and italicized and way too colorful and whatever the hell i said times new roman j joel part of you [ __ ] gets it because it's ellie dude you know her you know her fears you know her desires you know her trauma you know her sense of humor you know she can whistle now i'm whistling oh good something else you can drop me crazy with the last of us double front tuck gainer 900 nailed that [ __ ] dude in my opinion it's like the definition of a perfect ending so when you have an ending as powerful and as intentionally open-ended as the first last of us you've already kind of shot yourself in the foot bone when you decide to make a sequel but me and every other fan still [ __ ] themselves when they announce part two like what what are they gonna do what's gonna happen is that buckley gonna be there well it turns out joel's gonna go meet god right quick well i guess pro probably definitely the devil ellie's ellie's gonna go give her some revenge and you bet your sweet ass buckley's in it oh my god dude the second i saw buckley was in this game i was seriously like all right did i do that like did my dogs and video games video actually affect the fate of the last of us part two i'm not saying that it did but i'm just saying if it did that may be a pretty quirky and crazy gamer effect that's all i'm saying um right anyways joel gets bonked on the head [Music] gq referred to the last of us part two as naughty dog's double album because usually their games like uncharted 4 or the last of us one will run you about 12 to 14 bucks bucks as in hours and the last of us part two is 25 to 30 hours hence the comparison to when a band makes a double album that is like 25 to 30 songs compared to the usual 10 15. you [ __ ] get it blah blah blah jacob's typing words and wingdings again who cares am i right to say that the story and motivators of part two are a little more complicated and widespread and less intimate then part one would be a massive understatement and i don't even mean that in necessarily a negative way right now i'm just stating the straight up fact that this story is not as simple as the first and i think in order to properly discuss part two's game design we first need to do a little recap because story is such a large part of naughty dog's games i will now recap the story of last of us part two as quickly as possible okay so you're ellie from the first game but it's four years later and you don't really know her anymore this girl named abby comes along with her friends from seattle and kills your dad joel hey joel's dad he's not your dad he's technically your dad your relationship is really weird now though because he obviously lied to you at the end of the first game and you could tell and now you and your new girlfriend dina this is dina by the way you guys are going to travel from jackson wyoming all the way to seattle washington and chase after joel's brother tommy who's going after abby to get revenge which is what ellie also wants to do oh [ __ ] we're already in seattle now okay now you gotta figure out where abby is and then the process kill every single one of her friends including one that's super pregnant and uh also a bunch of other people who have names now also there's a cult and sometimes you play the guitar and dina is here and she's pregnant and yeah dean is pregnant and jessie's i didn't [ __ ] talk about jesse jesse is the dad and he's i'm gonna be really jesse is not important at all because abby comes after ellie and after ellie killed all abby's friends and jesse this is falling apart just happy [ __ ] shoes [Music] abby i'm so tired abby shoots jessie in the face and shoots tommy in the back of the face okay so now we're gonna do a cliffhanger and rewind the clock back to seattle day one and you're going to play as that abbey girl that killed joel and you learned that abby's dad was the surgeon that you were forced to kill at the end of the first game as joel and he's actually a really good guy because he saved zebras and he was wearing blue and it was clean not green and dirty you sick are you sicko you sicky you weirdy freaky you freaky weirdo get him out of here and at first your only motivator during this part is get through this section as abby so that you can get back to the ellie cliffhanger but eventually the motivator for average becomes save your friend owen and save these kids yar and live because you feel a moral obligation to you after they saved your life and maybe you're also seeking some sort of redemption for brutally torturing and murdering joel as an act of revenge wait but i didn't do that though abby did and also hey ellie killed all of your friends including the pregnant one at this point he might be motivated to kill her in this boss fight i don't know it's up to you except it's not because this is an extremely linear game that only ends win-win you'll get a game over if you try to do anything other than kill the people we want to kill in the exact way we want you to kill them even though we're also clearly saying that the cycle of violence is destructive without representing the story and themes of cutscenes and gameplay sorry i think i blacked out for a second what was i saying something about something about saving big money i'm in orange and then abby's about to kill his friend and girlfriend tina just like ellie killed abby's praying her friend and then levi's like don't do it no and then abby's like okay but you better get the [ __ ] out of my town so now he plays ellie again and you're on a farm and you and dina have a really cute ass baby but oh no you experienced ptsd from joel's death and then one-eyed tommy comes skulking around the house and wants you to go after abby again in california and you're initially like nah but then you're like i don't [ __ ] with you even though dina is like wait are you [ __ ] kidding me but then you play as abby again for like two seconds trying to contact and regroup with the fireflies from the first game in california with lev but oh no you could casually buy the rattlers who are these slaver dudes that don't matter at all except this guy does because the internet loves him and now he plays ellie again and oh no you get captured by the rattlers but don't worry you fight them off and then you kill a bunch of more of them and then you find abby and you and you force her to fight you by threatening lev with your knife even though you and abby are both already half dead and now you have to fight abby in a boss fight she bites off two of your fingers and then when you're about to kill her because you're being forced to otherwise you'll get a game over in a failed state you have a flashback of joel and you decide to let her go um and there yeah there's a bunch of oh i didn't even talk about all the flashbacks in this game there's flash there's a ton of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks i'm sorry come on christensen get it together you call yourself the yoga ball gamer you piece of eddie calls me the yoga ball gamer and i i don't like it and then you return to the farm as ellie and dina and the cute baby are gone now and then you play to try to play the guitar but remember abby chomped off your fingers so you can't play the guitar so then ellie sets the guitar down and she walks outside and she's walking outside and the camera pans up and the credits roll okay bye so yeah it's a lot to think about and also remember the ending of part one presented a pretty crucial conflict that could drastically affect how you feel about joel going forward into this direct continuation and while a lot of fans will probably still feel the same emotions as ellie in this moment you know shock sadness anger bloodlust bloody nose all that [ __ ] which i think is what naughty dog clearly intended with how sudden and shocking joel's death is some other people might not exactly feel that way about joel bite in the dust and might not be connecting with ellie's bloodlust very much thus making this potentially a pretty complicated motivator for the people that maybe don't really want to go to seattle just to kill a bunch of people that have names now but on the flip side that's the exact thing that a lot of people have pointed to as being a positive feature of the game including the person that wrote the 10 out of 10 ign review the fact that you're forced to carry out these extremely violent actions that you most likely disagree with during an extremely linear story that you have no say in that's the exact thing that made it affecting for him which i'll rotate back to that in a bit for me at this point i was only feeling partially in tandem with ellie because while i was sad that joel died i was sad for a different reason i was more like damn naughty dog if you're killing off joel this early into the game then the bar of my expectations is definitely going up because you're gonna have to replace them with someone or something that's pretty damn interesting to keep the goopy goblin in my brain nice and covered and plenty of goop and entertained while playing a last of us game for reasons i just spent a hundred thousand dog years explaining in chapter one of this video how do i change the time code and premiere to dog years needless to say i was extremely curious where neil's violent water slide was gonna take me after splashing in the face with joel's death and it turns out it was taking me to the kiddie pool the lesson here is that every person you meet and every person you kill could have their own ellie or their own joel just like abby and her dad who again saves zebras there's two sides to every story and this story is about loss and the destructive cycle of violence and forgiveness and we're going to explore those themes in game play by having you pop pills to get better head shots and more violent melee kills and it turns out dying might actually be kind of bad because war might be kind of bad too what the [ __ ] okay hold on though teacher i maybe can't read cursive good yet or do math at all but i've seen pocahontas i've seen princess mononoke i know that violence and dying and war and revenge are all bad and toxic things so what are you showing me that's emotionally engaging or thought provoking using the interactive nature of video games like you did with the relationship of ellie and joel in the first game well i i mean there's there's there's some there's some stuff you know like like the idea for a dual narrative mirrored story where you play as two different characters on opposing sides of a conflict as a way to empathize with all the characters is a really cool concept in theory but in practice i think it all kind of falls apart in this game because of one word consistency and agency and gameplay okay so three words like look at this boss fight that happens at the end of abby's three days it's supposed to be this really tense moment where we finally built back to that ellie cliffhanger but now because you're playing as abby your objective is to kill ellie and because you've spent time with abby and you probably empathize with her more you're supposed to be conflicted i'm guessing and be like oh [ __ ] but i i [ __ ] i was ellie before but now i'm abby ah rats i'm conflicted but regardless of how you feel about either of these two characters the game only proceeds one way if ellie kills abby because you [ __ ] up as the player which by the way killing abby was your motivation and goal for the first 12 hours of this plot that's now a game over screen and you just retry until you act out your role in this high school play correctly oh god damn it lime can i have my line please but again like the ign reviewer said that's the point right that this dance between interactivity and an unalterable story made for a much more affecting experience than if i'd watched it all unfold in a movie yeah totally okay so i'm gonna walk around and press triangle at a bunch of things and kill every human and dog in the most [ __ ] up way possible because screw it the goopy goblin in my brain quickly recognized that the gameplay made it feel very satisfying and rewarding to do that efficiently and the enemies are going to scream at each other's names as they die and get blown up and just murdered in the most grotesque ways the ps4 could possibly render but unless it's a character that ellie kills in a cutscene it basically didn't happen because ellie chooses to spare her greatest enemy who she has no real reason to empathize with only after she kills literally dozens of people with no hesitation or mercy at all i was with abby for like 12 hours spending time with her and getting to know things from her side like how her dad saved a zebra but ellie wasn't there oh but now ellie can choose to spare someone and not just slit their throat and call them a [ __ ] ah you know what i like that for her that's nice and if you think i'm being ridiculous or nitpicky or childish a you're not wrong because i am an insane person that hasn't left their apartment very much as of late but ampersand sign the only reason i'm beating this drum so hard right now is because even more so than the first game this game really seems to want to talk about the violence because it is a very central part of this story so if naughty dog wants to talk about the gator under the bed i'm gonna [ __ ] talk about the gator under the bed setting aside the ludo narrative dissonance [ __ ] for a second it baffles my mind that with this particular story in this particular subject matter that naughty dog chose to tackle with part two why wouldn't you take at least a little more advantage of the fact that you're a [ __ ] video game metal gear solid 3 on the playstation 2 not only has better stealth mechanics than a naughty dog game in 2020 but also made me think about my violent actions and my personal cycle of violence as the player more than part two ever did because it did it with [ __ ] gameplay during the boss fight with disarro this ghostly apparition poltergeist casper the friendly ghost paranorman [ __ ] you slowly walk up this river while all these familiar faces start walking toward you like zombies in this really haunting way and you just gotta deal with it and when i slowly realized that these were all the specific enemies that i chose to kill it blew my eighth grader brain out the back of my fat head and made me feel something because i knew that during gameplay i didn't have to kill any of these people it was my choice to do that and that game came out in 2004 really let that sink in oh but in part two you can go prone and grass and use silencers now 2004. in part two there's a chapter during abby's section where you visit a morgue and as i was walking into it i was like oh no way they're totally gonna pull a metal gear solid three paranormal you know i thought because the enemies in part two actually have names and call out to each other and say [ __ ] like oh no jerry they killed toby they were gonna use that and unzip some of the bags in the morgan show some of the faces of the enemy character models that i'd recognize because there's only a select amount of them that repeat themselves and the game would be like yeah toby got [ __ ] stabbed in the neck by some girl with a tattoo on her arm that called him a [ __ ] and jerry watched him die and i'd be like damn you know maybe i didn't have to stab toby in the neck you know maybe i could have snuck around him but did the game do any of that nope they just unzipped it back and talking about some dude named danny who i had never seen or heard of prior to this moment in the game like what the [ __ ] you had the t-ball set up all you had to do was just whack the ball off you know how in abby's section there's that cute-ass dog bear that you could play fetch with and there's that cute-ass dog alice that you could play fetch with and how the game's framing is like pretty heavy-handed how it's like that that dog we forced you to kill in a quick time event to proceed with our game is actually kind of cute huh uh they didn't really get my butt with that you know there wasn't really a sniper spree there but when replaying the hospital infiltration section as ellie i killed the dog that looked like bear and a lady screamed up and i felt [ __ ] awful dude which is so powerful and you know why i actually felt something because it was my choice to explode that dog and that interaction with the lady screaming out there happened in [ __ ] gameplay not a cut scene or a quick time event [ __ ] violence in cut scenes dude all my homies hate violence and cut scenes people say this game is brave for subverting expectations by killing off joel and brave for forcing you to throat punch people as abby and brave for having ellie's character go down this vengeful path of violence and destruction and brave for showcasing that violence in a gritty in a realistic way that other games won't but [ __ ] all that that's not brave at all you know what would have been brave a triple a game that didn't resort to mindless violence that doesn't actually mean anything as like the primary gameplay mechanic that's why i said this game made me feel like how bioshock infinite did because like infinite the last of us part 2 also made a decision to highlight the violent actions of the protagonist as a central part of the story as a way to emotionally manipulate the player but commits to none of those themes in actual gameplay it's still mindless shooting that doesn't mean anything it's still exactly like every other aaa game when you're playing the gameplay it may as well be [ __ ] calling you and i'm not saying that violent video games are bad or shouldn't exist or any dumb [ __ ] like that because no i [ __ ] love violent video games i'm one of the few people that still acknowledges max payne 3's existence and that's like the most violent [ __ ] ever and there's plenty of linear games focused around violent gameplay mechanics like shadow of the colossus they use those mechanics in a consistent way to tell a powerful story where the violent motivations of the player and protagonist to go kill a bunch of giant monsters because hey it's a video game and it looks fun and cool and i gotta save the princess right is a central part of that story and that setup and slowly gets flipped on its head through gameplay and ends up affecting the player in a really powerful and emotional way but what i am saying is that i think this is some very shallow outdated and laughably hypocritical gameplay for a game that chose to tell this story and chose to tackle these themes in these lessons about the destructive cycle of violence and forgiveness that people that love the game seem to keep claiming the game is trying to teach you and get you to understand which i agree with them that i think very much the game is trying to do that because if it's not what is the point of so many choices that were made in this story what's super interesting is in that same bruce straley interview i mentioned in chapter one of this video where he talked about pluto narrative dissonance and naughty dog games he also said and i quote can you create a game that's as interesting and character driven and compelling as an uncharted story or last of a story without shooting i think you can again the concept has to be how can i create a rich enough world to allow for interesting core mechanics so in light of that quote other than killing people in very violent ways and maybe successfully sneaking around them to avoid conflict altogether what other interesting core mechanics are in this 25 to 30 hour long game after beating the game you can play through all the combat encounters back to back and the ironic thing about me going off for so long in the last chapter about how the game handles violence in relation to its story and themes is that the combat encounters were still my goopy goblin ass brains favorite part of this whole ass game because it's the most gamey part of the game where you know you actually get to do stuff with the controller and play the game how long do you think just the combat encounters took me to play through all of them back to back on hard go ahead just think about it mull it over three hours and 22 minutes it took me three hours and 22 minutes and this isn't me saying that wow that automatically means pizza bad huh guys because no that'd be dumb as hell not every pizza has to be all combat all the time video game pizzas can be all sorts of things this one for example has garlic stuff crust but the point i am trying to make is that this game is twice as long as the first and with the low percentage of time spent in combat that the game has my goopy goblin brain really needed to like all this other stuff on the pizza in order to have a good time eating this giant-ass pizza and i just don't think he had a very good time eating this pizza twitch chat seattle day one is one of my least favorite naughty dog water slides ever because it's this big super slow chunk where the pacing is like at a glacial pace and naughty dog plays pretend at being an open world type game with this wide linear level design without any sort of new or engaging or innovative open world type gameplay which is hilariously ironic when rockstar literally did the opposite thing with the missions in red dead 2. like use that [ __ ] rope more man that rope is seriously amazing it's so goddamn cool some talented ass person at naughty dog probably worked a billion dog years to make the most amazing rope physics ever and yet there's barely any puzzles or traversal situations where you actually get to use the damn thing in fun interesting innovative new gameplay moments that no other game has i count like one puzzle where the game even began to tap into that rope's amazing potential where you had to throw bricks to break glass to throw the rope which also did the [ __ ] glass in this game i know it goes against my cardinal rule but i can eat the glass in this game it's so goddamn good i would break every vending machine in car window it never got old because the sound and animation breaking the glass was like the only thing that kept me from shooting myself in real life during boring ass looting sections that was really dark and aggressive i'm sorry this game just this game just gets me [ __ ] riled up can you imagine having a rope during regular exploration in combat are you kidding me like crafting a temporary grappling hook on the end of it using some of your valuable supplies adding some risk reward interesting decision making or [ __ ] but maybe i could reach a place that could have even more supplies or using it in combat to like sneak behind a zombie and tie it to something so it can't chase you or to like set up zombie traps like the [ __ ] rattlers do at the end of the game or even setting up a simple tripwire to [ __ ] with zombie hordes like the ones that are already in the game or setting up a more elaborate rope trap for human enemies like the one joel gets stuck in in the first game or the one ellie gets stuck in in the second game nope no innovative new gameplay mechanics here just a bunch of [ __ ] codes that you type in to open stuff like is that really a puzzle barring a couple exceptions that actually get kind of creative and actually do kind of make you pay attention to your surroundings look at a [ __ ] door or something is finding a note that has a number and typing that number into a thing is that a fun or interesting core gameplay mechanic well apparently the game thinks it's pretty groundbreaking because you do it over and over and over and over again jesus christ by the way quick psa buried in the accessibility options is a setting called auto pickup now you're going to want to go ahead and flick that song [ __ ] on because i don't understand why it isn't on by default there's never a situation where you don't want to pick something up there's no interesting decision making or like an in-depth inventory management system like an actual survival horror games or anything like that the game only lets you carry so many of each item and you can't strategically carry less of one thing to carry more of something else or anything like that because they're all independent of each other so having ellie or abby just scoop [ __ ] up while walking past it is a godsend and save your tiny little poor gamer thingy from matching triangle every two seconds because one of the most popular songs from this double album is the smash hit loot scooting boogie by brooks and dunn featuring the triangle button that naughty dog chris angel illusion recipe to create great pacing and a sense of forward momentum that typically hides how boring the actual gameplay is of holding up and pressing triangle at stuff and having ellie or abby slowly open another cabinet or drawer just to have to press triangle again to actually pick the thing up just like in red dead 2 like cool aaa games i see you i see how realistic this looks i'm sure a really talented animator worked a [ __ ] ton of hours and maybe didn't get properly compensated for their work to make this look that good but can we maybe speed it up because i don't really care how realistic it looks the hundredth time i do it after doing it for 14 and a half hours am i being unfair am i being too harsh i really don't feel like i am i know that the visuals and animations are the best in the industry right now i would never deny that it is a [ __ ] technical marvel that this game looks like this while running on a console that came out the year i looked like this but i know deep down in my plums that the actual core gameplay would be criticized so much more if it wasn't for all this fancy eye candy just like with red dead 2 which i'm saying this fully aware that you can make that same claim about a lot of other really well reviewed games but again with my goopy goblin situation if i'm attracted to a game because of its gameplay like super mario 64 or tony hawk's pro skater 2 or left 4 dead 2 or metal gear solid 3 or undertale i don't care if the visuals look dated because the actual core gameplay continues to be interesting and engaging remember the first last of us is the exception to the goopy goblin gamer rule or whatever the hell is going on up there i don't [ __ ] know it's bees and sawdust and like the first last of us with the pairing of ellie and joel the engagement level for so many parts of part two rely so heavily on relationships that i wanted to care about so bad but just couldn't because honestly it seems like the game couldn't even care they just sidelined the [ __ ] out of pregnant dina compared to characters like tess or even bill in the first game dina doesn't seem to have any thoughts or motivations that hold actual significant importance to the plot at all other than bailing ellie out of jail and blindly agreeing and supporting ellie all the time and saying [ __ ] like you're so stupid i love you while ellie maybe stops talking like batman for maybe five seconds and plays dina a song on the guitar like what in the icing on the cake is that after you literally disintegrate people during combat dina will have the audacity to be like did you recognize any of them and ellie will be like no [ __ ] and i'll be like yeah could you literally recognize any of this that man has been boiled down to a red paste all over the wall there's too many songs on this double album that could basically be swapped out for one another because they're blank canvases that exist solely just to either die to serve the game's themes or keep the player company while they blow people's heads off because this is still gears of war like especially mel to fighting the phone as an eight-month pregnant woman being deployed out into the field to fight either murderous cultists or [ __ ] zombies like dude i will die on this hill it is so ridiculous that not only someone that is eight months pregnant eight months pretty pregnant medic like a valued super valued member of that type of society have you seen a shambler homie is squirting and farting everywhere it is not safe outside and even with all of these criticisms i'm still slightly conflicted because at the same time the game can succeed at getting me to like some characters like yara and lev i actually liked abby and lev a lot once they were paired up and got going their chemistry is [ __ ] great and is that typical naughty dog good good that you have come to expect with all these games because it's basically the same recipe from the first game that came out in 2013 without being quite as interesting as the first game owen was okay jesse seemed cool i guess even manny and mel were like whatever they're fine i haven't even mentioned isaac once throughout this whole long ass video if that tells you how important he actually is to the plot of the game but barring the flashbacks with ellie and joel there's not a single scene or gameplay moment in part two involving any of the new characters that emotionally sniped my butt like the fully realized character development of ellie and joel did in the first game that was not only seen as a spectator but felt as a player those flashbacks were the most compelling moments for me by far because for me that was the compelling thing for the entirety of part one's experience as a video game so for me after the credits rolled on part two the most interesting aspect of this entire sprawling ass giant ass game about love and hate and cycles of violence and war and revenge and loss and forgiveness is easily the conversation of okay ellie has known about joel's lie for a while now and was finally starting to forgive joel the night before he died and ellie still chose to go do all this extremely heinous [ __ ] that you as the player are forced to act out after joel's death and how should not only ellie but you feel about it all basically okay so what was the point of it all i didn't want to do any of this i didn't want to kill and torture nora with a pipe i didn't want to drown abby even though i feel like it makes way more sense narratively for ellie to kill her given all of her [ __ ] murders i didn't even want to kill veda girl but none of that matters at the end of the day because this is ellie's hollow and inconsistent story of violent actions and motivations not mine the game made that extremely crystal clear as frequently as possible i have nothing and want nothing to do with it ellie is the true villain of this story because she's become such a selfish short-sighted immature and just straight-up evil [ __ ] which i think is kind of the point right that joel her father figure made her this way with his own violent actions and lies and deception you know the whole cycle of violence thing that keeps spinning around that abbey finally broke out of when she decided to spare dina because of lev's influence and ellie finally broke out of after having a miraculous flashback while drowning someone if the point was to intentionally transform a character i once admired into a despicable piece of [ __ ] without fully committing to that transformation in a consistent way just to convey some elementary level half-assed lessons on violence and empathy and forgiveness and love and hate while still being a mindless outdated and cowardly third-person shooter then i really only have one [ __ ] thing left to say and the last of us won i became joel and the last of us left behind i became ellie and the last of us part two i became disappointed [Music] [ __ ] there we go ah big gulps huh anyways thanks for watching my video sorry it took so [ __ ] long to make the series of doozy this game was a doozy i have done nothing but think about write and continue to write and edit and [ __ ] make this video since the game came out and i never want to think about it again i hope there was something in there that was at least a little bit entertaining or some nugget that was maybe a little bit interesting that made it worth watching but you guys are the best i can't say how much i really [ __ ] appreciate you guys and your patience and the fact that i get to do this is insane and i think about it every day even when i get really [ __ ] depressed it is something that i can cling on to that's really amazing and i'm very grateful for it so anyways thank you for watching hopefully i'll see you again soon and please stay tuned for a word from today's sponsor cheersgamers anytime you're online doing anything you're sending a bunch of little pieces of data out into the cyber world and those pieces of data things like your personal info your emails your passwords your location all of that stuff can potentially get intercepted by nasty little hacker boys on unencrypted networks just like that one time a football player intercepted a football but you don't want football players like hackers or the government or ad companies intercepting your precious internet football you want to keep that football to yourself if this is you and this is the internet 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a little better i read that the ghibli movies were coming to netflix but they weren't coming to us netflix and i live in the big apple so i said dammit but then i also says i says i says wait a minute jaxter with expressvpn i can take a little hop across the pond and connect to the uk and now when i go on netflix boom that got me a netflix princess mononuke in my room expressvpn is the protective snuggie with a baseball bat riding on a surfboard that can virtually take you all around the world on the internet find out how you can get three months free by clicking the link in the description box down below expressvpn.com forward slash jakey thank you to expressvpn for sponsoring this video and as always thank you to you for watching my video i'll see you next time

Channel: NakeyJakey

Views: 2,867,972

Rating: 4.8845339 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: QCYMH-lp4oM

Length: 52min 20sec (3140 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rusty_warhorse]

Isn't the same guy criticizing Rockstar's design being outdated, he got solid points, will watch this one later.

[u/Expert-b]

The video is 52 minutes long. It was only posted 40 minutes ago. It already has 12k likes, and 2400 comments. Interesting.

[u/Pleebrat999]

Wow look it's the exact same comment section we have been seeing about this fucking game for the last 500 years.

[u/LukeParkes]

Mel never got "deployed" lol. They were simply moving to a different base through an area the WLF wrongly thought was secure.

[u/J_NewCastle]

I feel like talking about TLOU2 at this point is so exhausting. I don't even want to watch someone like Jake critique it. It's all so exhausting.

[u/Cpt_Tsundere_Sharks]

I'm amazed (but not really surprised) by how many people are putting arguments against him that he specifically addresses in this video.

At the end of the day, this was Jakey saying that he expected more. He knows he's seeing things from a certain perspective. He knows he's being nitpicky about a lot of this. But his main criticism of this game extends to more than just the game itself.

He actually perfectly falls into what videogamedunkey describes about critics in general. Which is: know your critic. Understand what their likes and dislikes are, how their mind works. Some are really into games/movies for certain reasons and are looking for that specific thing. And in this case, Jake knows to put an asterisk on what he talks about with his goopy goblin brain.

But in general he brings up really good points about characters and empathy for characters in stories.

edit: The fact that it's been less than a minute and someone already downvoted this comment really proves my point. There are zealots on both sides of this, mindlessly defending/attacking this game with fervid fervor. But, I guess he saw this coming too.

[u/MattC42]

Really loved TLOU2, excited to see his take on it. Positive or negative, Jakey always puts out quality content.

[u/MysteryCroquette]

Blows my mind how many people are writing rants and disagreements with this video while at the same time admitting to not having watched the whole thing. I just finished it and honestly thought he made his points very clear and it upsets me that people will say he missed a point or didn't mention something when he very clearly does.

[u/ZGiSH]

There are people in this specific thread going on about how discussion about TLoU2 is impossible because of the vitriol but then you have Jakey who is just kind of stating what he dislikes about the game and people now suddenly find it too hyperbolic and unfair.

It feels like nothing bad can be said about this game without it being categorized as coming from an unreasonable place. I think it says a lot that the YouTube ratio is almost entirely positive while this thread is at 72% upvoted. There are more legitimate defenses and critiques in the comments of a YouTube video than a Reddit thread.