what, this thing is 20+ hours long?
Almost 30 for me, but I took my time and didnât use listen mode at all
Iâm 19 hours in and still feel like Iâm miles from the end. It is far too long and feels like two campaigns stapled together. I feel like it would have been better to frame it like a Nier A route and B route and NG+ Ellieâs Abilities to carry over on to Abbie rather than a continuous start-to-finish narrative.
Yeah it definitely feels like they at least chucked the dlc in as well .
Iâll give the auto collect thing a try, sounds like it might help. I looked throught the accessibility options and didnât find anything that helped make objects more noticeable, which surprised me.
But anyway, Ellie sure is looking for Tommy. Feel like there could be the sound of an ice cream van, or an elephant going PROOOO!!! in the distance and sheâd stop in her tracks and go âthatâs gotta be Tommy.â
Isnât the idea of a cure, as I think itâs been retconned from the first game where it was a vaccine, for a fungal infection kind of flawed? You go bad almost immediately if you come into contact with spores, and thereâs definitely no way a Bloater is gonna be cured of its bloating.
high contrast mode is what you want
I feel like this is the least of this gameâs problems but it is weird they never explicitly discuss it. I guess they could develop anti-fungal medication but how theyâre gonna produce and test complex pharmaceuticals in that environment is beyond me.
Faithless talks about her favourite game TLOU 1 and itâs dlc at length in the latest how did this get played? episode if anyoneâs interested.
it seems weird how this second game never even considers that the vaccine might not work. in the first game, the fireflies are presented as a messy organisation with flaws, but here they are just an objective good that would have solved everything if joel hadnât done what he did.
Yeah, I mean the whole revenge thing seems to leave even the possibility of vaccine in the dust. I guess thatâs sorta the point but it does paint the whole thing a bit black and white. Like even if a vaccine was created, how are you gonna distribute it? Clickers are still everywhere and transportation and manufacture are a huge issue. Not to mention trust when there are superstitious cults and societies that have already adapted to the situation. Once itâs all dealt with what would society look like? A vaccine isnât a cure for the lack of government, resources or security, or the grudges everyone seems to love. I guess we can assume this has affected the whole world as well since no-one has come to Americaâs aid. Whatâs your moral imperative there?
specifically in this one Abby & co seeing the possibility of fireflies existing as this promised land that they will reach is so empty. the only conflict around it is whether itâs true or not, rather than what any of that means or how it would be any different than the WLF or Jackson or the Seraphites or the bonus last act slaver faction
In fact the Fireflies fomented their own failure by making a bush league mistake: they never bothered to ask Ellie for consent. If they had she wouldâve said yes and then Ellie couldâve told Joel her decision herself, which may not have completely preempted his dadrage but probably would have robbed it of its force. By spiriting Ellie away, locking Joel up and saying âstay put weâre just gonna kill her real quickâ, he has the perfect moral justification to act, by his own lights. Heâs not even really wrong in a clearly definable way.
I think the game does a pretty good job at setting up the Fireflies as an organization that wouldnât bother asking, making the whole thing a tragedy in the classical mode, rather than just a stupid inexplicable mistake.
If 2 just makes them Good Guys then thatâs one more reason that 2 seems dumb.
fireflies not just bringing everyone in ellieâs room waking her up and saying hereâs whatâs going on whatâs your feelings on it is why also making the viability of vaccine an unknown thing seems overly complicating an already morally murky situation. why add that to the story, thereâs already enough people who played the first game and itâs news to them that joel did anything wrong. and it wouldnât really do anything but make joel more right. also I donât remember everything in abbyâs flashbacks but in the flashback with joel heâs still calling it a vaccine, not a cure. I donât think they really make fireflies just good guys either. they disregard ellie as much as joel. all the flashback stuff with them is basically them saying âall the heinous stuff weâve all done to survive in apocalypse land is now justified if we just do this one last bad thing.â for abbie and owen though the dream of the fireflies is still a step up from anything theyâve been involved in subsequently. ellie doesnât care, when she finds the rattlers sheâs still scribbling âfuck firefliesâ next to her goth poetry in her journal.
speaking of the rattlers, in the concept art their gear is all clearly marked police gear. obviously post-apocalypse the cops as kidnap and slaver gangs are going to have the most success in gun restricted states like california
yeah i was gonna say just that the game doesnât make the fireflies out to be straightforward Good Guys, it just makes abby out to be someone who thinks of them as Good Guys
If anything I think the gameâs trying to say Naughty Dog are the good guys.
This game is very Phantom Pain, down to a random surgeon from the previous installment being imbued with plot-catalyzing significance and trailers plainly showing flashbacks from the end of the game that make you feel like youâre skipping over and misremembering things from the get-go.
âIf this was your daughter,â Naughty Dog whispers to the dads in the audience, âwhat would u do.â
Thereâs a continuity error at the start of this, Bigot man says âI heard you and Dina are headed out todayâ then Jesse decides to put Ellie with Dina a minute later
Also Joelâs house would be the most camp thing in any other game
Still love this massive weird bad taste AAAA game though