This is a really good point and it is going to take me another day or two to work out how it is changing my perceptions.
Half thought how much is lost in a game when an amatuer shmuck strings together the game cutscenes and calls it The Game The Movie Complete on youtube? How much emotional resonnance? How much story flow?
We have the professional example of Shenmue which well is terrible. Delivery and execution of whatever story they were trying to tell laid bare was going to fail. the story is boy buys boat ticket and gets on boat.
I watched one of Adis videos. tLOU has more going on in gameplay than I gave it credit for. so i guess I just have to throw up my hands and go but I didnt like it.
I think pretty much everything I wrote is decidedly non-academic.
I get this but it is also a dangerous standard because you could apply this exact same set of words to the worst Ubisoftian crap. Assassinās Creed is a vague mushy mass of mechanics all swirling around the concept of making you Feel Like a Badass. At some point, developmental rigor is required.
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Second response to this: then we are the same side? The impression it made on me was without emotion*. The thoughts it produced were Iāve felt more from similar stories in film. Itās not like Iām actively conciously comparing everything to everything else, but if i start doing that it means the medium is failing to engage me. The illusion collapses and suddenly Iām looking at the environment and the character modeling. Iām thinking about all these things and not āWhat are Joel and Ellie going to do nowā or āHow am I going to accomplish the next task the video game has given me?ā
I have no idea. I never wrote āDonāt have any expectations.ā If you didnāt have even the smallest sort of expectation going into an experience, that would probably mean youād be technically braindead. I just havenāt had the impulse in forever to put the videogames I enjoy into this relativistic context of Videogames vs. All Other Media because I like what they do on their own terms. My favorite videogames/game soundtracks are fine as they are, in my opinion.
TLOU is so far down the movie/TV-like part of the spectrum that it almost demands to be compared with them. For some time thereās been a squeeze whereby movies are getting dense with CG and motion capture, whereas what can be done in real-time is catching up; this is an old observation by now, but that trend shows no sign of stopping. TLOU can only really be discussed as an interesting point on that continuum.
I think this topic will become fresh and interesting again with the emergence of VR. Even without true interactivity, VR goggles can offer qualitatively new cinematic experiences, and there is no way to do VR without gamelike real-time rendering. And once as a moviemaker you have a game engine at your disposal anyway (though primarily to allow camera head-tracking), why not introduce some interactive elements here and there? If VR proves a success, the remaining distance between static cinematic experiences and game genres, and the different development staffs and fanbases, might increasingly collapse.
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I donāt think falling into that category is inherently a good thing. I would also group david cage shit into it as well. but I do think itās a more āmatureā place for the industry to be. a good game must have rigor applied to its mechanics regardless. but imo the best stuff happening right now is pushing the envelope of this new paradigm, which allows in lazy noodly stuff like assassinās creed.
You can call Dina āher loverā, Naughty Dog, itās okay.
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even so
is it me or are there a lot of cis white lesbians in games nowadays
like itās still representation I guess but itās also like, the most box-ticking, least threatening form of queerness available, I feel like itās barely even a stretch for all the fuckin dads writing every other part of these games to be able to access āwant to kiss a girl,ā and frankly I think itās like, less narrative work to do this to the present standard than to actually try to portray even male affection (or affection for a male) critically and honestly. this is just excising tension.
like every part of this story is immediately tired but I wonder if they didnāt also have to have some of the most well worn relationships out there right now
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So I guess Joel isnāt a ghost like people were thinking? I was hoping that was still an option so I could make āghost dadā jokes but whatever.
I think this looks really good! I bet itāll be as fun as the previous game.
honestly the first game, while a good game, was such a fuckin downer i donāt really know if i have it in me to retread the same thematic ground
re: queer choices, keep in mind that this game will be played by a lotta dude bros so it will be plenty edgy for them, plus i donāt really trust them to handle any other queerness with much fidelity so this is probably for the best
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Wasnāt the guy in Philly gay and whoops he is also sneaky and untrustworthy?
bill? oh yeah. nah he was a good guy in the end. actually they handled his character pretty well i thought.
Itās w. earl brown so heās a good guy
hey this is a good time for me to suggest you watch our old pal adilegianās video essay on TLoU part 1
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That this is and likely will always remain unfinished is a huge personal tragedy
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The level of visual detail is mind boggling. Up there with Red Dead 2 in terms of fidelity.
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