People definitely take pleasure in their work in army-sized pop culture, but it’s more of a craftsmanship than the expression and meaning achievable with smaller, more personal work. It’s the satisfaction in competence and a small amount of your personal human touch. At the end of the day, you may not have had the luxury of making people pay attention to your vision, but at least you made something, and you can make sure that your work was good.
It’s not satisfying enough for me, but it’s enough to drive me to do more than I should.
There are a lot of reasons The Last of Us never gelled with me, that have all been raised here, but the thing I am routinely surprised got a pass is how nothing feel scaled properly at all. Go into a house and it’s immediately obvious.
Dog Days casually goes through Cycle of Revenge! Oh No! w/out commentary (Lynch’s Shakedown Aside turns Thoughtless Murder which begets Girlfriend Fridging which begets Oh No! I’m So Sad! I Also Have No Self Awareness! Let’s Kill Everything! and then Shoot the Crimedad In the Dadhead which begets IDK Guess We’ll Have To Steal a Plane?") over 4.5 hours now 2 Blast 2 Us is here to bolt it on to Murderdad Sim (Lite) bringing the whole thrilling conceptual saga up to the 50 hour (Campaign) mark. Remember when NeuDaughter was separated from SaDad and the folks she was with were revealed to be sexmenace cannibals to uncomplicate our dynamic duo’s slow, purposeful murders each from their own end of the Obstacle Bodies, ultimately meeting in the middle like Lady & the Tramp, cementing their personal bond? It was too cold to mix water into the cement, they needed human blood fresh and steaming, etc. Now the Dad who made The Big Selfish Choice that you Still Kinda Understood 'Cause Dang, Dang! He Loves This Kid! will learn–too late!–that there are consequences many and terrible to Solipsism of Dadfeeling. You may have learned again the bittersweet joy of dadfeeling, Llewelyn Moss But Now In Your Videogame Doing Your Murder Wearing Your Flannel Loving Your Childrens Joel, but you forgot the Great Dad Network… The Dad Community… You forgot to search the area for widad (wireless dad) and log on and check the dad sitch–to vibe with the Dad Entire!–before so many of your hundreds of Dad-Motivated Killings…
So flush with dadfeeling after so long in the Dad Wilderness, you forgot your responsibility to the Greater Community of Dad. Now, at last, we will witness your reckoning.
We will believe the duct-tape + scissor-half single-use craftable shiv (alpine biome edition) will tear through even the most earnestly worn Dad Flannel, borne over the most open of Dad Hearts.
The game’s co-writer Halley Gross, in an interview with GamesRadar+, also elaborated on how this new enemy type plays into The Last of Us 2’s ruminations on violence, justice, and morality: “How much is my love for Tommy going to make me willing to engage with these dogs? Is there a way for me to avoid it? Do I have to make this hard call?”
only a work of outstanding moral courage + boldness can ask the question “after your one-thousandth snuffing of the Human Life, will this be A Dog Too Far?”
