I started laughing so loud when I realized the last hour was just him rambling after the review.
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Iâm finding the violence exhausting just reading and hearing reviews.
I dunno, there is just a certain type of violence and gore I canât take. I never got in to Breaking Bad because of that whole episode where they are dissolving the body in the bathtub and justâŚnope, completely over it. The idea of murdering dogs and people in gruesome detail gives me that same feeling.
Maybe itâs hypocritical, because the violence in fantasy or âhistoricalâ shows doesnât bother me that much, even some of the more gratuitous stuff in Game of Thrones or Vikings. Maybe itâs because they are more clearly fantastical, I dunno.
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I love Tim Rogers, he comes at game reviews from such a unique angle.
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This after he opened the review by listing every single physical game he owns, from memory, with repeated, detailed description of his storage âsolution.â
Also, I love his insider stories. That Troy Baker one was gold.
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I find Tim super entertaining but thereâs a not-insignificant part of me that feels that his reviews are kind of meaningless on purpose. That last hour solidified the feeling for me - I donât think any of that meant anything, and thatâs okay!
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Part 1 and 2 spoilers: I had some friends call me cynical when I suggested that the ending of the first game only existed so they could leave the window open for a sequel. The more I think about TLOU2 Iâm wondering if they⌠just did it again. For all their gritty grimdark brutality they still couldnât bring themselves to kill off Ellie. They made a game entirely about revenge and then didnât even manage to resolve that. God, they even switch perspectives and try to pull some âoh donât you feel bad, you were the monster all along!â type stuff, and then they totally chicken out anyways!
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âBefore you embark on a journey of revenge, dig⌠enough graves to keep your franchise going.â
Iâm pretty sure thatâs the quote.
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The more I think about it, the more the âexamination of revengeâ seems incredibly pretentious. Even in the AAA space, stories of people failing to rise above their better nature and paying the price is not new
And Last of Us 2 seems like an even more ham-fisted take
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You know Iâve been thinking about this, and last night I kind of by accident stumbled back upon 17776.
If anyone hasnât read or doesnât know of 17776 â first, Iâd recommend it more strongly than literally anything else I could recommend reading, watching, or playing, and second, itâs one of the most imaginative stories about apocalypse Iâve seen in a long time, and basically asks the question of what people would do and make and care about in the absence of death and conflict (in a âgoodâ version of the end of the world, where time and entropy cease to exist) â how that would shape their reactions and approach to the things around them.
Anyway, what this has all left me with is the same thing I said in 2018 on the announcement thread for this game, that games would just try to imagine a world beyond this stuff. Jon Bois canât be the only writer in the world with that kind of creativity. And thatâs not to say there canât be a place for this kind of game⌠but I wish it werenât the only kind of game that ever seems to get made.
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Neil Duckman is now being passive aggressive at people for not liking his game by painting all his critics as bigots because he put Some Gays in his violent murder misery parade.
You know, thereâs a new Jimquisition pointing out this is nothing new (like, David Cage reported Jim to his editor in 2010 for giving Heavy Rain a bad review holy shit) but it has never been so public because most of these spoiled AAA directors never acted like asses on Twitter during the review cycle, just after.
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Seems like heâs mostly complaining about the review-bombing (which is definitely coming from an anti-LGBTQ+ place) on Twitter. I think that frustration is pretty valid. I looked through his tweets just now and didnât see anything directed at the people who published poor reviews for big sites (here, Kotaku). The âdevelopers forced to look at mutilationâ claim isnât something Iâve seen on any major sites, either, and I can see how that claim is frustrating if he doesnât think itâs true.
Coming after Schreier was pretty shitty, but âfuck review bombingâ I can get down with.
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Not me. The tactic here to save his ego is pretty blatant. Lump your actual critics in with far right chuds and bam, you can feel like youâre the big important boy much easier while actual gay people are still kind of pissed off at you. You can do this without ever drawing a clear line as long as youâre vague enough.
Also, itâs 2020, who even cares about review bombing at this point? I figured most big budget devs would see that as a badge of honor more than anything if it happens on Metacritic, where nobody cares about the user score. On Steam itâs a problem because that effects visibility, but on Metacritic? Why would anyone care about mass review bombing on that site in the user review section, especially before a game is even out. Kind of gives away the guyâs incredibly thin skin.
Honestly I stopped giving the benefit of the doubt when that one Dad of Son dev chimed in during a convo to complain the one game journalist reporting on crunch and work conditions with actual sources is âtearing them downâ and it turns out a lot of these big budget directors have been complaining to news site editors about this whenever they get a poor review score or negative press since forever.
Then I remember just how many labor violations Neilâs company has done and you start to think maybe this is about more than some homophones doing what they always do and using fictional queer people as a shield to make everyone forget about what youâve done to your employees.
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The disaffected average nice guy routine that Cory and Neil put on in their social media presence is tiresome. They have the power to affect real fundamental change in common industry practices, they know that they have this power.
Itâs either that theyâre utterly subservient to Sonyâs aggressive project time-tables, or they have a perverse belief that this culture is normal and their staff need to just deal with it. In Neilâs case, itâs probably the latter.
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Oh, that was very clever on the part of whoever wrote that. Plausibly deniable through being such a vague turn of phrase, but if you know about the crunch situation at Naughty Dog itâs very easy to connect the dots.
There are other cards that got reported on in the game that reference other employees and some former and current ND management people - with other references to crunch culture and âexperiments on human limitsâ and unhealthy work hours. I saw some of the employee cards on a stream and one explicitly mentioned being âexperimented on by Dr Uckmannâ.
So it seems the employees are trying to send a call from inside the house, here.
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Iâve always wanted to dive into 17776 but it seems a bit scattered. Is there a definitive archive or site where I could read, watch, peruse from start to finish?
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Yup! So it can be very confusing to look at but itâs actually a completely linear story. Even has a table of contents page.
What you should do is go to the main page: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football. If itâs the first time youâve visited it, read it like you would an article, and then something weird will happen that will take you through the first chapter. The first chapter is by far the longest physically, and will take a bit to read, but once you get to the end of it, and also sets you up to understand the different formats it uses (because it does both images, dialogue, and then an embedded youtube video at the end).
Youâll then see a âContinueâ button at the bottom, which takes you to the next chapter.
The main page also puts a cookie on your browser, so if you leave and come back, itâll bring you to the table of contents instead of to the beginning of Chapter 1.
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Ah thatâs great. Thank you so much.
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For me itâs that revenge is an idea that has been deeply and thoroughly examined in just about every medium. If you want to make your story about it youâre inviting comparison to everything from The Iliad to John Wick. So you better have something really interesting to say about.
@diglett If those theme in 17776 vibed with you I highly recommend Rebecca Solnitâs A Paradise Built in Hell. Itâs a brilliantly written book chronicling the societies that people create after catastrophic events.
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So I hit the section that (I think) Patrick talked about where the game opens up a bit and encourages you to find your own way around the Seattle Quarantine Zone and itâs cool. It reminds me a bit of Metro: Exodus that I recently played with its âhereâs your objective hand drawn on a map you have but oh thereâs also these randoms question marks that weâre adding when you discover a relevant bit of intel lying aroundâ type of exploration. Itâs great because I donât feel funnelled into objectives and itâs not like a Ubisoft game where you unlock a load of markers by synchronising a viewpoint as it feels natural instead. It sucks that it sounds like it doesnât carry on through the game as it shows that Naughty Dog couldâve improved on the original formula more than they perhaps have.
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