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S2 Ep110: The Last of Us Part II
79 Plays5 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: The Last of Us Part II
Join Dave and Jake as continue the battle royale to determine who truly is The Last of Us in this week's episode.
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Join Dave and Jake as continue the battle royale to determine who truly is The Last of Us in this week's episode.
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Setting the Tone
00:00:29
Speaker
So, I'm going to do this.
00:00:44
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going, Dave? It's going okay. It's going okay. I'm doing pretty well.
00:00:57
Speaker
Nobody fucking asked you. That's true. No one did. Jake said, I'm going to wait a week to share how I'm feeling. And we're like, we don't care. We don't care. Next topic, please.
Legal Phrases and Media Consumption
00:01:10
Speaker
I take your answer. That's one of my favorite things. And have you ever seen like a court review or something like that or an interview where they have witnesses for Congress or something like that?
00:01:26
Speaker
And there's a question that they really, really don't want to answer. The most like legal passive aggressive way you can bypass that is like, I take your question. You just say that I take a question. That's not even like I plead the fifth or just no response. Well, plead the fifth is specifically like you aren't incriminating yourself, which this witness would be not in that situation normally, but
00:01:52
Speaker
But yeah, just saying I take your question like I have it's it's the rx equivalent I acknowledge that your question has been received. Oh,
Internet Memes and Pop Culture
00:02:00
Speaker
it's like I heard you. Mm-hmm
00:02:03
Speaker
I feel like Comey did that for one question in the hearing. I'll be honest, I didn't watch that because it seemed super fucking boring. Ramifications be damned. I can read a news article or a snippet about the proceedings and then go from there. Everything seems more serious since then. It kind of puts things a little more perspective, I guess.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, remember when it was just like, did this person get elected by illegal means? And now we're just like, we got other shit to worry about.
00:02:42
Speaker
I still remember, like, does Bruno Mars is gay, you know, back in the day. Man, those days. I don't know if you ever saw that Game Grumps, but if not, I'm gonna have to link it to you
Home-cooked vs. Takeout Meals
00:02:54
Speaker
later. It's a fun one. I'm just making references to things people who listen to us will never probably know about, so it's not a great sign, but I had- This is not roast. This is our time.
00:03:06
Speaker
Oh, this there's this is a Jake food update. Yeah. Well, please proceed. It was immediately prior to the preparations for recording here. The wonderful wife made pot roast with some like carrots and celery and some mashed potatoes and stuff. And my gosh.
00:03:24
Speaker
It's so good. I just like sometimes I'll like go and like grab food, grab Taco Bell, grab food from somewhere or whatever or order food in. Jake doesn't cook. That's the TLDR. Yeah, that is the short of it. But if you do that for like a while or even just eat pre-prepared food, sometimes like home cooked meals are just they're on another level, I think.
Bread and Culinary Debates
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah, there's a certain joy to it. You visit that level more than I do, I think, because you actually prepare food. I mean, yeah, blanket statement, that is very true. But at the same time, recently, like tonight's dinner was I made sandwiches. And by that, I mean, I went to Wegmans to get sandwich ingredients and then I cut the rolls in half and put stuff in between them.
00:04:20
Speaker
and ate that. There's already more fancy than me. There wasn't much prep. See, I buy pre-sliced bread, so I'm not even like... Jake, Jake, hear me out? That's a heathen's way to do it. Never get pre-sliced bread. One, it's probably not going to be the exact size you want. Two, fucking cut your own sizes so you can get the size you want. And then three, it's going to be fresher if it's an actual loaf.
00:04:48
Speaker
I'll concede all the points except size. I feel like there's a relatively standard size for pieces of bread that most people mentally imagine. That's the one you can co-opt it into by the media. Because if you think like, oh, what's a bread size? You're like, oh, here's a plain white slice of bread, right? Well, I don't know if white bread really.
00:05:11
Speaker
I know that there's forms of white bread that are tiny. Like they're just smaller, baby pieces. If you think of like a very standard grilled cheese, what size do you imagine that to be? Cause I would guess it's on, you picture it as here's your white bread. You got your cheese slices of whatever variety. And then the other bread piece. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's pretty much correct. It's usually a wheat bread for us. So we don't really get white bread. Um, it's a race thing.
00:05:40
Speaker
Hey, Jake, all breads matter. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of breads that are kind of trash. Um, or just I can't
Video Games and Unique Mechanics
00:05:52
Speaker
do plain white anymore. Honestly, I like, I feel like if I white bread, I could see for exactly peanut butter and jelly and that's like it. Um, but even then I would probably prefer wheat.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah. Like if I'm having like toast at a diner, give me some wheat toast. Give me a little, little pat of butter, a little bit of jelly.
00:06:17
Speaker
The real money's on sourdough though. The king of all breads. Sourdough solid. I'm still a sucker for challah, but I mean that's in my blood. Yeah. I'm not Jewish, it's just actually in my blood. Bread blood. That was a superhero power.
Deep Dive into 'The Last of Us Part 2'
00:06:40
Speaker
Well, the mystery. How did he die immediately?
00:06:49
Speaker
I was going to make a joke about how this episode we were covering, one of those games that was named after bread, but I can't remember the name of the game now. I think it was like a physics based steam game. Well, it's just I am bread. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like the clop, but it was with bread and you had to, I think go from one place in a room to another. Yeah. I remember trying to finagle onto a skateboard to go across and then try and climb up to the countertop and it was a nightmare. Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
that octodad co-op they all kind of live in the fake or not fake but like bad controls games purposefully bad control bad controls games octodad dark souls you name it man yeah dark souls
00:07:37
Speaker
But I guess that's not really what we're here to talk about. No, we wanted to kind of change it up tonight. So like last week we covered Last of Us. Right. So we're like, we're not doing that again this week. We didn't have great reviews on that episode. Actually, I don't think I heard any positive reviews on the previous episode. Now I've very rarely heard positive reviews for any episode, but they're always in person. But, um, but yeah, Last of Us part two,
00:08:07
Speaker
It's a different game. It is. And it's so recent. I would like to give a verbal spoiler warning just in case someone auto played here. Yeah, this literally just came out and we actually.
00:08:22
Speaker
I think we both beat the game before we finish the editing for the last episode. Yeah. That's safe to say. Yeah, I think that's pretty. We recorded. We then started playing the next game. And then we're like, and we're done. Oh, we got to post that thing, right? Yeah, yeah. It's kind of funny because you have to mentally keep them a little bit separate. But you also see all of the similarities. They stand out a lot, I think.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad that we did them close together, because I have a shit memory. So it's like, hey, do you remember that thing from two weeks ago? I'm like, kinda? But if it's just a couple days, that's easier to pull off. So yeah, we'll spoil everything, probably.
00:09:12
Speaker
So as needed. Yeah, as as the whim demands. So where do we want to start with this? So I guess, I don't know, for me coming off of the first game.
00:09:28
Speaker
I think that was, do you think it's true that finishing the first game before, like was to lay the groundwork to cover the second game? Cause I know we both really enjoyed the first game. It was like, I think as of our last episode, last week's episode again, I have that memory too, but it was like top 15 game for me, like all time. And I definitely wanted to be able to cover Last of Us 2 pretty quickly.
00:09:57
Speaker
Um, so I think you could say there was hype, right? Oh, yeah, definitely. This is one of the things. I remember when it was initially announced E3 last year. Is that right? It sounds about right. Big, big squint because it was the trailer. Yeah. But yeah, obviously had anticipation going into this and it was not pre-order, but downloaded like same day it came out. Mm hmm.
00:10:26
Speaker
Not that anybody from my current shop would be listening, but I kind of stopped working, quote, quote, around like two. And I would like keep playing in like these intervals for like 20 minutes. I'm like, Oh, what's going to happen next? Yeah. And I go back and do like a chore or something for work. You check the device or something. Nothing's on fire. Nobody messes with me. Cool. Yeah. I'm on support. It's passive availability. Yeah. But this is, I can't imagine anybody playing this game.
00:10:56
Speaker
without playing the first one. That would be insane to me. I mean, it's not a standalone thing. Like there are like, let's say Monster Hunter, right? You don't need to play the previous Monster Hunters. It's kind of like Call of Duty. It's another title in the series, but they're not dependent upon each other. They're standalone entries. Right. But this is a direct sequel and everything that happens in the game is based off the first one. It's kind of it's kind of interesting, I think.
00:11:27
Speaker
I mean, both Call of Duty and The Last of Us, as far as I understand, the main entries do have a plot that goes through the games. I'm sorry, if you just want to like get into one, you're not going to be inhibited if you didn't play the previous video. I mean, I feel like you could you could still make that argument for The Last of Us, but the difference I feel like is playing The Last of Us 2.
00:11:50
Speaker
Basically, playing the most recent Call of Duty, there's no reason to go back and play the earlier ones, as far as I'm concerned. Gameplay is really similar, like you were saying. And unless you literally only care about the story, and that's a minor part of that series, I think, in my mind, you probably wouldn't want to go back. I could see someone finishing The Last of Us 2 and being like, I want to go see what happened in The Last of Us 1.
00:12:14
Speaker
You'll know the major plot points because they give you a summary at the beginning of the events at the end of the first game. But it doesn't devalue the playthrough, I think.
00:12:31
Speaker
I call bullshit on that entirely. Really? I think part of the appeal of one is obviously all the good things we've already said about it. But when you get to that end, the whole game is building to that point. So when that event happens at the end, it's very impactful.
00:12:51
Speaker
Right. So if you were to, let's say, start playing the second game before playing the first game and they're like, hey, here's kind of a recap of some of the important things from one, aka just the very end. Yeah, you'd know the end of one. Yeah. So it would kind of diminish that entirely in my opinion. Counter, counterpoint to that, though. That's normally how Naughty Dog does storytelling in The Last of Us. They wait until you've experienced an event before they go back and they tell you what it meant.
00:13:21
Speaker
That's like the way that they do storytelling because like even in their description of the previous episode, spoilers for both, the outcome of Joel, you know, executing the fireflies or the last of the fireflies like in that group at the end happens after you know that they've left, right?
00:13:46
Speaker
Like they love to, Naughty Dog loves to go back in time and be like, here's going on a feels trip is the term I like to use to make you feel something. And I feel like you could finish the last of or play through the last of us two and then go back and see the formative experience of Joel pre-outbreak and the loss of his daughter and like all of those moments
00:14:13
Speaker
uh, with Ellie and be like, Oh, this is like, I feel like I would fill in some of it. You'd like to see the, the blocks come into place, but I don't know. I understand what you're saying. I still wholeheartedly disagree. That's fair. We don't have to agree on all of it. I would say that, um, it probably undermines the first game a bit, knowing the end, uh, from the get go, cause it kind of,
00:14:44
Speaker
um it's a twist right yeah and it's not a twist if you know it from the start so but that being said personal recommendation if you have already played the last of us part two for some reason you haven't played the first one still go back and play the first one i think you'd still enjoy it and for all the people i know who haven't played the last of us one but have access to it fucking play it it's it's solid and you shouldn't be here by now this is my point
00:15:13
Speaker
We've had at least three people use Dave's copy, maybe more, possibly hundreds. We don't know where that copy is. I'll keep pouring it around the state, don't worry. Yeah. But I got to say, last was two. I know it's taken a whole lot of beating because I think some things were leaked initially. Yeah. As far as the plot, and then it got shit canned in reviews because of that.
00:15:39
Speaker
But I thankfully avoided everything and just played over like two and a half, three days. I think Jake is probably in a similar boat, just getting it in. And while I do have some thoughts on like where some things went a little bit awry or could be improved, still thoroughly enjoyed the game. Was solid as far as gameplay and everything.
00:16:03
Speaker
I think that if people have seen negative reviews of this game online, it's probably mostly YouTube because I actually saw the Metacritic score before I played. I didn't check out any of the reviews because I already knew I was going to play it, so why check reviews?
00:16:19
Speaker
But it has a 94 on Metacritic, so it has universal acclaim. It's like in the top percentile of reviewed games. I think people that have really negative opinions of the game almost have to take the position that the game is overrated by other reviewers. Because you can be like, here's my opinion on the game.
00:16:42
Speaker
And other people are also welcome to their own opinions. They had a different experience. But if you're like, this game was trash, and then the professional reviewers are all giving it 94s, you have to be a conspiracy theorist a little bit at that point. Yeah. I'm not going to say it's not like all professional reviewers are the best at what they do. Cop IGN. Makes you feel like Spider-Man 9 out of 10.
00:17:12
Speaker
I don't know. For anything, I feel like you should always form your own opinion. But at least for our opinions on this, again, speaking for Jake, I'll let him correct me if I'm wrong. Really fucking love the gameplay of this. I feel like they took everything from the first one and then built on it. They didn't add a whole lot of things out of the blue, being like, what are these magical new mechanics?
00:17:36
Speaker
But the things that they added really fit well into it. One of the big things that they demoed at E3 was kind of moving around the terrain and fitting through like these narrow corridors, which before wasn't a thing, but they made it like a seamless transition going between rooms.
00:17:55
Speaker
And you do that a lot in the game. You can fucking go prone and go under stuff. You can sneak around a lot more. But also they made the game more difficult in every fucking possible way. But I think it was in a good way.
00:18:11
Speaker
Because I feel like towards the end of Last of Us, again, when I was talking about getting used to those mechanics of I switch my gun, I go crouch behind something and heal, yada, yada. It became very natural for the gameplay and it wasn't challenging at a point.
00:18:26
Speaker
right you're pretty powered up by the end of the first one the ambient i would agree like the ambient threat level um is pretty pretty high in this game i heard some people were complaining a bit about ai and
Gameplay Strategies and Resource Management
00:18:40
Speaker
yeah i think those complaints are fair um but the uh the game as a whole is is pretty challenging and i i don't know if you can go guns blazing nearly as easily in this one and the game's really rewarding to um
00:18:54
Speaker
While I was playing, I had thoughts of the Batman series. It's like, you don't have detective vision in this one, but you are sneaking around, taking people out one by one. A similar kind of encounter design. And the game really rewards that with a lot of strong stealth options.
00:19:17
Speaker
And you mentioned prone. Prone is freaking broken. I love prone. Speed boost from the skill tree and stuff. Yeah, it's nice to be able to specifically crawl under certain things like let's say trucks or something that has a lifted bed. Or if you want to be more sneaky beaky than a crouch. Or especially if you have something called short grass.
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah. So you could tall grass you can crouch in and do the Pokemon cosplay or short grass you can just like blade completely down and. Mm hmm.
00:19:50
Speaker
And enemies almost have to be on top of you to detect you if you're prone in grass. It's really, really hard for them to see you. Also, there's also hate slash like, let's say you're in the grass and enemies coming up. You're like, I'm just going to bust a cap in their forehead. When you go to aim, the camera's not like, oh, they're in grass. Let me clear that for them. Yeah. You got to figure out where the fuck you're aiming at because you're in grass. So it doesn't give you a little freebie out.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely had. So if you like behind cover and that doesn't do like the kill switch blind firing, really. If you're behind cover and you want to take a shot at somebody, you hold the aim button and you'll pop out of cover a bit.
00:20:36
Speaker
And there's the sound effect of someone is watching you and you're about to be detected, which I kind of like. I love that. Because a lot of times I would just be like stealthing around. I would hear it, not know where they were, and just go prone. And then I'd move my camera around and be like, that fucker. Because with the listening vision,
00:20:57
Speaker
they will not show you people who are in your actual vision. So if there's like a guy down the street who you can see from where your camera is, they're not going to show up with that sound. Now they might blend into the background and your eyes might not catch them. Yeah. So a lot of times I'd come across people after like going into sensory mode and completely miss them because they were just physically right in front of me.
00:21:24
Speaker
Um, yeah, and sensory modes still pretty great. Although I think the game wants you to use it in a way that's like not completely optimal. I'll get to that in a second though. If you're pop out.
00:21:35
Speaker
You can aim on somebody, but you'll become visible for a moment. Now, if you are prone and you go to aim, you do the Sam Fisher style, like, oh, I'm going to lay down backwards, or a solid snake style, and take them out. And you don't reveal yourself anymore when you do that. So you can get to the edge of a bush or some shrub or something. Clear that visual obscure. I don't want to say obscuration, but that's not a word.
00:22:03
Speaker
Um, the grass that's blocking your, your path, basically find your little out, just sit there and then just pop people coming by. It works pretty well recommended. It's not tall grass is good. 100%. But, um, I like those additions. I think they're, they're additive. Everything mechanically, I think that was changed. None of it is surprising addition to like a part two. Um,
00:22:31
Speaker
It's here in the name. You shouldn't expect that they're changing everything about the game. Mechanically, it's still pretty similar, just with some improvements.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah. Again, going back to the increased ambient threat level, enemies seem to be a lot more cognizant of things going on. Like if I killed somebody and left their body in the middle of the street, somebody else might come along and be like, this person's dead. Something probably killed them and they'll go in search after you. And they're usually good if you're somewhat exposed being like,
00:23:10
Speaker
They're over there. And then tell other people that in the same way zombies would be like, ah, and then all the zombies are like, oh, oh, right there. Thanks, Tim. Tim, the robbery. And they also say they also have fucking dogs, which would be like, hey, you have a scent trail now. The dog is going to follow you. So you end up killing dogs in this game.
00:23:38
Speaker
Which I don't think many people are a fan of that inclusion for that fact. Mechanically, from a difficulty perspective, it is an interesting bump. The dogs are also more alert when people are in a general state of alertness. So they will pick up on your trail a lot more if they're looking for you, as opposed to just their standards on patrol. Which is more of an incentive to stay actually quiet.
00:24:08
Speaker
You can decoy the dogs too, like throw a brick or a bottle, and the
Character Development and Relationships
00:24:14
Speaker
owner will pretty much always send the dog off to investigate, which can buy you some time. Which is all, just feeds into the resource usage of the game, which is...
00:24:25
Speaker
It's dang near perfect, I feel like. To get into something I really, really appreciate about The Last of Us. Is it resource management? Yeah. As I was playing through this game, I kept thinking, I played Seven Days to Die, we played Rust, we played co-op zombie survival games, things like that. And none of them felt as good in the resource usage as The Last of Us to me.
00:24:56
Speaker
So I think the main difference is with The Last of Us, it is a guided path versus something like Rush or Seven Days where it's super open-ended. They just kind of have nodes throughout the game where they have to reset them after a time so you're not constantly exploring for things. You always have access to it.
00:25:18
Speaker
Whereas in this, you're constantly exploring and encouraged to explore because you run out of resources because you're not perfect. You might use some of your ammo on body shots, so it's less efficient. You now have less bullets. Maybe you have no bullets and now you have to stealth. Maybe you don't have a bottle of round or a Molotov and you have to
00:25:43
Speaker
rearrange your situation. Or when you come up on something, you might have to feel like, okay, I have X amount of things I can craft. But let's say I want to make a Molotov. I now can't make a health kit. Right. Those are exclusive. Take the same resources. I think it was the same way. Exactly. It's the same way in one for that. I think the thing for me, though, is
00:26:04
Speaker
In some ways, I feel like they take it a little bit too far in The Last of Us and that you have like, you can get a full clip for Aegon and then usually hold in reserve one additional clip. And that's about it. Like you can get a rifle through one of the characters.
00:26:21
Speaker
and unlock like a three round burst modification, which I did. But I fully knew I would be able to fire that like four times, regardless of how much ammo I started with before it would be completely out because they don't let you keep very much extra. But I just meant like.
00:26:40
Speaker
like the bug out bag idea. It's like, oh, if I were to go out and salvage in a city, I bring like some health supplies, maybe some like grenades or whatever, but then you'll need to use them. The Last of Us 2 puts you in situations where it incentivizes actually using your resources.
00:26:59
Speaker
And you can feel a bit anxious if you don't have them. Yeah. If you know you're going into it. You always want to have something on deck because certain situations come out, you know, be really useful. A pipe bomb to explode a bunch of enemies or set a trap here and lure them in. Because again, I'm blowing bullets because I suck at aiming. Which again, it goes back into the encouraging you to go out and explore and find shit.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I feel like you can trade resources for effort, too. There's oftentimes come into encounters where it's like, if I had rifle ammo, this would have been trivial. I would have had to have burned through most of my rifle ammunition, but I could have just destroyed this. You mentioned the pipe bombs. There were some encounters where there was one large shambler infected. And if I could just throw two pipe bombs at it and then shoot it twice,
00:28:00
Speaker
This encounter would not happen. It would just be done, right? But I'm out of explosives, so we're going to have to do this like Rambo, which means dying five times and then retrying something completely different. So what was your normal approach? Did you try and stealth a lot of things first?
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, I did try to stealth like a lot of the game, but I wasn't the best at it. I got better later. I got better. I got better later, but I definitely had plenty of encounters that went loud against my will. Yeah, this is a throwback to our Payday 2 episode.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, always same boat. I will always attempt stealth because it's more resource efficient, but I will fuck up. So then I'm doing like mad dashes, running around, trying to use cover, get some pop shots on either zombies or people.
00:29:03
Speaker
and just try and like run and gun until someone says, I think that's all of them. Yeah, which I got to say I do like. I do like you. So like, oh, that encounter is done. I'm not going to just go walking on by and then get killed by somebody and then have more restart the encounter. More likely just unnecessarily sneak. Right. That's the other thing. As soon as you hear that, I think that's all of them. You know, you can just get up, run around and loot everything. Yeah.
00:29:32
Speaker
Which is the other aspect, like there's some encounters you can just run past. I think I straight up ran past under like a handful of encounters in the game. A lot of them have doors you have to like interact with for a period of time is kind of a soft. You either snuck here and you're going out splinter cell like or everybody's dead. Yeah.
00:29:54
Speaker
But there are other times you can just jump like across the gap or run up some stairs or something and the encounter is done. But if you do that, if you don't clear it, you missed out on all of that loot. And it might have been really useful.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's always a trade off, but it's nice to have the option because there were some points in the game where I felt under resourced. Like I literally had two bullets. I was too lazy to stealth seven people. Yeah. So it would go loud and I would sprint and I would just get far enough away from people, get to the interactable door or wherever I needed to go jump out a window.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I'd be like, okay, cool. We'll assess the next battle and try and get resources for that encounter. So it's nice to not always have to fight if you want to go sneaky beaky and just manage your resources in a different way. Yeah, I feel like those limitations on resources, how dangerous everything is, it makes it feel more like a survival game than most survival games I've played.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah, because you literally are opting into certain things like, oh, I want to explore this other path. There's definitely some zombies down there. I'm willing to venture that risk for the possible loot gain. Yeah. Yeah, it's testament to the balancing of the game that I cared about loot till the very end of it.
00:31:23
Speaker
There was times I was like overstocked or I had pretty much everything in stock. And there was times I was almost completely depleted. But for the most part, I was always like, oh, it's saying I can't pick up any fabric. Let me open the inventory. Okay, I'm down one med pack. Let me craft a med pack. All right, now let's go back, grab the fabric.
00:31:42
Speaker
makes them all tough. A lot of the skill tree upgrades are like more efficiency with like, you can craft two of these at once instead of just one. And I'm like, yep, I'm going to be using bombs more. Um, can we talk about that? The fucking skill trees that they have now. Yeah. So I think before again, it was like a week. I think it was just one skill tree.
Comparing 'The Last of Us' Series
00:32:05
Speaker
It was like one or two. There was very few if there if there was multiples, I'll look it up. I'll remember you could have more health, faster crafting. There's probably something for gun stability, but it's kind of across the board. Everything had a benefit.
00:32:21
Speaker
but it wasn't a huge benefit. Whereas in this one, they have specific things for benefiting your crafting, making you more resource efficient when crafting, enabling your gunplay a little bit more with stability, recoil, reload speed, stealth, explosives, had a whole bunch of stuff.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, there was... So you were 100% correct. The first game had one tree. Everything that existed in that tree was moved to the second one. Increase List and Mode Radius. Increase Max Health. Reduce Crafting Time. Use Health Cuts faster.
00:33:03
Speaker
And then the end of it allowed you to make shivs to be able to kill clickers when you're grabbed by them instead of I think the first game was instant death. If you did not have that ability clipper clickers always killed you if they grabbed you. Yeah. And this one, Ellie, who you play as for I would say like the majority
00:33:23
Speaker
60% of the game, maybe? Half? Half, yeah. She's freaking awesome. And she spent her entire life fighting infected. So she can just kill clickers. Like, it just might take a little bit longer if you don't have the fast kill animation thing. Yeah, but it seemed like you sneak up to choke somebody out. She just does it with a shiv. She always takes that knife on her. Yeah. The other character you can play actually has to use shivs like Joel did to kill clickers. Yeah.
00:33:56
Speaker
But yeah. Where was I going with that? Oh yeah, skill trees were awesome. And one of the things I loved about them was,
00:34:04
Speaker
the divergent play styles. Because there's like five different skill books, basically, you have to get per character to max it out. You can't really max everything. And so you can make some choices. Like my Ellie, I made really stealthy and tried to make her really resource efficient, but not that much direct force. So maybe not the best with guns.
00:34:31
Speaker
And all of this just fed back into I wish there was like a co-op game like The Last of Us that was actually survival that had that sort of difficulty, you know, go out in the world and spend resources and get stuff. But, you know, that's life. We can we can ask for it. Can we get that?
00:34:53
Speaker
It wasn't a way out. It wasn't that co-op. And there are good. I guess maybe it's always a monkey's paw to be like, I want another zombie like open world multiplayer survival crafting game. Like, do you really want that? Are you sure? I want a good one, though. Here's the thing. Yeah. But yeah, I did quite enjoy the skill trees.
00:35:24
Speaker
I feel like we should talk about the elephant of the room. We keep saying like, oh, they're the characters you can play as. Where obviously in Last of Us, you played as Joel for most of it. And then Ellie for a segment or two. Whereas this game is Ellie and Drumroll. Abby. Joel. Oh, okay.
00:35:47
Speaker
Who the fuck is Abby? Exactly. You also play as Joel. Do you? A very brief period. There might be like a mission. Actually, do you? I feel like I feel like, yeah, when when you're when you're again, I play as less than a week and I've already forgotten. No, no, you are playing as Ellie when you arrive at the cabin the second time. The first time you're playing is Abby.
00:36:10
Speaker
You're right. Yep. So Abby, Abby literally comes out of the blue as far as your concerns story wise, she's with this other group of people. They come across the settlements called Jackson started
Narrative Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:36:24
Speaker
maybe not started by, but currently led by Tommy and Maria, who we met in the first game. And they're looking for somebody and we don't know who.
00:36:33
Speaker
So these events are kind of going on at the same time that Ellie's getting used to her life in Jackson. They're going on patrols with people, trying to clear infected, et cetera, et cetera. To their credit, Jackson's actually shown in the first game, too. Yeah. Which is cool. That's the thing I said. Oh, I didn't I didn't realize you said it was also shown in the first game that they established it, but they show it in the game in a cutscene. Like, oh, yeah, they're more developed because this the the events of this game are happening four years afterwards.
00:37:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:37:05
Speaker
So things have changed. Everybody's older and wiser question mark. No, not really. As it turns out now. But I mean, the short version is the person who they are looking for is Joel specifically. And through some events, they find Joel and they blow out his fucking leg and then beat him to death with a golf club.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, Abby does after she, after he saves her. Yeah. Yeah. Whoops. So through a lot of the game, you're like, fuck Abby, she killed Joel. Though as we talked about in the first game,
00:37:51
Speaker
Joel's kind of a piece of shit. Yeah. And we talked about what he did at the end of game one, which is save Ellie's life against her wishes because she wanted to help people find a cure, lied about it and then killed all the fireflies there. Yeah. So there's that. Now we're theorizing who would this piss off?
00:38:16
Speaker
Abby. The child of the doctor Joel killed. Yeah. So that's revealed a lot later, but her whole motivation is the doctor who was going to provide the cure and perform the surgery on Ellie is like the first guy. Well, I guess not the first guy. Yeah. He's part of the way you start booking off. Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:41
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah. And that's not shown until much later. So a lot of this game seems to be events happen and then you get to look back, whether playing as Abby or through a flashback saying like, hey, here's how fucked up it actually was.
00:39:00
Speaker
Right. So I mean, the reason they do that that way, I think, is because on that first playthrough, you have the experience and the knowledge of the characters you're playing as. And then they come back and provide context from the other side. So they put you in Ellie's shoes when she's seeing Joel get his brain smashed out by a golf club. But they have no justification for why those other people might do that because Ellie doesn't know. Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
So in that regard, I do like that.
00:39:39
Speaker
But from a gameplay standpoint, it feels a little bit weird to me to play essentially the first half of the game as Ellie up to a certain point of the game. And then when it comes to this cliffhanger, it switches to Abby's stuff and goes back to the past couple of days. So you get a lot of Abby's backstory and the other side of things.
00:40:03
Speaker
Which clarifies it a lot. She's not an innately awful person, per se. You understand her motives. But by then, I think Jim Sterling put it in a good way where they were trying to make me feel bad for things I did like 13 hours ago. It's like when you get you get the ability to pet the one dog who you killed like 10 hours ago, like the dog was trying to kill me. Yeah.
00:40:34
Speaker
It's, I guess the way I'd put it is it's kind of like, it's like anti-war propaganda, basically, or anti-violence propaganda, or empathy propaganda. That is the theme of the game, more or less. It's trying to demonize everybody. Exactly, exactly. Even the dogs, especially the dogs.
00:40:57
Speaker
Uh, and the primorphize everybody a furry version of the last of us. Thank you. Now, I'm going to keep my request just for the multi-players of my local crafting thing. You can get the furry version and you can be the scaly. Anyway, um, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know. I'm pretty sure I don't actually, uh, what's funny. Um, so you described like.
00:41:22
Speaker
the motivation pretty much for these characters their conflicts and whatnot it's kind of telling how easy it is to summarize some of this stuff like these people show up they kill Joel they leave they go back to Seattle Ellie and a friend go chase them down
00:41:45
Speaker
There's a conflict there. They kill a bunch of people. You can say very quickly what happens in this game, for the most part. But it takes a long time to get there. Yeah, there's a lot between A and B that happens in the game, I should say. Yeah, it's definitely an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind.
00:42:12
Speaker
But I got to say, I really do like Ellie's arc in this. Yeah. So just as a reminder for everybody, Ellie's gay. Surprise, surprise. We found that out from the DLC of the first one. Yeah.
00:42:29
Speaker
Her romantic interest is who she got bitten with. She starts a relationship with this character, Dina. Dina's not bitten for clarification. No, no, no. That happened on DLC. Dina is somebody who lives in Jackson and is a friend of hers and goes with her on this journey to avenge Joel and find out what's going on. But it's really cool to see her initial
00:42:59
Speaker
how Ellie's getting into this relationship and how she's cautious about certain things. And then her emotions flare at certain times for like anybody who's, cause she's like what, around 18, 19. She would have been 18. Yeah. Because she was 14 in the first game and this is four years later.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah. So all of those things were great to see and very natural in the progression. And then as events transpire, I should mute my Discord. I didn't hear anything. As events transpire, you see Ellie's character and demeanor kind of change as he kind of descends into this. This is my sole focus to get vengeance. And people comment on it a lot.
00:43:46
Speaker
Like the one friend, Jesse, whose withers like, hey, after we rescue Tommy, we're good to go, right? Like you can squash the rest of this beef and we can get Dina back because she's not feeling well. And she's like, yeah, yeah, that's fine. It's fine. And then it's not. Yeah, it's never enough is one of the, one of the themes there. They did really rip off Sylvanas talking about this, this revenge arc. But that's okay.
00:44:17
Speaker
But I mean, I still think they do it in a really. That's sarcastic. I don't know. Yeah, I just want to reinforce. I do think they do it in a very nice, clean way. Oh, yeah. Again, for Ellie's art, I think that was really nice because like you see her get the shit kicked out of her constantly from just like getting injuries along the way. And she's still like determined to do all these things.
00:44:46
Speaker
But that is her character. She's to their credit, Naughty Dog's credit. They carry that through 100% from the first one. Ellie is never one to give up. No, she doesn't shy from shit. It's just not until part two that not giving up. It was a good trait in the first one. It's a good trait for some of the second one. It turns into a bad trait by the end of it. Not being able to let things go is, you know, part of the downfall, I guess. Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker
You mentioned Dina and the friend that comes up. There's a bunch of drama. Jesse, yeah. And I actually really like Jesse. I have notes here that he's basically, he's soft-spoken, witty, incredibly capable. One thing I love that Naughty Doug does in their storytelling is some of these NPCs, quote unquote, that are out here in the world are like way cooler than the player ever is.
00:45:44
Speaker
Tommy comes up to avenge Joel so that Ellie won't be able to, basically. Just like, all right, I'll take him out before, like, so they won't come up here and endanger themselves. And the game depicts him as just a BA. Like, he murders so many people with his freaking sniper rifle. And I'm just like, he's just a freaking hacker, you know? That's the only explanation.
00:46:12
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's crazy how much you do as like an eight year old girl. And then what this like four year old guy does, it was just off on his own. No backup. I mean, he's not four years old. 40. Oh, 40. 40. I thought he said four year old guy. I'm going to correct Dave on this obvious misspeak that he did. Doesn't know the age of characters is dumb ass. Uh,
00:46:38
Speaker
I'm just imagining a four-year-old Tommy, which is, you know, the name Tommy and fits a four-year-old in the diaper.
00:46:48
Speaker
But yeah, Jesse's also super capable. There's times some of these characters will head off to accomplish a goal. In this case, Jesse goes off to where he thinks Tommy is. And Ellie chooses to go and get information from one of these members that killed Joel, because she thinks that's where Tommy will end up. But maybe in the background, she also just wants to make this person hurt.
00:47:13
Speaker
And Jesse just does it like the next time you see him, he has like he and Tommy are returning because they're super competent and they accomplish it. And. I mean, the game mentions it also in their dialogue. There's a part where Dina and Ellie are talking and they're like, when was the first time you killed somebody and not like an infected, but like you actually had to kill somebody. And Ellie was like, I was like, I think she was 13 or something.
00:47:44
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, I was I was 10, you know, had to had to kill somebody because he was like attacking my mom or whatever. You're just like, oh, geez, that's not problems I had to deal with when I was 10 years old. You know, no.
00:47:58
Speaker
So these, these people are growing up in the apocalypse where they have to be willing to kill people as young teens, as tweens literally. Um, and then they, you know, hope their romantic interests turn out fine and that they can empathize with other people and they don't turn into monsters. Yeah. It's a very real life over. They have to grow up very fast. Um,
00:48:26
Speaker
But at the same time, there's still kids. Yeah, essentially like. Not all of her thinking is the clearest at times, but at the same time, they are adults going out doing adult shit. There's like a switch, right? It's like they can be talking about their relationships and like Dean is pregnant. Gasp.
00:48:51
Speaker
and like all of the sensitivity of that stuff. And then they, you know, if they run across a group of people that they're not friendly with, they immediately start sneaking up and murdering them. Like, there's no, it's just something they have to do.
00:49:10
Speaker
There was a time, I think I was, I was on a horseback with Dina. We're going somewhere. And then like some encounter came up and like we were talking about something, the characters, and then it stops. Like we kill the zombies or whatever. We get back in the horse. She's like, so anyway, where were we? And it continues the fucking conversation. I was like, uh-huh. I liked that. I liked that a lot. It's.
00:49:34
Speaker
This is what the future is. It's very commonplace. It's like this is something we have to deal with now. Let's deal with it. We deal with infected all the time. Sneak up stab zombie. I love like the simultaneous sneaks. Oh, you in the embassy would be like, I'm going to take this guy out. You take the other person out. And it's like the simultaneous. Yeah. Yeah, they have pretty cool. The companions, like we mentioned, are incredibly capable.
00:50:03
Speaker
And I think in that case, as long as no one's seen the second target, no other enemy has sight on the second target, your companion will run up and take him down along with you. Which is awesome, because it could double the speed of clearing. But the companions are very capable.
00:50:23
Speaker
I watched part of Moist Critical's review, which is like, it was very critical of the game more so than I think is necessarily fair. But he literally ran around while he was playing as Ellie in a flashback and just like let Joel shoot things. I was like, that's...
00:50:43
Speaker
a good idea. And I never thought of that. So I just died fighting. I mean, I definitely thought that too. And watching that video, I was like, I've never run around. Yeah. There's another time you have some friends with bow and arrow and they're very capable archers, but they will not fire at enemies that you are near at a risk of hurting you.
00:51:10
Speaker
And I realized that partially through the fight. I was like, Oh man, it feels like I'm just getting like overwhelmed. And then I kind of like jumped back for a second to take a breather and they're just like, all right, now let's take them down. You know, we'll go Legolas style. I'm like, Oh, right. That was me in there blocking all of your shots. Sorry about that. I'm trying to remember the, who's the kid with the apple?
00:51:36
Speaker
on his head with the apple. It was like an app on his head and like a dad with like a bow and arrow. Oh, right. I'm going to Google it actually because I remember quick references with Dave topical.
00:51:52
Speaker
Let's see here. Wow. Okay. There's a lot of news stories. So that's not what I want. Florida, Florida. There's a fair amount of Florida in here. So why are you looking that up? It's not so important as well. Okay. There you go.
00:52:11
Speaker
So as we're at 51 minutes and I want to have this be as long as the other episode, what strengths, major strengths do you think that two had? And then we'll get into what flaws do you think last list part two had?
00:52:26
Speaker
Okay. I mean, we've covered some of the major strengths. I would definitely put mechanically, um, the game part of it where you're, you're doing stuff and you're not sitting back watching a cut scene is it's really strong.
00:52:43
Speaker
Um, I think that, uh, I mean, it's always engaging when I'm playing and you can never like autopilot through a section. You're always two, one to two decisions away from dad or one to two decisions away from completely clearing an encounter. Like some awesome terminator. Um, also to its credit. So one graphically, everything looks fucking gorgeous. Oh yeah. So in that form and.
00:53:14
Speaker
every scene. But to that end, if I'm exploring an area, it feels very natural. It's not like, oh, I've come to an encounter space. It's not a separate entity. Everything is part of the world. And even when I'm exploring,
00:53:31
Speaker
It's half. It feels natural for where I'm going to explore and half. I don't know where the fuck I'm going. So that felt really good, too, because it's really easy to make a linear game where it's like, go down this hallway over to the door. That's what you have to do. Or like, here's the obvious indicators. But again, it felt good to naturally explore something and then find it and be like, oh, of course it would be here.
00:53:58
Speaker
There is sometimes I wish that there were a few points where I wish I could hold a button and be like, quest objective this way. Or just point at your camera a little bit. Like, hey dumbass, look up. I'm like, right, right, right. If we were going to mention things that wasn't super hot on, the hint system was one of them. Because it would kick the prerequisite for the hint system is you have not reached a certain area by this time. It's easier running around for like three minutes. It's like, we should give this guy a hint.
00:54:26
Speaker
Yeah, but see, I was looting for those three minutes. I was purposefully not going forward. And then I roughly knew where I needed to end up, but I had dedicated no time to trying to solve that puzzle yet. So I was like, I kind of want to just do this, but that stupid indicator in the corner of my screen that pops up every time I go to some other interactable and then back is too obnoxious for me to leave here. So I'm going to hit the button and I'll hear that internal monologue, you know, um,
00:54:52
Speaker
Kind of bothered me. A little bit. A little bit of said about that one. Well, it happened like twice, twice in 20 hours, but still also a minor gripe. Opening drawers was like one of the longer animations. There's never anything in the fucking drawer. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of dumb. I don't get that. Actually, again, super minor. I just remember it sticking out of my mind and like open another drawer. I'm like, OK.
00:55:22
Speaker
Okay, and then moving on. It's the kind of thing I can I can understand from a design perspective, but not like an implementation perspective, not like a play test perspective. Because from a design perspective, maybe you're like, make some doors empty. So people never know whether they're going to get something or they won't get something. But then someone must have played the game and they're like, half of your drawers are broken because there's nothing in them. And there's no reason for me to waste time opening this nonsense, right?
00:55:50
Speaker
Yeah, I get it. Part of it is like it's a desolate world. And obviously there wouldn't be some fucking supplies everywhere. It's kind of ridiculous. Right. But for part of the loot system, it was cool to be like, oh, there's pills in the bathroom. That's where there were a lot of the time. Oh, which makes fucking sense. Yeah. So I liked when they did things like that. Oh, there's alcohol in the places that would have alcohol, like a bar or like a bathroom behind a mirror, that type of stuff. Kindergarten.
00:56:19
Speaker
Teach your drinks, you know? I had a note for this that I removed, but I was going to say that it's a better post-apocalyptic world than Fallout. I saw you type it and then erase it. I was like, I don't want to always mention Fallout, but it's true. Everything you mentioned there, the world feels like it's aged 20 years. The only thing that's real unforgivable is gasoline doesn't stay.
00:56:48
Speaker
usable that long. So that's unfortunate. 0 out of 10. 0 out of 10, yeah. Spoilers for my final review. All right. How about one more strength before we get into some late bashing? I think for the most part, the characters are really well written, just as they were in the first.
00:57:15
Speaker
They make you care about characters that maybe don't even have all that much screen time by just having like a couple interactions and seeing how they relate to the characters that you do care more about. More on Ellie's side, I would say, than Abby's.
00:57:32
Speaker
Agreed. Abby's feels more contrived. But on Ellie's side, like Jesse, I literally mentioned the pregnancy and then we're never going to explain it. And that's just going to be how the podcast goes. But like Jesse is a great character from just a couple of interactions where like Ellie's talking to him about how Joel thought that she liked Jesse and Ellie's like, but you're not my type.
00:58:00
Speaker
And Jesse's like, you mean you don't like Asians? And Ellie's just like, yep, that's exactly right. But the thing is, he knows that her and Dina are dating or involved at this point. So it's like a tongue in cheek joke. But it's a really nice, friendly back and forth, right?
00:58:25
Speaker
Yeah. Another thing, like when Dina tells Ellie that she's pregnant, she's like, don't worry, it's not yours. Yeah. And it's like, no shit. But again, it's a great fucking friendly jib, you know? Mm hmm.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's pronounced Gibb. I think Studio Ghibli. Studio Giblets. Or any of the flashbacks where Ellie is like a younger child and they're having like bonding experiences with Tommy or Joel. Awesome. Freaking awesome gameplay and it's inherited straight from the first game.
00:59:04
Speaker
And by that I mean, the first game was all building relationships and establishing it. And there's some of that in the second game in part two. And I just, I love the Sniping segment. I love the dinosaur park. The dinosaur park was probably one of the best parts of that game for me. That was easily the strongest flashback moment. I would agree. There's so much in it. Hello, Joel, it's for you. It's so good.
00:59:30
Speaker
Oh, that one just hit me in the feels. I know. Yeah, it's like it's right there. It's just just under the surface. And it's the crazy thing to me. This actually leads into a downside for the transition. My favorite parts of the game, like, didn't have any gameplay attached to them as far as what's impact or what I'm going to remember.
00:59:52
Speaker
Some of them, some, there were some cool touchstones or like set piece things that involved gameplay, but the standout best moments of the game were the character interactions. And that made me almost resent the gameplay for spreading them apart toward the end, I would say, when the game gets 20 plus hours. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
01:00:22
Speaker
We're going to go past an hour, but I need to talk about a couple of things. No, that's fair. I mean, honestly, if this is part two, then it needs to be twice as long. So we should have three hours. Buckle in, kids. Buckle in. So I didn't dislike playing as Abby by any means. Um, it was cool to get some other story stuff in there.
01:00:46
Speaker
But there were so many characters that they had in this game. Well, they had some nice interactions and stuff. You're like, oh, that's cool. I did not give a fuck about them. And even if they had moments to be like, hey, here's why you're going to care about so and so.
01:01:02
Speaker
Nope, not for me, right? So like when Yara died, didn't really faze me that much. When Manny died, didn't really faze me that much. And they also kind of just go right by that shit too. I mean, I think that's the better way to handle Manny's death. Yara's death is more dramatic. Yara's death should be more dramatic and as far as a child soldier almost basically.
01:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, and she has an alive sibling still. Yeah. Manny's I just want to say just real quick for Manny's. Yeah, he just gets like shot in the eye and Abby closes the door right behind him. Tommy kills Manny and it's just like flash kill. They do that with Manny. They do that with Jesse. Where they just die in a few frames and then it's just like that person's freaking dead. I actually appreciate that.
01:01:59
Speaker
Cause it's almost the saving private Ryan sort of death comes fast. So appreciate life. Yeah. Cause usually like that happens, but stuff's still going on. It's not like, Oh, the person died. Let's everybody take a minute. It's like, I'm being shot at. So people are fucking hauling ass. Um, so to that end, yeah. But at the same time,
01:02:24
Speaker
Like so many other people along like, let's say the Abby team die. I'm like, okay. Yeah. I didn't necessarily like them as characters. I wasn't as invested in them for whatever reason. So.
01:02:37
Speaker
Essentially, Abby's gameplay, it's still like the same type of gameplay. They didn't change anything mechanically. So it kind of felt longish to a point. But then it seemed like, oh, we're meeting back up at the same point in the timeline. That's going to resolve. Then the game's going to end. So when I messaged Jake and Justin on Discord saying, oh, I'm almost done at that point in time, I believe that to be true. Right. But herein lies what Jake and I found out is
01:03:06
Speaker
After that sequence resolves, I'm like, oh, they're going to roll credits. And this is a fine place to end. Yeah. And this would be a fine place to end like five more times. Yeah. So like they keep adding things on to it. I don't think any of it is explicitly bad or necessarily superfluous or something superfluous, excessive. I think it all fits in the narrative that they wanted to deliver.
01:03:36
Speaker
It's just at that point, I was like, Oh, it could end here. You still have your met a good message. Yeah. Um, but I think they wanted to draw it out for the sake of you continue to see Ellie's degradation of revenge and how she changes and kind of pushes away everything else. That's not that it keeps going through the strongest, but pushing through like, this is my only goal. Yeah. So to that end, I did like that.
01:04:06
Speaker
Boy, I was just like, holy fuck, it's going to end. I agree entirely. I don't think it just did not need to be that long. And so the tail end of the game starts to feel a little bit contrived post. So there's the major conflict where it's like, is Abby going to kill Ellie? And then it goes into the Abby flashback for like 14 hours. It's not 14, but it is like six. It's a long time.
01:04:36
Speaker
And after that's resolved, and they're like, all right, we're not going to immediately kill each other. Because Ellie can't because Abby chooses not to.
01:04:50
Speaker
they have so many ways to tie it up but instead they're like here's our main plot line and that is revenge ruins people so in order to get to the end we're gonna wrap the setting and the plot and the events and everything around this like it's a freaking soap opera to arrive at the end and it becomes less and less believable like the last act of the game just seems like
01:05:16
Speaker
Someone had a list of plot notes and they're like, you have to hit this. Ellie has to save them. Ellie has to refuse to let them go. They have to fight in the water. Like that felt very Metal Gear Solid to me. I don't know why it was. It was a hundred percent like that. The fight at the top of the, um, the structure from MGS four. Yeah.
01:05:38
Speaker
if one of them would have yelled liquid that would have just gestures around them liquid yeah it it feels kind of nitpicky to like for a game that's that's so good to call this out but
01:05:58
Speaker
And it feels bad to say this entire locale of California and all of the effort you put in all of these assets. I didn't need this in the game. And I think the game might've been better without it.
01:06:10
Speaker
that feels really petty you know especially since we play for video game we pay for video games yeah but well it's not like we're bashing it for that it's just a constructive criticism on airport yeah um i'm just saying they suck that's all i'm saying because they made what they made a mistake
01:06:31
Speaker
It's just a direction that we would have possibly changed it. And I think some of the story could have been shortened or rearranged a little bit to make it a little more concise and directed. But. I would say I did like the the humanizing of the Abbey fire team. I missed a lot of the whole Ellie kills a bunch of people. You go back and you meet the other people from another character's perspective or their allies is the TLDR. But
01:07:01
Speaker
I think I think it's a cool storytelling segment, if nothing else, because other people don't do this. Right. Like if you're playing a survival game or a first person shooter, you don't see the other side. Like in Fallout. Legitimately bandits. These guys are bandits. Yeah, sometimes they have funny dialogue, but they're always bandits because we don't want you thinking about killing them.
01:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's not the point of the game is to make you have feels. It's to explore and survive in a wasteland, you know? They're loop pinatas. I like that term. And the last of us doesn't want you to see people as loop pinatas.
01:07:41
Speaker
They literally named like everybody, by the way, whenever you kill someone, they're all like, Max, Sally. I think they overdid that a little bit. They did. They did. So some of the points that I did like that they had in there because it made me uncomfortable. There are times a lot of times you have like mashed the square button to kind of get out of a situation or if you're like grappling with somebody. But this happens a lot of the brutality. Yeah. Because it'd be like, hey,
01:08:11
Speaker
At this point, you're playing as Abby, fighting Ellie, and you need to press square to choke her out and like, I'm not cool with this. Or you had to do it to stab a knife into Abby or to beat somebody to death. So those moments felt uncomfortable. But it's funny. But it's good in that way because it was supposed to be.
01:08:36
Speaker
I made a Saving Private Ryan reference earlier. Yeah. And that exact same scene is duplicated where you mentioned the knife stabbing in with the brutality button press. That same thing happens in this game. I didn't realize you were so interactive with the Saving Private Ryan movie. Yeah, I edit the wiki pretty frequently.
01:08:57
Speaker
Jake's has PS controller while watching the movie. Yeah. Um, they don't over it. I think we've reached a good place with them.
01:09:12
Speaker
quick time events where they're not, they're not crazy. Yeah. None of them were obnoxious, which is, there you go. You've accomplished it. You've removed enough quick time events that I'm now okay with them. And a lot of times they were in a heated moment too, where it wasn't like, if you mess this up, you fuck up and die. It was more of a,
01:09:34
Speaker
There are one thing I really liked is when Abby first runs into Joel and Tommy because she's running from a horde of zombies, which initially there's like two and you're like, I'm going to kill one. And then she's like, I should run. And I was like, I think we can shoot one or two more. And then there's like 30 zombies and it's like the time should sprint. So your mass sprinting, you get to this building. There's this, you know, chain link, not chain link.
01:09:59
Speaker
standard fence, metal fence. And you're like running alongside of it and like the zombies are just pressing up against it and pushing it down. And that felt very tense. I think that would try and squeeze through. So like they do a good job of for those events, making you feel like
01:10:17
Speaker
the actions here, you got to react to survive. Yeah, the fence is like it's it's basically the trope of like the bridge falling down behind you as you run. Yeah, modified a bit and put into a different escape sequence. But those escape sequence are all like really good. It's like the movie 2012, you know, it's yeah. Mm hmm.
01:10:39
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean, overall, I think the game is, I do think it's pretty solid. I think if you played the first one and you liked it, you've probably already played this one. If not, then you just should. And I don't know why you're listening to me right now. Um, I could understand why you're listening today, but I don't know why you're listening to me. Um, but, uh, if you didn't like the first one, I don't know what's wrong with you.
01:11:06
Speaker
If you didn't like the first one at me, son, let's, let's talk about it. Get you into therapy. Um, but they are, they are very similar in kind of the field strip, uh, slight improvements in gameplay. I can understand the 94 on Metacritic. Personally, I would put it like high eighties. I think there's a couple of things that we mentioned we went over. I don't think it's one of the best games ever made.
01:11:36
Speaker
Here's here's the real trick because I know you want us to wrap up. I mean, how do I keep quietly gesturing with my hands? Yeah, you're just like I'm in a queue right now for a game. What are you going to stop this? Last of us, one or two, part one or part two, which is the better game?
01:11:55
Speaker
So if it's a standalone story, one is a better game entirely because it was kind of the first in its genre or space to have a story that good. And a lot of that story is done through show not tell. Because they never explicitly say anything, but you infer these feelings, you get involved in the characters, you get invested in the story. So when things happen, again, I replayed this game four years after the fact, still cried like twice.
01:12:25
Speaker
Whereas Last of Us 2 didn't. And they're also saying a lot of things like, hey, here's a flashback to make you feel something, or Careco explicitly says something, which is kind of on the nose. And again, still great story and great writing, but it doesn't have that same impact. 2 definitely has better graphics and gameplay, and it's still a great story, but it's hard to be
01:12:58
Speaker
It's like if they made a shadow of the Colossus too, right? Right. More shadows. The first one set ground for where it was. And it's going to be hard to top for that reason. But SQL is still really good. Yep.
01:13:12
Speaker
I agree with that. I think this is, this is more iterative than innovative, uh, for the last of us, but it gives us, um, more of a conclusion to the story, at least the conclusion to a lot of the plot points. Yeah. If it really doesn't seem that's all I'm saying. I kind of feel like they would based off how to ends, but I'm not really sure. They could, they could do either way. Honestly, they could. I hope they don't though. Yeah. I think, I think this would be a fair place to end it.
01:13:43
Speaker
All right. Thank you guys for listening. If you'd like to give us direct feedback and you want to use some adult swear words, not normally allowed on Christian servers, you can do that at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. Or if you would like to give censored feedback, you could do so on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:14:12
Speaker
Talking away I don't know what I'm to say, I'll say it anyway Today's another day to find you Shining away And I'll be coming for you, okay
01:15:02
Speaker
In a day or two Needless to say I'm odds and ends But I'll be stumbling away This loneliness is okay Say after me
01:15:38
Speaker
Take.