The Last of Us - it's the time of the season

good call, definitely reminds me of the Pittsburgh chapter

That 2nd shot is the Stockton Tunnel:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/2548285.jpg

i started this over the weekend, on hard. i like it! so far bullets are so scarce that it's not even worth starting a firefight, stealthily strangling everybody one at a time (ie Batman-style) seems like the way to go.

it reminds me of I Am Alive, except with a giant budget.

Fans of this game will probably want to see The Girl With All The Gifts

It's essentially the same plot with a v good twist to the setup.

Looks interesting for sure

Sold out already, but loved this poster commissioned for "Outbreak Day" (their attempt to keep pushing this franchise?)
https://mondotees.com/blogs/news/celebrating-the-last-of-us-for-outbreak-day-2016

playing this on grounded difficulty is so stressful, i've made it pretty far tho. the hanging upside down in the trap and shooting part took like 30 tries

so many empty drawers

not sure this game needed a sequel at all but the trailer for part 2 is certainly atmospheric:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqU58Q72acA

Ellie will be the lead playable character in The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog has revealed in a panel session at this year's PlayStation Experience.

Neil Druckmann took to the stage with Troy Baker - who plays the returning Joel, the main playable character in the first game - and Ashley Johnson, who plays Ellie.

Details were understandably thin for a game that's not due out for a while - and the trailer was intended for next year's E3 but Naughty Dog elected to show it at this year's PlayStation Experience - but Druckmann did give a broad view of what to expect.

The story is set five years after the first game, with Ellie now 19 years old. "If the first game, the theme was the love between these two characters... This story's the counter of that," said Druckmann. "It's about hate."

The Last of Us' original end drew lots of praise, leading many fans to believe the story of Joel and Ellie did not need a sequel - something Druckmann addressed.

"So much thought went into this - I know there's trepidation about going back to these characters. We feel that as well. No-one loves these characters more than we do, and we wouldn't do it if we didn't have the right idea. I had ideas with different characters and it didn't feel right. The Last of Us is about these two characters. All I ask is that fans of the first one put some faith in us - we're going to do right by you."

Calling it now that Joel is a ghost and Ellie is avenging his killers

spoiler alert ffs

i still haven't played this game but am so looking forward too. i may have to buy a PS4. can you play Demon's Souls on it?

damn it zappi, i hate that you're probably right

i'm still 100% behind the hype ofc

didn't need a sequel. will still play it. pls do not fuck this up naughty gods. get hype

I just started playing this and:

it's never scary but it is frequently intense.

I will tell you that I let out an entirely undignified yelp once when I was ambushed by a runner.

I wish I could play it for the first time again

leee are you talking about the sequel?

sequel isnt out yet

I'm playing the original! (I've taken a long break from console gaming.)

And without checking any advice, I started my game on Normal difficulty and am currently at the sewers (so about halfway through the game?), don't quite feel like starting over. ESPECIALLY don't want to retry the hotel bit with the bloater, which was all I could do not to completely freak out (even though I ended up just sprinting to the exit) (I'm so bad at this game!).

Just finished this. Really reminds me of Citizen Kane.

lol

was this the game responsible for the current generation of Dad Games

what are the current Dad Games?

so many empty drawers

lol.

OK so the Winter section was a bear, I'm amazed that I was able to make any progress during the whiteout sequences because I was scared out of my wits and was just running to avoid gunfire without any clue about where to go -- one of the times I was thankful for how linear the game is. But after that the difficulty started to melt away, in part because some of the stages became, with all my dying, a de facto training ground for me, which made the last two stages a lot more tractable (and dare I say easy?).

Except the hospital stuff was still hard! But it also forced me to use smoke bombs in a somewhat strategic manner.

I never got to actually use the flamethrower!

xp witcher 3, god of war, theres several other big ones from the past few years but im blanking on em at the moment.

but yes, this was totally the game responsible (+ Telltale's Walking Dead S1 which was around the same time iirc)

One thing that annoys me though about the game is the compulsive scavenging mindset it forces on you, because of which I missed the giraffe petting part.

Oh and BTW, Tommy is IMO definitely modeled after a lesser Baldwin brother (Stephen?).

always seemed more like sawyer from lost to me

For Part II, it'd be great if Ellie knows how to swim, it'd be even better if she only knows how to dog paddle.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-last-of-us-and-the-post-apocalypse-by-darran-anderson

Great longform article on post-apocalysm by the Invisible Cities author.

i played the first 3 hours or so of the remastered ps4 version and just wasn't into it at all. but does it get better after that? i'm assuming that i continue helping the girl get to wherever i was supposed to be taking her, but then something happens and i end up having to be her guardian more or less full time, and i don't want that and neither does she, but then we go through some shit together and we slowly bond while learning that in this terrible land of zombies and death and terror, the capability to love and be loved is ultimately the thing worth living for? meanwhile solving little puzzles, moving ladders around, and judiciously saving ammo and going through lots of cutscenes where the little girl is moody and hates me but is slowly starting to respect me? and at one point i get really injured (or maybe just straight up die) and end up playing as her for a significant portion of the game? i'm just making all this up and would like to be very wrong and surprised. so many people adore this game, so it makes me think that there must be something more to it.

That was a really assholey way to ask that question, sorry. I guess it’s better phrased as something like “is this more of a really well polished action-adventure game, or is there something really innovative about it that I haven’t seen yet?” That sounds assholey too. Maybe I’m just an assholey. It didn’t help that I played through the first hours of the game with someone who was adamant that it was the greatest game of all time, so I was naturally kind of inclined to pick it apart (internally) as I went, which is kind of an assholey tendency, I know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTSGp4UdEvQ
in my mind your two posts were spoken aloud in this voice
but tbf and answer your question, no, there isn't really a great innovation you're looking for. it's just really exceptionally well done

good article brocc

xp
your plot guesses are pretty much otm haha
as you suspect it's a well polished action adventure game
I remember someone (on here?) calling these sort of games "content tourism", being led thru a linear path of set pieces while giving you the illusion of agency

xpost Weird, that Family Guy clip briefly was replaced by a Last of Us 2 trailer for me, then reverted back to Family Guy after I reloaded the page. .

hahaha, uuugh, i'm sorry. i would prefer that my posts be read in the voice of the crystal river boy on the right from 3:35 on in this video, but i brought that on myself.

i'm sure we've already discussed stories + videogames before, but i can't find it at the moment. in the spirit of being the ilx i want to see, i'll start a thread on it

As someone who feels that story is not inherently but in actuality an afterthought (at best) in most videogames, I was surprised to find myself getting a lil emotional during the opening portion of this game.

(I never got too far beyond that, though.)

They've made a point of emphasizing that story is an important context for the apparent ultra violence of the sequel. Likewise, as discussed elsewhere, there is apparently more emotional payoff to Uncharted 4 if you've played the previous games. Most games and esp. game series have mere scenarios or setups for action, or boast pretty elliptical/confusing/optional narratives. But as graphics get better and better and more and more "realistic," and games intersect and overlap with the qualities of feature films - and as feature films become more and more like video games - I assume there will be a gradual but still ever greater emphasis on story.

Has there been a high profile (or low profile) collaboration with a game developer and A+ author or screenwriter yet?

Pretty sure whoever did this has won at least a Pulitzer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhG9D9UO7c

i'd say there was plenty of context for the ultra-violence in the first game (at least, beyond the first Uncharted, for instance). the second one looks even more violent, but that world has already been established as pretty sickening so i wasn't that taken aback. Plus The Walking Dead has been on for like eight seasons now and has really normalized this kind of thing, for better or worse

if anyone cares to join me on the story tangent:

storytelling, plots, and narratives + videogames

http://www.thelastofus.playstation.com/outbreakday#sf198111575

Damn this sounds like a Plastikman track (spoiler-free!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn50VaRva0s

Not TLOU2 news, but still:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ae2ug8/the_last_of_us_in_a_nutshell/

this is probably a good thread to say that i didn't realize until last week that life is strange 2 came out!