Giant Bomb Presents: The Last of Us Part II Spoilercast

So what is “that part”?

@rimjaynor: Commenting before even watching the video...

Why no Bakalar on this?

Abby was right Joel had it coming

@ro: He was on a boat. He mentioned on the Beastcast he was bummed to miss it.

Tommy ruined a lesbian’s happiness so bad you’d think he was voiced by Otis from the WWE

Commenting my thoughts before the cast. I feel like the game completely undermined itself in the Santa Barbara section. Ellie's section is the worst, Abby's is the best, but everything from the Island raid to the very end I didn't like. Felt too bombastic for me. I at least had some sympathy for Abby remaining, unlike Ellie who they completely drive into the dirt.

TLDR: Most of the game is excellent, most of the story is pretty eh.

@awkwardl0ser: Honestly that is my reply to the whole “deification’ of Joel that is happening on a certain subreddit. Joel’s past was always going to catch up with him. I personally didn’t really want to see it but from a narrative point of view it made sense.

I just finished listening. My feelings mirror theyre thoughts pretty much. Very good game at parts but pacing issues and some inconsistent story choices left me feeling a bit dissapointed.

any chance for a review too ?

ONLY an hour and a half?? Rob Zachny is shaking his head right now.

I think Abby Russell hit the nail right on the head for me. Both storylines are essentially the same, love triangle, dealing with loss. You don't really need both of the storylines. Unlike her though I think I like Abby's storyline better purely because of Lev and Yara. I wish the game was just about Abby and her relation with the WLF and Seraphites. I don't need this heavy handed revenge story, that part of the game did not affect me, it was too heavy handed and obvious. I also felt like they killed off way to many people, it began to feel empty.

thanks for this yall! i can tell this is going to be my personal witcher 3 vis-a-vis this site (deposing the former xcom 2), but that's the fun of all this. a lot of things the gb crew saw as inherent negatives i saw as positives, but so it goes!

one thing i've noticed is a lot of people express something akin to, "what is this game trying to say?" or "i get it, violence and revenge are bad."

totally fair- i'd agree the game is heavy-handed and unsophisticated with it's relationship to capital 'V' violence.

but with some distance from it (and speaking personally) i think the overall message i extracted from it is "loving people is hard." probably an oversimplification, but that's what i got- and that seems to be main axiom that the joel/ellie or abby/owen relationships explore, and arguably those relationships are the absolute keystone of the whole game, plot be damned.

violence commentary is just less interesting to me, because i think most people understand violence begets violence.

edit: also i don't think they bring up the museum sequence? that thing floored me from start to finish and is a personal highlight.

Man, I never picked up on the 'literal' 'eye for an eye' equivocation!

Our Abby did a really good critique on this game in this. I agree with most of her points.

@ro: rich man Bakalar was on a boat at the time (a paddle boat but still...)

There are some fascinating discussions being had about this game, but this wasn't one of them unfortunately.

I kind of expected that there was going to be a bit more of a structured discussion to things? Having listened to one or two other spoilercasts on the game (Kinda Funny being especially good, VICE, yikes), personal opinions aside about the game and it's perfectly okay to dislike and criticise it, this was kind of a mess to listen to.

Abby is starting to more like Diana Ross as time goes on :ben

Iunno I thought this podcast was about 4 and a half hours too short.

In all seriousness a fun and concise discussion for such a long game. I enjoyed a lot of smaller beats of the story well enough but the gameplay was really the star for me too, felt like they really refined the tools and encounter structure of the first game and made both the stealth and action blend together well, even moment to moment.

@tempa777: Not sure if I’ll have time to watch it but I’m curious

I gotta hurry and finish this seemingly never-ending game.

Does Ellie play “Take On Me“ in this game? That tears it. She is a monster.

So these zombies can live indefinitely without food and water, shuffling in the dark for 30 years? Not really explained.

Also the boat at the game clear title screen is obviously Catalina so they clearly made it to the island.

For those unsatisfied, I guess, by the structure of this, the existence of a 6 hour spoilercast that breaks down the game into (what I can only assume to be - haven't listened to the Vice one) fairly minute detail, this didn't need to be that for me. Given who was on the Vice one (I just looked it up...), and when you have the people on there and the outlets represented on that one, as well as discussion of not only the game, but academic-style articles on the game, it would feel redundant for GB to try to replicate that kind of piece. Last of Us 2 is the sort of game that, for a lot of people, once finished people want to talk about their feelings of it and their interpretations of some of the bigger story events - and that's what this was, and I feel all it needed to be: The 4 staff members of GB that have finished TLoU2 getting out what they thought about it and speaking about specifics without spoiling things for others.

Could there have been more? Sure! But given all of the streams and everything else GB is doing while the lockdown is going on (and the other pieces on TLoU 2 that are already on the internet) asking them to take more time out of their non-streaming/non-'work' time for a larger, more 'critical' piece seems a little unfair to me - particularly as I'm not sure when this was recorded, so perhaps the hour-and-a-half window was all they had.

I will say as well, as someone who records a podcast remotely, trying to talk about anything, let alone something you feel a sense of passion about, without 'talking over people' etc. is incredibly difficult to do. And I do also feel that there have been dismissals of 'certain' perspectives in the gaming space for such a long period of time, so to criticise/take the piss out of Abby for being 'vocal' on this thing is also maybe a little unfair in some ways.

Regarding the game and some of the things mentioned in the podcast/video:

Lastly, @draugen, I'm totally with you on your view of the end of the first game and how it's explored further in 2! In retrospect, I wish the game did more with that idea in some way, be it through Tommy, Joel, or some other way.

@steelknight2000: I am yet to see any zombie fiction adequately explain where zombies get the neccesary energy to survive from. Especially the ones who are so ruined they can clearly not metabolise anything.

i can't dislike this game because the farm section was so stellar. it really got me

So it sure sounds like everyone on this podcast would sacrifice their child for humanity?

The Discourse has ruined any conversation about this game for like three years at least, let's all take a break & come back when we can all agree that it's a very good game and most of what people are complaining about doesn't ultimately matter that much.

For those interested to hear about the game and its ending from the director himself, Kinda Funny did a Last of Us 2 Spoilercast w/ Neil Druckmann, Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker on Youtube. I found it a little helpful to hear some of Druckman's intentions for the game. I dont know if plugging other content on GB content is a no no. Im not even a big Kinda Funny fan but hearing directly from the horse's mouth helped me understand what exactly this game was supposed to be going for instead of what I took out of it.

As far as this spoilercast, it was interesting to hear everyones takes on the game. The takeaway is that I dont think this game was fully successful at giving the player the intended effect through playing the game. Seems like what the staff left with after playing the game is kinda all over the place, which maybe shows that this game's story was a little too complicated and not as clear with it's messaging.

The game was fine but I agree with Vinny that I think TLOU 1 had a clearer message and effect on the player than TLOU2 and is the better game storywise. I thought this game was fine but it definitely isnt one of my favorite games like the first one was. After finishing it, I started it again, thinking it would flesh out the story a little more, but after maybe two hours in I stopped and never looked back. Watched that Kinda Funny Spoilercast and haven't thought about it since.

@eazyrider1: Agreed.

The Last of Us Part II: Down the Morality Poophole

A major problem for me with this game is that it didn't surprise me at all, in a weird way? Idk, this felt like doubling-down on a point that had already been made.

Why note wait to record this until Jeff was available? This was tough to listen to.

@tom_omb: I also dismissed fuck boy Owen, who gets a girl preggers while also working to get back with his ex and then cheating on his preggers girlfriend. Owen sucked, Jesse ruled.

All and all I'm in the Abby camp that the entire game is kinda cheese filled. I liked the Abby(video game) section more, but the best parts are the the down time between the big "moments".

I could never fully get on board with the Abby redemption arc. She mentioned early on in her section that the murder of those Seraphite kids that threw rocks was justified, thus breaking the truce. Anyone that can justify the murder of kids because they 'trespassed' on territory is irredeemable for me (at least without addressing it directly). There is also the whole, she tortured Joel for hours, part that can't be redeemed. There is no redemption for people like that, and there shouldn't be. And unlike the game's writers and characters, I don't buy that blind hate is something that most people feel after tragedy.

There are so many problematic things going on in this game with the Seraphites, WLF, and Jackson. Cycles of violence are always a byproduct of a larger issue, they are never the reason for the conflict. The side characters like Jesse, Manny, and Nora either perpetuate ethnic and cultural stereotypes or have absolutely no agency in the world. Symbols have meaning, whether it's intentional or not.

Also, the fact that the face of the company and one of the voice actors (no surprise as to who) are essentially painting all criticism of the game as toxic vitriolic or undeserved criticism is not a good look.

I enjoyed the podcast.

I would have to disagree with Abby on this game not being a page turner because she saw it coming; things can be predictable and you can see it coming from a mile away and still be executed well. By the end I almost feel like the emotional manipulation was meta at the beginning. Like the day 1 Abby stuff was so freaking cheesy and manipulative that I don't think anyone took it at face value. But by the end Abby has had the rug pulled from underneath her so many times and given Ellie a 3rd chance at life at that point that I was downright disgusted by Ellie's actions towards the end.