The girl whispering "Should we go around them?" at 3:18, and the guy pleading for his life at the end makes me think pacifism will be an option. Probably not for all of the game, but hopefully a good deal of the situations.Originally Posted by Eldron
Looks scripted to hell tbh :/ Like, one of those "here's the exact path we want you to take" type of a game. Hopefully i am wrong.
Tho, the player is kind of a dick which... I like. When was the last time your protagonist was not likable ? that's Kind of cool and can totally work if they make him interesting. Which, again, has lots of potential with the "nicer" girl sidekick.
Yeah, I wanna see how that scene plays out if the player attempts taking a stealthier tack. The AI responses looked too spot-on to allow for random variation, but if it's dynamic responses to the situation, colour me impressed.
There's plenty of gamed protagonists that I don't find particularly likeable, but unfortunately the game developers seem to think that they're the coolest people ever. Any protagonist that is all about cool quips in between bouts of hyper-violence tend to turn me off. Truly conflicted, flawed protagonists are much more interesting... and rarely done well.
What about Alan Wake? For basically all of the first game he's a self-absorbed unlikeable douchebag (who very rarely gives out quips when he's not bantering with Barry) and sometimes you just wanna punch him. He's a little better in American Nightmare though.
Yeah, but he's not even a little bit relatable, is he? He's a self-important douche with no character development at all, at least not from what I've seen so far.
A flawed character who does the wrong things because he's human is infinitely more interesting than a protagonist like Alan, who's written to be a two-dimensional asshole who perfunctorily calls out scenery in front of him ('It was me, on the TV' - WELL GEE WILLIKERS I GUESS I DIDN'T NOTICE WHEN IT HALF BLINDED ME AS IT TURNED ON BY ITSELF), pocking bullet-holes in shadows after freezing them with the ungodly bright beam of his supernatural torchlight.
Last edited by Sulphur; 6th Jun 2012 at 03:44.
Since The Last of Us is a Naughty Dog title, I'm actually not too worried about the writing/characterisation. Nathan Drake is by no means a perfect example of a well-written character (there's a lot there that can be criticised), but on the whole I really enjoyed how the writing and performance came together with him. The Naughty Dog guys strike me as pretty smart in what they do, so for now I'm definitely not pre-judging the game or its characters based on E3 footage.
I don't know, the fact that it is Naughty Dog is what has me concerned. Yeah, Nathan Drake is a fun character in the cutscenes but during gameplay he's a homicidal maniac, racking up hundreds of kills on his merry mission for the McGuffin. He's pretty much the epitome of the
Now, from what little I've seen of The Last Of Us does seem to indicate they are aware of how this new character may come across but it's going to take more than the occasional objection from the kid to iron out any narrative/gameplay dissonance if he's going to be as psycho as he is in that E3 video. I've seen a lot of people defending it as the whole 'what you will do to survive' thing but I don't see how that works here. He was the completely unnecessary aggressor and brought the kid right into the middle of a face-off between half a dozen armed men*, to the point where the kid had to get involved too. And for what?
I've got no problem with unlikeable characters, it's the reason I love the Kane & Lynch games despite their ropey gunplay, but, as others have mentioned, it's a tricky thing to get right and I have my concerns here. I really want to be proven wrong though because it looks visually stunning, very atmospheric and the combat/violence has the right tone for the material. Stealth and diplomacy options would be great but player choice is not something I associate with Naughty Dog and I can't see them creating alternate character arcs, with all their meticulous cutscenes, for stealthy vs full psycho.
* The characterisation and design of these guys is pretty lazy and gutless too. They're all beefy and tough looking, swearing profusely - which is pretty much Naughty Dog shorthand for 'these guys are not good, don't feel too bad about killing them'.
I see where you're coming from, Angel Dust, but in Uncharted this didn't bother me (much) - for me, Nathan Drake is very much in the vein of an Indiana Jones, and I'm not overly concerned about Indy killing Nazis and other bad guys in the movies, as long as it's a means to an end.
To borrow a term dethtoll used recently, what bothers me is the sort of dudebro violence that is mindlessly, gleefully sadistic and stripped of any context, violence where you're supposed to sit there and think, "Isn't it cool how that guys head came apart?" Drake works for me because of the type of narrative he's in and because he's not enjoying violence and brutality for their own sake. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer the Uncharted games to offer more/better stealth gameplay and alternatives to killing, but IMO there's a big difference between Uncharted's violence and the kind of violence (and characterisation) you get in Army of Two.
I'd definitely not want the protagonist of The Last of Us to be a post-apocalyptic Nathan Drake, but what I'd trust Naughty Dog with is understanding what sort of narrative they're telling and what this means for characterisation etc. Player choice could come into this, but it doesn't need to - I didn't find Shadow of the Colossus any less intriguing and poignant for not giving me the choice of 'talking to the monsters', so to speak. What I do mind is games trying to force a particular attitude towards what the player character does onto me.
One of the most violent games of recent years, God of War 3, did this pretty niftily IMO - obviously there's the "Cool, those were the centaur's guts flying across the screen!" element there, but the game primarily made me think that Kratos, through his actions, is becoming more and more irredeemable, to the extent where I felt more and more that my character was as much as a villain as those he fights (and sometimes more). And I don't think I'm reading this into the game - I do think the game at the very least allows for this reading.
Given that A) that's Sam Lake's style and B) so's Stephen King's and C) AW is very much a love letter to (aside from Twin Peaks) 1990s Stephen King miniseries on ABC, this is pretty much to be expected.
Well this talk with the developers, specifically the part near the end where he mentions you can stealth that whole E3 sequence, pretty much alleviates any concerns I had.
Better get myself a PS3 then.
First review has been leaked. Looks like Sony's been sending out that phat bribery cash.
BWAHAHAHA. Bold f*cking words right there."It may also prove to be gaming's Citizen Kane moment."
Looks great, but not THAT great. Jesus. I'll wait for Tom Chick's review over @ Qto3 thankyouverymuch.
I've been looking forward to this and although those statements are ott it does suggest that it won't be mediocre.
Yeah, I'm wit it.
PS3 only?
Hmmm. This, Demon's Souls the Silent Hills and the Metal Gears. Plus Shadow of the Colossus and Ico.
Going to be needing a PS3 then I think.
The Silent Hill HD versions on PS3 are abominations. You should either A. get a PS2. or B. track down the PC ports. (How good the PC ports are I dunno, but I do remember seeing stunning high res screen captures of SH3 years ago.)
Last edited by EvaUnit02; 3rd Jun 2013 at 20:37.
The correct answer is A. Failing that, there's always C: emulation.
PS2 emulation is very hit and miss. Even if your PC is powerful enough to get the game running at a decent framerate (or you've stumbled across a combination of hacks that work well), good luck trying to get analogue button presses to work when mapping that shit to a PS3 pad or the like.
Preaching to the choir bro. I bought Liberty City/Vice City Stories outright because I couldn't get VCS working right. Just saying it's an option. The PC port of SH2 is a piece of shit. I imagine SH3 didn't fare much better.
As I've said before, getting a PS2 ain't nuthin doin - I regularly see them selling for mere pennies.
Just a case of whether I want to play the SH games enough to warrant using the extra space.
My PC gaming backlog is ridiculous enough as it is even without me deciding to get an extra platform, so I reckon I'll pick up a PS3 at some stage for when I want to game on a comfortable sofa and do Demon's, MGS series and Ico / SotC.
Well the reviews are coming in now and they are almost all highly praising this. It looks like it'll be at least worth playing, even if a lot of this is hyperbole.
Edge, who I usually find very odd and and often oddly harsh, gave it 10/10 saying:
That's a big statement to make. I'll be getting this.Naughty Dog has delivered the most riveting, emotionally resonant story-driven epic of this console generation. At times it’s easy to feel like big-budget development has too much on the line to allow stubbornly artful ideas to flourish, but then a game like The Last Of Us emerges through the crumbled blacktop like a climbing vine, green as a burnished emerald.
Last edited by SubJeff; 5th Jun 2013 at 15:36.
Edge aren't a "gaming Pitchfork Media" by any means (and neither are Eurogamer). Do you know what else they gave a perfect score? Halo 3. Gears of War 2 got a 9 from them. Edge are as mainstream as the IGN's and Gamespot's of the world (ditto for Eurogamer).
They may've had a reputation of being harsh critics once upon a time, but that was OVER A DECADE ago.
Try again.
This review and some of the other lower ones, have me a little worried. Not that the game is going to be terrible, they largely praise it, but that it is still going to have the same issues that I have with pretty much all AAA games that attempt show some dramatic ambition. Namely, tired game mechanics (like fighting waves and waves of enemies before being allowed to progress) rubbing against the narrative and its goals. I'm sure Naughty Dog come closer than most but I'm just not sure that the AAA market allows the kind of freedom, in game mechanics, that is necessary to really push this stuff.
Last edited by Angel Dust; 5th Jun 2013 at 16:48.
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