Sony The Last of Us Part II OT - Best Served Cold, update: the story behind the game's realistic facial animations (PlayStation Blog)

[Firewithin]

im maybe around 75% through now and i cant wait until we get a Ground Part 2 documentary about this one like the first

[ShreddieMercury]

3 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yeah that's completely fair. I suspect that if I got into firefights more often, I'd need more ammo, or a bigger mag for my handgun, or to reload my revolver more quickly. Other than when the game forces you to do so with certain fights, I don;'t think I ever needed to reload under duress, either. I know you can get really granular with the difficulty sliders, I wonder if there's a setting that would allow for the game to be more like Uncharted, where firefights are more prevalent. There are fewer enemies in this game than there are in that series, so... I wonder how it balances out.

 

Unrelated to anything I posted... it's still funny to me that you still don't fire from your guns in Naughty Dog games, you fire from the camera. It's not as obvious as it can be in Uncharted, and they finally let enemies shoot at you when you do this... but you're still not firing from your gun!

This is interesting.  I might just be bad at games, but I keep finding myself unable to completely stealth areas, and things tend to break out into a brawl or a firefight more often than not.  I'm playing on Hard and although it seems like I'm getting too many upgrades too early, I've had to survive really dynamic encounters that do not play out anything like the first game, where I felt like the enemy paths were more rigid and stealth was easier.  While I've seen some AI missteps, my impression is that things are playing out more randomly and forcing me to use items that I otherwise would avoid.  I wonder how Survivor changes this - I look forward to replaying at some point to see how much harder it is.

 

Great point about the audio in your post too, it's brilliant.  I love that you have the ability to change how dynamic it is.  Playing with headphones, you can tell how much work went into it.

[Kal-El814]

5 minutes ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

This is interesting.  I might just be bad at games, but I keep finding myself unable to completely stealth areas, and things tend to break out into a brawl or a firefight more often than not.  I'm playing on Hard and although it seems like I'm getting too many upgrades too early, I've had to survive really dynamic encounters that do not play out anything like the first game, where I felt like the enemy paths were more rigid and stealth was easier.  While I've seen some AI missteps, my impression is that things are playing out more randomly and forcing me to use items that I otherwise would avoid.  I wonder how Survivor changes this - I look forward to replaying at some point to see how much harder it is.

I found that the stealth got a lot easier as the game goes on. Not sure if that's the arenas getting more conducive to it, me getting better, both, etc.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Playing on normal and there's an overabundance of supplies. I don't use my guns often, just in areas where there are a lot of enemies. I can stealth through a lot of the game, but with a dozen enemies or more, I usually end up getting discovered and have to blast my way out. I still have more than enough ammo, though.

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, ShreddieMercuryRising said:

Great point about the audio in your post too, it's brilliant.  I love that you have the ability to change how dynamic it is.  Playing with headphones, you can tell how much work went into it.

 

Agreed - I've been playing with headphones on too and the Sicario-like bass beat of dread music that plays during combat sections is extremely intense and unsettling. I love it.

[johnny]

25 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Agreed - I've been playing with headphones on too and the Sicario-like bass beat of dread music that plays during combat sections is extremely intense and unsettling. I love it.

I actually almost made this exact sicario comment the other day. Reminds me so much of the scene where they go to Mexico and I love it 
 

@Emperor Diocletian II

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

God, I LOVE the original Sicario.

[SimpleG]

1 hour ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Agreed - I've been playing with headphones on too and the Sicario-like bass beat of dread music that plays during combat sections is extremely intense and unsettling. I love it.

Also makes it easy to know if you cleared an area out.

[Spork3245]

Just beat it. Incredible 

[best3444]

11 hours in. I absolutely love it!

[Nokt]

7 hours ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

God, I LOVE the original Sicario.

One of the only films that had me on the edge of my seat the entire movie.

[Moa]

 

The only review worth reading.

[heydude93]

Sicario is in my collection and I still haven't watched it yet.  Time to do something about that soon.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I’m at work and suffering from withdrawal.  

[Keyser_Soze]

4 hours ago, Nokt said:

One of the only films that had me on the edge of my seat the entire movie.

 

I was on the edge of my seat seeing how more naive Emily Blunt's character could get in the next scene!

[SaysWho?]

How much time did you guys spend in downtown Seattle? I spent a few hours there exploring everything building and unlocked the trophy for doing so. It reminded me of that one open area in Lost Legacy.

 

4 hours ago, Moa said:

 

The only review worth reading.

 

I'm not ready to watch reviews, especially still not being far into the game, but I hear his review was uncharacteristically serious?

[TheLeon]

I'm about 12 hours in.

• I can't get over how good this game looks. I'm stopping a lot to go into photo mode and just look around.
• I'm enjoying the combat a lot more than the first game, although I might be mostly remembering my Grounded playthrough, where you pretty much have to stealth constantly because you have no ammo. 
• While this is a game about these characters and their relationships/struggles, it's also a game about poking into every corner of the world to find assorted pills to learn new skills from magazines. Videogames are dumb.

[Kal-El814]

7 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I'm about 12 hours in.

• I can't get over how good this game looks. I'm stopping a lot to go into photo mode and just look around.
• I'm enjoying the combat a lot more than the first game, although I might be mostly remembering my Grounded playthrough, where you pretty much have to stealth constantly because you have no ammo. 
• While this is a game about these characters and their relationships/struggles, it's also a game about poking into every corner of the world to find assorted pills to learn new skills from magazines. Videogames are dumb.

Step 1: Read Guns n Ammo

Step 2: Crush a shitload of percocet 

Step 3: Crawl much faster now

 

awwyea

[Spork3245]

One thing that’s bugging me, and I’m def nitpicking, is that the game doesn’t play by its own world rules in regards to infected. Here’s the timeline for infection progression (spoiler free, don’t worry, going by the first game - tagging it anyway just in case):

Spoiler

 

Stage 1 - Runner: 1-2 days after infection occurs 

 

Stage 2 - Stalker: 1-52 weeks (within a year) after infection 

 

Stage 3 - Clicker: “roughly” 1 year after infection (possibly a year after stage 2 begins?)

 

Stage 4 - Bloater: 10-15 years after infection 

 

So, here’s my gripe... runners should probably be the second least common of infected going by that infection-timeline and the amount of years that have passed since the outbreak. Every runner you encounter is less than a year old, AND the easiest to kill/clear out, yet they’re the most common infected you encounter. Going by the timeline the game world established, shouldn’t there be a ton of clickers in those hordes and not so much runners considering survivors have gotten better at avoiding (and killing) infected over the ~30 years since the outbreak? Also, any isolated “old world” building you enter should most likely be all clickers or worse and not even have stalkers. I dunno, I’m def overthinking it, but I think ND goofed by making the first stage so short in their literature, however, from a gameplay perspective I’m grateful that you deal with runners more-so than anything else  

 

 

[Kal-El814]

9 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

One thing that’s bugging me, and I’m def nitpicking, is that the game doesn’t play by its own world rules in regards to infected. Here’s the timeline for infection progression (spoiler free, don’t worry, going by the first game - tagging it anyway just in case):

  Hide contents

 

Stage 1 - Runner: 1-2 days after infection occurs 

 

Stage 2 - Stalker: 1-52 weeks (within a year) after infection 

 

Stage 3 - Clicker: “roughly” 1 year after infection (possibly a year after stage 2 begins?)

 

Stage 4 - Bloater: 10-15 years after infection 

 

So, here’s my gripe... runners should probably be the second least common of infected going by that infection-timeline and the amount of years that have passed since the outbreak. Every runner you encounter is less than a year old, AND the easiest to kill/clear out, yet they’re the most common infected you encounter. Going by the timeline the game world established, shouldn’t there be a ton of clickers in those hordes and not so much runners considering survivors have gotten better at avoiding (and killing) infected over the ~30 years since the outbreak? Also, any isolated “old world” building you enter should most likely be all clickers or worse and not even have stalkers. I dunno, I’m def overthinking it, but I think ND goofed by making the first stage so short in their literature, however, from a gameplay perspective I’m grateful that you deal with runners more-so than anything else  

 

 

Yeah, this doesn’t make a ton of sense.

 

Spoiler

By the end of TLoU2 I think it’s been ~25 years since the first infection? There should be many more stalkers and clickers around. There’s also a number of long abandoned places that you think someone would have seen whatever that big fucker in the hospital was somewhere before.

 

[Spork3245]

15 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Yeah, this doesn’t make a ton of sense.

 

  Hide contents

By the end of TLoU2 I think it’s been ~25 years since the first infection? There should be many more stalkers and clickers around. There’s also a number of long abandoned places that you think someone would have seen whatever that big fucker in the hospital was somewhere before.

 

Spoiler

TBF, (apparently it’s called the RatKing) that thing seemed to be a bunch of infected that fused together from being kept in tight hospital quarters. You can unlock the model under extras and it’s basically a ball of bodies. So, that may have been a unique type, or, at least something that takes 25+ years to form. I dunno. That thing was crazy  

 

[Kal-El814]

20 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

  Hide contents

TBF, (apparently it’s called the RatKing) that thing seemed to be a bunch of infected that fused together from being kept in tight hospital quarters. You can unlock the model under extras and it’s basically a ball of bodies. So, that may have been a unique type, or, at least something that takes 25+ years to form. I dunno. That thing was crazy  

 

Spoiler

True enough. You think that thing would have woken up when it heard the small army farting around upstairs, but... hey a game’s gotta be a game.

 

[Spork3245]

14 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

  Hide contents

True enough. You think that thing would have woken up when it heard the small army farting around upstairs, but... hey a game’s gotta be a game.

 

 

Spoiler

Well, it clearly needed the electricity turned on before it could completely rip all quarantine doors apart...  

 

BTW, thinking about it, those quarantined clickers in the hospital should’ve at least been shamblers if not bloaters. Not to mention the stalker on the wall 

 

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, Spork3245 said:

 

  Hide contents

Well, it clearly needed the electricity turned on before it could completely rip all quarantine doors apart...   

 

Spoiler

True, just like Abby can overcome the inertia of huge bookcases and filling cabinets on the other side of closed doors on the regular... but all that muscle is useless on an motorized door when the power is off. Shame!

 

[Kal-El814]

I made the mistake of looking at the reddit for this game and some of the scuttlebutt about it online, which hadn’t really registered aside from the review bombing.

 

Jesus fucking Christ what is wrong with people?

[best3444]

10 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

I made the mistake of looking at the reddit for this game and some of the scuttlebutt about it online, which hadn’t really registered aside from the review bombing.

 

Jesus fucking Christ what is wrong with people?

 

How's it rank for you this gen?

[Spork3245]

11 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

I made the mistake of looking at the reddit for this game and some of the scuttlebutt about it online, which hadn’t really registered aside from the review bombing.

 

Jesus fucking Christ what is wrong with people?

I haven’t looked into it at all. When I heard (on here) there was “controversy” and saw someone call the game “full SJW” I just assumed it was because 

Spoiler

(Prior to playing/beating) you played as an open lesbian (potentially in a relationship based on the E3 2018 trailer) who’s also a “strong” woman instead of Joel, that won’t need unrealistic “saving” in the game. Then during my play through figured it was also because you play as TWO strong women, with Abby basically having a bodybuilder physique, and there’s also a transgender boy in the game who’s being persecuted for being “different”.  

 

[Firewithin]

im getting to the end and oh shit last night when i got to a certain scene i was playing with my jaw dropping.  what an amazing game this has been.  Ill spoil the scene below...

 

Spoiler

the two stories caught up to each other in the theater and playing as Abby going against Ellie was hard but awesome. not hard in gameplay sense but just having to be in that confrontation not as ellie

 

[Spork3245]

End game spoilers:

Spoiler

That last fight was so f’n rough to play. I cringed when Ellie was trying to push the knife into Abby’s chest, and definitely wasn’t “tapping square” with any vigor at that point.

ND seriously had balls with this game: having you switch roles to play as the “big bad”/antagonist, then, immediately making the entire organization not a bunch of faceless “evil” scavengers. I can’t really effectively put into words what they accomplished here. Even just the little touches such as moments after killing Alice as Ellie, realizing that they weren’t just emotionless war dogs. Just... fuck, man.

 

[Kal-El814]

9 minutes ago, best3444 said:

How's it rank for you this gen?

It’s in my top 10 probably? In no particular order I’d say that probably includes:

 

Breath of the Wild

Beat Saber

Divinity Original Sin 2

TLoU2

Outer Wilds

Mario Odyssey

Wild Hunt

Celeste

Tetris 99

Phantom Pain

 

If I thought about it more and got more games in, it might drift in our out of it.

 

13 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

I haven’t looked into it at all. When I heard (on here) there was “controversy” and saw someone call the game “full SJW” I just assumed it was because 

  Hide contents

(Prior to playing/beating) you played as an open lesbian (potentially in a relationship based on the E3 2018 trailer) who’s also a “strong” woman instead of Joel, that won’t need unrealistic “saving” in the game. Then during my play through figured it was also because you play as TWO strong women, with Abby basically having a bodybuilder physique, and there’s also a transgender boy in the game who’s being persecuted for being “different”.  

 

 

Spoiler

There’s an awful lot of dunking on Abby for not being stereotypically feminine / attractive. There’s apparently a conspiracy theory the sex scene with Abby was mocapped with Neil Druckmann and Laura Bailey... it’s fucking DUMB out there.

 

6 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

End game spoilers:

  Hide contents

That last fight was so f’n rough to play. I cringed when Ellie was trying to push the knife into Abby’s chest, and definitely wasn’t “tapping square” with any vigor at that point.

ND seriously had balls with this game: having you switch roles to play as the “big bad”/antagonist, then, immediately making the entire organization not a bunch of faceless “evil” scavengers. I can’t really effectively put into words what they accomplished here. Even just the little touches such as moments after killing Alice as Ellie, realizing that they weren’t just emotionless war dogs. Just... fuck, man.

 

 

Also end game spoilers:

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I agree with this completely. It’s part of why I was a little disappointed with your time on Seraphite Island and in Santa Barbara... they spent so much time getting you to spend time with the WLF and Abby’s crew in particular that you can really sympathize with folks that they prime you to hate early in the game, I thought that was super effective. Then you’re facing off against a cult that mutilates people and a gang that crucifies people and uses them as slave labor, there’s a lot less nuance.

 

I’m interested in your take on the Rattlers... I thought that section felt incomplete, in a way? Did I miss collectibles, or was there little to no context fo why they were doing what they were doing? Did I miss why Abby was crucified?

 

[Spork3245]

16 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

It’s in my top 10 probably? In no particular order I’d say that probably includes:

 

Breath of the Wild

Beat Saber

Divinity Original Sin 2

TLoU2

Outer Wilds

Mario Odyssey

Wild Hunt

Celeste

Tetris 99

Phantom Pain

 

If I thought about it more and got more games in, it might drift in our out of it.

 

 

  Hide contents

There’s an awful lot of dunking on Abby for not being stereotypically feminine / attractive. There’s apparently a conspiracy theory the sex scene with Abby was mocapped with Neil Druckmann and Laura Bailey... it’s fucking DUMB out there.

 

 

Also end game spoilers:

 

  Hide contents

Yeah, I agree with this completely. It’s part of why I was a little disappointed with your time on Seraphite Island and in Santa Barbara... they spent so much time getting you to spend time with the WLF and Abby’s crew in particular that you can really sympathize with folks that they prime you to hate early in the game, I thought that was super effective. Then you’re facing off against a cult that mutilates people and a gang that crucifies people and uses them as slave labor, there’s a lot less nuance.

 

I’m interested in your take on the Rattlers... I thought that section felt incomplete, in a way? Did I miss collectibles, or was there little to no context fo why they were doing what they were doing? Did I miss why Abby was crucified?

 

Spoiler

The Cali section in general definitely felt “rushed” in a way compared to the rest of the game. The Rattlers didn’t get much history - with the WLF and Seraphites there was a TON of history left through notes you could find throughout the world with people slowly joining or escaping from either side. With The Rattlers the few notes you can find amount to “gotta get out of here, Rattlers are coming” or “I got extra food because I’m doing so well with finding slaves!”. There was nothing besides that they were some type of biker gang that took over the area who hates doing their own farm work and potentially “uses” infected to set traps or for guard work somehow. They were a generic Walking Dead style “these guys suck, kill’em!” which did feel a little out of place considering the nuance used for the other two factions.
 

In regards to Abby, though, when you free those prisoners/slaves, when they tell you where she is (I think they say “pillared”?), they mentioned it’s because she tried to escape.

 

[Kal-El814]

Ah I definitely missed that line read somehow. Thanks!

[Greatoneshere]

17 hours ago, johnny said:

I actually almost made this exact sicario comment the other day. Reminds me so much of the scene where they go to Mexico and I love it 
 

@Emperor Diocletian II

 

Nice! It's so good and it's definitely similar. Love it.

 

17 hours ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

God, I LOVE the original Sicario.

 

Same! It's not as good, it's meaner and darker, but the sequel (by the guy who directed the excellent Gomorrah) is also really good, with a magnicifent mid-movie action scene.

 

16 hours ago, SimpleG said:

Also makes it easy to know if you cleared an area out.

 

Yes, that music gets the blood pumping and then finally ends heh.

 

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

I made the mistake of looking at the reddit for this game and some of the scuttlebutt about it online, which hadn’t really registered aside from the review bombing.

 

Jesus fucking Christ what is wrong with people?

 

It's what I've been trying to explain in the other thread about TLOU Part II sales . . . 

[Dodger]

Just to check where I'm at, without any real spoilers how far into the game am I?

 

Spoiler

Right after you meet up with Tommy at the Aquarium

 

[SimpleG]

2 minutes ago, Dodger said:

Just to check where I'm at, without any real spoilers how far into the game am I?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Right after you meet up with Tommy at the Aquarium

 

About 1/2 way