Sorry but this is the exact sort of reasoning why I can't take seriously the opinions of people who call this game bad. It's crazy to me how people just throw out terms like "narrative disaster" which seem very meaningful and yet when you examine the so-called "bad writing" it's just a way to frame your own personal opinion because the story didn't go where you wanted it to go. And while your opinion doesn't go the distance (and I really hate to bring this up as a critique) it's also a way to thinly veil this undertone of misogynistic thinking which is just kind of...sad.I don't actually know if anyone is interested, but i'd like to share my thoughts about TLOU2 after the end of my second playthrough.
Overall, i think it is a bad game, expecially if you compare that to the first chapter (which happens to be one of my favs).
Positive aspects: Graphics and gameplay
About the graphics: You can't deny they're pretty good, but just consider two things:
1) The first game graphics are just as good and impressive, considering they were made in 2013 for ps3. Maybe you could argue they're even proportionally better considering the timelapse and the resources (ps3), but let's just stop.
2) Graphics are not really important in a game, not even close to gameplay and the plot.
About the gameplay: prolly the best thing in the game, ND was able to propose a gameplay that looks fresh and new, while still sticking to the OG game.
Negative aspects: Bad writing (Plot, Narrative choices, and characters psychology)
Gonna put some major spoilers here.
TL'DR': It is a narrative disaster, and plot matters to me way more than graphics and gameplay. That's way it's a bad game to meFirst of all: the way joel dies
You wanted Joel to die? Okay, but not in that way.
In the first game joel is described as someone who was able to survive because he never trusted anyone (except people like Ellie,Tommy,and Tess), as any human (infected or not) will most likely try to kill you. You also have to consider that joel has been the bad guy of the situation many times in his past (They give hints about this many times, in pittsburgh for example), so he pretty much knew a lot of tricks that his enemies could use against him.
It is UNCONCEIVABLE that he would trust a group of strangers like that.
Secondly: Abby
This character is so bad-written, anything she does doesn't make any sense.
So, what ND wants you to understand is that there are not good or bad people in a world like that, but honestly the way the try to teach us this lesson is PATHETIC. In the first part of game they depict abby as the most evil character you could ever encouter, not only for her actions, but also for her masculine appearance and the shape of her face (that's no coincidence).
While on the second part, they try to make the player emphatise with her, showing her past and her will to help Lev and Yara. This method doesn't work, as the player has a way stronger bond towards ellie and joel, and also because it is bad executed.
So, her father is honestly pathetic, expecially when they help the zebra they wanna make you think "Oh joel what u have done OMG ur the bad guy". Honestly, a doctor who operates for willingly killing his patient instead of helping him is a joke to me lmao.
Let's cut with the past and let's talk a bit about Lev and Yara, which i liked way more, as they're coherent with themselves. So to show that Abby is not a massive biatch, after killing the man who saved her life, they make her emphatize with them because they saved her life (LMAO). So she turns her back to WLF, in which she still has many friends she's been knowing since years (not only the ones Ellie & friend killed) to help people he just acquainted with. Everything about this characters is bad and doesn't make sense.
Lastly: The finale
Yeah, so Ellie just kills abby's friends like nora, who didn't harm joel at all, but she lets the girl who tortured and killed him be free. So I've read some posts about ellie breaking the cycle of revenge and not give to strangers any reason to go hunt herself or the people she loves (like dina and JJ) which are total bs. If Ellie killed Abby and Lev, no one would have ever known anything about that. By letting her live, what's gonna happen is the exact opposite thing: Abby has a reason to hunt her Ellie, because she joined the fireflies again.
Like isn't a lot easier to just say how you felt about the game - "hey this game didn't really do it for me" "I can't like this game because they killed off my favorite character from the first" "the game never made me care about abby's perspective" vs pretending like your making an objective criticism of "yeah this game blows because 'bad writing.'" OK, where's the bad writing? "Well Abby's written badly because she looks like a male [or "trans" as others on the internet have so kindly put it]. Seriously? It's bad writing because...she's muscular and her face is shaped a certain way? Huh??? Am I missing something obvious here? Like is this not just a stop on the road down to clear cut misogynistic thinking that (not you) others on the internet are disguising as "bad writing"? Idk man, I think it's just incredibly intellectually dishonest and pathetic to hide an opinion like this and leads to the sort of fucked up behavior where people are sending death threats to others. And this is not meant to shit on you but that sort of thinking which is definitely prevalent in your critique and that I've seen others in the fandom use.
It's commendable that you played the game twice (I struggle to see myself doing so whereas the first is pretty much the only game I've played but Imultiple times) but I kind of have to question how much you were paying attention because a lot of your criticisms are pretty easily solved. Like you don't like Abby's father because he was going to kill a girl...who herself was willing to sacrifice herself for a cure for humanity. Surely you've got to see the nuance there right? You aren't exactly giving the character a chance if you can't recognize the ending of the first game being morally ambiguous in some way. And I mean I think some of what you say about Abby is right, Joel/Ellie is the better pair, but there's a lot of subtlety, non-obviousness to her character (and probably just the game in general) that I think you've probably missed in her journey (maybe because you didn't give her a chance?). Like I think it should be very clear that the theme of the game is that revenge doesn't solve the emotional trauma behind the deaths in this game. I don't know about you but even before I played as abby I didn't feel fulfilled at all killing the WLFers. And it felt even shittier as the game progressed when you see how things end up and life is worse for pretty much everyone involved in either revenge plot. I'm surprised you wanted Ellie to "win" at the end (and maybe I'm just sensitive to violence) but her fighting a frankly pathetic looking abby was depressing and sad.
It's commendable that you played the game twice (I struggle to see myself doing so whereas the first is pretty much the only game I've played but Imultiple times) but I kind of have to question how much you were paying attention because a lot of your criticisms are pretty easily solved. Like you don't like Abby's father because he was going to kill a girl...who herself was willing to sacrifice herself for a cure for humanity. Surely you've got to see the nuance there right? You aren't exactly giving the character a chance if you can't recognize the ending of the first game being morally ambiguous in some way. And I mean I think some of what you say about Abby is right, Joel/Ellie is the better pair, but there's a lot of subtlety, non-obviousness to her character (and probably just the game in general) that I think you've probably missed in her journey (maybe because you didn't give her a chance?). Like I think it should be very clear that the theme of the game is that revenge doesn't solve the emotional trauma behind the deaths in this game. I don't know about you but even before I played as abby I didn't feel fulfilled at all killing the WLFers. And it felt even shittier as the game progressed when you see how things end up and life is worse for pretty much everyone involved in either revenge plot. I'm surprised you wanted Ellie to "win" at the end (and maybe I'm just sensitive to violence) but her fighting a frankly pathetic looking abby was depressing and sad.
Idk man, I hate to shit on your opinion here. I can't and don't want to change your opinion. It's totally ok that you didn't like the game. I'm disappointed in a way too. I still like the first way more. But don't think it's very fair in the slightest to say the game is bad because of "bad writing" when that's just demonstrably not true. Why can't we be honest about not liking the game because we didn't like the direction it went in? Is it that hard to admit that?