FredEffinChopin

It's been a few years but I needed someplace proper to say that: I'll be happy if I never have to play through another sequence where (typically after "losing" a scripted fight that you have to win) I get knocked out and imprisoned, and then have to spend a boring 10-15 minutes finding all my stuff and escaping with it.

Pardon me just randomly popping up after a pretty long absence from the forum, but I wanted to see what people here were saying about the game. Looks like it's just the (last) two of us, Ethan, so I guess I'll speak to your comments directly, in addition to the mini-essay I'd like to share. I was curious, and checked my response in this thread after beating the first game seven years ago (JFC), and find that I feel exactly the same about the sequel. Since video games started taking cinematic approaches to storytelling, they have been trying to reach or catch up to cinema in terms of quality. The first TLoU is one of the first games, in my opinion, that could make the argument that the medium was finally beginning to bang that door down. I'm not much of a consumer of zombie-themed shit at all, but from my limited experience with it, TLoU's premise, plot and execution was about about as good as you could ask for from that genre. While it didn't exactly do a whole lot new throughout most of it, it was totally competent, thoroughly engaging, and actually presented the best kind of question that you can leave a player/viewer to contemplate at the end of its story - the only point in the game that actually demanded some thought from the player (though much of the game that preceded the end did lend itself to some literary analysis) - a question that just doesn't have a right answer. Sure, you could weigh in with one opinion on the matter of Joel's actions in the Firefly hospital, but whichever side you take (and you do appear to have taken one, Ethan, from looking at your post in the other thread), I could take the opposite side and present a strong argument. I'll do some of that later in this post. What TLoU2 does, on top of delivering another narrative/execution that can stand tall and look cinema directly in the eye in most respects, is work within that cinematic-type framework and deliver the kind of narrative experience greater than that which cinema can possibly create - a potential that has long existed in gaming, but that has only barely been touched upon previously, and which typically involves complicating the storytelling process in some fashion in such a way that a cinema snob who doesn't game (as well as some who do) is likely to turn their nose up in response to. Choice/agency would probably be a go-to for most people who are asked what ways a video game can deliver a story that a movie or series cannot. In Mass Effect, you can make your protagonist act like a dick or a saint throughout the game. Consequently, the decision to put the player of control of a protagonist with that kind of flexibility required that they build a story that was largely indifferent to the protagonist as character, and sacrificed the kind of plot that could develop that character in any meaningful way. Fallout 3 introduced you to a universe wherein you could destroy or set up shop in the first town you encounter. The result being that the introduction to that town didn't represent anything especially significant to the broader, hard-wired portion of the story, and you knew it immediately. You didn't have to pay especially close attention to the goings-on there, or consider the role of the people you meet in that part of the story, if you can even call it that. Heavy Rain tried to have it both ways, and hard-wire an underlying story throughout most of the game while letting the player's choices determine how much of it and how they experienced it, as well as impact some points of it that could lead to substantially different endings - not just different endings to the same final scene that everyone experienced regardless of previous actions. It did hit the mark of creating a bond between the player and avatars by giving them a sense of agency and empathy the likes of which is difficult to create in a passive media experience. It's one thing to watch a man on a screen cut his own finger off, but it's another to be expected to choose which grisly manner in which you would have to watch it play out, and either perform corresponding actions to complete the terrifying action or decline and suffer other consequences for it later that would be even worse to witness. Nothing happened until you made a decision. Still though, stories rely on things like pacing, events, sequence, and development, and the integrity of that was threatened by the player's agency in events, and resulted in a lopsided and/or unsatisfying experience for many people who played Heavy Rain. I'd still call it the first example of a cinematic experience (that did fall short in several respects in that department) that goes beyond cinema. VR for the soul, but ultimately, with very limited application possibilities for future titles. TLoU only flirted with the idea of moving beyond cinema to beat it at its own game, and only near the end. Like many if not most good narratives in movies/series, it wanted to tell a specific story and leave you asking yourself and others who played it specific questions or coming away from it with specific takeaways, and so it couldn't let you move things around, as much as some players would have liked to have had some say in how events played out in the operating room. What they did, rather than give you agency, was offer the passing semblance of it in that operating room, but actually only use your input to make you complicit in Joel's actions - actions which maybe made him heroic to us who are sympathetic to him, having walked 10-15 hours in his shoes, but that also made him a villain to almost every other living person in TLoU universe who was aware of what he did, including Ellie to some extent. They could have played the operating room scenario out in a cutscene, but they did not. They made you go in there and butcher a doctor that couldn't have done much to stop you from taking Ellie away even with his knife, and made you want it on some level because of the perspective-based bias they instilled in you, even if you intellectually questioned the actions in the moment or shortly thereafter. I imagine most people's most immediate, reflexive instinct was more along the lines of "I'm going to tear this motherfucker limb from limb before I let him take another baby girl from me," and then they did any contemplating after that reflex has passed or after they played the scene or game out completely. We can make all sorts of arguments on his behalf to justify his actions, but Joel didn't do any of that. He acted from a place of, at least partially if not mostly or entirely, personal interest and instinct - not as the result of any philosophical meditation that we may have engaged in. He's a character, not the author. Having completed a fresh playthrough of the prequel right before release, I expected much of what TLoU2 ended up doing in that many of the (even more) surprising elements were among my expected possibilities for the sequel as I watched the credits roll in the first game. It was still a shock when I played through TLoU2 though, as I didn't think ND would have the balls to actually go through with much of it, never mind to the degree they did. TLoU2 takes this idea of using the notion of complicity and the bias resulting from it to the next level, and bakes it into the every crevice of its stories. I believe that's why, in the end, aside from people who were mad because they spend all day bitching about "SJWs" and believe this game pushes an agenda because it features gay people, and aside from the people who had already decided on the basis of spoilers that TLoU2 sucked and whose playthrough amounted to an exercise in figuring out how each scene sucked the moment a new one began, the game rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It doesn't want you to feel secure or comfortable at all. It doesn't want you to recognize the beats or be able to separate it neatly into acts. It doesn't want to give you things to think about and/or second-guess at the same time that it ultimately gives you the expected, satisfying conclusions that most people may want or expect. It's unsettling, jarring, disorienting, and can even come off as insulting to some. It wants to threaten the very notions that the beginning of the game as well as its prequel made players comfortable with. The gamble here is that while some players would doubtless reject it altogether, others would reflect on their own initial rejection of several of the story's characteristics and be interested enough in the ends that they might be in service to to keep an open mind and give the writing some benefit of doubt. The truth is, while many gamers love the idea of gaming being as good as cinema, they really only want a summer blockbuster. Or at least that's what they expect, maybe is more accurate, and they become flustered when they don't get it, and instinctually feel like something is wrong with the game and/or story. Even an ending or element that is unsettling on some level should feel good on some other level, and uncomfortable events are expected to resolve in a way that makes some kind of immediate, intuitive sense and results in some form of satisfaction. On top of that, we have basic formatting expectations that were among the numerous conventions that TLoU2 threw right out of the window with full force. I'm sure it's no accident that most cinematic action games live in a 10-15-hour-long window. There is probably good research that suggest it is a comfortable space for people to enjoy that genre of game in. I think many people were thrown in that respect in TLoU2, and where ND hoped players might wonder if it was justified later, many people who did stick around to find out were dragged to the finish line kicking and screaming, and were too dug into their initial assessments by the end to reconsider any of it at any point - a response which, to your credit, Ethan, you did not box yourself into at all. I'm speaking generally here. Some cinema lives outside of the norm though, and if there was one game to stake out that territory in the medium of video games, I can't think of a more appropriate title then the follow-up to the final events of TLoU, where we (Joel) end(s) up lying to Ellie because we (he) know(s) she would completely reject our "saving" her, and where she looks us in the eye, knowing we're full of shit, but can't do anything about it or even to prove it to herself. Seeing as how I printed this massive wall of text, I won't get too into the weeds of your comments in the following, much smaller spoiler section, Ethan. I don't even know how likely you or anyone are to see this, let alone read it, let alone have the desire or stomach to reply to it, and I get that, so I'll save any further dissection of the characters and events for any replies that might appear. Honestly, I could talk about this game for days.

Just listened to a couple of tracks off that game/album during a long drive yesterday. Timeless.

If one were so inclined, one could cook bacon on this track. I'm dead-ass. Try it.

I haven't been around in a while, but I've been doing an I told you so tour of the internet in the past few days, and while I don't think I got any opposition in here, I would like to reprint that bullseye right above where I'm writing right now. A lot of us saw this coming from miles away and were being dismissed in favor of polling that never reached this newly-galvanized portion of the electorate. To the people pointing fingers of blame at 3rd-party voters, there are a couple of things to keep in mind (disclosure: I voted Stein in NY, but would have voted Clinton if I was in, say, Florida): 1) Johnson took most of the third-party vote, which, we can fairly safely assume (feel free to argue it), represents more votes taken away from Trump than from Clinton. If anything third-party votes might have helped her win some of the states she did considering the small margins by which she won states like Colorado and Nevada; smaller than the percentage of the vote that Johnson snagged. There seems to be nothing to support the idea of Stein and Johnson being monkey wrenches in this election. 2) Even if there was a so-called Nader effect in this election, I'm not at ok with this idea of spending more time talking about the responsibility of those third party voters instead of talking about the responsibility of people who actually voted for Donald Trump. The two party system is just custom, it's not a rule. If the ball never gets rolling though, we'll be stuck with it for good as far as the Presidency is concerned. If there was ever an election in which voters have an open window to begin pushing the viability of a third party it's an election between two historically disliked candidates from the parties that have each got one of our testicles in their grip. If for nothing else than to remind them of their own mortality and/or to get the two parties to work to appeal to that growing portion of voters. A lot of people talk about how this is different than past elections (where people have already been conditioned to vote for the lesser of two evils, and to the point where the phrase doesn't phase them anymore, as we've just seen from Democratic turnout) because Trump was a singularly frightening candidate. I agree that he was. As I said, I'd have voted Clinton if I were not a NY voter, and only out of pure fear of Trump. I think what a lot of people missed though, is that that tactic would only become more susceptible to exploitation had it worked here (maybe it still does). Anyone who saw a Republican primary debate earlier this year knows that there are no shortage of frightening presidential hopefuls with nutty ideas that the Democratic party can point at while screaming "fire!" in order to get people to vote Democratic without an especially appealing campaign. Who wants to be trapped into that "choice?" What I'm getting at is that if Clinton actually did lose because of Stein and/or Johnson, it really sucks, but there's a word for it: Democracy. Aside from that electoral college part... But yeah, that many more people were compelled to vote third-party with the given choices. Or were compelled to vote against the other parties. Want to blame Trump's election a portion of voters? Look at the people who voted him in. To that last point, that's where Dems shot themselves in the foot. The Republican voters got their candidate. Yes, the party did try to push others ahead of him, and I'm certainly not crediting the party's leadership for it. The point is that their base was inspired (ugh) by this guy, and they pushed him into the general, which is probably a lot easier to do when you're running against 15 other people. Look how many people ran in the Dem primary in comparison. That party had chosen their candidate years ago, and when the going got tough for them in the primaries, their only course of action was to shove their candidate down the base's throat in the most hamfisted way possible, insulting and demonizing many of them in the process, rather than reading the writing on the wall. Consequently, new voters came out in excited droves for Trump, and people who voted for Obama in 2012 decided to stay home. It's funny (in the most tragic way), a month ago people were talking about how the Republican party would whether this storm and whether they would ever be able to pick up the pieces again. Now it looks like the Democratic party are the ones who will have to do soul searching and repairs while the Republicans have their way for a while.

"Can we please not do the line by line deconstruction thing? I find it rude." That's ok with me since I found your posts pretty rude too. Only because they were dismissive and condescending though, not because I have my own private interpretation of what it means when someone block quotes my text when replying to me. Regardless, I'm not changing the way I structure my posts because someone imagines that the formatting carries some connotation. On that topic, while we're sharing what we find rude and perplexing about each others' reasoning and mode: The amount of speculating you've done in responses indicates that you first decided that you took issue with my criticism, and then second got to work at figuring out why that is that you took issue. As a result you've thrown several theories against the wall, and offered up as many inept analogies as you could to suggest that I'm being selectively critical, and that everything about the narrative was executed adequately. It didn't slow you down a beat either when one of the conclusions that you considered viable in the absence of any evidence provided by the show (the idea of the face database) didn't fit in with what we've seen on the show. There must be some other way that I'm an idiot for my criticism, you just haven't figured it out yet - seems to be the idea. The difference is that when I see you do that, I'm not going to sit here and try to tell you to interact with me the way I would like you to. I'm just going to respond in a way that I feel is appropriate, and I don't feel like the quotation of texts to support my argument is going too far at all. "My point is that the face thing is obviously done by "some kind of magic", since they clearly aren't wearing actual masks a la Texas Chainsaw" Nothing is clear or obvious, and that's my problem. You reached that conclusion for the sole reason that the alternative (some method of skin-wearing, and no, these aren't mutually exclusive) sounds ridiculous. The problem is that the alternative has more content that supports it, no matter how silly that looks to us without further detail. The show itself has only shown us that, at least for Arya, the carrying of carefully-removed face skin is involved. The show has shown us that far from teaching her how to use the faces, Jaquen forbade her to do so (take a physical face from the wall to wear), even telling her that it would be poisonous for her to try, which suggests that he did not teach her. It doesn't seem likely that the waif did either, given her disposition towards Arya. They made a point to send her on missions with her own face, which worked to drive that idea home pretty well for me. "I don't get why it matters to you which kind of magic it is exactly or that we see how Arya learns it." I would like something, and that something could come in different forms. Give me a single scene of Jaqen smiling slyly as he welcomes Arya into a new area of the house. Then I can say "ok, he showed her how to do whatever magic-tricky and/or artisanal thing they do to apply the faces." Give me a scene of her sneaking into an area of the house where she doesn't belong, and then her beginning to eavesdrop on Jaquen or the waif about to engage in some activity, and close the scene. Then I can say "ok, she was sneaky and managed to learn some magic-tricky and/or artisanal thing they do to apply the faces." If they were to get more descriptive with the technique itself as Arya (or anyone) employs it, I might, depending on what that process involves, be able to reasonably suspect how we're meant to believe that she came about this ability. As of now though, it seems that I'm expected to believe that it just rubbed off on her from her remaining in close proximity to those who know how to do it for long enough. I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse with your bow & arrow example, but in case you're not, I'll explain why it's not the same thing: We know how people tend to learn how to shoot a bow & arrow. They practice shooting one. Some people are naturally talented at such things too. I'm not taking issue with the story not showing me how Arya learned to walk either. When Arya handed over her Bravos coin to the captain of the ship that took her there, I think it's safe to say that a lot of people were excited to see when/if she masters the mysterious technique that Jaquen showed off to us, even if we didn't expect an eHow video on it. We spent the following two seasons shadowing her every major move and event, and some minor ones. By the end of it we pretty much saw her do everything but defecate and learn how to wear faces. One of those is typical to omit in any story, but in this context, the other one is a glaring omission, especially given all the show's suggestions that nobody showed her how to do it. Say Podrick was separated from Brienne in a dramatic scene that ends with him stowing away in some ship that heads for Bravos. If Pod shows up a season or two later and starts pulling faces off left and right, I'm not going to ask any questions. He went to Bravos and learned this. Fine. It would be cool if he talks about it in a conversation when he reunites with Brienne, but I wouldn't count it as a strike against the show if that never happens. The narrative doesn't have the same relationship with Pod as it does with Arya, where we're privy to her every meaningful development. In the case of Arya, as opposed to the Pod hypothetical, the impression it leaves me with is that something about her learning this was deliberately avoided. Two possibilities come to mind as to why. The first is that something involving her picking up that ability is going to be revealed at a later, more appropriate time for other developments/reveals. This is the one I'm hoping for. The other one is that this faceless thing wasn't thought through very well, and that it's being awkwardly treated for that reason. That's the one I fear, and that I'm being tentatively critical of.

That is exactly what I'm getting at. Or getting at me being concerned about, rather.

"We know that faceless men can change their face through some sort of boojum." This literally means nothing. You're telling me that we know something but that we don't know what it is (aka we don't know it), and wondering why I can't just accept that. "We can assume that she was taught face swapping at some point because she was given a mission to murder someone" "The more I think about it, the more I think the hall of masks is a reference. It would be inconvenient to be caught with a bag full of faces." No, we absolutely cannot assume that based on what we were shown, which is a major part of the problem I'm having. She was told that she was NOT supposed to take a face from the well. She was told that when she came back from taking a face and killing Merryn Trant, and we (and her) were led to believe that that is why she was made temporarily blind by Jaquen. That same scene that shows us that she had to return a physical face to the wall, which suggests that she needed the physical face to perform the feat, which suggests that there may or may not be "boojum" involved, since they have said nothing at all to us about it, but that there is almost certainly a physical component involved. All of these assumptions that you guys can't seem to understand me not having reached just don't make any sense. Maybe another theory that presents itself will, and that will be dandy. I don't think my message board pals should be left the task of explaining things like that though. I feel like it's the show's responsibility. I love these discussions, but if you can imagine a reason for why something strange happened in the show, especially if you have to stretch to do it, that doesn't necessarily mean the show did its job. "I don't get why you need to see something to get your immersion back. I prefer the element of mystery about it." I don't. I didn't say a word about immersion, partly because I can't stand the word and avoid it, but mostly because it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. My complaint is about a major change in a character that we've been following closely that hasn't been explained at all. My concern isn't that I'm no longer able to buy the idea of magic in a fantasy setting. My concern is that it's starting to seem like a poorly thought out plot element that's now being swept under the rug because it would be difficult to try to convince people that, even in this fantasy setting, people can cut the skin off of peoples' faces and wear it convincingly. "Arya used the face swap on Meryn Trant in season 5. She used it before the finale, why is everyone acting like the finale is the first time she did it?!?!" It's just me. We're talking about me. I'm not acting like it's the first time. I believe my first post about this said something along the lines of it now being past the point by which we should have an explanation. We first saw her do it in a season finale, in a dramatic reveal as she killed Trant. I wasn't expecting the show to drop everything and tell me how at that point. It's a full season later though, and it seems like we're past the point where any of that is going to be explained (unless it's being intentionally hidden to serve a purpose later, which, as I said earlier, would ease my concerns about it). The only clues offered up to this point indicate a process that at very least involves the removal of a corpse's face skin that someone else then dons and wears so well that it looks natural. That alone seems ridiculous to me.

Then give me a basis for that (or any other) reasoning. Not you, the show. The show has not offered me that. On the contrary, all of the clues provided seem to lean more towards this being a cultivated technique rather than some sort of incantation or ritual (just as several of the clues also indicate that there is likely no belief in a mystical "Many-faced God" that the faceless order worships, only clients that tell them who to kill). At the very least a physical component seems to be involved, as they appear to take a great deal of time and care in the removal of faces from corpses. I can accept any combination of possibilities, but as of now I've only been shown that Arya hung around the House of Black and White for a while, and that now she can employ this highly exclusive technique whenever she feels like it without ever being taught how to do so. I'm not demanding an instruction manual for how to wear faces over here, though I would welcome it, and don't feel like it could possibly hurt the story. Being that one of the central characters, who we have followed intimately throughout the series, learned a mysterious technique that (as far as we know) was not taught to her directly while she was under the tutelage of the only people who know how to do it, I would appreciate some small explanation of how that went down. As I said earlier, even a 10 second shot of her witnessing some sort of vaguely depicted event would at least keep me at bay for a while if not shut me up altogether. Then I could say "Ok, it's a magic ritual that uses faces of the dead, and she learned it right under their noses by being sneaky." As it stands, since Arya is done with the Bravos leg of her arc, it just seems like there is some possibility that the Faceless order's defining skill is one that wasn't given very much consideration, and is just being swept under the rug once it's purpose is served because it would be awkward to deal with. Also this is not like those examples. Half of those amount to the question of the existence of the Lord of Light, which I personally believe will be addressed in some way or other by the end of the story, along with questions about the relationship between the Targaryens and dragons/fire, the relationship between the WW/zombies and dragonglass/obsidian, and the nature of the Three-Eyed Raven. I don't necessarily expect a detailed metaphysical explanation of any of it, but those are all core questions that the narrative proposes for the viewer, and that we can reasonably expect to be involved in the endgame. I'm not in Season 2 demanding an explanation of where the Whitewalkers came from. I'm not asking how the House of the Undying dude was able to make duplicates of himself either. It's one of the main characters undergoing an incredibly significant change with no explanation offered while we seem to know every other detail of her circumstances. Perhaps this explanation will present itself at a later time also, or at very least the reason for avoiding the details I'm asking about might become apparent when other events play out later. Maybe there will be a flashback. If that happens then it will make sense, and my skepticism will vanish. It's not sitting right at the moment though.

I can't imagine how it could possibly make the show worse to have an explanation of one of the major two skillsets that Arya has incorporated into her repertoire. For me I can say that it's coming off as a really hard sell, as some other elements of this season were for Arya, which is a nagging distraction, which makes it worse. Kind of like spending a season and a half watching her ride around on horses with Sandor, and then taking 45 seconds to go "and then she became a blind warrior." At least they had the decency to show us some sort of montage that lets us know that this is something she achieved through training and hard work (and abuse with a stick). An equivalent for this even greater skill than armed combat doesn't seem like too much to ask for. Her witnessing a ritual or technique that we see off-camera at very least, so we know how she came into this ability. Unless I'm forgetting something, we've only seen Jaqen talk about how she should never try to do it, far from showing her anything. If it's magic, what did she do, figure it out? Spy? Ok, but that second sentence that you began immediately contradicts the certainty of your assertion that it's only (?) some form of sorcery. In other words we do not know that because we were not told anything.

Yeah, no doubt, magic (with the component of actual human faces) but of what variety? We've not seen any secrets shared with her. It seems that one day she just grabbed a face off of the wall andx used it, and now that she's solo, she's still wearing new faces. Did she learn an incantation? Is it something she internalized? It's a huge move, and we've seen a character undergo training (or just learned) in using it, and we still have no idea what "it" is.

Beck + Got a girl. This would make the second Beck collaboration I posted in here in a short time. Funny, I'm not really a fan.