Malazan Empire: Aptorian - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Just finished The Last of Us 2.

Some spoiler free thoughts.

I'm very conflicted about this game. It's very well written, the characters are great, the animations are next level, the attention to detail is crazy, in general this game already looks like a PS5 game. And it just plays phenomenally. It's got a perfect feel to the exploration and the combat.

It's a truly outstanding video game.

But, boy do I hate the plot and the narrative structure of this game. It's got great moments, scenes - character interactions that are worthy of some kind of actors award but the overarching telling? The games direction I guess you'd call it? Neil Druckman's directing. The way it's cut or perhaps not cut at all, is baffling to me. It's so clunky it's hard to believe giving the otherwise brilliant grasp of video game storytelling on display. It's like there was meant to be a big DLC expansion. Or a part 3, maybe even 4, that got moshed into the middle and end.

The game is so so so very long and that's not a good thing when you're creating a narratively grim and tense telling of vengeance. And without giving anything away, what it choses to do throughout the game, with the characters POV, just ruined the experience for me.

In a way part of my dislike echoes the feeling I had upon completing Part 1. I just hated what the writer made the characters do. Maybe that's a kind of success. That you can write a modern revenge story, that's not like Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood on a rampage, but something more complex and dark. Where the hero isn't much of a hero at all and the act of vengeance has terrible consequences. Maybe it's good that I played through this game and thought Ellie was a horrible fruitloop.

I don't know but I didn't finish the game with any real feeling of satisfaction. It felt sour to me. And I can't tell if that's because I dislike the storytelling or I just don't like how ambiguous the notion of justice gets.

I'm gonna have to ruminate on this game a bit.

Depends. Are you doing something fancy or just trimming everything down? I usually just buy the cheapest trimmer and replace it every five years or so.

I was listening to a podcast called the Rabbit Hole from The New York Times last week, where they did an episode about QAnon. It seems like it's much more of a community thing for lonely republicans and middle age old people than necessarily just conspiracy nuts.

They're great but upon a re-read also sinister and quite scary.

Does the errant push Brys? I got the impression he was merely witnessing and not intervening. I don't particularly think The Errant likes the Edur or the Crippled God.