veggie_ roll

Spoilers: The world is expansive and beautiful. I understand the critiques of there being a lot of walking around, but I think the devs just wanted people to be immersed rather than just fading to black and being thrown into some random place. I love the designs, the acting, and the story. I think it’s a great sequel to the first game. The first game is a complex but a straight forward story about love and learning how to trust. There is less nuance, making it easier to understand. I think that’s why people tend to not like the second game. The world of the people within the game become more nuanced and it is less straight forward. It took me a lot of analysis videos to fully understand the perspectives of the game devs because the story is complicated. It is an emotional and wonderfully told story. It changes in the middle of the game to Abby. Their stories are completely intertwined and the change makes sense to make the, 1. Story longer and 2. To make the fight scene at the end even more impactful. To see how worn down they both get, especially with Abby being strewn up to a log and starved— her muscles atrophied. It just goes to show how much they are just forced to move on but just want to hold on because it feel familiar. It’s all they know for years, especially Abby and all the time that passes from her father dying to the end of the second game. Speaking of fathers dying, people say Joel is now weak in the second game, but he learned to trust and love. He was in a highly protected and emotionally close town with his daughter and brother. Although he consciously knows the world isn’t safe, he created his world (Ellie, Tommy, and the town) to now be safe. The moments leading up to his death scene, he looks physically uncomfortable, but he trusts Tommy. Tommy exposes his real name, which encourages Joel to expose his name. It reminds me of the idea of confirmation bias. The idea of “would you jump off of a bridge just because your friend did?” Joel, even though fans heavily cared about him, still did wrong. He was the villain in Abby’s story, no matter how much we hate her. The death of Joel wasn’t heroic and that’s how Abby wanted it to be. That doesn’t make him weak, it’s the natural development of the story. I feel like, although it happens fast, Ellie’s descent into madness is natural. I went through a lot of trauma when I was young with my own dad and I was incredibly violent. I have PTSD and it’s very similar to Ellie’s. It just makes sense and I think critiques lack the sympathy and perspective to fully understand the nuance and complexity of the story. How trauma truly changes your brain. It’s a sad story and people might not want that, but it is a sad environment to be in and fully encapsulates what Joel says at the end of the first game, that you just find something to keep fighting for. There is humanity packed to the brim in this game and I think people expected more, but I love the fact that it is utterly human. It’s not real but it’s human