Yes, but as a theme goes it's like putting too much salt in some food, at least for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I do like a good flawed cast of characters, the theme in general is good, but the execution just didn't land for me.

I think if I could empathize with the characters a bit better it might have landed a bit better? As an interactive medium I think the character you control and yourself needs to have some level of shared goals, or at least the ability to understand their actions. I didn't feel that for 90% of the game, it was like watching a soap opera where the characters don't act like people. I can forgive that of the main two in concept, who are powered by bloodlust, but frankly they don't act enough like maladjusted revenge golems to make it believable to me that they'd continuously make these terrible decisions.

Something else was that the theme got a bit muddled towards the end in terms of revenge. The theme is that revenge bad, violence begets violence, violence corrupts you etc, but after Abby does her thing she gets such a glow up over the course of her campaign, both as a character and in her situation, that the theme feels mixed. Hell, for most of the time you could kind of forget that it's Ellie doing all of this because there's the internal politics and fighting completely unrelated to what's going on. Very little of Abby's issues actually revolve around the revenge issue. Without the theme being clear on this stuff it becomes muddy exactly what the point is, and it feels like violence for violence sake. Like someone was out to prove that humanity is garbage, instead of being a warning against doing garbage things.

I also can't help but feel it pulls the assassins Creed 2 problem with forgiveness being learned. I think it's a good theme in concept, but after spending an entire game mercing a bunch of people both tangentially related or unrelated, it's a little hollow. Even then though, I could see it working, but the fight at the very end kind of ruins it for me. If she lets Abby get on the boat immediately, that works better because she made the conscious decision to forgive. If she actually kills Abby, funnily enough I think that also works. Seriously, for where the game has been the entire time I think her doing it, but the audience knowing it was wrong would actually go a long way towards making the game as a whole feel more cohesive. Hell you could have done a player choice at that point, and even that could have worked.

It's something I'm still kind of thinking over to this day because it's such a unique problem to encounter in a game like this. Again, I do want to like the game, it does a lot right, it's a good game. But yeah, bit of a yuck thinking about it.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What a great breakdown on your thoughts, thank you for sharing. I’ll admit it’s not a perfect game but I think it worked for me much better than for you. When the game switched to Abby I had this sense that the writers were going to try and make me feel something besides hate/contempt for her and my immediate reaction was “Good fucking luck.”

But it really worked and as the narrative unfolded with Abby I found her to be a very sympathetic character and by the ending I was more worried about her than Ellie.

When I realized this I felt super conflicted because - who didn’t care about Ellie going into Part 2? And I think that message about having empathy for people you hate was such a powerful theme to make a whole game about that I was willing to let a lot of the smaller narrative mistakes go.

Have a good day.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

All good mate, I like being able to go through this stuff from time to time because it helps me refine my own thoughts about stuff.

I definitely feel the same way about Abby, though I think it does get off to a rocky start by kind of cliffhangering the end of Ellie's story. Still it did totally work in the long run.

I did have empathy for Ellie going into the game definitely. I think the game using that as a starting point and was incrementally raising her actions so the audience would naturally come to the conclusions she does at the end of the game regarding violence and vengeance. How effective this is might be dependant on the point the audience comes to these conclusions. I think it might just be the exposure to these kinds of stories I've seen, but I kind of got what the game was going for pretty early, and it felt like it just kept kind of bludgeoning me with the moral the longer it went on, like it wanted to bathe in the horrible mess Ellie was making. That was partially why I was hoping for it to be a subversion at the end I think? Kind of have it be a tragedy of character, kill Abby, and the forgiveness that she couldn't give to another also means she deserves no forgiveness herself. As it stands it's kind of there, but feels like it stumbles at the end, at least for how it hit for me.

I don't think the narrative made too many mistakes honestly. The world building in general is great, the characters are believable, maybe just didn't resonate with me personally.

I might actually replay it at some point to see how I digest it. I feel like I might be sort of out of step with this series anyway, I know people love the first game but I can't get over the idea that the fireflies were just going to crack open Ellie immediately, like characters we know besides, that seems like an extremely bad idea to jump immediately to that conclusion. That's something crazy mad scientists do, not actual medical experts or researchers. I try to just assume that it's logical somehow in the logic of the world, I think the rest of that game is actually great, but that one thing keeps nagging at my brain. Anyway, tangent over. Hope you have a good day as well!