The Last of Us Part II [OT] Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

NaNoW said:

so one question has been raised by a number of folks, who along with me, have already got to experience a small part of the game.
What if the game is "too realistic" and the gore is too violent that it prevents you from enjoying the game.
You will probably "see and feel" when you shiv an enemy, but this has happened now multiple times that I found the experience too brutal that I am questioning if its distasteful and stopping me from enjoying the progression.

Its like its all fun and games during Eid, until you have to actual slice the neck of the animals.

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JANARIOO said:

Girl on girl action

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SolitarySoldier said:

It's fine if one feels that way but if it is offered as criticism, as at least one review I've seen did, then I can't agree. From the very start, ND had made it clear that they were going for unadulterated violence and concrete realism to capture the feel of a world with abject indifference and abandonment. This is precisely a world where there is no sense to suffering and no meaning to violence. This is what a player is supposed to feel about this world. If all violence is justified and explained, it simply defeats the purpose. One could see this premise and say that this game isn't for me - that is fine. But I don't find criticism of such violence compelling when the game is designed around this theme and no one said it would be otherwise. If it is distasteful, it is supposed to be. One cannot project one's expectations of justice in a normal world onto a world where there is no justice and no order. This isn't just fiction. When a world is ravaged like it is in TLoU II, things work differently and there's little point in hope and expectation. I'm thinking of the Nanking massacre of Chinese by the Japanese army. One of the events in that massacre was two Japanese soldiers betting each other as to who will behead most Chinese civilians with their sword in a given time. The winner 'scored' 100 or more. This actually happened in 1937 and, of course, things much worse than that have happened. What was the point of that violence? Nothing. It was war and conquest and nobody gave a shit about anything. It wasn't right, obviously, but this world was a (in)different world - one we aren't accustomed to, thankfully, but also one that makes us rightly uncomfortable when we are exposed to it. This is what ND intends to evoke with their gruesome display of violence and they've been quite open about this imo.

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Chandoo said:

wajhi no one here besides you has played the game yet, stop rubbing it in our faces

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My playthrough of The Last of Us 2 felt terrible to experience. Over the course of my 27 hours with the game, it grew to the point of feeling nearly unbearable. This wasn’t because it asked me hard questions about my own capacity for harm or revenge, or pulled some Spec Ops: The Line-style moralizing about video game violence. Despite Druckmann’s promised “philosophical questions,” I never felt like the game asked me anything. Instead, it told me “brutality,” repeatedly and louder, until by the end I couldn’t hear what it was trying to say at all. Characters make hideous, irredeemable choices, over and over. Everybody suffers, physically and emotionally, in graphic detail. This is all intended to prove a point, but the only point I got from the game was simply to be required to stare at violence, and play through violence, and then do that again, and more, and again, and more.

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