Such a disappointing game. It's basically one long downer, unlike the first (obvs awesome).
What are you able to enjoy. What hasnt been exploited and commercialised.
The doc is getting hammered at the moment, throwing a looped modal dialog. Not sure what the fix is, other than putting it on another host.
Anyway, good work on the doc; I found it interesting as a Seattle-area resident.
I could get nitpicky about a few areas that didn’t really make sense (and I’m still not really sure where the Seraphite camp was in act three given geography or what our actual aquarium looks like inside) but given how much I enjoyed the game I didn’t really care.
I personally disliked 2nd last of us, but that it is because, unlike the first one, it was missing something from the original. I absolutely disliked the 2nd act as the former antagonist despite understanding the need to include their portion of the story in the narrative.
I am lukewarm towards the end message despite it, oddly, aligning with my own personal views. It felt it was preachy.
And that, I think, some find off-putting. It is supposed to be entertainment.
Hell, Wick just released Ballerina that features strong female protagonist and.. people don't hate as much as other forced entries. I have theories as to why, but those, I think, can only derail this thread.
Does that mean you'd describe 70-90% of other visual storytelling as "catering to male straight audiences" ?
Like a lot of modern zombie media, it eschews the genre's initial thrust towards satire of race/class issues to instead play them straight, presenting a survivalist power fantasy that edges a little too close to colonialist sympathies. The admitted beauty of its settings actually makes this issue worse: players are supposed to admire the despoiled wilderness, cities and towns rendered bucolic via violent depopulation. This is only broken by the continued clashing of human/formerly human fighters and soldiers; there are still too many people.
Finding out that one of PII's subplots was meant to be an allegory of the Israel/Palestine conflict made things click hard, especially remembering how PI's development difficulties (famously, Amy Hennig being forced to lead a push to force Neil Druckmann to change the original plan to make Clickers female-only) dovetailed "grossly" with the eventual story (one where almost every prominent female character is killed brutally on-screen). What was supposed to be a thoughtful exploration of human nature, as literary as it was interactive, turned out to be just another [redacted] [redacted] power fantasy along the lines of Call of Duty. Maybe worse, for the pretense.
People that are not used to that would definitely feel unsafe in that situation.
lenocinor•8h ago
donflamenco•2h ago
In Abby Day 1, I'm pretty sure she goes through the Home Depot on 1st Ave and spends some time going through SODO. Not sure where that building with the boat is. That part seems missing from your doc.
Also, you do see the Space Needle pretty closely on the Seraphite island. In real life the Space Needle and the TV station (where the WLF people are strung up) are right next to each other. In the game, not so much.
lenocinor•2h ago
I definitely thought about putting in Home Depot. The problem is that, according to Begeal's map ( https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/viewer?mid=1pcItdmVeC6Rj24... ), which I almost always agree with, Abby's around 5th Ave. and Main St. at that point. I haven't doublechecked that location myself in game recently, but looking at a playthrough, the FOB appears to be almost directly east, and I'm pretty sure that was meant to be Harborview. This roughly tracks with what Begeal shows on their map.
That's pretty far away from Home Depot in SoDo, which is a little ways south of both stadiums, and here in the game you actually seem to be north of the stadiums by this point. Also, as you exit in the game, the garden center seems to be on the northwest corner of the store, not the northeast, and the parking lot seems different too. Given that the game has generic stores all the time that don't exist in real life, I'm inclined to say "not quite close enough" personally. But I should put all this in the document for people to judge on their own, so thank you for prompting me to do that! I'll add it in a minute.
I thought so too re: the Space Needle on Seraphite Island. But I tried to take pictures every time I saw it appear, and I could never get a good shot. (And I really tried!) If you know of a good screenshot online, though, I'll be happy to include it and credit the original source.
EDIT: Oh, and yeah, the Space Needle definitely is not in the right place in the game at least some of the time, which the TV station in the game (and the guide) makes obvious.
donflamenco•1h ago
I don't have a good save, but starting at the 28:43 mark in this YT video there is some dialog about heading towards the Space Needle. 28:53 shows it looming large.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htTJFRQxU1U
lenocinor•1h ago