The Last of Us may be getting remade!

[Roo]

Oh, and the Days Gone sequel is seemingly cancelled...

NO! NO! NO!

When will companies learn that banking off of nostalgia doesn't always work!?

 

[Carlos]

Oh, and the Days Gone sequel is seemingly cancelled...

NO! NO! NO!

When will companies learn that banking off of nostalgia doesn't always work!?

This remake is going to bomb and backfire at whoever greenlit the game. Thing is, the franchise is dead after TLoU2's fiasco. I don't see the game selling well.

It sold over 4 million, but how much of those people are going to buy a remake or sequel? I see half buying it.

Days Gone 2, too.

It sold pretty well at launch, but I doubt it has the same staying power that God of War has.

 

[Roo]

I always did say that Naughty Dog had my respect, as they made something wonderful and didn't splash out a lot of crap like Capcom does. Unfortunately, it seems companies these days are scared to take risks, especially if a game gets a mixed reception. But I don't see how remaking greatness is going to do anything except turn a lot of heads. Plus, it's way too soon. Maybe in 2023, yeah, enough time will have gone by. But it didn't even come out 10 years ago as of this writing.

 

[LordOfDarkness]

That game only came out a few years back. I never even played it. Is this because the sequel flopped or something? I don't know, I'd heard it wasn't as good or there was definitely some hoo-ha about it.

 

[Roo]

I have no idea. But they are already doing a TV series, which follows the same premise. Hopefully, they're not getting dollar signs in their eyes.

I no longer feel motivated to get a PS5. In fact, I was so chuffed to hear that RE8 was coming to the PS4.

 

[V's patron]

I wasn't interested in remakes till FF7R came out. That showed me what remakes could be. An old game with new content is more appealing than an old game with just a fresh coat of paint.

For example, Jak and Daxter's 20th anniversary is this year. It would be cool to see a remake of the first game. There's a whole ton of cut content they could put in now. They have the benefit of hindsight etc.

I don't mind remakes. I just don't really feel there's anything you could do with the Last of Us to make it extra appealing. Unless it's a crossover with Uncharted.....What if Nathan lived through the Last of US?

The last of Nate?

Lol.......

 

[Carlos]

That game only came out a few years back. I never even played it. Is this because the sequel flopped or something? I don't know, I'd heard it wasn't as good or there was definitely some hoo-ha about it.

Both the first game and the second game sold pretty well, but the thing is, The Last of Us Remastered was also released for PS4 (which is playable on PS5 via BC, but don't quote me on that, dunno if it works).

As I mentioned TLOU2 sold 4 million units. I doubt Sony's gonna match those sales with a remake or a sequel. Damage's been done with TLoU2 "woke" theme(s).

I don't have a problem with more muscles on women's body, but people got offended over it. And Abby's personality from what I understand.

 

[V's patron]

Honestly, devoting time to remaking games that people don't like, in an endeavor to make them better, would certainly work well instead of relying constantly on nostalgia bait. It's amazing how quickly video games as a medium descended into the same pitfalls as its elder brothers, filmmaking and comic books.

Then again, "remake a bad [thing]" is how we got two terrible Dark Phoenix movies, so...

@Morgan raised a good point in the other thread. That companies should invest in remaking failed products instead rehashing successes.

Like Sega should totally fix Sonic 2006 or Boom.

 

[Morgan]

That game only came out a few years back. I never even played it. Is this because the sequel flopped or something? I don't know, I'd heard it wasn't as good or there was definitely some hoo-ha about it.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Absolutely. Sony or Naughty Dog wouldn't say it outright, but after the initial brag about "TLOU Part 2 has sold/shipped 4 million copies", that was only the initial weekend numbers and hasn't been updated since, suggesting it hasn't hit other milestones since then. Meanwhile the first game sold 1.3 million in its first week of release in 2013, but 8 million copies within its first year. By April 2018 (3+ years later), the game sold an additional 9 million copies, totaling 17 million in lifetime sales, and then sold 3 million more copies by October 2019, so it has over 20 million copies sold across its lifetime by now.

4 million copies for a hyped sequel is embarrassing, first-week sales or no. That's a fifth of the total number of people who enjoyed the previous game. The lack of update suggests no legs thanks to poor Word of Mouth and the events both in and around the game that soured people's opinions of it and will impact the sales of a potential sequel.

In no particular order of importance, for things in the game:

• Bad writing, straight up. Not only criticized by amateur and professional writers alike, and from people around the world in whatever their native language is (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese especially), but without spoiling anything, I'll say that characters behave stupidly and are motivated entirely through coincidence and cheap callbacks that don't hold up, to deliver some deathly shallow moralizing at the player about a lesson they don't need a 30-hour game to learn, and really, if a video game is at the position to teach them that lesson when they hadn't before, they were too far gone.
• The story is so poorly told that it needed movie-length podcasts post-release for "why the thing happened how it did" to have a decent explanation. In-game, it's nothing but retcons and characters holding Idiot Balls. The first game revolved about the characters and how their actions shape the way the plot unfolds. The sequel was like the director had a set story/theme they really wanted to tell but instead of being respectful enough to tell it with new characters entirely and leaving the old ones behind, they took the ones from the previous game and battered their personality around until they fit. Like blatantly bad "sequel fanfiction" written by someone who claims to love a character only to reduce them down to one or two traits.
• Very blatant manipulation of emotions in the game mechanics, such as giving NPCs names that their allies call out when they die, or forcing the players to kill a dog in a scripted gameplay sequence but blatantly lying about how killing the dog is optional during press junkets. The villains are clearly villains one moment, but then they get a moment where they do some generically nice thing like pet a dog or feed a cat or something. The game tries to blackmail the player into being invested in it. You can even forget there are zombies in this zombie game!
• Ellie is apparently supposed to feel bad about each person she kills, and she only kills less than a dozen people across the game in unavoidable sequences, but she not only racks up a body count in the hundreds throughout the game otherwise with no other show of remorse, the game clearly rewards the player by giving them more creative ways to kill, including tossing Molotov cocktails at dogs and watching them whine in realistic and heart-wrenching ways and she calls them a "stupid dog" afterward. But she's totally traumatized by all the killings, everyone!
• False advertising. Trailer footage and other promotional material showed things in the game that don't unfold. Like, changed character models and everything. Like if DMC5 showed Vergil's comeback in trailers and then you played the game and it's actually Kyrie standing in his place because Vergil wasn't in that part of the game.
• All of the above is exacerbated by people who played the first game either repeating each other or otherwise having a shared memory of a plot-relevant collectible in the first game that justified its ending but the collectible was either removed either in a patch or in the re-release, suggesting that Naughty Dog was trying to retcon certain details to make future retcons in a sequel more palatable.

And for things out of the game:

• It has all the execution of a bad teen drama, but "critics" that gave it positive reviews kept comparing it to works with actual cultural relevance, like Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. No game is Schindler's List. Video games themselves barely hit "literary epic" status even with novel-length scripts upwards of 700K words, and most of those are from visual novels with various routes. Dafuq?
• The opportunity for high-handed snobbery at hailing this sequel as a "masterpiece" also provided a lot of ammo for "critics" to lambast portions of fandom and tout their own moral superiority over "gamers", "nerds", and general undesirables, without care for who it was they were painting with a broad brush. It turns out, it doesn't matter if you as a gamer are Black, Latino, Asian, a woman, trans, bisexual, lesbian, etc,, and you loved the previous game. If you dislike the sequel, you're automatically a Straight White Male looking to be oppressed because this game doesn't cater to your Straight White Male sensibilities!
• Crunch. Lots, and lots, of crunch.
• A lot of, urrrrrr, shall we say, "using marginalized groups as shield from criticism" going on, that even Tumblr and sects of Twitter noticed and were repulsed by. Turns out if you're trying to make your game appeal to diverse groups it helps to not accuse them of being homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, racist, etc. just because they don't like your game. Maybe it's just bad.
• Troy Baker defending the game from criticism as if he'd get a bonus in his check, to the point of comparing Joel in this game to David in the previous game. David was a pedophilic cannibal who threatened to make Ellie his "pet". Joel is clearly none of those things. Ashley Johnson has stayed quiet.
• Previous interviews and articles surfacing about Neil Druckmann and TLOU1: namely, that he tried this same plot before during TLOU1's development but Bruce Straley called it out as being implausible and continually refused until Neil worked it into something more sensible. TLOU2 was Neil with basically no one to tell him "No". Also, he has more than one interview where he admits he had homicidal thoughts about people he saw on television and entertained revenge-and-torture fantasies against people he knew nothing about, including children. It's unclear why he volunteered this information, but he also voiced an intent to manipulate the player into feeling the same.
• The director is insufferable on Twitter and dismissively told people to "get therapy" just because they felt strongly about the way the characters are treated in the game, even though he's publicized his intent to make people feel violently angry about the characters by manipulating their sense of closeness to them. He got the exact reaction he said he wanted from people and then tried to ridicule them over it.
• Bannings, lots and lots of bannings. AngryJoe got banned from ResetERA because of his "politics" when he was getting ready to put up his review of the game. And some poor schmuck got banned from the same site by pointing out that a woman having muscles didn't mean she was MtF trans, and that the female character in question was based off of a female bodybuilder. That poster was right. Still banned, though! Same goes for The Last Of Us subreddit versus The Last Of Us 2 subreddit. People in the former banning anyone for posting even the most benign criticisms (like, "a pregnant medic who looks like their belly's about to pop shouldn't be climbing fences and smacking said belly right into walls, taking ten-foot drops or walking along beams") even though the game is ostensibly about "gaining perspective" and not writing "bad people" off as wholly terrible. Latest reason for a subreddit ban is "we don't allow ugly people to post".
• All in all this game threw its hat into the ring of IdPol culture war whatever the term is, something something, went toe-to-toe with Ghost of Tsushima for fandom attention, and ummmm.... something.

 

[BrawlMan]

I boycotted Naughty Dog for their crunch abuse, so I give no sh!ts for their pathetic remake. I've already played or playing better remakes:

• REmake 1, 2, & 3.
• Super Mario 3D World - It's a 3D version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA)
• Ninja Warriors Once Again
• Crash Insane Trilogy
• Shadow of the Colossus

Sony has an obsession of only focusing on "Blockbusters", and it's going to bite them in the ass hard. Niche studios and games are just as important, even more so than the big guys. I'll still buy good niche games from other Japanese or Western developers, if Sony's cowardly dicks and clits won't do it.

 

[BlackAngel]

This is some bullshit!

 

[Roo]

I don't think I will post on GameFAQs anymore. The users on there are pretty ignorant, to be honest. I've had too many unpleasant replies from people on there, whether I discuss The Last of Us, or Resident Evil Village. I've gave up thinking they will ever be rational.

Like, if I make posts going into a bit of a tangent, they all act like shills do and act like opinions are taboo, and refer to me as a casual fan. And if I embed videos, that are not necessarily my own videos, they keep on saying I am self-promoting or spamming. Even though it's being done to prove a point, you're not supposed to be doing this.

Not to mention, they're just outright cheeky anyway. I've also got to be careful in any case, as some Australian idiot called "Alfred Gimpy" watches my YouTube channel like a hawk. He used to run a website called Capcom Central years ago, but it has been gone for a long time by this point. Now because he doesn't have a life, all he does is pester me online. This guy is an adult, but he signs into joyfreak.com all of the time, just to read my posts, and even edits wikis just to be subscribed to the articles I contribute to as well. You would think fully grown men would like, you know, be able to act a little more mature.

 

[Carlos]

I don't think I will post on GameFAQs anymore. The users on there are pretty ignorant, to be honest. I've had too many unpleasant replies from people on there, whether I discuss The Last of Us, or Resident Evil Village. I've gave up thinking they will ever be rational.

Like, if I make posts going into a bit of a tangent, they all act like shills do and act like opinions are taboo, and refer to me as a casual fan. And if I embed videos, that are not necessarily my own videos, they keep on saying I am self-promoting or spamming. Even though it's being done to prove a point, you're not supposed to be doing this.

Not to mention, they're just outright cheeky anyway. I've also got to be careful in any case, as some Australian idiot called "Alfred Gimpy" watches my YouTube channel like a hawk. He used to run a website called Capcom Central years ago, but it has been gone for a long time by this point. Now because he doesn't have a life, all he does is pester me online. This guy is an adult, but he signs into joyfreak.com all of the time, just to read my posts, and even edits wikis just to be subscribed to the articles I contribute to as well. You would think fully grown men would like, you know, be able to act a little more mature.

Go to the owner, and complain, bro. Keep this ****head in check. If he publicly berates you, report it. Tell the owner I sent you. He knows who I am.

The software JoyFreak runs is the same one this site uses - xenForo. So the owner has a choice to just ban the account. If he re-registers, guess what? IP Ban or Discourage.

 

[Morgan]

This is some bullshit!

Talk to 'em!!

An amendment to my post above:

I've looked at GamStat. This site has been archived with no future updates since Nov 19, 2020, and it measures players by people who've attained at least one achievement in the game.

TLOU2 is at 7.2 million players since the initial week milestone, with 270K new players between Oct19 2020 and Nov19 2020.

TLOU1 in comparison, is at 44.5 million players. Since October 2019 to the last known update to GamStat on November 2020, the amount of people who picked the game up doubled in size in one year, with 310K new players over the month of Oct-Nov2020, with the 44.5mil players split between 16.9mil on PS3, and 30.9mil on PS4.

Keep in mind, this does not track shipments of new copies, but achievement counts. These copies could be from used game and secondhand sales, by people who've already completed the game (or not) and don't want it anymore. But for the playerbase to double in a year and to have more new players than the sequel is still an absolute flex.

I boycotted Naughty Dog for their crunch abuse, so I give no ****s for their pathetic remake. I've already played or playing better remakes:

• REmake 1, 2, & 3.
• Super Mario 3D World - It's a 3D version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA)
• Ninja Warriors Once Again
• Crash Insane Trilogy
• Shadow of the Colossus

Sony has an obsession of only focusing on "Blockbusters", and it's going to bite them in the ass hard. Niche studios and games are just as important, even more so than the big guys. I'll still buy good niche games from other Japanese or Western developers, if Sony's cowardly dicks and clits won't do it.

*busy taking notes on what the swear filter does and doesn't catch* Mmhmm, mmhmm....

*puts notepad away*

There needs to be more often and more honest conversations around game development and what it's turned into. Development cycles have gotten too large in proportion to how big and boomy publishers want the game to be to draw the most eyes and get the most cash to recoup their costs, and something-something marketing. As we've seen with Cyberpunk 2077 and even with TLOU2, a development cycle for a new game can start at the beginning of, or just before, a new console generation only for the game to come out right at the end of the console's life or the next generation. So if TLOU Part 3 were being worked on right as soon as the most recent game, we'd have to wait until PS6, or the end of the PS5? That's stupid.

AAA gaming is a behemoth that needs to be slain. We don't need it. There's the term Quadruple A floating around now that the PS5 and SRX is out, and that sh#t needs to be smothered with a pillow.

We can do with "AA", "B", niche titles. Hades came out and people loved the nuts off of it. I'm gonna play Kaze and the Wild Masks when I'm not getting my butt kicked by Stranger from Sword City, and even with that game's difficulty I can't stop singing its praises even though it's literally 2D art and the PoV of an old Windows labyrinth screensaver.

We can do with indie and niche titles and titles supported by Devolver Digital and New Blood Interactive to name a few.

 

[Roo]

Banning somebody's IP address, whether it's a proxy or their own ISP issued subnet, likely won't do anything. In this day of age, there's so many free VPN services available, that it's so easy for abusers to keep on coming back. Hell, even Opera has one included. For every IP address you block, they can come back within minutes with another proxy. So if you added 82.* to a block list, you'd be unfairly banning any normal users with that IP range.

Unfortunately, this guy is either in Australia or New Zealand, so my country's jurisdiction could be separate to his. It's possible he is in New Zealand, as I obtained an IP address on Wikipedia once, to do with a company named Spark, which doesn't cover Australia. Unfortunately, I just ran in circles trying to report him.

I know who he is, however, because he happened to be spamming on Biohaze in 2017. He posted a picture of himself and a dog. Not long after that, he went on Wikipedia to revert my edits, and I got that IP address in question. So I thought of people I knew from either Australia or New Zealand, and I found his Twitter, where he had a picture of himself and the same dog. And I even remember his old handle from when I knew him back in 2004. He was also a moderator for The Horror Is Alive, run by Dot50Cal.

Since 2017, he has been annoying me on tons of forums and the Fandom wikis. For some reason, he creates multiple pseudonyms on the Horror Film Wiki, to edit articles I edited months ago, even with anonymous IP addresses. After that, he closes them and signs up even more. He probably looks at the recent changes menu, which is rather creepy.

Apparently, editing the pages automatically subscribes users to the pages, so if anybody else edits them, they get notified through emails that such and such has edited, whatever it is. I'm not quite sure why someone would do that, other than to stalk me. My mother advised me to avoid him, but it's not very easy to do that unless I just stop using these websites altogether.

He may have also tried to contact actors I met ages ago, which would not surprise me, considering he gives my address to women on Twitter. Somebody gave me a copy of a film I had a small part in, and I uploaded it on Internet Archive without the guy's consent. So he was there too, and I think he informed the guy that I did that.

He was on one of my streams in January, using dumb or offensive sounding aliases like "Retard Check" and posting my address on air. Some of my followers are wanting me to play Resident Evil Village next month. Although it may be a bad idea to stream it publicly in case he comes back, spamming again.

He knows I know who he is, which is why he makes videos like, "You think you have this figured out, mate!" Because well, I do...

 

[Morgan]

I had a cynical thought concerning the Remake: Wow, can't wait for Naughty Dog to be so incompetent that they crunch their employees and have sexual harassment cases. They might even do both at once and cause another mass exodus of game designers!

I shouldn't come to that conclusion. No one should have to about a developer they should enjoy, whose games are similarly enjoyable. But let's not forget for those who know, and let's learn for those who don't know, that one of the developers who worked on Uncharted 4 was sexually harassed by a lead dev, and when he reported it to Sony HR after a mental breakdown, he got fired the next day, and they offered him hush money not to talk about it.

In late 2015, I was sexually harassed at Naughty Dog by a lead. My work environment became extremely toxic afterward. 1/

3:31 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

In February 2016 I had a mental breakdown at work & Sony Playstation HR became involved. When I told them about the harassment they... 2/

3:31 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

...ended the call and fired me the next day. They cited the company was moving in a different direction and my job was no longer needed. 3/

3:32 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

They tried to silence me by offering $20,000 if I signed a letter agreeing to the termination as well as to not discuss it with anyone. 4/

3:33 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

I declined to sign. I have been unemployed for 17 months since. When interviewers ask why I left Naughty Dog, I say I was burned out... 5/

3:33 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

...by the crunch, ashamed to get to the root of the problem of being sexually harassed. 6/

3:34 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

I'm speaking out now because of the strength I've seen in others coming forward about their experiences in the TV/Film industry. 7/

3:34 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

This is the hardest thing I've ever done. I will not let anyone kill my drive or love for the video game industry, my passions or life. /END

3:34 PM · Oct 14, 2017 · Twitter Web Client

It's been 2 and a half years since I was sexually harassed at Naughty Dog by a lead. And 2 years and 2 months since I told Sony PlayStation HR that I was sexually harassed and then promptly fired. I still don't feel like I have the dignity or respect because of it.

2:42 PM · May 7, 2018 · Twitter Web Client

Thank you. His name is Robert Cogburn. Former Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra accused me of wanting to fire Robert when I told him I couldn’t work with him anymore. HR was present. And it was Sony PlayStation HR Heather Zavadil who I told about the harassment.

1:51 PM · May 10, 2018 · Twitter for iPhone

I can't embed tweets to save my life, so I put this all in manually with the quote function and some copypasting. Still less work than being the guy to make those tweets and name names. This happened during Uncharted 4's development, and Robert Cogburn was directly named as the party responsible for harassing David Ballard. One would think following that, that Cogburn himself was fired, no? No. He was protected by Naughty Dog and Sony for those two-plus years after such a despicable thing, and Cogburn still left Naughty Dog on his own terms and with praise from his fans:

It was an incredible 9 years @Naughty_Dog but I’ve moved to a new company - @1derstorm

Thanks for everything.

2:59 AM · Jan 28, 2018 · Twitter Web App

He'll block you if you @ him about how he harassed his own employee, though.

 

[V's patron]

Geezz.....

I liked the idea of "Dead Rising 2: Case West". It's a reimagining of Dead Rising 2 with Frank West as the main character instead of Chuck Greene. It's a cynical business move but i think it can be used pragmatically.

For example, DMC2 could be remade with a different protagonist. Like how would the story play out if Lucia had to rely on Vergil instead of Dante? it's not essential but fun to think about.

 

[Carlos]

Banning somebody's IP address, whether it's a proxy or their own ISP issued subnet, likely won't do anything. In this day of age, there's so many free VPN services available, that it's so easy for abusers to keep on coming back. Hell, even Opera has one included. For every IP address you block, they can come back within minutes with another proxy. So if you added 82.* to a block list, you'd be unfairly banning any normal users with that IP range.

You're talking to a guy that runs a network of gaming sites. This ain't my first rodeo. Admins on xenForo boards can make life hard for even the biggest harasser. Yes, i know there's a VPN, ISP subnets, or TOR routes, but you can play cat and mouse with these trolls. I do it every day with Spammers.

 

[Roo]

This Gimpy guy really needs to go the hell away. I've reported these videos already, yet Google doesn't bother deleting any of them. Just like my local authorities don't pursue contacting the police in Australia about his campaign of abuse. But at least he cannot tamper with my page on the Horror Film Wiki as a guest.

I cannot really be arsed making individual reports, as they have to warn the user before any removal commences. This means he can just keep adding and removing crap before he receives a penalty. Now he's going on about my legal issues with former support workers, sex workers, and films, besides other things.

Besides, he's like herpes anyway. He keeps coming back...

I have known this person since 2004. He used to run Capcom Central. He was a moderator on Capcom Europe years ago as well.

 

[Morgan]

Not to make light of your situation, but maybe you should take it to the Ranting Thinking Thread.