by OL » Mon Nov 13, 2017 1:30 pm
I love The Last of Us, and I'm obviously looking forward to the sequel (even if I do kind of think the story should have ended with the first game), but I have to say this newest trailer/teaser/scene did pretty much nothing for me. That's not a knock against the game, like it's going to suck or anything; at this point, it'd be pretty dumb to doubt Naughty Dog.
I just think, if they want to generate any kind of hype (which shouldn't be hard to do), trailers/teasers/scenes like this are a pretty poor way of going about it. It features no previous characters, shows nothing of gameplay, is overall pretty slow and visually uninteresting, and the only thing striking about it is one or two messed-up acts of violence.
Funny thing, even though The Last of Us was post-apocalyptic and featured zombies, I barely think of it as horror when I think back on it, nor is the realism or disturbing nature of its violence even the most memorable part. The Last of Us was impactful because of its characters, the arcs they go through, the drama that stems from it all. The violence is important toward getting them into those places, sure, but it's not really the thing to be showcased outside of gameplay.
I would think, if you were making any kind of showing for the sequel, the most meaningful thing you could do is actually show us something of Joel and Ellie. Don't have to spoil anything, necessarily, just bank more on them being the real point of interest among fans. I'm not interested in a bunch of random characters I've never seen before, and I'm pretty numb when it comes to violence among people like that. But show me people I know, people I'm already interested in, and the hype level goes up.
The first teaser from however many months back was downright excellent in that regard.
But this?
It's one big "meh."
But then again, they could show us literally nothing but a logo and release the game tomorrow, and it would still sell a shit ton of copies. So hey, what do I know?