T w e n t y S i d e d

We spent a lot of time making fun of the stupid church bell, mostly because we were in the middle of a six-hour combat section and had nothing else to talk about. But now that’ I’m thinking about it, what the hell is that bell for? I suppose it exists to let people know of danger, but I think the CONSTANT GUNSHOTS accomplish that. And how does the guy ringing the bell know what’s going on, or if he should stop ringing or start ringing? (Other than listening for gunshots, I guess?) How does this not attract ten thousand zombies?

The scene where Ellie escapes from food prison is so painfully contrived that I can’t stand it. They already have half a dozen dudes hanging up in the meat locker. Plus a horse. Plus a deer. Plus another thirty or so bodies thanks to Ellie and Joel. These idiots have more than enough meat.

But even if they’re going to butcher her now, are they really going to hack her up alive and clothed? Is that how they normally do it? Seems like that would be the messy and extremely dangerous dangerous way of doing things. And then her escape requires David to leave his cleaver where she could reach it, for both of them to fight like dumbasses, and for her knife to be on a shelf right outside the room. What is going on in this videogame?

I’m not even angry. This is just so goofy I actually find the entire sequence disturbingly funny. Two men are trying to chop up a young girl. I should not be laughing right now. I can’t believe all of this happens in the same universe as the tear-jerking scene where Ellie and Riley agree to lose their minds together.

And then at the end they turned David into this ridiculous psycho villain. He was so interesting in that first scene, and now he’s a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Snidely Whiplash. What a big dumb silly sequence.

Thankfully, the worst is now over.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

At around 14 minutes Ellie gets to this big house, and there’s already Raiders roaming around saying, “Find her!” We’re a mile away from where they thought she was, and they don’t have radios.

Can you imagine what this scenario must look like from their point of view? David said he wanted Ellie alive. So he sent out almost a hundred guys to track her. (It must be that many, assuming we’re not so unlucky that we just happened to run into all of them. I assume there must be still more guys searching all the other buildings in the area.) Instead of the entire group following her trail in the snow, they scattered themselves all over the entire region and began searching all the buildings.

Of course, there is a good reason for this. We needed more gameplay padding here and we already had the sound files for the raiders telling each other to look for the girl.

This is how I picture the design process at Naughty Dog:

1. Hire supremely talented actors and have them perform a brilliant script on a high-end mo-cap stage.
2. Have talented artists design gorgeous ruins,brimming with detail and flavor.
3. Then some asshole comes in and mindlessly fills the space with raiders without regard to tone, pacing, or coherency.
4. Then an even bigger asshole comes along and notices that there are still a few rooms in the game that don’t have mooks for you to gun down. He fixes this with some quick copy & paste work.
5. Then Eugene comes along and figures, “If one bandit in every room is good, then two bandits will be twice at good!”

Dammit Eugene. You suck.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.