There’s bad stuff everywhere but I think it’s fair to say that TLOU is considered one of the if not the finest example of storytelling in videogames, and that if we compare its level against the whole landscape of greatest movies and TV shows of all time, it would be quite mediocre.
As far as I understand Neil was always more about the action too while Amy was more about story.
I don't mean to say that Neil doesn't want story or whatever, but I think that people praise him a lot in ways that is probably not true.
The TLOU2 trailers have basically been violence and gore fests, it almost feels like Mortal Kombat just with less slow-mo and close ups.
And a lot of his female characters that he's responsible for have been pretty predictable and stereotypes of a '' strong female character '' in the blandest and most stereotypical ways imaginable.
I don't think that he's as smart as people say that he is at all.
I am expecting TLOU2 to focus way more on the action tbh and less on story and the story being a bit of a mess and just a bunch of excuses for gunfights to happen.
The first game was very basic and unimaginative, it wasn't exactly a difficult endeavour. It played it incredibly safe with the writing.
People really need to understand that good voice acting and mocap doesn't make something a good story or all that well-written.
I think that people get way too drawn in by that and the whole '' cinematic experience '' aspect and they feel like it's better and more impressive story and writing wise than it really is.
Especially when it's kids involved in the story, it's very easy to touch at peoples heartstrings then.
Ultimately both games like TLOU and God of War played it incredibly safe, I know that people say the opposite about God of War but considering the times it really didn't take any risks at all. Everything about it was designed in the safest possible way and just adopted everything that had already been proven to work in the mainstream from other AAA games.
I mean as much as I enjoyed the early seasons of Walking Dead, it really wasn't that impressive in terms of writing and Rick's actor really carried the show A LOT. That guy was just an incredibly actor and it wouldn't have been anywhere near as good without him. And TLOU really isn't all that different.
Neil often gets called the most important and greatest storytellers in gaming of all time by both fans and the gaming press and it's honestly a bit embarrassing imo. Because to me it just tells me that we have really low standards.
That doesn't mean that Neil is awful at it, but I mean if that's what he gets labelled as.
