So, I've been down the Last Oasis rabbit hole and completely missed this until today. But...
I went hard on Last of Us when it came out. The story of it really was awesome to me, even though the gameplay was mediocre, fairly standard stuff. I pretty much marathoned the game to completion and was really curious about the ending. It seemed to me there were a lot of reasons to think the Fireflies were garbage and that giving up Ellie would actually accomplish nothing, vs the doctors there actually curing the disease. A lot of the little logs and such hinted that they had no idea what they were doing. So.... curious and yearning for more I went out onto the internet and started searching for more information.
Who remembers the phrase, never meet your heroes?
Neil Druckman, in my opinion, is vastly overrated. He had a couple articles talking about the game and his story and if you read between the lines, Last of Us was not his story. He made the framework, but his original write up had Joel kidnapping Ellie and fleeing across the nation while Trish, his sidekick who dies in the beginning, chases them for vengeance. His original write up for Joel was not what we saw. He actually talks about how Troy Baker, the VA for Joel convinced him to change the character and how at first he was very resistant to the idea. According to Neil, Troy told him "No, I understand Joel, I get this character" and basically sold him on a pitch that eventually won him over to change Joel to more what we see now.
Basically, Neil's Last of Us story was not his own. It was heavily edited by a team, with input from the actors and team that made it the story that we all got to see. What we have now though, is a Neil Druckman who can do no wrong. He is now solely in charge of the story without the editing team to question him and wash away the bullshit ideas while distilling the good. He has become the famous story writer, the mastermind that gave us 'The Last of Us' and so now he is off to write his great vision. And this time no one is around to reign him in.
Add to that Neil Druckman is an SJW. Full on, bought and sold believer in the ideology that believes he should use the medium to its fullest to educate people. To make the world 'better' and to do more than just write games. That he needs to use the platform thats been given to him.
I lost interest in the Last of Us 2 quite some time ago when I learned all this, but secretly held out some small hope. I don't know if the leaks are true. They seem to be odd with other leaks reporting that a right wing religious fascist group was going to be the antagonists, and yet Joel and Ellie end up dying being the bad guys? There are some rather odd incongruities with Ellie being aligned with an anti gay faction, but even if they aren't true, this game is going to be a story disaster. Druckman believes his own bullshit too much to not use it as a platform, and you all know the story. Get woke, go broke.
