Polygon: Stop using extreme violence to sell your game (The Last of Us Part II)

Did not even flinch at the hammer scene but its seems it ruffled some feathers.

What do you think? Did ND go too far with violence against women?

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/30/16571230/last-of-us-part-2-trailer-violence-women

"Bones bludgeoned with hammers. A noose wrapped tightly around a struggling woman’s neck. The blade of a knife pressed into a vulnerable stomach. The gruesome imagery Naughty Dog manages to cram into a five-minute trailer for The Last of Us Part 2 is physically uncomfortable to sit through.

The victims of the vicious assault, two women, are unnamed. It’s not clear why we’re watching two people be tortured, but we’re asked to take in the extreme violence under the assumption that we’ll be rewarded with more information for doing so. That information never comes, however, and all we’re left with is residual nausea.

A trailer is a pitch to its audience of what to expect from the full game. In the past, Naughty Dog’s trailers have captured a particular mood or suggested a compelling relationship. But here, the promise is almost exclusively gore. There's an argument to be made that the trailer raises an enticing question — Why are these women being attacked? — but that mystery is both too familiar and too broad."

Someone throw the journalist a tampon..

Omg Polygon's at it again lol

people need to calm down, its like violence has never been in a game (or any form of media really) before... Really if anything should be bugging people its not the violence, but the lack of context for the violence

Time to bring back Jack Thompson!

more brutal than dad of war

Lolygon.

Deal with it.

The context is that they are in zombie apocolypse where human rights, dignity and empathy are long gone.

The world of TLOU was always gruesome as ****.

? Polygon.

They need to STFU.

@deeph: ya, I mostly mean just who these people are. The violence is fine

i love it when ppl get pissed at this xD U know whats funny? the brutality is what I liked the most, because it makes it look even more real

@getyeryayasout: Same here. "why are these women being attacked?"

It's like the writer didn't play the first game. A) the apocalypse has happened. Life isn't the somewhat peaceful and just society we live in now B) women have always been and probably always will be the more vulnerable of the sexes due to their being physically weaker.

This article brings up some questions about us as a species Imo. Why are we so enthralled by violence in our entertainment? But spare me the spin on it being a sex thing.

Put it this way. I'm a woman, and I couldn't care less. I think the trailer is great.

Polygon is full of wank heads.

i can care less about the violence but a 5 min trailer and no gameplay? gonna be another boring AF game

Even this I think the trailer explained rather well. They are from different factions.

Clip its wings is most likely a reference to the fireflies.

It's a video game, do they know that?

What if you hit her? You might go to jail...

did they not play the first game?

Yea, tampon could have ridged edges.

@deeph: ya, I dunno. I was just joking really.

The trailer gives enough context to work on and was really just to setup the world.

Im not sure who these people are, but I kind of figured they were some sort of cult given some on the terminology like "apostate"

It was a brutal trailer which I feel shows the fans how the world of The Last of Us is still a crippled and deadly place to live in. A horrific, post-apocalyptic setting which shows humanity is definitely still a major threat.

Granted, it was quite a sparse trailer in terms of information. There was no gameplay which is the major omission but also no mention of the infected has been made yet either.

I feel like the trailer was mostly setting up the mystery surrounding who the faction of characters in the trailer are and who they are fighting against. The brutality is common to the world of The Last of Us. I think the writer of the article is being too sensitive. :(

ya Im hoping for some gameplay too, but its probably too early for that still. The infected were in the end of the trailer though, so they still do exist in the world at least

Aha! I just re-watched it and I missed them the first time around. That's good. So we know that the infected are back in.

@uninspiredcup: Ah come on now, Ted. The writer is just expressing their desire to see the more complex character elements of The Last of Us described in the trailers rather than the violence we know to expect from the series.

Understandable but the framing of the article is wrong. By saying he found this trailer difficult to watch, he's exposing himself as being rather forgetful in the extreme violence constantly displayed to the player throughout the first title. There is something to be said about the lack of character-driven scenes in the trailer, but then I'd argue the reveal teaser already showed us some of Ellie's current emotional state, so it's not as though Naughty Dog haven't gone that route already.

Basically, the guy is being too sensitive. This is coming from someone who really struggles with extreme gore.

Bingo.

While I agree with the sentiment (violence shouldn't be a video-game's main selling point) the SJW garbage is just seeping from all of this article's orifices.

I'm a bit torn. The violence was very hard to watch, but to say its without context is just plain silly. Its a teaser trailer. We'll understand what this all means in time.

The article's author is a woman, and it seems she's not upset by extreme violence or gore, but rather that it's violence directed at a woman

@drlostrib: Okay. That gives me a bit of a clearer understanding of the article that I didn't read. :P

Her second tweet, I find interesting. The word 'glorifying' seems ill-placed. The trailer didn't glorify violence. It wasn't showing violence against women in a positive light or in a flippant manner. It was very much meant to be an unsettling, horrific perspective of the world the game is set in. The trailer is not glorifying violence against women.

I do have difficulty watching women die on-screen in gruesome ways; especially in TV and movies in a live-action setting. It's just something that I am squeamish about but I understand the difference between violence being glorified vs. something made an example of...

I thought it was a good trailer, would still rather have gameplay though. In that type of world violence is survival, people do what is necessary to live.

This is the theme/setting and world of the last of us...it's suppose to be violent.

Another YouTube game brought to you by Sony Entertainment. I look forward to streaming it.

Fictional violence is only okay when it's against a man.

#Equality

I liked it, another top 5 GOAT in the works.

Who the hell gives that site clicks?

Apparently most of the folks responding here. Its funny how passionate some folks are towards the article they supposedly don't care about.

Theres nothing more hypocritical to talk about violence, any kind of violence, in todays video games.

Aren't Polygon writers typically vaginas on legs? Probably akin to those Buzzfeed writers with the testosterone levels of children.

lol the unnecessary amount of violence in one scene was hilarious. If it were a movie it would get a 30 % on RT just based on the lack of subtlety.

Derpy millennial SJWs are killing the world.

Never click on a Polygon link.

People are complaining about how this game is SJW, but no one is talking about how it was just a five minute cutscene of a game that will probably be mostly walking and talking, along with even longer cutscenes. I thought I was watching The Walking Dead Negan beat down style with the whole hammering going on.