Modern Naughty Dog is trash and gamers licking their boots are braindead. They are either too afraid of sales failure or too untalented to mix their trite narrative with gameplay that fits. So instead you end up with a cliche "likeable" hipster that basically commits genocide for treasure and somehow you're supposed to root for him like Indiana Jones. Nope, doesn't work. "B-b-but that's EVERY game, silly!
". Yeah, no. Not in my top 100. Fucking
Kojima handled ludonarrative dissonance more subtle on PS1 than these clowns.
Then for your "serious" game use the most basic forms of emotional manipulation, brehs. Uh oh, they killed a child 30 mins in. So brave!
Seen a reviewer of Part 2 today who felt so sad killing dogs. The next best low hanging fruit to force cheap compassion right after sad little girls
Nier 1 is by far the smartest take on this kind of gaming morale, despite some leftover animu tropes. While it also takes advantage of gaming as a narrative medium, instead of trying to bend games into a pretentious indie movie. When it comes to Naughty Dog-esque gamedesign, Hellblade is the only positive example I can think of.
edit: Demanding Spiderman to become a protest walking simulator is also pretty dumb.
