not the promised masterpiece due to some very annoying flaws, but god damn if it isn't a fine game.

wish it was shorter, the game could do without making you do around 50 favours for a single npc before they finally decide to be useful.
the game mostly consists of a awesome story buried in an absurd amount of favor quest,
john : come on do that thing you promised
guy : sure sure.... uhhh could you do me one last thing for me ?
john : god damn sure, but if you ask again i'll kill you
he'll ask again 5 more times and john does not in fact, kill him, this would be fine if it wasn't the entirety of the game, this game is about 17 hours in lenght, and i say it could be 7.
i left satisfied and pleased, but still expected more from the internet's claimed greatest game of all time

extremely surreal to see that a prevalent consensus on this is that it's an OBVIOUS uberbleak nihilist exercise in cynical ultraviolence when I feel like it's Very Clearly shooting for (but emphatically not always flawlessly succeeding at) humanist themes exploring mercy, kinship, and absolution: The last spoken line/thesis of the game is literally "I don't know if I can ever forgive you, but I'd like to try" which basically mirrors the bubbly final sentiment in Steven Universe of all things... like come on people the game clearly has a lot of faith in human compassion and optimism that we can be (and are) better than our worst impulses. We can (and should!) totally debate the efficacy of the way the game communicates these ideas. I think there are plenty of areas to criticize or outright condemn in terms of execution; the pieces written about the games fraught zionist inspirations and the discomfiting misogynoir on display in regards to a specific moment are especially vital reads--but framing this story's outlook as intentionally nihilist, player-blaming pain porn about the inescapable cycle of violence is just.. totally disingenuous to what it's clearly trying to do, imo. A story about empathy without a soft and tender pastel veneer does not render it ineffective or worthless. I would probably argue that the game's refusal to over-sentimentalize the repugnance of its deuteragonists' actions (or make their realities easily accessible/justifiable) lends more integrity to the challenge of conveying the inherent worth and potential for change within them... I feel like the game makes it extra clear that Abby and Ellie are not universalizing prescriptive ciphers for the human condition / our inescapable URGE 4 VENGEANCE and are instead very specific / detailed character studies of damaged people whose emotional processing is expressed through borderline surrealist New French Extremity interactive dream logic in a world that also presents a variety of individuals with approaches and outlooks that are direct foils to these self-destructive coping strategies!!!

lots and lots of thoughts about this game, might revisit and explore further at some point

(also feel the need to say that Naughty Dog's crunch culture is a blight on the industry and this game could have been just as affecting as a more contained and less needlessly sprawling experience)