>>714338002Gameplay is fine but I'm saying that Straley kept Cuckmann in check with his writing. You can find the stories of the shit that cuckmann wanted in the original game. Linking from an old Reddit post that covers some of this:
I watched a talk that Neil gave to a university writing class sometime in 2013/2014.
In it, he discussed his unsuccessful pitches of TLOU and the seed of the story he had.
He mentioned that he had this idea of a virus wiping out just women, turning them into violent infected, and only one woman was immune, and a grizzled detective/film noir type leading guy was the lead.
He spoke of how the story was pitched to comic books and none baited. He pitched the story to Naughty Dog and was told that it's going to be seen as misogynistic if the virus only infected women and you're just beating and killing infected women for the entire game.
So he kept working on the story and fixing and changing based on the input of those around him. He had to get rid of things that weren't working.
Bruce told him what themes and story beats won't work. The actors and actresses infused their own takes on scenes and character interactions.
The game was hugely collaborative, with Neil's partners and the actors working in tandem to create the end product.
Now I don't know how it ended up that he became the rockstar, but it seems that he enjoyed the attention, loved doing the interviews and talks, and so stepped up to become the face of the franchise. After all, it was "his story".
But proof that the guy isn't a lone genius is that when his biggest partner, Bruce, left the company, we get something like The Last of Us Part II.
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