See, there you go again: “What makes it poor writing is that it didn’t have anything to say about any of those things that justified its bleakness.” or “not deep enough to justify its insistent misery.”

The word exceptional has two primary meanings. The first is “atypical, rare, unusual” and the second is “outstanding, excellent.” Both meanings are common usages, though I would say that the second meaning is more common. Regardless, the two meanings are so dissimilar that one should be able to understand the intended…

And yet, you are saying that a downer story is a bad thing in terms of story. The implicature is that a story “ought to” be uplifting or happy. This leads to the further implicature that a depressing story is failing in some way and so on, so forth. You use “bleak” and “depressing” as though they are bad things for a…

That’s fine. You don’t have to like the game or even the story. But we are talking about the quality of the writing and the moment-to-moment is every bit as important as the overall story. A book can tell the greatest story ever told, but nobody is going to finish reading it if every page is full of horrible prose and…

I would not fault a person for experiencing entertainment any way that he/she may please, but no story owes its audience a happy ending and the context of people’s lives is not a problem on the part of the game.

You cannot seriously expect us to fault the game for the unpredictable and out-of-its-control global events that happened around the time of its release, can you? 

Oh, but the moment-to-moment writing is so much more important than people give it credit for. It really makes or breaks each scene and defines the experience while playing the game (before the overarching story even becomes evident).

You understood what I meant by the word “well-made” and yet you quite intentionally chose to focus your argument on a separate definition of the term. I would say that is an argument in bad faith.

I think that perhaps TLOU2 had a few too many sucker punches, which could indeed be weary-inducing, but do you really think that none of it was earned? The relationship between Abby and Lev was not as fleshed out as the relationship between Joel and Ellie in the first game, perhaps. But I did not find it to be overly…

I totally understand that those things are not your cup of tea. It can be a turnoff, sure. Misery, yes, but well-written misery.

If you want to argue about the meanings of the words “exceptional” or “well-made,” then you are not arguing in good faith. If you understand how I intend to apply the word, then it can be applied that way. Let’s stay away from semantics, shall we?

I think that I will give Hades a try. It sounds quite good.

Yes, but I mean that the cheerleaders literally make less than minimum wage even if they don’t get injured and do show up to cheer.

I have said nothing of the sort. Every story has weaknesses, even the greatest works of literature. I cannot think of a game that was written better.

It’s funny...almost all of your points are valid and yet, I think that those same points could be made to argue about why TLOU2 was a masterpiece.

Oh please, there is not a single story that has ever been told that was free of weaknesses. 

I am sure that you easily could argue that. But the key word here is “effectively,” and I think that an effective argument would require you to point to actual flaws, such as logical inconsistencies, unnatural dialog or clichés. Also, if you felt that you could do it so easily, you would have tried it, as many people…

Yeah, they don’t really pay their cheerleaders either.

Well, that is an entirely valid point of you if you ask me! It certainly can be argued that GOTY should go to the most fun game (and fun is not the first word that comes to mind with The Last of Us, to be sure). I personally think that “Most Fun” should be its own, separate category and that GOTY should be based on…

Yes, I really cannot think of another revenge story in all of literature that takes you through the story of both sides of not just a revenge, but a cycle of revenge upon revenge, letting you see the lives of both so intimately. In the first game, we saw Joel’s “original sin” if you will. Whether you agree with what…