I’m in the same exact situation Didn’t get the tattoo, but it was my plan.

I also didn’t watch any videos, only the synopsis.

It feels like finding out Santa isn’t real, but instead it’s some old druggie living in a swamp together with 16 rats, that he’s legally married to. And that all the presents you’ve ever gotten, has been made of tree bark, owl intestines and the dudes HIV infested blood. Including the naughty underwear you once got from an ex boyfriend.

But I am trying to find some positives in this, and are using every single ounce of brain power I have left, so hear me out (and this actually requires that you be open minded. Do it for the rats): This is my thought process right now, and it changes all the time.

But firstly, the person who wrote the story for TLOU 1 and Uncharted, is the same person who has written TLOU2. The 2 former stories are some of the best in the gaming industry, so chances are this one will be good too.

The clips that have been leaked, are from early February. The dev notes are also from February and March. I remember someone from naughty dog saying something back when it got delayed to may. Something about key points of the story that had to be re written and animated from scratch. What if the clips we have seen and the story, are actually the story before they re wrote it? Naughty Dog has always done it, so they’ve Motion captured different kinds of scenarios. They did that for Uncharted 4 especially, trying out different conversations, different conflicts and different narratives, so they didn’t have to go back and re shoot everything, when they got to the animating part. Albeit, the things we’ve seen can’t all be wrong, but I actually don’t believe that all the clips are the final ones. But they also haven’t pressed “Save” on the game yet, so they actually do have time to change some of the things people really didn’t like.

It’s become a sort of trend for most high profile games to get bad-mouthed before release. Death Stranding got it, and it actually turned out to be an amazing game. Not for all, but that’s just because not everyone likes Kojimas weird mind.

The Last of Us is very much about the journey and atmosphere. Cutscenes and relationships are of course also important, but unless you have played everything together in one consecutive fashion, we may not actually know what everything is.

All other things aside, if we go into the game, preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best, we may actually be pleasantly surprised. Before the leaks, we only had extreme high hopes for the story, and its almost impossible to not get disappointed in that state.

I will still play it. If I don’t like it, I will just treat it as an alternative ending to the entire story, and keep the ending from PT1 as my real ending.