Well, the problem is you can’t be a muscle mommy unless you’re hot. If you’ve got muscle but no titty nor a pretty face and long hair, you’ll make the losers mad. Female characters can be badass, but they also must have said ass.
That’s really inviting the real issue with Abby. They designed a story for people to hate her, with the expectation that she’d grow in you and you’d sympathize with her at the end. She literally looks that way through a whole game for the big reveal at the end when you see her.
It’s a post-apocalyptic setting, and she’s the only one jacked. It would have taken all of 30 seconds to show an active dairy farm, a weight gym, and other people also jacked. Bulking up muscle if you don’t have the resources is not a wise thing to do. Turns out there’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” gym. Very possible to not see it if you don’t rotate the camera to look. Still, a single person walking up looking like her (jacked), to be VERY explicit would have gone a long way.
If the second game had started at the end of the first game, from the perspective of Abby (basically take the one flashback and make that the start), and then you move forward in time bouncing between Ellie and Abby, giving players time to learn about Abby, that would have changed a lot.
Instead we are forced to play Abby, who has an unnecessary sex scene with her friends (Mel) boyfriend (Owen), who immediately kills Joel, who appears to be wasting resources on a selfish revenge plot, in a game with a story was written by writers who saw Momento + GoT and thought they could pull off clever writing (they couldn’t). And at no point is the player given any agency, especially at its ending.
Abby sucked, because Naughty Dog set the character up for failure.
It would have taken all of 30 seconds to show an active dairy farm, a weight gym, and other people also jacked. Bulking up muscle if you don’t have the resources is not a wise thing to do.
I will say I’ve never played the game, but from looking at a collection of her cutscenes on YT, they literally do?
The first time they show where she lives, they show an active gym (filled with people using the equipment), a food market with meat, and a farm with cattle.
Holy crap, it is there. Ok, scratch at least that one from the list. They should have emphasized it because I missed it completely and I can’t be the only one. I nearly missed it in the video you shared. IMO, it’s important to show that there’s an active gym culture there, because it means overall the community approves of it and they do have extra. Building muscle requires a surplus of calories. If it’s just a single person, they’re an asshole. If there’s a welcomed gym with active users, or even if it’s encouraged it sets a very different tone. She still sucks as a character. But slightly less.
I suspect the people who unabashedly yell “MUSCLE MOMMY” and the ones who self-righteously cry about video game girls not being pretty anymore are two (mostly) different subsets of the gaming community. The complaint is about the latter, and I definitely have seen people cry foul about Zarya (Overwatch) or Abby (The Last of Us 2). I’m fairly confident the only reason I haven’t seen anyone complain about Karlach (Baldur’s Gate 3) is that I no longer engage with larger gaming communities nearly as much, precisely because of that subset.
Yeah, that doesn’t really track, tons of people fetishize so-called ‘muscle mommies’, lol.
Well, the problem is you can’t be a muscle mommy unless you’re hot. If you’ve got muscle but no titty nor a pretty face and long hair, you’ll make the losers mad. Female characters can be badass, but they also must have said ass.
A muscle mommy can be with short hairs and no titties too
I was thinking of Abby from The Last Of Us Part 2. But yeah, things have changed slightly since then.
That’s really inviting the real issue with Abby. They designed a story for people to hate her, with the expectation that she’d grow in you and you’d sympathize with her at the end. She literally looks that way through a whole game for the big reveal at the end when you see her.
It’s a post-apocalyptic setting, and she’s the only one jacked. It would have taken all of 30 seconds to show an active dairy farm, a weight gym, and other people also jacked. Bulking up muscle if you don’t have the resources is not a wise thing to do.Turns out there’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” gym. Very possible to not see it if you don’t rotate the camera to look. Still, a single person walking up looking like her (jacked), to be VERY explicit would have gone a long way.If the second game had started at the end of the first game, from the perspective of Abby (basically take the one flashback and make that the start), and then you move forward in time bouncing between Ellie and Abby, giving players time to learn about Abby, that would have changed a lot.
Instead we are forced to play Abby, who has an unnecessary sex scene with her friends (Mel) boyfriend (Owen), who immediately kills Joel, who appears to be wasting resources on a selfish revenge plot, in a game with a story was written by writers who saw Momento + GoT and thought they could pull off clever writing (they couldn’t). And at no point is the player given any agency, especially at its ending.
Abby sucked, because Naughty Dog set the character up for failure.
I will say I’ve never played the game, but from looking at a collection of her cutscenes on YT, they literally do?
The first time they show where she lives, they show an active gym (filled with people using the equipment), a food market with meat, and a farm with cattle.
Holy crap, it is there. Ok, scratch at least that one from the list. They should have emphasized it because I missed it completely and I can’t be the only one. I nearly missed it in the video you shared. IMO, it’s important to show that there’s an active gym culture there, because it means overall the community approves of it and they do have extra. Building muscle requires a surplus of calories. If it’s just a single person, they’re an asshole. If there’s a welcomed gym with active users, or even if it’s encouraged it sets a very different tone. She still sucks as a character. But slightly less.
I suspect the people who unabashedly yell “MUSCLE MOMMY” and the ones who self-righteously cry about video game girls not being pretty anymore are two (mostly) different subsets of the gaming community. The complaint is about the latter, and I definitely have seen people cry foul about Zarya (Overwatch) or Abby (The Last of Us 2). I’m fairly confident the only reason I haven’t seen anyone complain about Karlach (Baldur’s Gate 3) is that I no longer engage with larger gaming communities nearly as much, precisely because of that subset.