TLJ did still turn a profit, but the audience numbers were way down from TFA.
TFA turned a lot of actual Star Wars fans off: the ones who knew the story well enough to recognize it as just a shitty do-over with no
fresh ideas. TLJ was the beginning of the real slide because it turned everyone off: even the normies were able to see at the time that it was shit. I'm not sure TLOU is a good video game allegory for that: even now most gamers will insist the first one was good.
I thought the first WAS good, for one playthrough. But after that, "ball and chain dialogues" would hurt every run afterwards. It wasn't in-your-face queer propaganda until that DLC, which I didn't play.
TLOU1 (with no DLCs), I played it with a dormmate in college, and the game was so piss-easy that we had a rule that you could backseat game at any time, and it had to be obeyed so long as it wasn't immediately suicidal. That made for a fun playthrough, and we both riffed the game the entire time. Game-and-story separation was a common riff. "Oh, the kid is whining again, that means we just killed the last enemy, it's amazing she can instantly tell, I thought for sure there was one more".
...But it's a narrative game with one predetermined ending, and juuust preachy enough to be mildly grating. Which is fine when learning that ending, but not so much on re-experience.
TLJ did still turn a profit, but the audience numbers were way down from TFA.
TFA turned a lot of actual Star Wars fans off: the ones who knew the story well enough to recognize it as just a shitty do-over with no fresh ideas. TLJ was the beginning of the real slide because it turned everyone off: even the normies were able to see at the time that it was shit. I'm not sure TLOU is a good video game allegory for that: even now most gamers will insist the first one was good.
I thought the first WAS good, for one playthrough. But after that, "ball and chain dialogues" would hurt every run afterwards. It wasn't in-your-face queer propaganda until that DLC, which I didn't play.
It certainly wasn't the worst thing ever made, although I never though it lived up to the hype.
TLOU1 (with no DLCs), I played it with a dormmate in college, and the game was so piss-easy that we had a rule that you could backseat game at any time, and it had to be obeyed so long as it wasn't immediately suicidal. That made for a fun playthrough, and we both riffed the game the entire time. Game-and-story separation was a common riff. "Oh, the kid is whining again, that means we just killed the last enemy, it's amazing she can instantly tell, I thought for sure there was one more".
...But it's a narrative game with one predetermined ending, and juuust preachy enough to be mildly grating. Which is fine when learning that ending, but not so much on re-experience.