Results[]
Friday, May 8, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 7 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 119 |
| Match Date | Friday, May 08, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Dark Souls - 56.64% 51 for - 1 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Dark Souls - 30.19% |
| User Votes |
Dark Souls - 5353 The Last of Us - 3667 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Dark Souls - 4213 The Last of Us - 3335 |
Before we talk about the elephant in the room, let's set the stage here. Some fun with numbers:
Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g)
Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11.
The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36.
The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote!
A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast.
There isn't much reason to think these are fraudulent numbers. Dark Souls got like 30% on Link to the Past that year, and Last of Us got 40% on Kingdom Hearts 2. There is only so much adjusting that can be done there, and at a certain point if you think Dark Souls looked better anyway in 2015 then you're just adjusting the numbers around until you see the result you want. There was nothing wrong with looking at 2015 and picking The Last of Us to win this match, especially if you thought The Last of Us 2 hype was going to boost the original up. Even if you thought Dark Souls would go up due to the respect factor and the name of our contest (as well you should have, this was perfectly good logic and Souls was the decade's biggest story along with open world stuff), it had to go up enough to beat The Last of Us potentially being boosted by sequel hype.
Oh it got boosted by sequel hype alright, but not in the way anyone was expecting pre-contest. One day after The Last of Us's match with Batman where it struggled a bit, Naughty Dog and Sony announced another delay in The Last of Us 2's release date. Now for the record, coronavirus has affected a lot of things in 2020 so delays on entertainment are understandable, but this game was originally supposed to come out on February 21st and the first delay was announced in October of 2019. A second delay was announced on April 2nd and corona was directly cited.
Okay, sure, makes sense. We all understand that. But the announcement of a third delay really started to piss people off, and it happened right in the middle of this contest on April 27th. At that point, it isn't coronavirus causing the delays and we all know it. More on that in a second.
On the same exact day that yet another delay was announced, all hell broke loose at Naughty Dog and the entirety of The Last of Us 2's plot was leaked and posted online. At first, it was widely believed that this was done by a disgruntled employee who was sick of the conditions there. And who could blame them? But as it turns out, the leak was done by a hacker who used an older game to exploit a server security weakness.
I could go on an incredibly long rant here about how Naughty Dog legitimately treats their employees like slaves, but Jim Sterling covers this one far better than I ever could. Don't worry, this video mentions absolutely nothing about what's in the leaks. All he talks about is how and why they happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LRynF3PZn0
Whether the leak was an inside job or not, the fact that everyone believed at first that it came from someone pissed at a crunch tells the story, doesn't it?
What's even worse is what's actually in the leaks, so let's just get to it. I will not discuss any of them here, even with spoiler tags, out of respect for anyone who doesn't want to know them. Instead, here is a video with a very safe thumbnail. If you want to know what's in the leaks, watch this video. If not, skip past it. WARNING: THIS VIDEO PROBABLY SPOILS EVERYTHING THAT'S IN THE LAST OF US 2!!! WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!
I asked a mod whom we all love and respect if this video was safe to post, and he confirmed that it is. Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE6RcyqBUB8
I won't bother getting into how I personally feel about what this all means in terms of the series plot, because I already said I'm not talking about the specifics here. Just know that I liked the original quite a lot and that my opinion pretty much lines up with what everyone is saying on the internet. And believe me, you can't go anywhere on the internet right now without people talking about this. Naughty Dog fucked up, and they fucked up badly.
What I do want to talk about here is the thorough and swift rejection of the SJW filth that's been infesting entertainment. Last decade was the rise of that puke, but this decade is seeing the public reject all of it at an alarming rate.
"But Ulti, everywhere I look online people are happy about diversity and such! And Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars so lol you!"
Social media in no way reflects the real world, and people need to learn this lesson. Don't let Twitter produce your show or control your opinions. If social media or going viral meant jack shit, we would have had President Bernie Sanders 300 times over by now.
As for Captain Marvel, good example! I'm glad someone brought her up. Thanks, Hypothetical Guy. She is a wonderful example of audiences being smart, because people know the difference between well-meaning diversity like Captain Marvel or the Tom Holland Spiderman cast and the garbage The Last of Us 2 is trying to pull.
You can have the opinions Brie Larson or Tessa Thompson have. Free country, free speech. Go nuts. The problem happens when you try to fight discrimination with discrimination in entertainment despite the audience, including most of the women in your audience, outright telling you to fuck off. Girl power and diversity based on merit are very, very good things. Forcing it at the expense of others (13 Reasons Why and the constant misandry being a great example) is where the problem starts, and I don't get how people don't understand the difference. I could name 100 female characters, probably more, who are strong, amazing, great female characters who aren't in their roles to check off diversity boxes and tell everyone men suck all day long.
Hell this writeup is going to be long anyways, so let's do it. What's 100 extra lines on a wiki page, anyway? This is right off the top of my head in no order whatsoever. I won't cheat, look at any lists, nothing. You can make strong, cool, and lovable female characters without ever going the moronic "all men suck and we must check off as many diversity boxes as possible" SJW route.
-Captain Marvel
-Wonder Woman
-Beatrix Kiddo
-Sarah Conner pre Dark Fate
-Commander Shepherd
-Tifa Lockheart
-Ellen Ripley
-Princess Leia
-Buffy
-Jill Valentine
-Presea Combatir
-Sheena Fujibayashi, and don't ask me to spell her last name correctly
-Rita Mordio
-Judith
-Scully (the real reason X-Files was popular!)
-Elaine Benes
-Althena from the Lunar games
-Khaleesi
-Cersei Lannister
-Catherine Tully
-Brienne of Tarth
-Black Widow
-Arya Stark
-Xena, Warrior Princess
-Katniss Everdeen (book version, the movies do her no justice at all)
-Lara Croft
-Padme (yeah I fucking said it, do not @ me)
-Clarice from Silence of the Lambs
-Miranda Lawson
-Tali
-Kasumi
-Celes
-Yuffie
-Yuna
-Rikku
-Ashe
-Lightning
-Fang
-Charlotte Flair
-Becky Lynch
-Shayna Baszler
-Ronda Rousey
-Sara del Ray
-Sarah Stock
-Portia Perez
-Cheerleader Melissa
-Kris Statlander
-Toni Storm
-Bianca Belair
-The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
-Maeve (Westworld)
-Dolores (Westworld)
-Bayonetta
-Juno
-Mulan
-Ariel
-Monica
-Phoebe
-Rachel
-13 from House
-Olivia Benson (the girl from Law and Order SVU with the big chin)
-11 from Stranger Things
-Jessica Jones
-Catwoman
-Maria from West Side Story
-Mimi from Rent
-Christine from Phantom of the Opera
-Beatrix from Umineko
-Beatrix from Final Fantasy 9
-Pepper Potts
-Terra Branford
-Ada Wong
-Edelgard
-Lyndis
-Corrin
-Undyne
-Cammy
-Chun-Li
-C. Viper
-Trish from the DMC games
-Trish Stratus
-Elizabeth Swann
-June from Handmaid's Tale
-Lucina
-Tharja
-Byleth
-Sothis
-Hilda
-Petra
-Ingrid
-THUNDER CATHERINE, I MEAN COME ON HER NAME IS LITERALLY THUNDER CATHERINE FFS
-Shamir
-Rhea
-Titania
-Jill
-Celica
-Azura
-Camilla
-Anna
-Micaiah
-Sakura
-Rose
-Elena
-Juri
-Kerrigan
-Meryl
-Samus
-Zelda
-Palutena
-Gamora
-Do female Pokemon count?
-How about generic female characters when I get to create my own, like in Skyrim or Dark Souls?
This should be around 100 or close to it. Yes, there are a lot of Nintendo, wrestling, JRPG, MCU, and Street Fighter characters. Welcome to what most of my entertainment time has gone towards! I could go on for quite awhile here with naming great females who aren't pushing stupid agendas, but do you get the point yet? If you're a great character, you're a great character and people will just like you for being you. No one who isn't completely out of their mind is walking around, looking at the world, and going "X is represented in this piece of entertainment, and by enjoying X you must hate all of Y". I've been trying to find the right words to prove my point here for years, and that Upper Echelon guy really did a perfect job. No one worth interacting with looks at Samus and goes "well by liking her, you must hate any female who isn't white".
"Actually I really loved Gamora's character arc in the Marvel movies, plus Zoe Saldana is an incredibly talented actress. You don't star in three different 2 billion dollar movies by accident."
"Yeah but she plays up to black stereotypes."
"Uh, she's Puerto Rican and Dominican, plus she was born in New Jersey so it's neat having someone from my home state star in the movies."
"Shut up cis amab racist, they should have cast black MTF trans POCs."
This is an actual conversation I've had with someone, and thankfully she was laughed out of the room. This stuff just does not sell, which is why these people go on social media to spread their BS; they just aren't accepted anywhere else. A great recent example is that idiot who is embarrassing the new Twitch Safety Council by pretending to be a deer, with the irony of all ironies being an MTF transsexual who now claims to be a deer but is always on stream wearing antlers. News flash -- female deer don't have antlers, genius. Are you telling us you're simply a moron, or are you you telling us that you're full of shit and that everyone is right to want you off of Twitch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GCCz4RnRwg
This guy puts it best. It's the Emperor's New Clothes. Thankfully, even the internet is rejecting these people at record numbers.
Or how about the SJW idiot in New York yesterday who called the cops on a black dude for walking her dog off leash? I refuse to link to the video, but the short version is her dog is off leash in a park in New York, he asks her to leash it, and she freaks out and literally says she'll call the cops and tell them an African is threatening her and her dog. Her words, not mine. Oh, and during the entire phone call she is quite literally lynching her dog. That's why I refuse to link to it or even say the dumb bitch's name. The good news here is not only did more SJW trash expose the entire movement as being the actual intolerant racism of our time, but the entire internet banded together and gave her exactly what she deserved. I could rant on that story alone for another 5000 words, but I'll keep it short. Conservatives get accused of being racist 24/7, yet the actual intolerant racists in our culture are always exposed as being these liberal SJW Karen types. Political donations are public, lady. Of course you virtue signal for equality and then turn into a plantation owner the second a black guy isn't following your orders. Anyone that's honest with themselves and pays any attention at all knew this already, but we're getting way off topic here. I just saw that story today and it made me sick, plus it's related to my overall point of SJWs being garbage, but all of them are being rejected from our culture in all mediums these days.
Back to the point. Men have been saying they don't want this SJW nonsense in gaming for ages, especially if you're going to tell us how much we suck and how you want us dead all day. The issue was never needing great female characters. We all love them. The issue is, like I said, forced diversity and tearing others down while you do it. You cannot fight discrimination with discrimination and be morally correct in any way. Now women are on board with hating it all too, thank God, so the entire SJW nonsense is going to collapse in epic fashion. When even women aren't buying what they're selling anymore, when you lose the folks with the most buying power in our culture (women), the jig is up. This is why no one went to see Men In Black International, Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters 2016, Charlie's Angels 2019, Batwoman on CW, and a whole slew of other things.
Gaming is still in the beginning stages of getting rid of this garbage, in large part because the medium is so young and naive, but we are getting rid of it. The one good thing about this shitshow with The Last of Us 2 is the momentum for getting the SJW vomit out of video games has hit a breaking point. Again, I won't mention anything specific in the leaks, but they're so awful and it's done in such poor taste that even the people Neil Druckmann is trying to cater to are telling him what a piece of trash he is. Dude fucked up hard.
This video is safe to watch. It has no spoilers in it whatsoever. Scout's honor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6f6mmuh_04
Have I mentioned that Druckmann is so woke that he fired a woman from out of her position as head writer at Naughty Dog? I hope the irony isn't lost on people here.
And even after all this BS and all this nonsense and all this controversy, it still gets so much worse. How do you guys think Sony and Naughty Dog reacted to all this? By going full Barbara Streisand, of course!
Youtube, and most social media really, has a means to protect privacy and protect content from theft. You submit a DMCA complaint, and poof. The issue is because these social media sites are so huge, the process is often automated and leads to erroneous deletions of legitimate content. Did Sony and Naughy Dog respond to this controversy by diffusing it, issuing any apologies, anything? Of course not. They scoured the internet and submitted a bunch of falsified DMCA claims. Some of them were legitimate so as to get rid of videos playing the actual leak. That was fine. But they also flagged people who were simply talking about the leaks or covering it like a news story, which is why a bunch of content creators had to put legalese in their videos threatening lawsuits.
Rather than try to cover all of the fraudulent deletions, this screenshot should suffice.
https://i.imgur.com/xjg0o8m.png
Yes, Sony actually DMCA'd themselves. That is a real tweet that you can still see as of this writing, though I imagine they'll eventually delete it entirely. But trust me, for the wiki readers who see this in a few years, this actually happened. Be warned if you actually look it up though, as there are spoilers in the comments. It should also be noted that Sony went way, way overboard. Entire channels were deleted and they also struck down harmless memes that spoiled nothing.
Does it get even worse? Of course it does. Sony and Naughty Dog have even gone so far as to blatantly submit false review scores to try boosting the game. Don't worry, this video is spoiler-free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a6B4fFaXCU
He's using numbers from a couple weeks ago. We're up to about 3100 scores as of this writing, and the game still has a perfect rating on the Playstation store. I've said this many times, but the only reviews in gaming that tell the truth are word of mouth reviews and/or people who are 100% independent. People paid to write reviews for companies and these aggregator web sites are manipulated on the professional side. There are far too may examples to list, but this aggregate score is literally impossible. Review copies haven't gone out yet and there is no way 3100 people have preordered the game on the store just to give it a 5 star rating.
This has all been one of the biggest scandals in gaming history -- the story truly is that nutty, and the game isn't even out yet, just wait until June -- and one of the biggest stories of a gaming company fucking up you'll ever see. The story isn't even over yet, which is the crazy part.
tl;dr version - People don't want SJW trash infecting entertainment anymore, yet somehow even the legendarily awful levels of the actual SJW trash did not match how bad Sony's attempt at damage control has been.
Which brings us to the actual match. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu discuss the tactics and strategy used that allowed his army of 10,000 to conquer an army of 100,000. One line from the text is very valid here: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
Dark Souls never had to actually "win" this match. It just had to sit there and wait. The Last of Us botched this entire build so badly that we were about to see one of the biggest contest collapses in our history, and this might legitimately be the biggest mid-contest fail we've ever had. I'm too lazy to try looking it up to compare it to anything else, but by the numbers I'll be shocked if anything tops this. We played fun with numbers during the last round's writeup for Batman vs Last of Us, but just in case anyone forgot:
Batman: Arkham City (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g)
Batman: Arkham City has a strength of 25.17.
The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36.
The Last of Us wins with 54.00% of the vote!
A win of 4,873 with 60,875 total votes cast.
Last of Us would end up winning with 55.24%, so we can safely say adjustments and whatever else was done in the 2015 stats for these two games was accurate. Let's bring up the original fun with numbers from the beginning of all this one more time:
Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g)
Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11.
The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36.
The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote!
A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast.
Dark Souls clearly went up between 2015 and 2020, that much is obvious, but the exact amount is anyone's guess. Thankfully, we know through Dark Souls vs MGS5 that we have 8% to work with. 8% can be split up for a Dark Souls boost and MGS5 deboost however anyone wants, but here's the point. You could give that entire 8% to Dark Souls and it turns this into a 54-46 match. Obviously it wasn't the full 8%, but you can see where I'm going with this.
When this poll started, Dark Souls beat the piss out of The Last of Us. It was well over 60% for a very long time here, and only a slight percentage bleed with the day vote gave The Last of Us any shred of dignity whatsoever on the way out of this contest.
Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that of the 8% we talked about earlier, we split it right in half. 4% Dark Souls, 4% MGS5. Pre-leak, we had evidence The Last of Us hadn't moved, so 4% from Dark Souls would have made this a 50-50 type of match that Dark Souls probably would have won in the 52-48 range. Maybe 51-49. In the actual match, Dark Souls won 58-42 and it could have easily been more. Do you guys understand how thoroughly ridiculous it is for a game to deboost by nearly 10% mid-contest in under 2 weeks?
I'm not upset The Last of Us Lost this match -- though I am quite happy I was out of the guru by this point because losing on this garbage would have been beyond dumb -- because all evidence leading up to this pointed to an easy win for Dark Souls. What I am upset about is just how brazen and stupid Sony, Naughty Dog, and Neil Druckmann have been with all this. It's one of the worst displays of self sabotage I've ever seen from a gaming company, and it almost rivals the idiocy of Activision-Blizzard. This is an ongoing thing, so I doubt it's the last we'll hear about the indefensible shitshow this all is. Seeing it play out live in a contest was nuts, too. Like people wanted to punish The Last of Us here, and who could blame them?
In the end, both games deserved what they got here. The Last of Us deserved to get its ass kicked, and Dark Souls also deserved to win a division. Let's not toss that aside. A contest called "Game of the Decade" would be borderline fraudulent without something related to Souls making the final eight, and having it be the flagship of the franchise made it awesome. This would set up a potentially incredible match between Dark Souls and Skyrim, provided Skyrim was able to get past Pokemon.
In the end, game developers, be smart and listen to your fans. Don't be trash like Disobedient Canine. Be more like From Software.
Post-Release Update
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-last-of-us-part-ii
It was every bit the shitshow I predicted, right down to critics loving the game and players hating it. Most of the so-called professional reviews are due to an embargo where reviewers were not allowed to discuss Abby at all under threat of industry blacklisting. I've said for many years these so-called professional reviewers are paid off SJW trash, and this game is the most blatant example of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5bw4CmLZcY
The Last of Us 2 is SJW trash, and 100% relies on emotional manipulation and outright lying. But what can you expect from the braindead idiots out in Seattle?
Ctes's Analysis[]
This match had not really been in doubt since round 2 where The Last of Us failed to look impressive against Diablo III and Souldborne in general looked to be better than ever, but man, for such a popular upset pick as The Last of Us winning here, it sure didn’t come close at all. Now under normal circumstances this would be a tribute to another fantastic game of the decade leaving the contest and all that, but this was not normal circumstances.
The Last of Us part II had been delayed three times by now, which was not exactly a popular decision to begin with. Then a day after its previous match a new and final release day would be announced, but it would also be the day the world collapsed when the game was leaked to the internet. We’re talking lengthy videos. There’s gameplay and there are cutscenes. A lot of it was out there. This is always unfortunate, but we were still a good while off. It’s different that when this happens because some employee is a jerk.
Information spreads rapidly fast these days and it has ever since been dangerous to be anywhere on the internet. Comment sections of Playstation threads that had nothing to do with the game became danger zones. Hell, I’ve seen people say they were spoiled on Smash forums. It was everywhere. The Last of Us has certainly been the talks of the internet these past months.
This matters in this match because the internet really hated what they saw. I won’t go into details about what’s in there, no aspects about it either. It’s a very interesting discussion for another time, but I don’t think it would appropriate here. What we need to take from it is that it exploded the internet with negativity. Everything they’ve uploaded since has had liked/dislikes and comments disabled. There was that one video from Neil Druckmann where he passionately spoke about the game vaguely and told people to look forward to it that and 75-80% of people disliked it. It was insane.
On top of everything, it was initially believed that the leak happened by an employee that was tired of his working conditions, a rumor which was believed by most because it’s not the first time we’ve heard something like that happening with Naughty Dog. Eventually we learned it was not why the leak happened, but I’m mentioning it because it certainly fueled the fire of burning hate coming in the direction of The Last of Us. This would hurt the game’s already bad chances of making it out of this match.
Fortunately, it was not getting out of it in the first place, so the many people that had their brackets die today at least can’t blame this. How much the leaks damaged it is tough to determine, but we can try to look at it. Before the match, a few people went as high as thinking 15%. That’s pretty clearly not the case, but it’s reasonable to expect some backlash even here.
Batman: Arkham City vs. The Last of Us went almost exactly as the 2015 stats suggest it would. Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V had Dark Souls winning by 8% more than it did in 2015. The Last of Us is projected to get about the same on Dark Souls as on Batman in 2015. These are the important things. The last of them is obviously the reason why The Last of Us was picked by as many as it was. It had a sequel coming and it had claim get far in a contest of this title. Even it Dark Souls was slightly stronger, it could still happen.
Let’s begin with the 8% difference in Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V. I’ll credit almost all of that to Dark Souls and I’ve said so before. There’s not really much reason for MGSV to decline further, maybe a little bit but the whole Konami and Kojima incident was already past us back in 2015. The relevance of all that drama back then might even upweight that Metal Gear Solid is less relevant today. Dark Souls and Soulsborne in general are however one of the most memorable things of the decade. They have boosted a good bit this contest and are more popular than ever. It would not surprise me if Dark Souls just grew that much by itself.
If we accept that the match would be about 54-46 in favor of Dark Souls. Most people probably expect Dark Souls and MGSV to split that a bit more. Most people also believed The Last of Us had already declined a bit before the leaks though, and that’s an important point. I believe so too. It just didn’t look that great, especially if you consider how many of the big games seemed to boost from the contest title and the forced voting.
The Batman match suggests that The Last of Us was constant from 2015 to now, but it’s not hard to imagine that Batman just declined a bit as well. I mean, those games were a much bigger deal in the beginning of the decade than they are now. It would not be terribly surprising. I’m thinking that’s the case, because I doubt the leak is much more than a few points of percentage.
Most of our site is a bit older than most of the whiny “fans” on the internet. Most of our site know that The Last of Us was still a good game despite of what happened and there are probably also many people trying to avoid the leaks and not judging things based on what little things they hear. This was a big deal of course, but the people complaining always seem like a bigger group than they are because they’re loud. There’s only so much damage I see the leak doing here. It’s impossible to know exactly, but I think it’s less than it seems most people think.
The Last of Us is in no way as big a deal as it was when it came out. Those games also never were as big here as everyone else. It’s similar to how Uncharted was a bigger deal in general than our site suggests. The finalists at this point are all games that are big on our site. The game has aged fine in some areas but not as well in others. We’re past the zombie craze of the early part of the decade, and a lot of the in-game mechanics feel outdated already. That’s how it is with games like that, unfortunately. I can see it and Batman declining a few percentage points and thus the leak only mattering a few percentage points.
When all that is said and done, The Last of Us deserves some respect. The game is great, I still think it’s fun today. They took some very bold decisions that paid off. I’m not as big a fan of the ending of the game as most, but that was a huge deal. The game had depth and was a fantastic presentation. Also, in a decade of open world games and very long stories I seriously have to appreciate the few of the gems that can be played in a few days. I have a much harder time getting through all the games I want to these days and it’s not just because I’m busier.
We would go into a highly anticipated Dark Souls vs. Skyrim match without truly learning more about Dark Souls today because there are too many uncertainties regarding The Last of Us, but Skyrim redeeming itself made it look like we were in for quite a match!
Safer777's Analysis[]
Check Ulti's analysis above! This guy sure can write! Damn!
So this match was somewhat debatable when we had our contest break BUT something crazy happened. Someone leaked gameplay videos and story videos from The Last Of Us 2 and man the Internet went crazy. Not only the story seems stupid, at least for me, but the worse thing is what the developer of TLOU did. Basically striking down videos on Youtube for people that just were discussing the spoilers. They didn't even had gameplay in their video, just some people talking around and Naughty Dog went after EVERYONE! So yeah people don't like Naughty Dog now, including me. I mean just discussing stuff and someone coming and saying no you can't do that! Go away! I am just talking! I mean just people sitting and talking and the video is taken down? Seriously. So we all thought it would affect the match. Well...
So for the match. DS was expected to win with around 55 and it did slightly better. So yeah I don't think this leaked spoiler thingy affected much. Probably. Although people were expecting DS to win by less so maybe it did affected things a little. People just like TLOU 1. When TLOU 2 comes out we will see the reactions there. There will be pretty bad. SJW thingy! You shall see! I am not sure why I see so many SJW thingies around since nobody seems to like these things but that is USA for you. As for DS damn. This game is damn strong here. I would never expected that to tell the truth. People are hardcore! So yeah all the Soulborne games are legit.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Time and again, we've seen that hype often trumps an actual release when it comes to strength on this site. We saw it in 2008, when Brawl disappointed so many Melee fans and led to all of the characters that had seemingly boosted in 2007 due to being in trailers falling back to earth, and we saw it in 2010 when Golden Sun pulled an upset in the first GotD on the release date of its disappointing sequel, Dark Dawn. (Though while I certainly had issues with the harsh difficulty spike after a certain spoilery event and the inability to return to areas earlier in the game to pick up anything you might have missed, my biggest gripe is that whereas Lost Age ended with a vague sequel hook that took seven years to deliver, Dark Dawn ended on a clear To Be Continued and we haven't gotten anything in over a decade.) Technically, we even saw it back in the very first Character Battle, given how poorly regarded Super Mario Sunshine is. So when the long-awaited The Last of Us 2 got a bunch of scenes and gameplay footage leaked not long before this match, it should've been fuel for a major upset, right?
Wrong, because what was leaked depicted the game to be absolutely execrable, with the internet exploding and the general consensus being outrage at the creators themselves, considering it to be contemptuous to their fans. Uh...yeah, you keep posting your clickbaity titles, guys. I say "depicted" because not long after this match, it was confirmed that what the hackers (yes, this was the work of hackers, not anyone affiliated with Naughty Dog) leaked was in fact fully outdated. That's not how gameplay will actually work in the finished version, and the scenes...well, what type of real gamer wants plot spoilers, anyway? That takes half the fun out of it! So in the end, it all added up to the fans getting massively trolled, and the general consensus was that this would've made this number unreliable, and that TLoU was destined to underperform here. Which, uh...kind of means this should've been a pretty close match? With these types of vote totals, it would only take a couple thousand votes swinging the other direction to outright flip this match, even less if those were registered voters. (Remember, swinging the votes means subtracting them from one side and adding them to the other. So the entire 4250-vote lead would in fact be turned by a mere 1063 registered users that voted for Dark Souls having instead voted for The Last of Us. Though given how low the total number of voters is, that actually is a large figure.)
Still, in a match that seemed prime for Dark Souls to overperform, it only got 58.30%. Oracle consensus: 56.64%. An overperformance, yes, but not a huge one. Seeing as how Dark Souls had fewer brackets taking it to the semifinals than either of its two potential quarterfinal opponents, this was definitely considered a discouraging result for Dark Souls fans...which made it an encouraging result for just about every Guru, even the eliminated ones, with the exceptions of Seginustemple, Xeybozn, and Agent_M, each of whom had a route to victory contingent on Dark Souls winning the next round. Xeybozn and Agent_M both needed Smash Ultimate to win it all, with Xeybozn specifically requiring Witcher 3 > Dark Souls in the semifinal while Agent_M would win it if Dark Souls either lost to Persona 5 in the semifinal or made the finals and lost to Ultimate directly; while Seginustemple was the lone Guru to take Dark Souls to win it all--but had enough mistakes elsewhere that the most likely path for this, defeating Witcher 3 in the semifinal and Breath of the Wild in the final, would not be enough. If Dark Souls made the final and lost to anything other than Smash Ultimate, or if it won it all specifically by defeating Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild, the Guru Champion would be a troll account that had entered both the Guru and their official bracket under the name COVlD-19. That's a lowercase L, mind you, not an uppercase i, but the intent is clear. Most people were calling this "the darkest timeline", and so the prospect of Dark Souls > Witcher 3 was not something we were looking forward to.