Having watched the previews, I expect ND to fail at communicating their message about "the cycle of violence".
In my opinion passing such a message through creative work requires that you put the viewer in a more distanced position, which would help him derive his conclusions by passing moral judgement on the actions of characters.
This is fundamentally at odds with ND's medium - a videogame, where by their own description, "our job is to put the player in Ellie's shoes".
If you create a story where the audience is also the main protagonist, it's too far-fetched to expect to pass a moral of the story to that audience, while at the same time you are doing everything in your power to affect them emotionally as actors.
Specifically, if you as a game designer encourage the player to preform violent and cruel actions, it's very questionable to use that game as a vehicle for pushing the moral of "violence breeds violence".
It's like if I show my child how to break glasses and encourage him, so that I can then tell him "see, breaking things on the floor is bad". But he never had the notion of breaking glasses in the first place.
This kind of author intent set up for this kind of entertainment product - I wouldn't call it "work [of art]" - stinks of an attitude of condescention towards your audience. Which is perfectly in line with what we know about Druckman and co. of course. Basically it's "I'll let you do ugly things and then wave my finger at you about how doing ugly things is bad for everyone".
I think if that's really ND's intent, then TLOU2 must be the most expensive lesson ever in "That's not how human behavior is driven".
For me it's obvious from miles away that this approach will not achieve its stated purpose. What ND claim they expect will hapen is that players will become so affected with the pain they can inflict in the game that it will drive them towards a play style where they will try to inflict less pain. This is pretty typical expectation to have for someone who has no experience playing videogames.
For me it's laughable for someone to seriously expect that allowing others to commit brutal violence in a simulated environment, however well it is simulated, without real danger and real consequence, beyond graphical/audial stimuli, will somehow induce a less violent behavior. It's pure pretentiousness - if you want to discourage violent behavior in the game - make it a real stealth game, where combat is hardly a viable strategy, like in Thief.
What actually will happen is what we have already seen and can also hear for ourselves in those previews, right from the journos themselves - players will share with chuckles how they really felt bad for killing NPCs with names and little stories, and especially about killing doggies. That's it, that's the upper limit of emotional impact all those efforts to present violence in a naturalistic manner managed to achieve! A little story shared with a chuckle between two soyboys.
What will happen further, after these little stories of, oh, I felt bad for the doggie there, get old, players will get completely desensitized to stabbing, burning, cutting and crushing people and letting them bleed to death.
Whether ND are feigning ignorance now and setting themselves up for taking a moral high ground, while hoping to brew up "drama" in the future, is something we can suspect. Whichever way the game's reception goes, they are bound to reap some benefits.
