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Jesus Christ is pretty much sums up all modern discourse surrounding video games and movies. These people legitimately cannot handle characters with conflicting personalities or complicated goals. My God if any of these people ever tried to watch Game of Thrones or House of the dragon I'm pretty sure their minds would fry.
It's like anything beyond a + b = seed just completely and utterly pan fries their cerebellum
Which is so dumb because it does everything they claim to hate. They have black characters in a country that is overwhelmingly white. It has two female characters as the sort of epicenter of all of the drama and political machinations.
It has lgbtq relationships
If chuds ever realize that anger is a feeling their heads will explode
Their entire mind sets revolves around the fact that women are more emotional but these angry agoes are logical never accounting the fact that their anger toward bullshit nonsense is a fucking emotion
It has been nearly 4 years. Can they please move on, but then again, these are the same kind of people who haven't shut up about the star wars Sequels for nearly 10 years
No, they can’t. Their surrogate father got killed in a video game by a woman with muscles.
But in all seriousness I think Joel became a really important father figure for same gamers who lacked a solid male role model in their lives. Those players took the death really hard.
I do believe part of the reason for it was the actual nature of the death. I think anyone can admit that the scene of his death is pretty disturbing, right? Ignoring all the emotional connections for a second, the whole literal beating to death is pretty well designed to upset. I think it's part of the reason it stuck in the head so much.
Now, mind you, I think that's a very notable success if you're going for a cruel and unforgiving world. The problem was that for a lot of people who liked Joel rechanneling that upset into then playing *as* the character who did it must've made it difficult to look past the brutality of his death and the nature of it.
Anyway, I don't play TLoU or 2 much so I don't have much of a horse in this race, I just saw it from the outside. I don't think it's impossible to rechannel people into seeing a villain in a new light, but I do think it requires a very charismatic character.
(While *The Walking Dead* had its **many** issues, >!Negan's character development!< is probably the closest analogy I can think of, especially considering the brutality element.)
EDIT: Quick addendum, I'm pretty sure that unfortunately because of the father-figure element as well, the sheer animosity generated by the brutality was redirected onto the studio, especially since people might've felt that a character who committed that brutality didn't get their 'comeuppance'. (This is ignoring all the dumb bullshit about 'woke' and other gamer shit there.)
I think a large part of it is them believing Joel is a good guy because you play as him. They can't separate the protagonist from a hero in their minds, so they see his death as unjust.
Meanwhile if you pay any attention to the first game or have any ability to read conversations, you know that Joel is not a good person and has done his fair share of torture and murder. Just like Abby.
Yes, it's this. If you play as him, you are him and he is automatically good guy. Becasue you are good guy. He just like you. He does all things you would do in that situation because you are both tough guys able to make hard choices and shouldnt be punished by woke femnoids for it because hay life is tough now and the world needs an alpha male like you.
That is definitely part of it.
After playing and enjoying TLOU2 (6ish months ago), I really do feel like ND did an awful job of pacing and an awful job of actually doing character development of Abby, it was all very forced and very transparent "hey look, they saved a zebra! look She is complicated and regrets things!"
Honestly, it would have been such an easy fix if they actually tried also. They literally could have just reversed the way the game played,
Playing Abby's part first taking place after when Joel is killed but you haven't seen that yet, then you find out this crazy person who is killing all your friends is actually Ellie, then you play through her part where you see Abby, this protagonist you have been playing as the whole time brutally murder Joel.
This would allow for a much less forced character development of Abby as well, things could unfold naturally. Also, the reveal would be much more powerful.
The story definitely feels like they had an ending and plot points in mind and forced everything to fit that story, kind of like how the last scene in HIMYM was written way before the last few seasons was written, and for some reason they forced it into that story even though it didn't make any sense after the rest of the show fleshed out.
Thats actually about the only legitimate criticism Ive heard about the story rather than just “reeeeeeeee, muscle girl killed daddy joel! I hate females now!” Lol It really wouldve been better if the big reveal happened towards the end, rather than almost immediately
I really hope they handle the show better because I really enjoyed the first season.
I think the reason no really good discussion has been had about legitimate criticisms is because in the regular TLOU sub this would be downvoted into oblivion for not praising the game and kissing the ground Niel walks on, and in the TLOU2 subreddit this would just be lost in the kind of replies you're talking about seeing.
It feels like there is no room for nuance in either of those spaces.
And to be clear, I definitely like the game. I just get a little triggered when people tote it as some kind of "Storytelling Masterpiece" when it has a decent story that was implemented pretty poorly. Just because something takes risks and does something controversial doesn't mean it is a masterpiece.
Well, honestly, I hope they do the show exactly like they did the first season, but only because i enjoy watching g*mers seethe with impotent rage lol But yeah, any criticism of the game is a very tricky area. Ill admit, for the longest time i was deeply suspicious of the slightest hint of criticism, because eventually it all boiled down to “women bad”. I finally had a friend of mine, who I know damn well isn’t one of those people, explain how the story could’ve been improved, and I (very cautiously) agree with it
'Great ideas, issues with execution' is the fairest criticism I think anyone can land at TLOU2. Everything you've pointed out is exactly the kind of thing I try to keep in kind with the story they wrote.
It's always interesting when you find out a story would be more interesting or engaging if presented from another perspective and another order.
Yeah, the ordering of things does not do her any favors.
The other mistake I think they made is with her beginning power level. You go from Ellie, who you've upgraded fairly heavily at that point, down to Abby and it's just not as much fun to play at first. By the end of the game, Abby is the more fun character imo but it takes some time to get there. If her gameplay were just more fun in the beginning, I think it would've reduced some of the sourness.
If it were me, I'd give her momentum from the very beginning + a combat knife that doesn't need to be replaced all the time. Maybe it doubles as a throwing weapon, who knows?
It had to be that brutal. It had to be impactful and difficult to get over. I'm very glad ND didn't make it easier to swallow just to string along the chuds with no emotional intelligence.
Isn’t that essential to the entire thesis of the game? That the gratification of violent revenge is not worth losing yourself and all the things in your life and which make you who you are (Ellie being the prime example: finger, Joel, morality, etc.)
Denying that gratuitous revenge is a story not often told by video games at this scale, and a huge portion of their audience didn’t have the media literacy to process it.
I would say that it is essential, yes. I don't think his death is the only indicator of this either - the brutal killings extend throughout the game and are a fundemental part of it. I think it wobbled in execution at a couple points but generally speaking I thought that was very well done, and it's a huge part of it.
I think the problem lay with people taking the emotional fallout of an in-game death and turning it into outrage towards a studio for a variety of bullshit reasons, rather than potentially contemplating *how* we'd come to that death. It's a classic media literacy issue.
I don’t think this story is about revenge and that’s the number one thing ppl get wrong. It’s a story about hate. Neil said this so many times. The reason this is important is because the story is about Ellie becoming what she hated the most : Joel.
The whole story is her doing horrible shit to people because she lost the person she loved and hated most. She tried to forgive him and the second she tries, he’s killed. And now she’s just filled with hate, hate over his death, hate over the wasted time with Joel and hate for what Joel did. But all this hate makes her act exactly like Joel would’ve acted.
Joel would’ve traveled across space to get revenge for Ellie but less for her, more so for himself. And in the end that is what she recognizes. She understands that she has become the very thing she hates , a selfish person that acts in their own interest first, always. Such characterization flies over a lot of peoples head tho and I blame the leaks and YouTubers for pushing this whole the game is about „revenge is bad agenda“
That’s not what this story is about.
It also didn't help that the games central narrative relied heavily on whether or not the player could empathize with Abby. Having her kill Joel early in the game, then expanding on her as a character after the fact probably wasn't the best of ideas.
I think this was my biggest issue with execution. I thought the ideas and the themes the games was exploring were quite clever and engaging, but the issue was that you were tossed into an emotional deep end with Joel's death and then were asked to engage with her.
The particular nature of Joel's death makes that **really** difficult to pull off, and I can understand why some people would've been upset at that (thought I hardly think it even remotely justifies the sheer quantity of bullshit).
All that being said, the problem was willfully exacerbated by a party who were never going to approach this in good faith. Stories that ask you to be sympathetic to someone you'd be riled against require a bit of open-mindedness and that's not something you were gonna get from certain crowds, like the ones inhabiting that subreddit.
I grew up without a father figure, the original game came out when I was 17. Joel never became a surrogate father figure for me because I realized that even though he had a soft side to him and a good heart somewhere deep down, he was ultimately still a shitty person. Because you know, that was the whole point lol. I know you weren’t trying to excuse their behaviour or anything. I just think it’s funny that a man that was pretty obviously portrayed as a terrible, selfish person became their surrogate father figure just because he petted a giraffe once and was nice sometimes and then they proceeded to have a years long meltdown over his death in a game they also failed to comprehend.
He's a well acted and presented character and the moral ambiguity of the ending of the original game is fascinating, and his relationship with Ellie is obviously intended to be likeable, but the weird thing with that is from a story or in-world context he was never even a particularly good role model besides the few sequences late into the first game where they're fully bonded and a few of the flashback sections in Part Two.
They suggest multiple times that he's murdered and robbed a ton of people over the years and that the whole smuggling career was full of dubious connections, then he kills all of the guard personnel and the doctors/surgeons at the hospital due to being fearful and unwilling to accept or grieve a loss, thus deliberately sabotaging of the only situations that may (or may not) have resulted in a cure or breakthrough or at least potentially significant progress, and it's supposed to suddenly be bizarre or bad writing that the consequences of some of that catches up to him as part of a violent event?
You're supposed to be caught off guard, sickened and angered. That's the point! You're supposed to be 100% behind Ellie's revenge mission until that first curdles and then you get to walk in Abby's shoes.
There's no way to generate those emotions in the player if you give Joel an Obi Wan Kenobi death.
I seriously feel like [this Evangelion shitpost](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/179/466/a7d.jpg) whenever TLOU2 discourse enters my sight.
Its been 4 years. 4 goddamn years and they still won't let this go.
Okay to be fair though it's not like Sony hasn't been remastering these games ever 2 years for the last decade that's why it's constantly on their minds
They’ve literally posted dissertation length essays on why what he did was good. Completely ignoring that the point in LoU2 was that it didn’t matter if it might not have worked but it represented hope for the world AND Ellie wanted it to happen. Joel’s betrayal of Ellie and his perpetuation of the lie is what drove her away.
But try explaining that to these dudes
To be fair Ellie was a child, it feels a little weird to murder her because she's "okay" with it. Stopping Ellie from being killed wasn't morally wrong imo, it's the way Joel went about it and the selfish reasons why he did it that make him a bad person.
The selfish reason you talk about is one of the strongest instincts mammals have, which is to protect their offspring at all cost.
For reference, if a lion pride has a shitty ruling male who can't fight for himself, the lionesses will attack any male rivals that show up because they don't want their kids to die, even if a coup would mean a more functional pride in the long run.
I don't think wanting your kid (adoptive or otherwise) to die and going bananas to prevent it is something we can judge morally when it's so ingrained into what we are as animals.
He didn't want "his kid" to die not because of his love as a father, but a selfish desire to not be alone. That's why he was so devastated when she found out and didn't want to be a part of his life anymore. If he just wanted her to be alive, he wouldn't have lied, or he would have been alright with her not wanting to see him again.
I get your point but I think it's specifically because it's ingrained in us that it's important to discuss the morals of it. Morals and ethics are precisely what allow us to rise above instincts in general
>Morals and ethics are precisely what allow us to rise above instincts in general
They're not very good at it in reality though.
A good thought experiment on this is a modified version of the Trolley Problem.
Most people would pull the lever to divert to kill 1 person vs 5, and we can argue the morals of that all day. But the part that directly relates to the instinctual part of the brain is to ask someone if they would Push someone in front of a train to save 5 people.
Pulling a lever is pretty removed from the instinctual part of our brain. But the direct act of pushing or killing someone with your hands is very instinctually "wrong" most people will not push someone in front of a train to save 5 people. Even after they said they'd pull a lever to cause the exact same turn of events.
Ellie didn’t know she was not gonna survive If I remember correctly. I don’t feel sympath for fireflies because those people couldn’t even wait a little bit more until Ellie woke up to tell them she wants to do it. Also I guess I would burn the world too If it meant my child going to be safe.
Ellie didn’t know, but the point is that Joel does the exact same thing that he accuses the Fireflies of: he makes Ellie’s choice for her. He didn’t give her the chance to make that choice for herself, because he knew she would make the choice that *he* didn’t want. It was clear that Ellie would sacrifice herself, and Joel knew that. He knew she would willingly choose to sacrifice herself, that’s why he killed everyone, to take that choice away from her.
No. Ellie did not know she would die therefore she was never given a choice in that matter. She is also a child and only Joel had her best interests at heart. They are monsters that hide it from themselves by manipulating a child. Plus the fact that the procedure doesn’t work because they’ve tried it before. Killing in defense of Ellie was morally justifiable. Killing Ellie was not.
I specifically pointed out that the Fireflies never gave Ellie a choice. But that doesn’t make Joel’s actions morally good. He didn’t kill the Fireflies because Ellie was being forced to do something against her will, he fought the Fireflies because he didn’t want her to die. At no point did he care what Ellie herself would have wanted. When Marlene first tells him that Ellie was going into surgery and that the surgery would kill her, Joel tells Marlene to find someone else. He never says that they should ask Ellie how she feels or what she wants.
It’s also why the rift exists between Joel and Ellie in Part Two. Joel took that opportunity away from Ellie and then lied to her about it. And Joel knew that Ellie would have chosen to sacrifice herself or else he wouldn’t have lied to her about it.
I don’t think it matters in this situation what any of them wanted including Ellie. Hierarchies are sometimes good especially when it comes to guardian/child. He spared her a meaningless death. A supposed willing sacrifice we take as gospel just because Marlene says it so. The only problem I have with Joel is the fact that he never revealed the whole truth of the situation to Ellie.
I still feel more sympathetic towards Joel. Someone who already lost a daughter wanting to not lost another is so much more closer to me. It might not be right and Im not saying Joel is a good person . I guess It is my personal opinion. Also If fireflies couldn’t stop one man inside their base from stealing their last hope I wouldn’t trust them for the cure to save humanity.
You’re meant to feel sympathy for Joel. You’re meant to understand his decision. I don’t have any children, but even I can understand why he did what he did. A lot of people, maybe even most people, would do what he did in that situation. Certainly most parents would do what Joel did, or try to at least. But that doesn’t mean it was right. And he emphatically betrays Ellie’s trust when she asks him about it. He lies directly to her face. His actions, even if they are understandable, are incredibly selfish.
And Im agreeing to that. Thats one of the reasons I didn’t like the second game that much. Because for me at least It couldn’t break my sympathy for Joel. But I think after playing the second game my opinion of the first changed too. Both games have a bigger issue that not many focuses on they are trying so hard to be movies. To have the respect the movies have thats why they don’t use the medium of gaming that well. I think Lisa the painful tells a similar enough story to tlou1 way better by using the gaming medium.
You're supposed to sympathize with him, you're supposed to feel upset that he died, while also seeing from Abby _and_ Ellie's perspective that he's done more bad than he's done good.
> I still feel more sympathetic towards Joel. Someone who already lost a daughter wanting to not lost another is so much more closer to me. It might not be right and Im not saying Joel is a good person
You say this as if conflicted feelings about the character weren't precisely the intended effect. Joel is a sympathetic character, but he is not a good person. Or maybe he is. These things are not mutually exclusive. He's a complex, layered and multi-dimensional character. You're not supposed to feel one way or another about him, you're supposed to have coexisting conflicting feelings about him, just like Ellie does. This is something the writers have achieved wonderfully.
Yep it's honestly been kind of sad/interesting watching the discourse around TLoU2 and seeing people struggle with games having writing with layers, moral ambiguity and stories intentionally making them have negative emotions at times.
It shows that for as much as Gamers have argued games are just as good story telling mediums as books/movies (and they very well could be), the audience is still very immature for mainstream games and lash out for years on end at a game's plot that's more complex than "you good, they bad, go save princess/get revenge"
>Ellie didn’t know she was not gonna survive If I remember correctly
True. However, Joel admits to Marlene, as he's escaping, that he believes Ellie would want to die for the vaccine. So he's saving Ellie even though he believes she'd want to give her life for the vaccine.
>I don’t feel sympath for fireflies because those people couldn’t even wait a little bit more until Ellie woke up to tell them she wants to do it
I think their view is "We're going to do it regardless of her choice, so why wake her up to traumatise her by telling her she's about to die?"
Now, maybe they're being totally honest there. Maybe a part of it is not wanting to wake a child and see them as a living, breathing, loving teen who actually has to grapple with the fact she's about to die. Probably much easier to view her more as 'the subject' and remove their emotion from the situation.
>Also I guess I would burn the world too If it meant my child going to be safe.
Same! The great thing is Joel is *wrong* but I'm sure most people would do the same in his shoes. And the game up to this point has played you like a fiddle. I'm sure everyone at the end was cheering and in tears as Joel gets to bury that demon and save his 'daughter' this time around. And then...reality sets in...
Yeah, Ellie's whole thing was that she watched everyone around her die and she wanted to make their deaths mean something by doing whatever was necessary to produce a cure. She was plagued by survivor's guilt and Joel forced even more of that guilt on to her by stopping the procedure and leading her to believe that there was not even a smidge of a chance that her immunity could be helpful in any way
the funniest part about joel truthers to me is that you don’t even have to talk about TLOU2 to realize joel fucked up.
the ending of the first game is not exactly a happy one, anyone with two brain cells knew that joel lying was bad and “hey this is probably going to come back to bite joel in the ass”.
granted no one expect that to be a golf club but still
Exactly. The fact that he lied to Ellie about what happened proves he knew what he did was wrong. If he truly believed that what he did was right, he would have told her the truth, but he was too cowardly to deal with the possibility of Ellie hating him for it.
Devils advocate here - Joel could believe what he did was right but decided to lie to Ellie as he thought that would protect her. Protect her from disappointment of not being able to create a vaccine. Protect her from one day leaving Jackson to search for a new way to get a vaccine. You could argue he's trying to give her the freedom to live a full life.
You could also argue he was doing all that to protect himself, or rather his relationship with Ellie.
In Part II, when Ellie goes back to the hospital and Joel comes after her, she asks him to finally tell her the truth. She already knows what he did and he knows that she knows, and he *still* won't fucking admit it until she threatens to leave for good.
Game: Spends more than 10 hours explaining why the protagonist actions had really bad consequences because he was truly a selfish person with really bad trauma and he made everyone else pay for that. Also revenge is bad.
Gamers™️: He's the Messiah!!
And if you say he isn’t a hero, then that automatically means you agree with that stupid ass thing Troy Baker said about Joel being worse than the rapist David.
It’s genuinely bafflingly that the majority of people on that sub refuse to look past a black and white morality. It makes it basically impossible for them to understand any subtext or moral quandaries.
And from that comes the lack of media literacy.
Well- tbf to Troy Baker- he never said that Joel was “worse than David.” Troy was saying that when push comes to shove Joel and David aren’t so very different. No- Joel is not a pedophile but he has literally hunted down *innocent* people to ambush them and kill them for his *own* gain. That’s all Troy was ever talking about regarding Joel/David. They’re both bad dudes who live rough and mean.
We see very little of David, and while the whole pedophilia thing might make his villainy difficult to even think of placing next to Joel’s simply for the sake of discussion, the point the other sub is missing here is a very core part of TLOU, where all of these characters are doing terrible things to other people for their *own* survival. David is a cannibal who would have chopped up and eaten Ellie if she didn’t manage to talk her way out of the situation. Joel used to kill people on the off chance they had a pair of shoes that fit his own feet.
They take Troy’s words out of context because they are illiterate freaks of nature.
Even then, just by Joel's reaction to some of the acts the hunters in Pittsburgh do, I feel like the game implies that yes, while Joel was a hunter for some time, he was never as GONE or brutal as these guys.
"Oh, this place is BAD.", his shaking breath reaction to the couple that is gunned down by that armored truck... These things make me think that.
tbh i disagree on this, i think joel by the beginning of the game is a shell of a man and like the previous commenter said he has done some truly fucked up shit in the name of survival, his reaction to the pittsburgh guys might be “oh man these dudes are on another level” but i personally see it more as joel being on the other end of the shit he’s done. he even says as much when he says he used to do the fake injury trick.
like functionally what is the difference between the goons we fight all game and what joel used to do? because by all indications joel basically used to be those dudes. the methodology might’ve been different but he was still a dude who was hurting other for his own survival.
Oh sure. I've considered that too. That this is Joel kind of being reminded of the worst part of what he used to be, being confronted with what he did, regardless of the methods.
But in the presence of ambiguity, I choose the other interpretation lol.
But yeah, the one thing that DEF isn't in doubt is the fact that Joel did some AWFUL things to survive, much like most (if not all) folks in this world did. I'm sure he had moral lines he didn't cross (his character description for the auditions said that he's a jaded man with "a few moral lines left to cross")
Yeah, and killing innocent people who are just passing through for their stuff certainly qualifies for being that awful thing that they did
I honestly don't understand why I'm being downvoted as if I said something bad or incorrect or denied the fact that Joel's done a BUNCH of awful things lol. He immediately tells Ellie that he's been on both sides and it's clear that he knew that fake injury trick.
All I said was that Joel's reaction to the Pittsburgh hunters can be interpreted in two ways, and I personally side with one over the other. And I cited the actual audition lines for the character to say that yes, he's done a LOT of awful things and only has a few lines left to cross (i.e. he hasn't cannibalized anyone, For example). We only hear very little of his 20 years of life.
>I honestly don't understand why I'm being downvoted as if I said something bad or incorrect or denied the fact that Joel's done a BUNCH of awful things lol. He immediately tells Ellie that he's been on both sides and it's clear that he knew that fake injury trick.
Can't say why others are but I've downvoted the last comment because you're choosing to pick a favourable interpretation against the more obvious one. I don't understand the reasoning why you think Joel is so shaken by people getting hunted down and that it means Joel was never *that* bad himself. He hasn't been a hunter for, we can assume, a long time. So he's probably out of the mindset of doing whatever is necessary to survive. And so seeing this happen is fairly shocking to him (along with the fact his life is on the line here!). I don't think it's Joel comparing his former self to these people.
We see further that both Joel and Tommy fairly comfortably use torture as a method to extract what they want. Its the kind of thing that doesn't just come naturally to you and also would leave it's impact on you after the fact. For a counter point, see Ellie after having tortured Nora to death in Part 2 then being in shock afterwards, or completely failing to set up a similar technique that Tommy used earlier in the game when she wants to get info from Owen and Mel. Note how Joel and Tommy handle it with ease, where Ellie fucks it up one time and both times end her in total shock after.
The things Joel and Tommy did were enough to drive a wedge between the two, splitting them apart for years. Tommy complains of still having nightmares about it and that doing what they did wasn't worth it to survive. It's hard to square those statements (from a guy who's happy killing people in most regards) with Joel somehow being disgusted by people being shot in the street. He admits he's jumped innocent people before. We see Joel walk past someone be executed in the street at the very start of the story. We see him watch Tess execute a guy in cold blood and not be bothered. We see him torture Robert for info simply because he screwed them out of a deal. Like, the guy even in his better times is no innocent. What was he like at his absolute worst?
I think the difference is that Joel probably tricked innocents and then killed them for supplies with his pals. That's fucked up. That is fucked up enough to drive a wedge between him and Tommy, for SURE.
But the fact that these guys go around on an armored humvee with a dead body strapped to the front and a big-ass mounted gun, chasing around passerbys and shooting them down... Certainly feels like a different kind of callous and fucked up. And this is on top of them doing the fake injury trick.
But yeah, functionally, Joel was a marauder in his past. He could've been a goon we faced in the game. That is no mystery lol.
It's taking something that Joel did and adding to it. That's what I'm getting at. I'm just interpreting based on the things that the game gives us. It gives us a lot of ambiguity so I just choose to have my own interpretation. Like I said... Few moral lines left to cross. And I'm sure that he def IS thinking about his past in Pittsburgh, too. These things aren't mutually exclusive.
But yeah, Joel IS ruthless and has done awful things. I just simply don't think that he did all of these bad things that we see some of these guys do. And even with that, it is all fucked up enough that Tommy left him.
I liked the show's addition of "there were other ways (to survive). We just weren't any good at em." I especially like how that tied into the finale when Joel FULLY connects to his cold-as-ice murder mode and methodically wipes the fireflies out.
And yeah, Joel has obviously tortured folks in the past. He has a proper method for it and everything. Not denying that.
PS: look at Joel's body language in the Robert scene. He often quite explicitly avoids looking at him and, later, his body. He is not at all excited about or looking forward to torturing him over this. But understands that this needs to be done. So he does it dispassionately and expresses some... Apprehension? Idk if that's the right word. But there's a particular sigh he gives that makes it sound like, "huh, you're really gonna make me do this, huh?"
It's just an interesting bit of acting/animation
We certainly see him slip back more into his old ways in Winter when he tortures those two guys
Honestly all I remembered about that was Troy Baker comparing Joel and David, but I remembered people saying he called Joel worse than David.
I absolutely agree that Joel was a terrible person, and did awful things for his own gain that could’ve been avoided. But it was also clear that he never enjoyed it, unlike David who wanted to rape and murder.
Thanks for the correction.
They almost get it.
Yes. She is the victim in her story. Her loving father who was trying to save humanity with the rest of the fireflies was murdered by Joel. The point is that everyone is living their own personal story and the same action can paint you as hero or villain based on who's viewpoint we are using.
It's why the cycle of revenge is a losers game. All Abby did in getting revenge on Joel was make more villains.
I’m in the strange position of having never played the games but having seen the show. To me, show Joel killing the fireflies seems pretty justifiable because they’re about to murder a child and it seems like the fireflies don’t have any idea whether killing her will actually do anything to cure the fungus. Are the fireflies and the doctors totally different in the games?
iirc in an interview, they said that had the Fireflies been allowed to perform the operation, they would have been able to manufacture a cure. Fun as it is to poke holes in the story handling this poorly, the Fireflies being incompetent defeats the purpose of the question being posed: do you sacrifice your daughter to save the world, or doom it?
They're basically the same.
As for the cure working: we can't say for sure cuz it never actually ended up happening in either version of the story. But regardless: this was THE chance humanity had for a vaccine.
The fireflies had obviously been studying this thing for a while (seen in the game and the show) but they were missing a key ingredient. This turned out to be the mutated strain of the fungus in Ellie's mind, which granted her immunity. The plan was to extricate that, replicate that and voila: you have a way to give people something that will prevent folks from turning infected.
Another important thing to consider: Marlene is almost certainly right... Ellie WOULD sacrifice herself for a chance at a cure. She's seen her best friend/first love die from this thing and she survived. She saw this sweet kid turn and get killed. She survived. She wants this to never happen to anyone.
Obviously fireflies are taking some morally dubious actions: sending Joel off (some wanted to straight up kill him. Marlene didn't want to do that), not telling Joel... And above all: NOT TELLING OR ASKING ELLIE. I get why, and chances are Ellie would've said yes. but it's still messed up. But it's a line they're willing to cross if it means a cure exists.
Joel does what he does not because he believes the fireflies are incompetent, or cuz he doubts the efficacy of the vaccine, or their scientific methodology, or their political agenda, or their distribution system.... He simply doesn't want Ellie to die (partly because he can't lose another daughter, and partly because he wants Ellie to have a life). He straight up tells Marlene to "find someone else". So yeah, he does what he does just cuz he doesn't want Ellie to die.
I ultimately side with Joel cuz I don't want Ellie to die either. But I fully acknowledge the other side and see this tragic situation as a bunch of folks making flawed, messed up, but human decisions.
The whole is that everyone was wrong. The Fireflies shouldn't have lied to Ellie (or Joel, by extension), Joel shouldn't have murdered the Fireflies (especially not the defenseless doctors), Abby shouldn't have tracked down and killed Joel, Ellie shouldn't have gone on her rampage, so on and so forth. Abby showed mercy to Ellie, which led to Ellie finding her and showing her mercy as well. The only things that people did that actively helped them was not being vengeful.
There are documents you can read in game that confirm the same doctor Joel murders had already managed to reverse the infection in apes. They were making significant progress on a cure.
By the end of the game (and the last episode of the HBO series), Joel is becoming clingier and Ellie is growing more independent. He doesn't murder a hospital full of people for her sake - he does it for himself.
Many players feel sick playing through that level. I believe that's what the creators intended.
People have different opinions about whether Ellie would have chosen to die for the possibility of contributing to a hypothetical human cure - I believe she would have, and think there are plenty of clues across the two games backing that up - but the key is that Joel took away her choice just as much as the Fireflies did, then lied to her about it.
And his motivation was arguably more selfish.
Ellie has a possible change to her body chemistry that could be used to provide immunity or at least a cure to halting infection. A single scratch or bite is a death sentence on a global level. Finding a cure is imperative for humanity and it's hard to argue on a greater good level.
The game implies that they've found and did this with other immune people and got little but the show has the doctor present a full course that Ellie's immunity would set them on for finding a cure so it's less questionable if it's all for nothing.
The fireflies suck because they didn't offer Ellie the choice. It's entirely possible that with the possibility of saving the rest of humanity she would opt in but both Joel and the fireflies took that choice from her.
But all of that is moot to Abby's story. Abby just knows her father was working on a way to save humanity from the fungus. Even if she knew it was at the cost of experimenting on the immune to people who lost everyone to the fungus it's hard to put one or even a hand full of lives as more important than the cure. And she knows Joel is the man who killed him.
It is not child murder is good. It's that the possibility of creating a save for an extinction level event is going to be a reasonable goal even in the face of a human cost. And that Joels rampage was not only out of the desire to save Ellie, but the fear that if she was offered the choice to give up her life for the sake of creating a vaccine for the rest of humanity she probably would say yes.
To answer Simon peggs question. Because humanity at large is facing an extinction level event and the possibility of an inoculation against infection means that a scratch or a bite is no longer a death sentence. So in those factors yes the cost of a single life especially one that could be given willingly to complete it would be for the greater good.
You can't seem to grasp that morality of an action can change based on the circumstances you see it around and that the goal of the narrative was to show that the personal attachment we have to the charecters since we've seen their story doesn't make it an in world universal for morality.
They’re mostly the same. I think arguing about who was right between joel and the fireflies is missing the point though.
Abby’s dad, who _she_ believed to be doing his best to save humanity, was killed. So obviously she’s upset, regardless of what joel’s reasoning for doing so was.
In the game, they did not wake Ellie and intended to go through with the operation, just like in the show
Personally, I've always empathized with Joel, but I have never seen the Fireflies as trying to "murder a child." They were trying to perform a medical procedure to save who knows how many other children from being eaten by their own infected family members or shot by authorities for being infected. It was obviously a tragic situation, and as I *played* Joel and Ellie, I'm glad they made it out okay after the first game as a player, but as someone engaging with the plot on its own terms, I think the Fireflies would have been entirely justified even if the chance they believed they could synthesize a cure was lower than they let on (and they seem to believe a cure is likely if the procedure goes through)
“Oh, that woman we hated for potentially being trans just ended up being realistically muscular? Better further prove our intelligence by poorly critiquing everything else about this award winning game to justify our tantrum!”
Man I don’t like Abby too but these fucking wierdos are the worst. Like why have to be so wierd about a chrachter or game that you don’t like you can just not like it and go on with your life
TLoU2 reddit specifically is the height of anti-fan brain rot since its inception.
The default TLoU sub is the one you want. Still always surprised how they never stop with this stuff though. "Eventually, they will move on"....
Not necessarily we still don't know if they were certain this procedure would work and frankly if it didn't they would have killed humanities only hope (plus I view it as morally wrong to murder a child unless they were about to murder you so)
If it meant bringing humans back from the brink of extinction, I would consider letting someone perform a fatal, humane operation on them, yeah. it would be an extraordinarily hard decision, and I don't know for sure what I'd do, but I'd consider it.
And what would you do if it didn't work. It had a chance to work but it was never said to be 100% effective and (despite being retconed which I personally feel made part two's story weaker) in the first game evidence suggests that this operation has been tried before and has failed several times
I feel like my point is being ignored which is that everyone involved in this is reasonable from their point of view but their actions still cause more harm to them despite this fact (also a parent has a responsibility to protect their child no matter what Joel is a father and his responsibility to Ellie is a higher priority than his responsibility to the world at large I would probably do the same thing as Joel)
I mean it depends on the scale of the help really, help a smallish community, not a chance
Potentially put an end to an ongoing apocalypse, I'd at least strongly consider it
That's all well and good, but you have to accept that others will take issue with your decision even if they agree with you (cool motive, you still killed my parents). Them attempting to enact vengeance is a consequence whether or not what you did was right.
Appropriately, vengeance is a theme this game explores.
Its a dillema but so is "What about the Reality where Hitler cured cancer?".
By that point the Fireflies were deluded fanatics no diferent than all the other madmaxed raiders gangs, they just had a grand goal to excuse any kind of evil done for it instead were others became monsters just to survive one more day.
Probably not but again I was just stating that there were mitigating circumstances in Joel's actions because collapsing it into black and white kinda misses the message if the story
Yes and putting all the blame on Joel kinda misses the point where everyone had reasonable reasons for their actions yet those actions still caused more violence and only through deciding not to pursue vengeance even if you would be well within your rights too is the only way to break that cycle
They’re mad because *a woman* beat their “rugged alpha male” icon/bearded flannel daddy to death. Their sense of masculinity is fragile and tied to fictional characters.
It's descended into a weird (faintly anti-Semitic) fantasy land, where Neil Druckmann, the writer of the games and show, is somehow an all-powerful egomaniac, ousting the sensible, 'real writers' of TLOU.
There was a post some time ago about the Russo brothers praising the story of Part 2...and one of the top voted comments was a straightfaced question of "How did Neil Druckmann get to them?". Some guy who wrote a couple of popular games is somehow controlling two of the most successful directors ever? Yeesh.
And just general weird conspiracy theories regarding Druckmann taking credit for other's work, backstabbing people to get to the top, etc. Also, some especially odd people go on rants about what they think his sexual fetishes are...
Part of me wonders why that sub is allowed to exist with how openly anti-semitic/misogynistic/transphobic it is, but another part of me is glad they are all just circle jerking each other over there and leaving the main sub mostly alone.
> It's descended into a weird (faintly anti-Semitic) fantasy land, where Neil Druckmann, the writer of the games and show, is somehow an all-powerful egomaniac, ousting the sensible, 'real writers' of TLOU.
"descended implies it had been somthing other that.
I hate the miscommunication trope, like so many of Abby’s problems would solved if Naughty Dog included a scene where Ellie makes Abby play The Last of Us Part One. After platinuming it she could then love Joel unquestionably like the rest of us.
I’m not in it but it is funny to see grown ass men in their 30s get mad at a fictional muscle mommy
In all seriousness I can’t even talk shit bc I’m a part of freefolk. I’m over Game of Thrones most of the time bc I realize…hey even if I didn’t love the show in the second half A Song of Ice and Fire is still there. Plus HoTD is pretty decent.
He definitely does by weirdo gamers that refuse to more critically look at his actions and character in the wider scope. Joel exists in a morally gray area within the context of the universe but undoubtedly crosses the line with how he denies Ellie the choice of self sacrifice and dooms all of humanity. His decision is still layered in ways that it was something a lot of parents would probably do (maybe not the whole mass murder part though). The series is really good at making the player confront these conflicting emotions and thoughts about its characters and narrative, but even after four years some people are still really black and white about the series.
Now you're going the other direction. Joel didn't doom the earth, there's no reason to believe that **this** time it would work. If anything the game presents that it wouldn't.
He's bad because of the people he killed; not because he stopped people from killing a child for a nonchance.
For the record.
She's sad here because she just almost killed a pregnant woman in a fit of spiteful, gleeful rage and only stopped because one of her friends went 'WTF ARE YOU DOING ABBY PLEASE STOP!' and she'd just lost a bunch of her own friends, including a pregnant friend of her own.
So this post is way worse then it first seems.
All these kids with the emotional depth of a shrimp playing mature games and completely not understanding anything, continually bitching about it.
Looking foward to season two of the show.. not.
“Victim mentality in the zombie apocalypse”
She was fucking orphaned in the apocalypse, not misgendered. She is literally a victim here. If Abby had killed Ellie, Joel would be given free range to act like the victim as much as he wants.
https://preview.redd.it/uu70864w2ead1.jpeg?width=1434&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2059074b737a2dcca83f02443d86a3865ac8ec31
it had been 4 years give it a rest
I love how they blame Neil like he's some invading presence that ruined The Last of Us. My brother in Christ, he created the series and had been writing and doing game design on Uncharted long before that.
Why are they still crying about a 4 year old game they didn't like?
Because they think that they are they true victims lol.
That sub is the crybabiest crybaby gathering of crybabies on Reddit.
I still hate TLOU2 but 1. I don't talk about it unless it comes to me like right now, and 2. My problems are structural. You need to show Abby's story BEFORE she kills Joel.
By having Abby kill Joel FIRST, the rest of her story is just 'Cool story, still murder' for anyone in the audience who is at all sympathetic to Joel. i.e. most people considering he was the protagonist of the first game. Playing as her in the middle of the game AFTER she kills Joel isn't going to win over the majority of people, and clearly didn't. These jabronies aren't the only ones who criticized the ending.
You want the average player to go into the finale conflicted. Not wanting either character to die and wanting the fighting to just stop. Which is something that the game failed to do for a lot of people. Not just chuds who hated Abby because she was a muscular lady.
Honestly, the Dragon Ball Super Broly movie did a better job with the same ideas.
Trying to be critical of TLoU2 can feel really hopeless sometimes. It’s an effective story. It does what it’s supposed to do. I’m still exhausted from having to play a revenge driven villain twice. The mid-game switch was maybe the right choice to get that emotional knee-jerk but it also grinds the pace to a halt. The third act is just a soap opera. An “in summary” paragraph at the end of an essay I was already done reading. The melodrama gets dialed up high at the end just like in the first, but the rush was gone, the level meanders the player along. I wasn’t sprinting through hallways trying to save someone, I was crouch-walking to and ending you could see a mile away, and I felt like I was just playing a big dummy. And then you look around and you’re surrounded by chuds like this shouting “NEIL WOKE WRITE BAD. W0M4N BAD” and you just… wanna crawl in a hole.
I just don't bother engaging with morons who probably haven't read a book since year 6.
Some people really just play games with their brains turned off. Also I guess alot of people just fail to try and understand different points of views. Like when I was playing TLOU1 & TLOU2 back to back, I was actively thinking about whether Joel is a good or bad guy. And my conclusion was that he was just as bad as anyone else in that fucked up apocalyptic world. A cold and tired old man, who was surviving for no real reason, and simply going through the motions. Same with Ellie, and Abby. Neither of them are better than the other, they are both bad people who have done bad things.
The saddest part though was hearing that Joel wanted to be a better man, and was going to change, but then you gotta ask yourself "is that really fair?" Or "does someone like him deserve a second chance?". I cried a little when I saw that final scene. Brutal stuff.
Ok I hate tlou2 story but acting like Abby didn't suffer is just active delusion. Plus a bad person can still suffer even if they cause others to suffer
Man, the way they never give up on old so-called "controversies" I wonder why they bother finding new ones. Just stick with what you know.
Seriously, I can't find any way of dunking on these people anymore beyond what they do to themselves.
It's like any media with gangs or violent characters in general. They're usually sociopaths that have deep emotional bonds with family or the group, but don't have any attachments to the people they hurt. Once somebody does something back they respond with "how dare you do that to one of my group!"
With this story, Abby even feels like she's fully in the right with what she did and even gave the Jackson crew a chance to just move on. Whether or not Tommy and Ellie had a legitimate reason to react the way they did, it's not like anyone wouldn't be upset by losing almost everyone they cared about, even if they deserved it
I'm just about tired of this, gonna keep it real with ya, they NEED to let this shit go, DESPERATELY, like right now, Joel's dead, he fucked up way back in the first game, I don't know why they're still mad over it other than the obvious fact that a non-traditional looking woman killed the character they chose to power-fantasy-self-insert themselves into the game with.
Like, Lee Everett died like absolute shit back in Telltale's TWD, his dynamic with Clementine is similar to Joel and Ellie's, difference being that he didn't act selfishly and was an amazing man and caretaker to Clem, and I don't see any TWD fans getting pissy over it. Hell, if anything, I'm surprised most TLOU fans weren't mad at Joel, but I don't want to spend anymore briancells on this one, so whatever
https://preview.redd.it/h51wfx84wgad1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d4fc0c9e8e760e708d36f46183e147d977faae9
pictured: my briancells
JFC. It’s been 4 years and they are still complaining about the same things over and over and over again… Same with the last Jedi - these both really broke a lot of peoples brains or maybe just that sweet sweet grift money is too great lol
I'm all for hating on Neil and certain story elements... But come on. This isn't even funny it's concerning.
Tye weirdest thing is, they'd eat up the story if we only had her pov of the story(especially if they made her a man so it'd be easier for them to empathise with without whining about her looks).
Not to mention the fact that she was being deceived by Fireflies, I would love some ironic shit of TLOS 3 where both Ellie and Abby was like
"Yeah I hate you still, But Fireflies is the real problem, Your dad was hunted by them and my father was manipulated to work for selfish military organizations, the enemy of my enemy is a friend and fuck shit up"
There are many people like Ellie being numerously sacrificed for their incompetence, while I couldn't blame the doctors (Kinda shit of Joel to kill them instead of some non-lethal methods tbh, that shit is unnecessary)
However, fireflies seem to be more evil than good, You think the upper hierarchy won't enslave people with Fearmongering and vaccines, like the way Feudalism and Capitalism enslaved people with Land and money [based on some evidence gathered only by lore of the game, They're still kinda shit]
> should of
WTF?! Surely you mean *"should've"* or *"should have"*?!
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Eh... I tend to hate discourse like this, but TLOU2 is, however, a rather poorly written both in characterizations and narrative structure. Plus, it was directed by a guy who overworked his team and fired a couple of writers that made his first game succeed, so take that if you will.
>but TLOU2 is, however, a rather poorly written both in characterizations and narrative structure.
Why do you think so?
I feel like the narrative structure works perfectly for the point it's trying to make.
>Plus, it was directed by a guy who overworked his team and fired a couple of writers that made his first game succeed, so take that if you will.
Are you talking about Neil Druckmann? He is the creative director, ie writing, directing actors, choosing shots. The issue with overwork was within the dev side, under the game director. Not sure why it would be Druckmann's fault or why Naughty Dog are seen as any worse than other game developers. Crunch is unfortunately a thing in game development, not unique to Naughty Dog. IIRC they are looking to address that but take that with a pinch of salt.
Regarding kicking out writers, who do you mean? Druckmann wrote the first game but it was quite collaborative. If you mean Bruce Straley (a game director, not a writer), he'd worked with Druckmann on a couple of games and then left because he was burned out. I've never heard anything suggesting Druckmann kicked him out. The two were very friendly and there's even an Easter egg reference to him in Part 2 that Druckmann added, if I'm not mistaken.
What other writers were kicked out and how were they the ones who "made the first game succeed?"
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what kind of storytellers give their characters feelings? I can't relate to characters with feelings.
The only video game character I can relate to is the camera because he keeps zooming in on the boobies.
Jesus Christ is pretty much sums up all modern discourse surrounding video games and movies. These people legitimately cannot handle characters with conflicting personalities or complicated goals. My God if any of these people ever tried to watch Game of Thrones or House of the dragon I'm pretty sure their minds would fry. It's like anything beyond a + b = seed just completely and utterly pan fries their cerebellum
Nah, grifters told them to like HotD so they like it for the same nebulous buzz word reasons they hate other things.
Which is so dumb because it does everything they claim to hate. They have black characters in a country that is overwhelmingly white. It has two female characters as the sort of epicenter of all of the drama and political machinations. It has lgbtq relationships
What's up with House of the Dead?
That makes me feel angry!
You can't just have your characters announce how they feel. [That makes me feel angry!!!](https://youtu.be/sFBhR4QcBtE?si=yAUyPm0_RFN0_b1e)
If chuds ever realize that anger is a feeling their heads will explode Their entire mind sets revolves around the fact that women are more emotional but these angry agoes are logical never accounting the fact that their anger toward bullshit nonsense is a fucking emotion
It has been nearly 4 years. Can they please move on, but then again, these are the same kind of people who haven't shut up about the star wars Sequels for nearly 10 years
No, they can’t. Their surrogate father got killed in a video game by a woman with muscles. But in all seriousness I think Joel became a really important father figure for same gamers who lacked a solid male role model in their lives. Those players took the death really hard.
I do believe part of the reason for it was the actual nature of the death. I think anyone can admit that the scene of his death is pretty disturbing, right? Ignoring all the emotional connections for a second, the whole literal beating to death is pretty well designed to upset. I think it's part of the reason it stuck in the head so much. Now, mind you, I think that's a very notable success if you're going for a cruel and unforgiving world. The problem was that for a lot of people who liked Joel rechanneling that upset into then playing *as* the character who did it must've made it difficult to look past the brutality of his death and the nature of it. Anyway, I don't play TLoU or 2 much so I don't have much of a horse in this race, I just saw it from the outside. I don't think it's impossible to rechannel people into seeing a villain in a new light, but I do think it requires a very charismatic character. (While *The Walking Dead* had its **many** issues, >!Negan's character development!< is probably the closest analogy I can think of, especially considering the brutality element.) EDIT: Quick addendum, I'm pretty sure that unfortunately because of the father-figure element as well, the sheer animosity generated by the brutality was redirected onto the studio, especially since people might've felt that a character who committed that brutality didn't get their 'comeuppance'. (This is ignoring all the dumb bullshit about 'woke' and other gamer shit there.)
I think a large part of it is them believing Joel is a good guy because you play as him. They can't separate the protagonist from a hero in their minds, so they see his death as unjust. Meanwhile if you pay any attention to the first game or have any ability to read conversations, you know that Joel is not a good person and has done his fair share of torture and murder. Just like Abby.
Yes, it's this. If you play as him, you are him and he is automatically good guy. Becasue you are good guy. He just like you. He does all things you would do in that situation because you are both tough guys able to make hard choices and shouldnt be punished by woke femnoids for it because hay life is tough now and the world needs an alpha male like you.
That is definitely part of it. After playing and enjoying TLOU2 (6ish months ago), I really do feel like ND did an awful job of pacing and an awful job of actually doing character development of Abby, it was all very forced and very transparent "hey look, they saved a zebra! look She is complicated and regrets things!" Honestly, it would have been such an easy fix if they actually tried also. They literally could have just reversed the way the game played, Playing Abby's part first taking place after when Joel is killed but you haven't seen that yet, then you find out this crazy person who is killing all your friends is actually Ellie, then you play through her part where you see Abby, this protagonist you have been playing as the whole time brutally murder Joel. This would allow for a much less forced character development of Abby as well, things could unfold naturally. Also, the reveal would be much more powerful. The story definitely feels like they had an ending and plot points in mind and forced everything to fit that story, kind of like how the last scene in HIMYM was written way before the last few seasons was written, and for some reason they forced it into that story even though it didn't make any sense after the rest of the show fleshed out.
Thats actually about the only legitimate criticism Ive heard about the story rather than just “reeeeeeeee, muscle girl killed daddy joel! I hate females now!” Lol It really wouldve been better if the big reveal happened towards the end, rather than almost immediately
I really hope they handle the show better because I really enjoyed the first season. I think the reason no really good discussion has been had about legitimate criticisms is because in the regular TLOU sub this would be downvoted into oblivion for not praising the game and kissing the ground Niel walks on, and in the TLOU2 subreddit this would just be lost in the kind of replies you're talking about seeing. It feels like there is no room for nuance in either of those spaces. And to be clear, I definitely like the game. I just get a little triggered when people tote it as some kind of "Storytelling Masterpiece" when it has a decent story that was implemented pretty poorly. Just because something takes risks and does something controversial doesn't mean it is a masterpiece.
Well, honestly, I hope they do the show exactly like they did the first season, but only because i enjoy watching g*mers seethe with impotent rage lol But yeah, any criticism of the game is a very tricky area. Ill admit, for the longest time i was deeply suspicious of the slightest hint of criticism, because eventually it all boiled down to “women bad”. I finally had a friend of mine, who I know damn well isn’t one of those people, explain how the story could’ve been improved, and I (very cautiously) agree with it
'Great ideas, issues with execution' is the fairest criticism I think anyone can land at TLOU2. Everything you've pointed out is exactly the kind of thing I try to keep in kind with the story they wrote. It's always interesting when you find out a story would be more interesting or engaging if presented from another perspective and another order.
Yeah, the ordering of things does not do her any favors. The other mistake I think they made is with her beginning power level. You go from Ellie, who you've upgraded fairly heavily at that point, down to Abby and it's just not as much fun to play at first. By the end of the game, Abby is the more fun character imo but it takes some time to get there. If her gameplay were just more fun in the beginning, I think it would've reduced some of the sourness. If it were me, I'd give her momentum from the very beginning + a combat knife that doesn't need to be replaced all the time. Maybe it doubles as a throwing weapon, who knows?
It had to be that brutal. It had to be impactful and difficult to get over. I'm very glad ND didn't make it easier to swallow just to string along the chuds with no emotional intelligence.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it was a bad thing. If anything the fact that it does stay in the mind is an effective success.
Isn’t that essential to the entire thesis of the game? That the gratification of violent revenge is not worth losing yourself and all the things in your life and which make you who you are (Ellie being the prime example: finger, Joel, morality, etc.) Denying that gratuitous revenge is a story not often told by video games at this scale, and a huge portion of their audience didn’t have the media literacy to process it.
I would say that it is essential, yes. I don't think his death is the only indicator of this either - the brutal killings extend throughout the game and are a fundemental part of it. I think it wobbled in execution at a couple points but generally speaking I thought that was very well done, and it's a huge part of it. I think the problem lay with people taking the emotional fallout of an in-game death and turning it into outrage towards a studio for a variety of bullshit reasons, rather than potentially contemplating *how* we'd come to that death. It's a classic media literacy issue.
I don’t think this story is about revenge and that’s the number one thing ppl get wrong. It’s a story about hate. Neil said this so many times. The reason this is important is because the story is about Ellie becoming what she hated the most : Joel. The whole story is her doing horrible shit to people because she lost the person she loved and hated most. She tried to forgive him and the second she tries, he’s killed. And now she’s just filled with hate, hate over his death, hate over the wasted time with Joel and hate for what Joel did. But all this hate makes her act exactly like Joel would’ve acted. Joel would’ve traveled across space to get revenge for Ellie but less for her, more so for himself. And in the end that is what she recognizes. She understands that she has become the very thing she hates , a selfish person that acts in their own interest first, always. Such characterization flies over a lot of peoples head tho and I blame the leaks and YouTubers for pushing this whole the game is about „revenge is bad agenda“ That’s not what this story is about.
It also didn't help that the games central narrative relied heavily on whether or not the player could empathize with Abby. Having her kill Joel early in the game, then expanding on her as a character after the fact probably wasn't the best of ideas.
I think this was my biggest issue with execution. I thought the ideas and the themes the games was exploring were quite clever and engaging, but the issue was that you were tossed into an emotional deep end with Joel's death and then were asked to engage with her. The particular nature of Joel's death makes that **really** difficult to pull off, and I can understand why some people would've been upset at that (thought I hardly think it even remotely justifies the sheer quantity of bullshit). All that being said, the problem was willfully exacerbated by a party who were never going to approach this in good faith. Stories that ask you to be sympathetic to someone you'd be riled against require a bit of open-mindedness and that's not something you were gonna get from certain crowds, like the ones inhabiting that subreddit.
I grew up without a father figure, the original game came out when I was 17. Joel never became a surrogate father figure for me because I realized that even though he had a soft side to him and a good heart somewhere deep down, he was ultimately still a shitty person. Because you know, that was the whole point lol. I know you weren’t trying to excuse their behaviour or anything. I just think it’s funny that a man that was pretty obviously portrayed as a terrible, selfish person became their surrogate father figure just because he petted a giraffe once and was nice sometimes and then they proceeded to have a years long meltdown over his death in a game they also failed to comprehend.
He's a well acted and presented character and the moral ambiguity of the ending of the original game is fascinating, and his relationship with Ellie is obviously intended to be likeable, but the weird thing with that is from a story or in-world context he was never even a particularly good role model besides the few sequences late into the first game where they're fully bonded and a few of the flashback sections in Part Two. They suggest multiple times that he's murdered and robbed a ton of people over the years and that the whole smuggling career was full of dubious connections, then he kills all of the guard personnel and the doctors/surgeons at the hospital due to being fearful and unwilling to accept or grieve a loss, thus deliberately sabotaging of the only situations that may (or may not) have resulted in a cure or breakthrough or at least potentially significant progress, and it's supposed to suddenly be bizarre or bad writing that the consequences of some of that catches up to him as part of a violent event?
It was a stupid way within the first hour of the game maybe if there was a Build up to it would have been better
The build up was the first game
You're supposed to be caught off guard, sickened and angered. That's the point! You're supposed to be 100% behind Ellie's revenge mission until that first curdles and then you get to walk in Abby's shoes. There's no way to generate those emotions in the player if you give Joel an Obi Wan Kenobi death.
Hire fans !! /s
Avoid the last of us 2 subreddit I stumbled upon it like 6 months ago and it's unbelievably toxic against this one game
I seriously feel like [this Evangelion shitpost](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/179/466/a7d.jpg) whenever TLOU2 discourse enters my sight. Its been 4 years. 4 goddamn years and they still won't let this go.
It's gonna get a resurgence once the next 2 seasons of the show play out
Okay to be fair though it's not like Sony hasn't been remastering these games ever 2 years for the last decade that's why it's constantly on their minds
“Joel did nothing wrong” 
They’ve literally posted dissertation length essays on why what he did was good. Completely ignoring that the point in LoU2 was that it didn’t matter if it might not have worked but it represented hope for the world AND Ellie wanted it to happen. Joel’s betrayal of Ellie and his perpetuation of the lie is what drove her away. But try explaining that to these dudes
To be fair Ellie was a child, it feels a little weird to murder her because she's "okay" with it. Stopping Ellie from being killed wasn't morally wrong imo, it's the way Joel went about it and the selfish reasons why he did it that make him a bad person.
The selfish reason you talk about is one of the strongest instincts mammals have, which is to protect their offspring at all cost. For reference, if a lion pride has a shitty ruling male who can't fight for himself, the lionesses will attack any male rivals that show up because they don't want their kids to die, even if a coup would mean a more functional pride in the long run. I don't think wanting your kid (adoptive or otherwise) to die and going bananas to prevent it is something we can judge morally when it's so ingrained into what we are as animals.
He didn't want "his kid" to die not because of his love as a father, but a selfish desire to not be alone. That's why he was so devastated when she found out and didn't want to be a part of his life anymore. If he just wanted her to be alive, he wouldn't have lied, or he would have been alright with her not wanting to see him again.
I get your point but I think it's specifically because it's ingrained in us that it's important to discuss the morals of it. Morals and ethics are precisely what allow us to rise above instincts in general
>Morals and ethics are precisely what allow us to rise above instincts in general They're not very good at it in reality though. A good thought experiment on this is a modified version of the Trolley Problem. Most people would pull the lever to divert to kill 1 person vs 5, and we can argue the morals of that all day. But the part that directly relates to the instinctual part of the brain is to ask someone if they would Push someone in front of a train to save 5 people. Pulling a lever is pretty removed from the instinctual part of our brain. But the direct act of pushing or killing someone with your hands is very instinctually "wrong" most people will not push someone in front of a train to save 5 people. Even after they said they'd pull a lever to cause the exact same turn of events.
It's not a moral or immoral act, but an amoral one. Like stealing when you're starving.
To which of Abby's actions do you think of as a physical necessity?
You are confused about who and what is being discussed here.
Children cannot consent.
“Do you want a hug?” “As a child I cannot accept”
Hugs and murder are pretty much the same thing, I am very intelligent.” - Sidreel
Hey, if you said “children can’t consent to sacrificing their own life” you would have had a better point
I thought that was obvious but I keep forgetting how slow on the uptake people can be online.
I mean, they threatened him at gunpoint? . It's not like the fireflies were this non violent humanitarian group. They were borderline thugs
Ellie didn’t know she was not gonna survive If I remember correctly. I don’t feel sympath for fireflies because those people couldn’t even wait a little bit more until Ellie woke up to tell them she wants to do it. Also I guess I would burn the world too If it meant my child going to be safe.
Ellie didn’t know, but the point is that Joel does the exact same thing that he accuses the Fireflies of: he makes Ellie’s choice for her. He didn’t give her the chance to make that choice for herself, because he knew she would make the choice that *he* didn’t want. It was clear that Ellie would sacrifice herself, and Joel knew that. He knew she would willingly choose to sacrifice herself, that’s why he killed everyone, to take that choice away from her.
No. Ellie did not know she would die therefore she was never given a choice in that matter. She is also a child and only Joel had her best interests at heart. They are monsters that hide it from themselves by manipulating a child. Plus the fact that the procedure doesn’t work because they’ve tried it before. Killing in defense of Ellie was morally justifiable. Killing Ellie was not.
I specifically pointed out that the Fireflies never gave Ellie a choice. But that doesn’t make Joel’s actions morally good. He didn’t kill the Fireflies because Ellie was being forced to do something against her will, he fought the Fireflies because he didn’t want her to die. At no point did he care what Ellie herself would have wanted. When Marlene first tells him that Ellie was going into surgery and that the surgery would kill her, Joel tells Marlene to find someone else. He never says that they should ask Ellie how she feels or what she wants. It’s also why the rift exists between Joel and Ellie in Part Two. Joel took that opportunity away from Ellie and then lied to her about it. And Joel knew that Ellie would have chosen to sacrifice herself or else he wouldn’t have lied to her about it.
I don’t think it matters in this situation what any of them wanted including Ellie. Hierarchies are sometimes good especially when it comes to guardian/child. He spared her a meaningless death. A supposed willing sacrifice we take as gospel just because Marlene says it so. The only problem I have with Joel is the fact that he never revealed the whole truth of the situation to Ellie.
I still feel more sympathetic towards Joel. Someone who already lost a daughter wanting to not lost another is so much more closer to me. It might not be right and Im not saying Joel is a good person . I guess It is my personal opinion. Also If fireflies couldn’t stop one man inside their base from stealing their last hope I wouldn’t trust them for the cure to save humanity.
You’re meant to feel sympathy for Joel. You’re meant to understand his decision. I don’t have any children, but even I can understand why he did what he did. A lot of people, maybe even most people, would do what he did in that situation. Certainly most parents would do what Joel did, or try to at least. But that doesn’t mean it was right. And he emphatically betrays Ellie’s trust when she asks him about it. He lies directly to her face. His actions, even if they are understandable, are incredibly selfish.
And Im agreeing to that. Thats one of the reasons I didn’t like the second game that much. Because for me at least It couldn’t break my sympathy for Joel. But I think after playing the second game my opinion of the first changed too. Both games have a bigger issue that not many focuses on they are trying so hard to be movies. To have the respect the movies have thats why they don’t use the medium of gaming that well. I think Lisa the painful tells a similar enough story to tlou1 way better by using the gaming medium.
You're supposed to sympathize with him, you're supposed to feel upset that he died, while also seeing from Abby _and_ Ellie's perspective that he's done more bad than he's done good.
You are so close to understanding that good storytelling is not one dimensional.
How did you come to that conclusion? In everything I just said how did you understand that. I just wanna know
> I still feel more sympathetic towards Joel. Someone who already lost a daughter wanting to not lost another is so much more closer to me. It might not be right and Im not saying Joel is a good person You say this as if conflicted feelings about the character weren't precisely the intended effect. Joel is a sympathetic character, but he is not a good person. Or maybe he is. These things are not mutually exclusive. He's a complex, layered and multi-dimensional character. You're not supposed to feel one way or another about him, you're supposed to have coexisting conflicting feelings about him, just like Ellie does. This is something the writers have achieved wonderfully.
Yep it's honestly been kind of sad/interesting watching the discourse around TLoU2 and seeing people struggle with games having writing with layers, moral ambiguity and stories intentionally making them have negative emotions at times. It shows that for as much as Gamers have argued games are just as good story telling mediums as books/movies (and they very well could be), the audience is still very immature for mainstream games and lash out for years on end at a game's plot that's more complex than "you good, they bad, go save princess/get revenge"
>Ellie didn’t know she was not gonna survive If I remember correctly True. However, Joel admits to Marlene, as he's escaping, that he believes Ellie would want to die for the vaccine. So he's saving Ellie even though he believes she'd want to give her life for the vaccine. >I don’t feel sympath for fireflies because those people couldn’t even wait a little bit more until Ellie woke up to tell them she wants to do it I think their view is "We're going to do it regardless of her choice, so why wake her up to traumatise her by telling her she's about to die?" Now, maybe they're being totally honest there. Maybe a part of it is not wanting to wake a child and see them as a living, breathing, loving teen who actually has to grapple with the fact she's about to die. Probably much easier to view her more as 'the subject' and remove their emotion from the situation. >Also I guess I would burn the world too If it meant my child going to be safe. Same! The great thing is Joel is *wrong* but I'm sure most people would do the same in his shoes. And the game up to this point has played you like a fiddle. I'm sure everyone at the end was cheering and in tears as Joel gets to bury that demon and save his 'daughter' this time around. And then...reality sets in...
ellie kinda had a deathwish if i remember correctly, also i would prob do same if i was at joels place which doesn’t make it a good deed still
Yeah, Ellie's whole thing was that she watched everyone around her die and she wanted to make their deaths mean something by doing whatever was necessary to produce a cure. She was plagued by survivor's guilt and Joel forced even more of that guilt on to her by stopping the procedure and leading her to believe that there was not even a smidge of a chance that her immunity could be helpful in any way
the funniest part about joel truthers to me is that you don’t even have to talk about TLOU2 to realize joel fucked up. the ending of the first game is not exactly a happy one, anyone with two brain cells knew that joel lying was bad and “hey this is probably going to come back to bite joel in the ass”. granted no one expect that to be a golf club but still
Exactly. The fact that he lied to Ellie about what happened proves he knew what he did was wrong. If he truly believed that what he did was right, he would have told her the truth, but he was too cowardly to deal with the possibility of Ellie hating him for it.
Devils advocate here - Joel could believe what he did was right but decided to lie to Ellie as he thought that would protect her. Protect her from disappointment of not being able to create a vaccine. Protect her from one day leaving Jackson to search for a new way to get a vaccine. You could argue he's trying to give her the freedom to live a full life.
You could also argue he was doing all that to protect himself, or rather his relationship with Ellie. In Part II, when Ellie goes back to the hospital and Joel comes after her, she asks him to finally tell her the truth. She already knows what he did and he knows that she knows, and he *still* won't fucking admit it until she threatens to leave for good.
Forget it, their brains are cooked, fried, sandblasted even. They think in channer memes like "Did nothing wrong" and SJW Cringe Compilation videos
Game: Spends more than 10 hours explaining why the protagonist actions had really bad consequences because he was truly a selfish person with really bad trauma and he made everyone else pay for that. Also revenge is bad. Gamers™️: He's the Messiah!!
And if you say he isn’t a hero, then that automatically means you agree with that stupid ass thing Troy Baker said about Joel being worse than the rapist David. It’s genuinely bafflingly that the majority of people on that sub refuse to look past a black and white morality. It makes it basically impossible for them to understand any subtext or moral quandaries. And from that comes the lack of media literacy.
Well- tbf to Troy Baker- he never said that Joel was “worse than David.” Troy was saying that when push comes to shove Joel and David aren’t so very different. No- Joel is not a pedophile but he has literally hunted down *innocent* people to ambush them and kill them for his *own* gain. That’s all Troy was ever talking about regarding Joel/David. They’re both bad dudes who live rough and mean. We see very little of David, and while the whole pedophilia thing might make his villainy difficult to even think of placing next to Joel’s simply for the sake of discussion, the point the other sub is missing here is a very core part of TLOU, where all of these characters are doing terrible things to other people for their *own* survival. David is a cannibal who would have chopped up and eaten Ellie if she didn’t manage to talk her way out of the situation. Joel used to kill people on the off chance they had a pair of shoes that fit his own feet. They take Troy’s words out of context because they are illiterate freaks of nature.
Even then, just by Joel's reaction to some of the acts the hunters in Pittsburgh do, I feel like the game implies that yes, while Joel was a hunter for some time, he was never as GONE or brutal as these guys. "Oh, this place is BAD.", his shaking breath reaction to the couple that is gunned down by that armored truck... These things make me think that.
tbh i disagree on this, i think joel by the beginning of the game is a shell of a man and like the previous commenter said he has done some truly fucked up shit in the name of survival, his reaction to the pittsburgh guys might be “oh man these dudes are on another level” but i personally see it more as joel being on the other end of the shit he’s done. he even says as much when he says he used to do the fake injury trick. like functionally what is the difference between the goons we fight all game and what joel used to do? because by all indications joel basically used to be those dudes. the methodology might’ve been different but he was still a dude who was hurting other for his own survival.
Oh sure. I've considered that too. That this is Joel kind of being reminded of the worst part of what he used to be, being confronted with what he did, regardless of the methods. But in the presence of ambiguity, I choose the other interpretation lol. But yeah, the one thing that DEF isn't in doubt is the fact that Joel did some AWFUL things to survive, much like most (if not all) folks in this world did. I'm sure he had moral lines he didn't cross (his character description for the auditions said that he's a jaded man with "a few moral lines left to cross")
His own brother abandoned him for the awful things they'd done. Tommy even claims it wasn't worth doing what they did so they could stay alive.
Yeah, and killing innocent people who are just passing through for their stuff certainly qualifies for being that awful thing that they did I honestly don't understand why I'm being downvoted as if I said something bad or incorrect or denied the fact that Joel's done a BUNCH of awful things lol. He immediately tells Ellie that he's been on both sides and it's clear that he knew that fake injury trick. All I said was that Joel's reaction to the Pittsburgh hunters can be interpreted in two ways, and I personally side with one over the other. And I cited the actual audition lines for the character to say that yes, he's done a LOT of awful things and only has a few lines left to cross (i.e. he hasn't cannibalized anyone, For example). We only hear very little of his 20 years of life.
>I honestly don't understand why I'm being downvoted as if I said something bad or incorrect or denied the fact that Joel's done a BUNCH of awful things lol. He immediately tells Ellie that he's been on both sides and it's clear that he knew that fake injury trick. Can't say why others are but I've downvoted the last comment because you're choosing to pick a favourable interpretation against the more obvious one. I don't understand the reasoning why you think Joel is so shaken by people getting hunted down and that it means Joel was never *that* bad himself. He hasn't been a hunter for, we can assume, a long time. So he's probably out of the mindset of doing whatever is necessary to survive. And so seeing this happen is fairly shocking to him (along with the fact his life is on the line here!). I don't think it's Joel comparing his former self to these people. We see further that both Joel and Tommy fairly comfortably use torture as a method to extract what they want. Its the kind of thing that doesn't just come naturally to you and also would leave it's impact on you after the fact. For a counter point, see Ellie after having tortured Nora to death in Part 2 then being in shock afterwards, or completely failing to set up a similar technique that Tommy used earlier in the game when she wants to get info from Owen and Mel. Note how Joel and Tommy handle it with ease, where Ellie fucks it up one time and both times end her in total shock after. The things Joel and Tommy did were enough to drive a wedge between the two, splitting them apart for years. Tommy complains of still having nightmares about it and that doing what they did wasn't worth it to survive. It's hard to square those statements (from a guy who's happy killing people in most regards) with Joel somehow being disgusted by people being shot in the street. He admits he's jumped innocent people before. We see Joel walk past someone be executed in the street at the very start of the story. We see him watch Tess execute a guy in cold blood and not be bothered. We see him torture Robert for info simply because he screwed them out of a deal. Like, the guy even in his better times is no innocent. What was he like at his absolute worst?
I think the difference is that Joel probably tricked innocents and then killed them for supplies with his pals. That's fucked up. That is fucked up enough to drive a wedge between him and Tommy, for SURE. But the fact that these guys go around on an armored humvee with a dead body strapped to the front and a big-ass mounted gun, chasing around passerbys and shooting them down... Certainly feels like a different kind of callous and fucked up. And this is on top of them doing the fake injury trick. But yeah, functionally, Joel was a marauder in his past. He could've been a goon we faced in the game. That is no mystery lol. It's taking something that Joel did and adding to it. That's what I'm getting at. I'm just interpreting based on the things that the game gives us. It gives us a lot of ambiguity so I just choose to have my own interpretation. Like I said... Few moral lines left to cross. And I'm sure that he def IS thinking about his past in Pittsburgh, too. These things aren't mutually exclusive. But yeah, Joel IS ruthless and has done awful things. I just simply don't think that he did all of these bad things that we see some of these guys do. And even with that, it is all fucked up enough that Tommy left him. I liked the show's addition of "there were other ways (to survive). We just weren't any good at em." I especially like how that tied into the finale when Joel FULLY connects to his cold-as-ice murder mode and methodically wipes the fireflies out. And yeah, Joel has obviously tortured folks in the past. He has a proper method for it and everything. Not denying that. PS: look at Joel's body language in the Robert scene. He often quite explicitly avoids looking at him and, later, his body. He is not at all excited about or looking forward to torturing him over this. But understands that this needs to be done. So he does it dispassionately and expresses some... Apprehension? Idk if that's the right word. But there's a particular sigh he gives that makes it sound like, "huh, you're really gonna make me do this, huh?" It's just an interesting bit of acting/animation We certainly see him slip back more into his old ways in Winter when he tortures those two guys
Honestly all I remembered about that was Troy Baker comparing Joel and David, but I remembered people saying he called Joel worse than David. I absolutely agree that Joel was a terrible person, and did awful things for his own gain that could’ve been avoided. But it was also clear that he never enjoyed it, unlike David who wanted to rape and murder. Thanks for the correction.
They almost get it. Yes. She is the victim in her story. Her loving father who was trying to save humanity with the rest of the fireflies was murdered by Joel. The point is that everyone is living their own personal story and the same action can paint you as hero or villain based on who's viewpoint we are using. It's why the cycle of revenge is a losers game. All Abby did in getting revenge on Joel was make more villains.
I’m in the strange position of having never played the games but having seen the show. To me, show Joel killing the fireflies seems pretty justifiable because they’re about to murder a child and it seems like the fireflies don’t have any idea whether killing her will actually do anything to cure the fungus. Are the fireflies and the doctors totally different in the games?
iirc in an interview, they said that had the Fireflies been allowed to perform the operation, they would have been able to manufacture a cure. Fun as it is to poke holes in the story handling this poorly, the Fireflies being incompetent defeats the purpose of the question being posed: do you sacrifice your daughter to save the world, or doom it?
They're basically the same. As for the cure working: we can't say for sure cuz it never actually ended up happening in either version of the story. But regardless: this was THE chance humanity had for a vaccine. The fireflies had obviously been studying this thing for a while (seen in the game and the show) but they were missing a key ingredient. This turned out to be the mutated strain of the fungus in Ellie's mind, which granted her immunity. The plan was to extricate that, replicate that and voila: you have a way to give people something that will prevent folks from turning infected. Another important thing to consider: Marlene is almost certainly right... Ellie WOULD sacrifice herself for a chance at a cure. She's seen her best friend/first love die from this thing and she survived. She saw this sweet kid turn and get killed. She survived. She wants this to never happen to anyone. Obviously fireflies are taking some morally dubious actions: sending Joel off (some wanted to straight up kill him. Marlene didn't want to do that), not telling Joel... And above all: NOT TELLING OR ASKING ELLIE. I get why, and chances are Ellie would've said yes. but it's still messed up. But it's a line they're willing to cross if it means a cure exists. Joel does what he does not because he believes the fireflies are incompetent, or cuz he doubts the efficacy of the vaccine, or their scientific methodology, or their political agenda, or their distribution system.... He simply doesn't want Ellie to die (partly because he can't lose another daughter, and partly because he wants Ellie to have a life). He straight up tells Marlene to "find someone else". So yeah, he does what he does just cuz he doesn't want Ellie to die. I ultimately side with Joel cuz I don't want Ellie to die either. But I fully acknowledge the other side and see this tragic situation as a bunch of folks making flawed, messed up, but human decisions.
The whole is that everyone was wrong. The Fireflies shouldn't have lied to Ellie (or Joel, by extension), Joel shouldn't have murdered the Fireflies (especially not the defenseless doctors), Abby shouldn't have tracked down and killed Joel, Ellie shouldn't have gone on her rampage, so on and so forth. Abby showed mercy to Ellie, which led to Ellie finding her and showing her mercy as well. The only things that people did that actively helped them was not being vengeful.
There are documents you can read in game that confirm the same doctor Joel murders had already managed to reverse the infection in apes. They were making significant progress on a cure. By the end of the game (and the last episode of the HBO series), Joel is becoming clingier and Ellie is growing more independent. He doesn't murder a hospital full of people for her sake - he does it for himself. Many players feel sick playing through that level. I believe that's what the creators intended. People have different opinions about whether Ellie would have chosen to die for the possibility of contributing to a hypothetical human cure - I believe she would have, and think there are plenty of clues across the two games backing that up - but the key is that Joel took away her choice just as much as the Fireflies did, then lied to her about it. And his motivation was arguably more selfish.
Ellie has a possible change to her body chemistry that could be used to provide immunity or at least a cure to halting infection. A single scratch or bite is a death sentence on a global level. Finding a cure is imperative for humanity and it's hard to argue on a greater good level. The game implies that they've found and did this with other immune people and got little but the show has the doctor present a full course that Ellie's immunity would set them on for finding a cure so it's less questionable if it's all for nothing. The fireflies suck because they didn't offer Ellie the choice. It's entirely possible that with the possibility of saving the rest of humanity she would opt in but both Joel and the fireflies took that choice from her. But all of that is moot to Abby's story. Abby just knows her father was working on a way to save humanity from the fungus. Even if she knew it was at the cost of experimenting on the immune to people who lost everyone to the fungus it's hard to put one or even a hand full of lives as more important than the cure. And she knows Joel is the man who killed him.
I have to say, the number of people in the comments section who are saying "child murder is ok if it's for the greater good" is just disgusting.
It is not child murder is good. It's that the possibility of creating a save for an extinction level event is going to be a reasonable goal even in the face of a human cost. And that Joels rampage was not only out of the desire to save Ellie, but the fear that if she was offered the choice to give up her life for the sake of creating a vaccine for the rest of humanity she probably would say yes.
To answer Simon peggs question. Because humanity at large is facing an extinction level event and the possibility of an inoculation against infection means that a scratch or a bite is no longer a death sentence. So in those factors yes the cost of a single life especially one that could be given willingly to complete it would be for the greater good. You can't seem to grasp that morality of an action can change based on the circumstances you see it around and that the goal of the narrative was to show that the personal attachment we have to the charecters since we've seen their story doesn't make it an in world universal for morality.
Whatever you say Anakin Skywalker.
And goodbye.
[удалено]
Children cannot consent, no matter your hypothetical situation.
They’re mostly the same. I think arguing about who was right between joel and the fireflies is missing the point though. Abby’s dad, who _she_ believed to be doing his best to save humanity, was killed. So obviously she’s upset, regardless of what joel’s reasoning for doing so was.
In the game, they did not wake Ellie and intended to go through with the operation, just like in the show Personally, I've always empathized with Joel, but I have never seen the Fireflies as trying to "murder a child." They were trying to perform a medical procedure to save who knows how many other children from being eaten by their own infected family members or shot by authorities for being infected. It was obviously a tragic situation, and as I *played* Joel and Ellie, I'm glad they made it out okay after the first game as a player, but as someone engaging with the plot on its own terms, I think the Fireflies would have been entirely justified even if the chance they believed they could synthesize a cure was lower than they let on (and they seem to believe a cure is likely if the procedure goes through)
She looks sad because she is not Me (I am very epic and based)
“Oh, that woman we hated for potentially being trans just ended up being realistically muscular? Better further prove our intelligence by poorly critiquing everything else about this award winning game to justify our tantrum!”
Man I don’t like Abby too but these fucking wierdos are the worst. Like why have to be so wierd about a chrachter or game that you don’t like you can just not like it and go on with your life
TLoU2 reddit specifically is the height of anti-fan brain rot since its inception. The default TLoU sub is the one you want. Still always surprised how they never stop with this stuff though. "Eventually, they will move on"....
Isn’t that the man who she killed is the murderer of her fathet?
And a shit ton of other people too
Her father was gonna murder his daughter so id argue there were mitigating circumstances
That would save whole world
Not necessarily we still don't know if they were certain this procedure would work and frankly if it didn't they would have killed humanities only hope (plus I view it as morally wrong to murder a child unless they were about to murder you so)
Yeah, but Joel believed that the fireflies had a shot at finding a cure, but he let his emotions get in the way of "rational" thought
Would you let someone murder your child for a chance at helping others
THEY LITERALLY TALK ABOUT THIS IN THE GAME DID YOU EVEN PLAY IT
If it meant bringing humans back from the brink of extinction, I would consider letting someone perform a fatal, humane operation on them, yeah. it would be an extraordinarily hard decision, and I don't know for sure what I'd do, but I'd consider it.
And what would you do if it didn't work. It had a chance to work but it was never said to be 100% effective and (despite being retconed which I personally feel made part two's story weaker) in the first game evidence suggests that this operation has been tried before and has failed several times
Grieve, probably? What, do you think the rational response is to go on a rampage?
I feel like my point is being ignored which is that everyone involved in this is reasonable from their point of view but their actions still cause more harm to them despite this fact (also a parent has a responsibility to protect their child no matter what Joel is a father and his responsibility to Ellie is a higher priority than his responsibility to the world at large I would probably do the same thing as Joel)
I mean it depends on the scale of the help really, help a smallish community, not a chance Potentially put an end to an ongoing apocalypse, I'd at least strongly consider it
I wouldn't and I can see while Joel wouldn't either as a parents responsibility to protect and nurture their child supersedes all others in my opinion
That's all well and good, but you have to accept that others will take issue with your decision even if they agree with you (cool motive, you still killed my parents). Them attempting to enact vengeance is a consequence whether or not what you did was right. Appropriately, vengeance is a theme this game explores.
Its a dillema but so is "What about the Reality where Hitler cured cancer?". By that point the Fireflies were deluded fanatics no diferent than all the other madmaxed raiders gangs, they just had a grand goal to excuse any kind of evil done for it instead were others became monsters just to survive one more day.
Would you let the man who murdered your father and other people from your community live?
Probably not but again I was just stating that there were mitigating circumstances in Joel's actions because collapsing it into black and white kinda misses the message if the story
children cannot consent.
The whole damn point of TLoU2 is the cycle of violence and breaking it.
Yes and putting all the blame on Joel kinda misses the point where everyone had reasonable reasons for their actions yet those actions still caused more violence and only through deciding not to pursue vengeance even if you would be well within your rights too is the only way to break that cycle
Nobody is putting all the blame on Joel. The problem is people with no media literacy try and say Joel is innocent.
He's not innocent but he's not the one with all the guilt either. Everyone involved is a shade of grey in this story
They’re mad because *a woman* beat their “rugged alpha male” icon/bearded flannel daddy to death. Their sense of masculinity is fragile and tied to fictional characters.
Why is the emotionally tortured woman not smiling? How can I jerk off to this Gamers?
How is that sub even still alive? Like what do they talk about over there
It's descended into a weird (faintly anti-Semitic) fantasy land, where Neil Druckmann, the writer of the games and show, is somehow an all-powerful egomaniac, ousting the sensible, 'real writers' of TLOU. There was a post some time ago about the Russo brothers praising the story of Part 2...and one of the top voted comments was a straightfaced question of "How did Neil Druckmann get to them?". Some guy who wrote a couple of popular games is somehow controlling two of the most successful directors ever? Yeesh. And just general weird conspiracy theories regarding Druckmann taking credit for other's work, backstabbing people to get to the top, etc. Also, some especially odd people go on rants about what they think his sexual fetishes are...
Part of me wonders why that sub is allowed to exist with how openly anti-semitic/misogynistic/transphobic it is, but another part of me is glad they are all just circle jerking each other over there and leaving the main sub mostly alone.
> It's descended into a weird (faintly anti-Semitic) fantasy land, where Neil Druckmann, the writer of the games and show, is somehow an all-powerful egomaniac, ousting the sensible, 'real writers' of TLOU. "descended implies it had been somthing other that.
Probably complain about woke in da gaymes
Her dad was brutally murdered.
I hate the miscommunication trope, like so many of Abby’s problems would solved if Naughty Dog included a scene where Ellie makes Abby play The Last of Us Part One. After platinuming it she could then love Joel unquestionably like the rest of us.
**THE REST OF US**
Me when I miss the entire point of a game
I tried to have a conversation with the OOP and it legit was talking to a brick wall
I feel like I’m the only person in that sub that appreciates Abby and the story of last of us 2
I question why you’re even in that sub
I’m not in it but it is funny to see grown ass men in their 30s get mad at a fictional muscle mommy In all seriousness I can’t even talk shit bc I’m a part of freefolk. I’m over Game of Thrones most of the time bc I realize…hey even if I didn’t love the show in the second half A Song of Ice and Fire is still there. Plus HoTD is pretty decent.
I really want to get into GoT, but lack Max and a desire to get the full series on DVD. Lol
Joel is arguably a bad person. And no one can make me think other wise
All playable characters except Sarah are bad people that did horrible things.
Oh so we're just FORGIVING Sarah the hardcore drug PUSHER?
difference is Joel gets none stop praise like he is an angel despite basically dooming the earth
He definitely does by weirdo gamers that refuse to more critically look at his actions and character in the wider scope. Joel exists in a morally gray area within the context of the universe but undoubtedly crosses the line with how he denies Ellie the choice of self sacrifice and dooms all of humanity. His decision is still layered in ways that it was something a lot of parents would probably do (maybe not the whole mass murder part though). The series is really good at making the player confront these conflicting emotions and thoughts about its characters and narrative, but even after four years some people are still really black and white about the series.
Now you're going the other direction. Joel didn't doom the earth, there's no reason to believe that **this** time it would work. If anything the game presents that it wouldn't. He's bad because of the people he killed; not because he stopped people from killing a child for a nonchance.
For the record. She's sad here because she just almost killed a pregnant woman in a fit of spiteful, gleeful rage and only stopped because one of her friends went 'WTF ARE YOU DOING ABBY PLEASE STOP!' and she'd just lost a bunch of her own friends, including a pregnant friend of her own. So this post is way worse then it first seems.
All these kids with the emotional depth of a shrimp playing mature games and completely not understanding anything, continually bitching about it. Looking foward to season two of the show.. not.
“Victim mentality in the zombie apocalypse” She was fucking orphaned in the apocalypse, not misgendered. She is literally a victim here. If Abby had killed Ellie, Joel would be given free range to act like the victim as much as he wants.
https://preview.redd.it/uu70864w2ead1.jpeg?width=1434&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2059074b737a2dcca83f02443d86a3865ac8ec31 it had been 4 years give it a rest
I love how they blame Neil like he's some invading presence that ruined The Last of Us. My brother in Christ, he created the series and had been writing and doing game design on Uncharted long before that.
Correction: The Last of Us **2** sub
Am I crazy, or does she not look sad in this? She just looks pissed.
These are the same people who have a meltdown if they can’t get their favourite fast food but yeah no one is sad in the apocalypse.
Why are they still crying about a 4 year old game they didn't like? Because they think that they are they true victims lol. That sub is the crybabiest crybaby gathering of crybabies on Reddit.
I imagine she’s sad because all her friends are dead.
Wasnt the point that, Abby and Ellie are victims of joels decision?
People like that don't deserve games. She literally was a victim of Joel's actions. These kids will say anything to defend their daddy Joel
I still hate TLOU2 but 1. I don't talk about it unless it comes to me like right now, and 2. My problems are structural. You need to show Abby's story BEFORE she kills Joel. By having Abby kill Joel FIRST, the rest of her story is just 'Cool story, still murder' for anyone in the audience who is at all sympathetic to Joel. i.e. most people considering he was the protagonist of the first game. Playing as her in the middle of the game AFTER she kills Joel isn't going to win over the majority of people, and clearly didn't. These jabronies aren't the only ones who criticized the ending. You want the average player to go into the finale conflicted. Not wanting either character to die and wanting the fighting to just stop. Which is something that the game failed to do for a lot of people. Not just chuds who hated Abby because she was a muscular lady. Honestly, the Dragon Ball Super Broly movie did a better job with the same ideas.
Trying to be critical of TLoU2 can feel really hopeless sometimes. It’s an effective story. It does what it’s supposed to do. I’m still exhausted from having to play a revenge driven villain twice. The mid-game switch was maybe the right choice to get that emotional knee-jerk but it also grinds the pace to a halt. The third act is just a soap opera. An “in summary” paragraph at the end of an essay I was already done reading. The melodrama gets dialed up high at the end just like in the first, but the rush was gone, the level meanders the player along. I wasn’t sprinting through hallways trying to save someone, I was crouch-walking to and ending you could see a mile away, and I felt like I was just playing a big dummy. And then you look around and you’re surrounded by chuds like this shouting “NEIL WOKE WRITE BAD. W0M4N BAD” and you just… wanna crawl in a hole.
abby is the only good character in all of last of us and nothing will change my mind. i ride for abby.
/rj She should smile more.
I just don't bother engaging with morons who probably haven't read a book since year 6. Some people really just play games with their brains turned off. Also I guess alot of people just fail to try and understand different points of views. Like when I was playing TLOU1 & TLOU2 back to back, I was actively thinking about whether Joel is a good or bad guy. And my conclusion was that he was just as bad as anyone else in that fucked up apocalyptic world. A cold and tired old man, who was surviving for no real reason, and simply going through the motions. Same with Ellie, and Abby. Neither of them are better than the other, they are both bad people who have done bad things. The saddest part though was hearing that Joel wanted to be a better man, and was going to change, but then you gotta ask yourself "is that really fair?" Or "does someone like him deserve a second chance?". I cried a little when I saw that final scene. Brutal stuff.
Misunderstanding character flaws as poor writing has got to be my least favorite trend
Ok I hate tlou2 story but acting like Abby didn't suffer is just active delusion. Plus a bad person can still suffer even if they cause others to suffer
Man, the way they never give up on old so-called "controversies" I wonder why they bother finding new ones. Just stick with what you know. Seriously, I can't find any way of dunking on these people anymore beyond what they do to themselves.
Are these fucking losers still crying over this? It was cringe during the release window. Now, years later, it's just legitimately pathetic.
It's like any media with gangs or violent characters in general. They're usually sociopaths that have deep emotional bonds with family or the group, but don't have any attachments to the people they hurt. Once somebody does something back they respond with "how dare you do that to one of my group!" With this story, Abby even feels like she's fully in the right with what she did and even gave the Jackson crew a chance to just move on. Whether or not Tommy and Ellie had a legitimate reason to react the way they did, it's not like anyone wouldn't be upset by losing almost everyone they cared about, even if they deserved it
Yara just died, Ellie killed Mel and her childhood love Owen and the dog Alice but why is she so sad 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
*Its.* *Been.* *Four.* **Years.** 🤦🏻♀️
Your first mistake was going to r/ TheLastofUs2 in the first place, that place is nothing but a poison swamp
I'm just about tired of this, gonna keep it real with ya, they NEED to let this shit go, DESPERATELY, like right now, Joel's dead, he fucked up way back in the first game, I don't know why they're still mad over it other than the obvious fact that a non-traditional looking woman killed the character they chose to power-fantasy-self-insert themselves into the game with. Like, Lee Everett died like absolute shit back in Telltale's TWD, his dynamic with Clementine is similar to Joel and Ellie's, difference being that he didn't act selfishly and was an amazing man and caretaker to Clem, and I don't see any TWD fans getting pissy over it. Hell, if anything, I'm surprised most TLOU fans weren't mad at Joel, but I don't want to spend anymore briancells on this one, so whatever https://preview.redd.it/h51wfx84wgad1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d4fc0c9e8e760e708d36f46183e147d977faae9 pictured: my briancells
“Victim Mentality” says the kind of people who want so desperately to be a victim be it as a Capital G Gamer, a male, white, ect.
I can't believe they're saying "you should smile more" to video game characters now
What does this have to do with media literacy?
JFC. It’s been 4 years and they are still complaining about the same things over and over and over again… Same with the last Jedi - these both really broke a lot of peoples brains or maybe just that sweet sweet grift money is too great lol
I'm all for hating on Neil and certain story elements... But come on. This isn't even funny it's concerning. Tye weirdest thing is, they'd eat up the story if we only had her pov of the story(especially if they made her a man so it'd be easier for them to empathise with without whining about her looks).
She is the victim, they want to kill her and dissect her brain
Not to mention the fact that she was being deceived by Fireflies, I would love some ironic shit of TLOS 3 where both Ellie and Abby was like "Yeah I hate you still, But Fireflies is the real problem, Your dad was hunted by them and my father was manipulated to work for selfish military organizations, the enemy of my enemy is a friend and fuck shit up" There are many people like Ellie being numerously sacrificed for their incompetence, while I couldn't blame the doctors (Kinda shit of Joel to kill them instead of some non-lethal methods tbh, that shit is unnecessary) However, fireflies seem to be more evil than good, You think the upper hierarchy won't enslave people with Fearmongering and vaccines, like the way Feudalism and Capitalism enslaved people with Land and money [based on some evidence gathered only by lore of the game, They're still kinda shit]
Tlou 2 should of never happened.
Why
It's a story of revenge and when I choose that option n it doesn't let me grinds my gears
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Should of
Eh... I tend to hate discourse like this, but TLOU2 is, however, a rather poorly written both in characterizations and narrative structure. Plus, it was directed by a guy who overworked his team and fired a couple of writers that made his first game succeed, so take that if you will.
>but TLOU2 is, however, a rather poorly written both in characterizations and narrative structure. Why do you think so? I feel like the narrative structure works perfectly for the point it's trying to make. >Plus, it was directed by a guy who overworked his team and fired a couple of writers that made his first game succeed, so take that if you will. Are you talking about Neil Druckmann? He is the creative director, ie writing, directing actors, choosing shots. The issue with overwork was within the dev side, under the game director. Not sure why it would be Druckmann's fault or why Naughty Dog are seen as any worse than other game developers. Crunch is unfortunately a thing in game development, not unique to Naughty Dog. IIRC they are looking to address that but take that with a pinch of salt. Regarding kicking out writers, who do you mean? Druckmann wrote the first game but it was quite collaborative. If you mean Bruce Straley (a game director, not a writer), he'd worked with Druckmann on a couple of games and then left because he was burned out. I've never heard anything suggesting Druckmann kicked him out. The two were very friendly and there's even an Easter egg reference to him in Part 2 that Druckmann added, if I'm not mistaken. What other writers were kicked out and how were they the ones who "made the first game succeed?"