This may have been covered, but who knows since I'm not reading most spoilers until this ride is over.
BUT!
I have to say it seems pretty lame to base a huge amount of this story on what, in my opinion, is by far the dumbest part of the first game. I think they're both stellar games, no question there, but making Joel kill Dr. Jerry in the first one is something that always just strikes me as stupid. I thought it was stupid back when I played it on PS3 and thought it was stupid when I went through remastered just before the 2nd one came out.
I mean I deliberately shot doc in the big toe with an arrow because surely someone like Joel wouldn't be catastrophically stupid enough to pointlessly (arguably, sure) murder a neurosurgeon.
I mean I made my peace with it, and again, I think the first one is one of the best narrative gaming experiences out there. And so far, the sequel has been pretty much fantastic.
Just a shame that this whole thing more or less hangs on that dumb dumb dumb moment.
Anyway, yeah, still loving the game and can't wait to see how it all resolves.
Joel was ready to kill the older brother if Ellie didn’t stop him. Joel was a murderer all throughout the first game.
Oh, for sure.
And him wanting to kill Henry made sense to some degree - he left them for dead. I get Joel is a murder machine, but it still irritates me that killing the Dr. was forced.
I know, he's all hulked out rage mode and all that, but you'd still maybe think he'd draw the line at gunning down a random (at the time) neurosurgeon.
Anyway, I'm not mad about it or anything, and I agree it was fitting enough to kill Joel off. And yeah there's plenty of room for Joel's Adventures in the Past DLC. It just kinda grinds my gears that so much of the story hangs on that moment.
Also, totally unrelated, does anyone else occasionally feel totally overwhelmed by the size of some of these areas!? They're huge, and because I just have to try to see every last inch of the world, it's taking me ages to make any progress.
Well he didn't gun him down. Joel enters the room unarmed, the doctor pulls his scalpel on Joel and says he's not letting him take her, so Joel kills him with that scalpel. Its then up to the player to kill or spare the other doctors. If that guy had just not pulled that scalpel on Joel, he would have walked in grabbed Ellie and left.
Just rewatched the ending, and he's definitely armed to the teeth by the time he gets there - one I watched, player lit him up with a flamethrower.
The player doesn’t kill him. He’s the one that dies in the cutscene when a barehanded Joel grabs the scalpel he’s holding and stabs him with it. That’s Abbys dad. The other doctors are up to the player.
This is what I was talking about! Non.
the player can shoot the surgeon when they enter the room. The cutscene only occurs if the player walks up to the surgeon without doing that. TLoU2 assumes Joel/the player shoots the surgeon. They show it in the intro, his confession to Tommy. Which I thought was weird, but I guess they wanted to remove any veneer of self defence, and had Joel proactively murder the guy.
Oh brilliant
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
This may have been covered, but who knows since I'm not reading most spoilers until this ride is over.
BUT!
I have to say it seems pretty lame to base a huge amount of this story on what, in my opinion, is by far the dumbest part of the first game. I think they're both stellar games, no question there, but making Joel kill Dr. Jerry in the first one is something that always just strikes me as stupid. I thought it was stupid back when I played it on PS3 and thought it was stupid when I went through remastered just before the 2nd one came out.
I mean I deliberately shot doc in the big toe with an arrow because surely someone like Joel wouldn't be catastrophically stupid enough to pointlessly (arguably, sure) murder a neurosurgeon.
I mean I made my peace with it, and again, I think the first one is one of the best narrative gaming experiences out there. And so far, the sequel has been pretty much fantastic.
Just a shame that this whole thing more or less hangs on that dumb dumb dumb moment.
Anyway, yeah, still loving the game and can't wait to see how it all resolves.
Joel was ready to kill the older brother if Ellie didn’t stop him. Joel was a murderer all throughout the first game.
Oh, for sure.
And him wanting to kill Henry made sense to some degree - he left them for dead. I get Joel is a murder machine, but it still irritates me that killing the Dr. was forced.
I know, he's all hulked out rage mode and all that, but you'd still maybe think he'd draw the line at gunning down a random (at the time) neurosurgeon.
Anyway, I'm not mad about it or anything, and I agree it was fitting enough to kill Joel off. And yeah there's plenty of room for Joel's Adventures in the Past DLC. It just kinda grinds my gears that so much of the story hangs on that moment.
Also, totally unrelated, does anyone else occasionally feel totally overwhelmed by the size of some of these areas!? They're huge, and because I just have to try to see every last inch of the world, it's taking me ages to make any progress.
Well he didn't gun him down. Joel enters the room unarmed, the doctor pulls his scalpel on Joel and says he's not letting him take her, so Joel kills him with that scalpel. Its then up to the player to kill or spare the other doctors. If that guy had just not pulled that scalpel on Joel, he would have walked in grabbed Ellie and left.
Just rewatched the ending, and he's definitely armed to the teeth by the time he gets there - one I watched, player lit him up with a flamethrower.
The player doesn’t kill him. He’s the one that dies in the cutscene when a barehanded Joel grabs the scalpel he’s holding and stabs him with it. That’s Abbys dad. The other doctors are up to the player.
This is what I was talking about! Non.
the player can shoot the surgeon when they enter the room. The cutscene only occurs if the player walks up to the surgeon without doing that. TLoU2 assumes Joel/the player shoots the surgeon. They show it in the intro, his confession to Tommy. Which I thought was weird, but I guess they wanted to remove any veneer of self defence, and had Joel proactively murder the guy.
Holy shit. That is the now canon way it ends.
Edit:
Though looking at the intro again, the surgeon does still pick up the scalpel. Not exactly a threatening weapon against the arsenal that Joel has at that point in the game. But he does arm himself, it's just the game seems to assume Joel shoots him from the look of the intro.
I can completely agree with that interpretation - but bear in mind that it's an extremely open question. But we also know exactly what Ellie wanted and what she would have desired Joel to do, which is now no longer questionable with the second game. So whatever chance they had of doing so in that first game, Ellie wanted them to have it and Joel removed what was her choice.
While within the game story Joel believes they were going to make a cure, but he couldn't let them kill Ellie for it. So yes Joel did take that away from her. But for me as the audience, I believe the attempt at one to be futile so taking that choice away from her ultimately doesn't matter at worst and was a good idea at best because it would be letting her die for nothing.
Also even if it was going to work out you can absolutely say its not her responsibility to die for them and Ellie who is an experienced survivor but is also still a naive 14 year old girl isn't in the best place to make that decision for herself because it was mostly just born from the suffering she went through to get there and needing to feel like everything they went through wasn't for nothing. Not that she got to anyway, because she arrived unconscious and they were going to kill her regardless of her own intentions.
the player can shoot the surgeon when they enter the room. The cutscene only occurs if the player walks up to the surgeon without doing that. TLoU2 assumes Joel/the player shoots the surgeon. They show it in the intro, his confession to Tommy. Which I thought was weird, but I guess they wanted to remove any veneer of self defence, and had Joel proactively murder the guy.
I see that now. I've been going off of a video of the end of the game where the death by his own scalpel method was used from looking at it to remind myself as to whether it was actually the players choice to kill all of the doctors in the room. Since they specifically make you kill that doctor I wonder if they were planning from that moment what they were going to do with him in the second game.
People assume Ellie would have given her life for a cure,
if given the choice, (but she wasn't and not because Joel took it away from her, the Fireflies did, Joel just revoked it) just as young Abby does when offered the choice. But it's a big difference between "sure, kill me" and being on an operating table knowing this is the last time you're going to close your eyes. It's very easy to say I want to save humanity. She was still a 14-year-old girl.
I also want to describe my husbands reactions to this game because his feelings about things were strong but they probably follow the arc that Naughty Dog wants people to.
First off he was furious that they'd kill Joel, and kill him so soon in the game. Like me he thinks the Fireflies were a crazy terrorist cell and doesn't believe there's a cure or that they could or would have done anything properly with it had they made one. So in the beginning he was totally for killing Abby and everyone else she was friends with.
He was loving the game until Shimmer died, then his knee jerk reaction was for me to turn it off and stop playing it in the living room, but I told him to keep giving it a chance.
Enjoyed Dina, after initially thinking he wouldn't like her.
Ellie singing Take on Me was sweet but couldn't stop laughing for awhile about how that song was chosen over anything else.
After finding Leah's corpse at the TV station he thought "Oh great, now cultists, why are people even trying in this world? Why are they hanging around defending this dump?"
He fell asleep during Nora's chase and death but when I told him what happened he didn't care, and liked the idea of Ellie dragging her into a spore infested area because he was hoping that's how she'd deal with one of her marks.
Kind of zoned out during the Hillcrest section but Jesse got his attention. He thinks Jesse is great.
Did not care about Ellie killing Alice. "Goddamn annoying ass dogs" is what he said. He would have cared, had I not spent the previous hours shooting, bombing, and stabbing attack dogs in combat encounters. But by then they were no longer "animal in a game" like Shimmer the horse, which really upset him, but they were a bothersome combat mechanic.
He was literally standing up yelling at the screen "You dropped the fucking map you've been writing on! Why did you leave the map!? Somebody pick up the fucking map!"
Jesse's death shocked him with how sudden it was and he was still processing all of that by the time it loaded the beginning of Abby's segment and he was all "WHY are you playing as her again? What is this bullshit? Tell me right now, how long does this nonsense last? When I tell him "Around 10 hours give or take" He yelled what the fuck and got up and left.
So I start wandering around and he yells "Are you playing without me?" comes back in, sits down, and says "Okay Naughty Dog, "humanize" her for me. Let's see what you're going to do."
What ensued for the beginning of her campaign was a lot of insults, angry venting about having to spend so much time playing with her, and how ridiculous it was for her to act shocked that Joel's family came after them the same way she came after Joel. And *a lot* of Hulk Smash jokes. Those were good natured though, because he did like how muscular Abby was.
He loved the stadium setup, and said that even though we don't know what they are relying on for power it's probably a better source than a hydro-electric dam where replacement parts are definitely going to be impossible to get.
When I was playing fetch with the dog he said "Can you teach it to fetch a landmine? because that's it's future."
The "other side" of the rest of Abby's group did not impress. They were non factors and he didn't care anything about them, except for Owen. He warmed up to Owen a bit.
While playing as Abby though her better environments and more interesting story started to get to him, and then you met Lev, who he liked instantly. He started laughing at Abby's quips and her exchanges with Lev. When it came time for the sex scene he sad "Oh god Owen. NO. She has been crawling through mud and god knows what else and is COVERED in blood and fungus monster goo."
When it came time to go back for Lev and Yara hoped they'd be okay and he absolutely loved Abby's reaction to the Seraphite "bridge" on the top of the building.
It was at this point I asked him "So you're warming up to Abby it seems? And he said "Okay yeah, fine. I don't hate hate her, I'm just kind of still pretty mad at her, but I don't want Ellie to kill her, and I don't want her to kill Ellie. Why all the killing, what's even the point? The world's gone to shit, they were lucky to find a place like the WLF base. It was stupid to leave it just to kill one guy two states over."
So last night we left off at the cutscene after Abby and Lev get back from the Hospital.
As of that point here's where he's at.
Ellie - From please kill Abby ASAP to Maybe just beat her with a pipe a few times.
Abby - From please die ASAP to Why are you so fucking stupid to think people wouldn't just come after you for that.
Dina - From The Best to The Best and Pregnant.
Jesse - He really liked Jesse and I think he might have forgotten that Abby killed him.
Tommy - Has stupid hair.
All of Abby's crew is lumped together into "whatever, who cares." Except for Owen who got a "That's a shame, but what did they expect."
The only caveat to this is that he hasn't actually seen *how* Abby kills Joel. He made me skip that cutscene. If he'd seen it I think he maybe might have softened to her a bit, but not as much but I think he'd have problems reconciling that version of Abby who does something so sick and depraved, with the version he see's being helpful, hilariously afraid of heights, and making humorous quips with Lev.
I am very much interested in seeing how he reacts to Tommy guilt tripping Ellie to leave the farm.
EDIT: Yikes I did not mean to type that and leave it unspoilered.
This may have been covered, but who knows since I'm not reading most spoilers until this ride is over.
BUT!
I have to say it seems pretty lame to base a huge amount of this story on what, in my opinion, is by far the dumbest part of the first game. I think they're both stellar games, no question there, but making Joel kill Dr. Jerry in the first one is something that always just strikes me as stupid. I thought it was stupid back when I played it on PS3 and thought it was stupid when I went through remastered just before the 2nd one came out.
I mean I deliberately shot doc in the big toe with an arrow because surely someone like Joel wouldn't be catastrophically stupid enough to pointlessly (arguably, sure) murder a neurosurgeon.
I mean I made my peace with it, and again, I think the first one is one of the best narrative gaming experiences out there. And so far, the sequel has been pretty much fantastic.
Just a shame that this whole thing more or less hangs on that dumb dumb dumb moment.
Anyway, yeah, still loving the game and can't wait to see how it all resolves.
Joel was ready to kill the older brother if Ellie didn’t stop him. Joel was a murderer all throughout the first game.
Oh, for sure.
And him wanting to kill Henry made sense to some degree - he left them for dead. I get Joel is a murder machine, but it still irritates me that killing the Dr. was forced.
I know, he's all hulked out rage mode and all that, but you'd still maybe think he'd draw the line at gunning down a random (at the time) neurosurgeon.
Anyway, I'm not mad about it or anything, and I agree it was fitting enough to kill Joel off. And yeah there's plenty of room for Joel's Adventures in the Past DLC. It just kinda grinds my gears that so much of the story hangs on that moment.
Also, totally unrelated, does anyone else occasionally feel totally overwhelmed by the size of some of these areas!? They're huge, and because I just have to try to see every last inch of the world, it's taking me ages to make any progress.
Well he didn't gun him down. Joel enters the room unarmed, the doctor pulls his scalpel on Joel and says he's not letting him take her, so Joel kills him with that scalpel. Its then up to the player to kill or spare the other doctors. If that guy had just not pulled that scalpel on Joel, he would have walked in grabbed Ellie and left.
Just rewatched the ending, and he's definitely armed to the teeth by the time he gets there - one I watched, player lit him up with a flamethrower.
This may have been covered, but who knows since I'm not reading most spoilers until this ride is over.
BUT!
I have to say it seems pretty lame to base a huge amount of this story on what, in my opinion, is by far the dumbest part of the first game. I think they're both stellar games, no question there, but making Joel kill Dr. Jerry in the first one is something that always just strikes me as stupid. I thought it was stupid back when I played it on PS3 and thought it was stupid when I went through remastered just before the 2nd one came out.
I mean I deliberately shot doc in the big toe with an arrow because surely someone like Joel wouldn't be catastrophically stupid enough to pointlessly (arguably, sure) murder a neurosurgeon.
I mean I made my peace with it, and again, I think the first one is one of the best narrative gaming experiences out there. And so far, the sequel has been pretty much fantastic.
Just a shame that this whole thing more or less hangs on that dumb dumb dumb moment.
Anyway, yeah, still loving the game and can't wait to see how it all resolves.
Joel was ready to kill the older brother if Ellie didn’t stop him. Joel was a murderer all throughout the first game.
Oh, for sure.
And him wanting to kill Henry made sense to some degree - he left them for dead. I get Joel is a murder machine, but it still irritates me that killing the Dr. was forced.
I know, he's all hulked out rage mode and all that, but you'd still maybe think he'd draw the line at gunning down a random (at the time) neurosurgeon.
Anyway, I'm not mad about it or anything, and I agree it was fitting enough to kill Joel off. And yeah there's plenty of room for Joel's Adventures in the Past DLC. It just kinda grinds my gears that so much of the story hangs on that moment.
Also, totally unrelated, does anyone else occasionally feel totally overwhelmed by the size of some of these areas!? They're huge, and because I just have to try to see every last inch of the world, it's taking me ages to make any progress.
Well he didn't gun him down. Joel enters the room unarmed, the doctor pulls his scalpel on Joel and says he's not letting him take her, so Joel kills him with that scalpel. Its then up to the player to kill or spare the other doctors. If that guy had just not pulled that scalpel on Joel, he would have walked in grabbed Ellie and left.
Just rewatched the ending, and he's definitely armed to the teeth by the time he gets there - one I watched, player lit him up with a flamethrower.
The player doesn’t kill him. He’s the one that dies in the cutscene when a barehanded Joel grabs the scalpel he’s holding and stabs him with it. That’s Abbys dad. The other doctors are up to the player.
it's the first game's fault, not the sequel's. if you didn't feel guilty in that final moment it's a failing
and can't you at least see his decision is a philosophical one? with stakes so high, you can't hate someone for thinking differently about the classic trolley problem. it's a complex ethical problem, not a moral one
It’s not no. You’re pretending like all things are equal and the cure was a certainty and it absolutely was not. That takes pretending every bit of world building up to the finale didn’t exist.
Now yes, if the game actually followed through and we saw that without a doubt if Ellie died all of humanity would totally be saved and then knowing Ellie would want that yes, it’d be like you describe. But that’s not the case and the first game is better for it.
I can understand someone just taking them at their word or thinking even the chance is worth it, but I just don’t. I look at everything the first and second game tells us about that world, and the fireflies and to me it makes it clear their efforts would have entirely futile.
I can completely agree with that interpretation - but bear in mind that it's an extremely open question. But we also know exactly what Ellie wanted and what she would have desired Joel to do, which is now no longer questionable with the second game. So whatever chance they had of doing so in that first game, Ellie wanted them to have it and Joel removed what was her choice.
Your fourteen year old son or daughter comes to you, willful and earnest, and advises you that it is their sole wish to die on an operating table for a cure that'll probably happen. Is it up to them?
Your nineteen year old son or daughter comes to you, sure and determined, and advises you that it is their heartfelt desire to die for a cure that might happen. Is it up to you?
As soon as that Doctor took up the scalpel I'd'a shot him in his fucking mouth.
Edit: And let's not pretend 14 year old Ellie had been informed even if you're prepared to say she could have consented. She and Joel were talking about what they would do back in Jackson after they were done - Ellie had no idea it meant her death, that day. She wasn't even given the choice, because some Doctors need to get shot in the mouth.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
Towards the end of TLOU1, Ellie was withdrawn and ultimately asked the question ‘All of this meant something, right?’
And by all of this, she meant all of it. In her mind she was supposed to be dead with her first love. Instead she gets to continue to live. And for what? What’s her purpose in life, being immune to the fungus?
Ellie wanted her immunity to be shared with all. Instead Joel murdered the one person who could end this hellish existence out of pure selfishness. Joel is so selfish that he couldn’t even tell Ellie the truth.
No no, I get it. We had all these arguments last time (when TloU1 launched), and a lot of people are like "Joel is just a monster" and "love makes a monster of man" and so on and so forth. And yeah there's gray areas to that - evidenced in Lev,
who went to his mother, sure and earnest, and told her that he wouldn't be anyone's bride because he's a boy. The good thing to do, clearly, is to continue to protect your child above all else - certainly above this mad cult you've embraced - and Lev's mother, instead, made the opposite of Joel's choice in the first game.
Against Lev's will, she sided with the good of the majority she chose.
Against Ellie's will, Joel sided with Ellie. Joel was on Ellie's side when no one else was. When even you wanted her to die, he protected her, and that's why Joel's m'boy.
Joel is so selfish that he couldn’t even tell Ellie the truth.
"C'mere, little man, I wanna' rap at'cha for a second. I am like six months behind on the mortgage, and I. Am. Worried."
A parent makes some very hard choices, and one can't suggest Joel didn't weigh his and pay for it later. I always interpreted "swear to me," "I swear" at the end of the first game to imply that Ellie knew full well he was lying, as evidenced by her insistence, and knows his promise is a lie - and I always thought he knew she knew it was a lie, too - but Ellie allows him to take that burden, in exchange for more time together. She agrees to pretend with him, at the end of the first game, that it's okay.
If Ellie didn't always know it was a lie, she wouldn't have, y'know, forced him to admit it in this game. She always knew. I reckon.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited June 2020
Joel is your bro because his solution to everything is war, even against the will of the ones he cares about? This is the reason why many daughters don’t talk to their fathers, because they’re afraid the father is going to get angry and do something stupid like murdering someone. What gives Joel the right to be judge, jury, and executioner? Is it because Joel is your idea is what masculinity should be? If so, go back to the 50’s because what Joel is has no value.
Joel is your bit because his solution to everything is war, even against the ones he sided with will? This is the reason why many daughters don’t talk to their fathers, because they’re afraid the father is going to get angry and do something stupid like murdering someone. Why gives Joel the right to be judge, jury, and executioner? Is it because Joel is your idea is what masculinity should be? If so, go back to the 50’s because what Joel is has no value.
Ah. I'm not sure that's what I said. I wrote a lot about the degree to which a child has the ability to consent to risk their own life, but also the degree to which a parent should respect their child's agency and champion the safety of that child above all else.
Now if somewhere in that you read that "Joel's inability to have a conversation that references his emotions is good and healthy" and "saving someone's life is only ever a violent act," and also "get back in the kitchen" and probably "racist stuff too" (go back to the 50s? wtf?), well...
...shit I gotta' get better at typing, I guess.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
That we can't paint any of the main characters and their actions in black and white is the reason why this game's writing is better than 99.99% (I can't really think of better atm) of all video-game "narratives", if you can call them that.
the more i think about this game the more structurally and conceptually similar to pulp fiction it feels
spoilers for both:
couple of things keep playing out in my mind:
- the moment in butch's story where he just casually machine guns down vincent vega emerging from the toilet, after all our investment in him: such a wonderfully undignified end
- rescuing your mortal enemy from a more depraved fate, like butch rescuing marcellus. and the special kind of righteous joy you get in killing the tormentors of your grand rival
did anyone pick up any other little similarities or allusions? pulp fiction definitely does the antihero thing a bit better. but it's fun to consider
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
@viskod You can see how they generate power. If you look to the upper right it’s wind turbines.
Well I finished the game for the husband tonight, and he was not pleased at all.
He had done a complete 180 on Abby and was more invested in her and Lev than Ellie.
He didn’t want them to kill each other and just learn that holding grudges in this world is a waste of time and energy.
He was furious with Tommy for trying to get her back on Abbys trail and was practically speaking all of Dinas lines verbatim right before she said them.
When you find Abby again he was really hoping Ellie would just let her go, have some final words with her, then go their separate ways.
When Ellie was all “I can’t let you leave” he said “I’m done. This is too stupid.” And just kept repeating how stupid that last fight was.
After the final scenes his opinion was that watching that game was a huge waste of time because that was a really stupid ending. He hated it.
He thinks seeing Abby strung up and knowing what she went through as a slave should have been enough and Ellie should have just let them go.
In the end he really liked Abby and Lev but didn’t give a shit about any of Abbys friends and their deaths. And that Mel was a jerk and Owen was a tomcat.
After this I showed him the scene he didn’t see of Abby killing Joel, and he said “That’s like a different character, how idiotic to write her that way in that part, how can some scenes be so good character wise but then shit like this and that dumb ending also exist.”
I don't think Owen is a Tomcat at all, that's Manny, which is why I don't like Manny. It's played as a joke that he's working his way through the female staff members.
Owen clearly loved and loves Abby. He was there when she found her dad's body. If she had said to leave for Santa Barbara, he'd have gone with her and left the others behind. They don't go into specifics but I can only imagine that he and Abby split up because she was so obsessed with finding Joel, whereas Owen was pretty laid back and didn't see the point in going out risking life and limb for revenge anymore than he wanted to die fighting the Seraphites for a city he didn't care about. He wasn't oblivious to what the Firefly's were like, but he wanted something more hopeful to believe in and he wanted to go. He didn't love Mel. Whether the pregnancy was an accident or something Mel did because she knew he was still into Abby, we don't know, but he took every opportunity when they returned from Joel's murder to not be at home with her. This is in part because he's a coward and doesn't want to admit the truth to her when she is carrying her baby. I like that they portray that aspect and don't have him all gung ho into the relationship just because she is pregnant.
But I think if Abby had ever said let's be together and run away, he'd have gone in a second.
I asked if he wanted to play one of the uncharteds this weekend as a palette cleanser and he’s so just flat out annoyed with that ending and how they wrote Abby in the opening that he doesn’t want anything else to do with Naughty Dog at the moment.
I asked if he wanted to play one of the uncharteds this weekend as a palette cleanser and he’s so just flat out annoyed with that ending and how they wrote Abby in the opening that he doesn’t want anything else to do with Naughty Dog at the moment.
I'm dabbling in prerelease indies (Griftlands & Hades - both excellent), but drifting back to my NG+ playthrough now. The gameplay's still exceptional and the presentation's still immaculate.
My podcasting buddy pointed out the other day that Elena became pretty 2-dimensional from Uncharted 3 onward and while I don't remember 3 super-well (great combat, meh story to me), I feel like it was definitely true in 4. ND's storytelling definitely peaked with TloU1, imo.
I don't think Owen is a Tomcat at all, that's Manny, which is why I don't like Manny. It's played as a joke that he's working his way through the female staff members.
Owen clearly loved and loves Abby. He was there when she found her dad's body. If she had said to leave for Santa Barbara, he'd have gone with her and left the others behind. They don't go into specifics but I can only imagine that he and Abby split up because she was so obsessed with finding Joel, whereas Owen was pretty laid back and didn't see the point in going out risking life and limb for revenge anymore than he wanted to die fighting the Seraphites for a city he didn't care about. He wasn't oblivious to what the Firefly's were like, but he wanted something more hopeful to believe in and he wanted to go. He didn't love Mel. Whether the pregnancy was an accident or something Mel did because she knew he was still into Abby, we don't know, but he took every opportunity when they returned from Joel's murder to not be at home with her. This is in part because he's a coward and doesn't want to admit the truth to her when she is carrying her baby. I like that they portray that aspect and don't have him all gung ho into the relationship just because she is pregnant.
But I think if Abby had ever said let's be together and run away, he'd have gone in a second.
That's exactly why they split up, you're correct. To me, weighing Manny and Owen's fuckery circless back around to what is, imo, one of the central themes of the game - that sin and virtue are entirely matters of perspective.
When we're introduced better to Manny, as I recall, he and Abby are walking through some WLF installation and Manny has clearly been intimately close with several women who're all pleased to see him as you wander around. Now, because we're Abby and Manny is our friend, it's cool that he's happy - I'm not looking to slut-shame anyone, and nothing suggests any of Manny's friends were disappointed not to be in something a bit more committed. We're on Manny's side.
(Again, back to our theme - we're blind to those women's experiences outside of how they represent their feelings in that moment - it's entirely possible Manny is monstrous, but it's hard to feel that way about him absent any evidence.) In general, good on Manny. Get some.
But then there's Owen. In this case, I'm on Abby's side - but not as Abby. I'm on her side more as the friend who wants her to be happy and isn't happy she genuinely loves Owen and won't get over him. Thing is, you're right, Alpha, Owen genuinely loves Abby back and would absolutely drop his pregnant apocalypse-wife to run away with our heroine (he begs her to) - thank God Abby's smarter than that.
Owen definitely has deep feelings for Abby, but when Abby made clear at the aquarium that she wouldn't... I don't want to say "put out," but when it was clear that for her, intimacy was on hold until she had resolved her feelings around her father, Owen had 3 options. He could've just fucked off, he could've remained Abby's bestie and stayed true, or he could both stay her bestie and go see if there was anyone else who would let him kiss on them, and he picked option C. He stayed close with Abby while starting a family with Mel, despite not actually wanting to start a family with Mel.
Now I'm not saying let's stone Owen because he got together with someone who wanted to get together with him, after being rejected by someone who didn't want to. That's life, and that's how it goes. Perspective.
'Course then he cheats on Mel with Abby. Perspective.
If we're on Owen's side, in that moment, and we want to empathize with him - this is what we've wanted for our friend ever since Abby rejected him at the museum. We know she is the love of his life. He reminds her that he's seen the worst of her and he's frankly scared of her but he still loves her if she could only see and then she kisses him. On Owen's side? This is yay. Mel who?
My perspective on these events is that of someone who wants Abby to find the light she's so desperate for, and maybe some happiness too. And as a friend, I'd tell Abby maybe don't trust the guy who'll cheat on his current flame and try to make roads with someone else. I know you got history with him and that's what makes it so comfortable and easy to want to feel that way again, but he'll burn you.
Maybe he'll pull that same shit on you when you're seven months pregnant with permanent bags under your eyes, Abby. I know you love him, but he'll let you down. And I'm not sayin' this 'cause I don't want you happy - I'm sayin' it 'cause I do.
Now let's consider a third perspective on Owen cheating with Abby.
What are you prepared to say Mel feels about it? (Oh I think we know!) But that's the point. Of the whole game. How we may devastate lives by doing what we feel is good and righteous and true. How every victory is always, also, a slaughter.
Horrifying.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Seattle Day 2 as Abby and oh my goodness it's just so much extra game that I still maintain should've been DLC.
As for the Joel Discussion I've been thinking about it. I'll spoil it just because.
I don't think Joel is necessarily a monster. I think he's just a product of his environment. Or at least the environment that ND created. Dude was alive during the Old World. He's lived two lives. He didn't grow up in the new normal. He had to radically, violently adapt or die. He was just a normal suburban dad living his life when everything suddenly and like, instantaneously went to shit. His daughter dies. His whole life is completely shattered and he's thrust into a brave new world where he has to do bad things to survive. You don't really come out of that ok. Or at least without a very altered sense of "morality."
That kind of flavored the end of 1 for me. Joel probably didn't need to blast all those people, kill the surgeon and steal Ellie away. But from his past experiences and the things he's seen and done, and knowing what he knows about the Fireflies, and what's at stake, he did what he did to try and ensure that it ended right then and there. And, to an extent, in regards to the first game and its self contained narrative, it worked. As to the morality of letting them kill Ellie and maybe derive a cure or going in and killing everybody to save her, I don't have an answer. She didn't know she was about to die. They kept that from her and did not give her a chance to decide for herself. It's made very clear that regardless of her choice she would've ended up on that operating table. And is that even really a choice?
Joel just didn't want to lose his daughter again. That's a powerful motivator. And Pt 2 does a little to show you he's softened, become more open to helping people he doesn't know and trying to be a better person. Him dying the way he did sucks but... it's kinda a live by the sword die by the sword scenario. I'd imagine very few people probably live to die peacefully in their sleep in this universe. So I don't think you can say, unequivocally Joel is a monster. But you also can't say unequivocally that he's good, either. The world of The Last of Us is not black and white, and I guess you have to ask what it is the writers are trying to say with the world they created and the people they put in it.
And that's kind of why all these apocalypse movies and games are so popular. It gives us, in our safe and modern world, a foil to ask "what would we do in order to survive, what would we do in order to protect the people we love? Do we have it in us to kill and make terrible decisions?" My thought process is that we largely will never encounter a situation even remotely similar. People are not inherently monsters. Our survival was largely predicated on us being social creatures and cooperating. That holds true today. Whatever happens, the community will be what survives, not necessarily the crazy prepper up in the hills.
Anyway. That's just my thought on the thing, having only beat the first game like, 4 days ago.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
The only way Joel is a monster is if
that doctor 100% for sure would have made a cure from Ellie's fucking brainstem, or whatever. That seems exceedingly unlikely considering Ellie would be the first immune person he's ever met, and killing her instead of studying her seems insanely wasteful and unethical to boot. To do it against her will is monstrous.
this sniper section as Abby can go eat a dick, I've been enjoying the game on hard but this isn't much fun.
Flamethrower is your friend.
Also:
After the first wave, in which you hopefully are using the cover behind a van to burninate all the zombies, you can then pretty comfortably run to the top of the ramp and kill the rest without worrying about the sniper.
this sniper section as Abby can go eat a dick, I've been enjoying the game on hard but this isn't much fun.
Flamethrower is your friend.
Also:
After the first wave, in which you hopefully are using the cover behind a van to burninate all the zombies, you can then pretty comfortably run to the top of the ramp and kill the rest without worrying about the sniper.
I did get through it after bitching here lol
I found some bricks and lured the zombos to the staircase where the quick save was. Then I used my limited flamethrower ammo to dispatch all the easy guys, and then my shotgun ammo on the tougher infected. Then sprinted up to the exit, past the second wave after grabbing the ammo on the left.
I was trying to take it slow but like many parts of the game at a certain part it's fine to just run to the exit and hope for the best
One thing I can't stand in the game, and given how much attention to detail in all other areas is pretty unforgivable, is the skill trees. Having to waste pills to unlock shitty abilities so you can unlock useful ones is bad. Not putting enough pills in the game to do it in one playthrough so if you want an ability you HAVE to potentially play twice is absolutely crap design.
The Listening abilities are almost always worthless. You can do enough with the base ability, and 90% of the time they just spawn things in so your listening ability doesn't give you a warning AND the Stalkers cannot be heard EVEN THOUGH they're making noise. Or you have to unlock a bunch of fairly poor abilities so you can make extra arrows. It's crap.
One thing I can't stand in the game, and given how much attention to detail in all other areas is pretty unforgivable, is the skill trees. Having to waste pills to unlock shitty abilities so you can unlock useful ones is bad. Not putting enough pills in the game to do it in one playthrough so if you want an ability you HAVE to potentially play twice is absolutely crap design.
The Listening abilities are almost always worthless. You can do enough with the base ability, and 90% of the time they just spawn things in so your listening ability doesn't give you a warning AND the Stalkers cannot be heard EVEN THOUGH they're making noise. Or you have to unlock a bunch of fairly poor abilities so you can make extra arrows. It's crap.
First of all extra arrows is my jam.
Second yeah the skill trees are... pret-ty bad. But the whole save system is kinda' pretty bad too, and
the point at which you have all those skills stripped away
feels like you just got cheated.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
It's fun don't get me wrong. I just would've much preferred to play it later as side content so I could kind of appreciate it more instead of lowkey wishing it would just finish.
It's fun don't get me wrong. I just would've much preferred to play it later as side content so I could kind of appreciate it more instead of lowkey wishing it would just finish.
Seattle Day 2 as Abby and oh my goodness it's just so much extra game that I still maintain should've been DLC.
As for the Joel Discussion I've been thinking about it. I'll spoil it just because.
I don't think Joel is necessarily a monster. I think he's just a product of his environment. Or at least the environment that ND created. Dude was alive during the Old World. He's lived two lives. He didn't grow up in the new normal. He had to radically, violently adapt or die. He was just a normal suburban dad living his life when everything suddenly and like, instantaneously went to shit. His daughter dies. His whole life is completely shattered and he's thrust into a brave new world where he has to do bad things to survive. You don't really come out of that ok. Or at least without a very altered sense of "morality."
That kind of flavored the end of 1 for me. Joel probably didn't need to blast all those people, kill the surgeon and steal Ellie away. But from his past experiences and the things he's seen and done, and knowing what he knows about the Fireflies, and what's at stake, he did what he did to try and ensure that it ended right then and there. And, to an extent, in regards to the first game and its self contained narrative, it worked. As to the morality of letting them kill Ellie and maybe derive a cure or going in and killing everybody to save her, I don't have an answer. She didn't know she was about to die. They kept that from her and did not give her a chance to decide for herself. It's made very clear that regardless of her choice she would've ended up on that operating table. And is that even really a choice?
Joel just didn't want to lose his daughter again. That's a powerful motivator. And Pt 2 does a little to show you he's softened, become more open to helping people he doesn't know and trying to be a better person. Him dying the way he did sucks but... it's kinda a live by the sword die by the sword scenario. I'd imagine very few people probably live to die peacefully in their sleep in this universe. So I don't think you can say, unequivocally Joel is a monster. But you also can't say unequivocally that he's good, either. The world of The Last of Us is not black and white, and I guess you have to ask what it is the writers are trying to say with the world they created and the people they put in it.
And that's kind of why all these apocalypse movies and games are so popular. It gives us, in our safe and modern world, a foil to ask "what would we do in order to survive, what would we do in order to protect the people we love? Do we have it in us to kill and make terrible decisions?" My thought process is that we largely will never encounter a situation even remotely similar. People are not inherently monsters. Our survival was largely predicated on us being social creatures and cooperating. That holds true today. Whatever happens, the community will be what survives, not necessarily the crazy prepper up in the hills.
Anyway. That's just my thought on the thing, having only beat the first game like, 4 days ago.
Your thoughts on it, I meant.
S'pecially that last spoiler'd paragraph.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Ok no I can't do the whole post like that even as a joke
Anyway, I'm trying to re-play TLoU 1 before I jump into TLoU 2. I expected to be done before TLoU 2 even released but I forgot how frustrating it can be, especially clickers, who seem to succeed in their echolocation even if I'm not moving and I'm not that close. Is that just the game engine being kind of a dick to me or am I missing something?
I did take both of the shiv perks already so I'm hoping I can just let clickers find me and I can kill 'em dead with my full durability shivs. That's how it works, right? Just let em grab me and shiv? Playing in full stealth mode is just so frustrating.
I'm up to the section with Henry and his brother. About how much longer is this? I beat it but that was way back when, when it first came out on the PS3. Am I at least more than halfway? I mean I love the game but I have TLoU 2 installed and I just want to play that already.
Also, how long is Left Behind or whatever it's called? I never played that which is the other reason I wanted to get through TLoU 1 again before TLoU 2.
When a clicker does their RRRRRRAAAAACLIKLKLIKLIKLIKLIK thing, they're echolocating and can sense if you're close. But in 2 it seems to be if you're in front of them.
And you're almost at the end of halfway.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
The big ole cordycep chungus in the hospital. It definitely had a level of cheese to it but it was also kinda cool seeing something new. Up to a certain point most of the infected lose their effectiveness as creepy enemies. The stalkers got close with their weird movement and cheating your listen mode so they stay hidden longer. But even then it's like, make a little noise, back into a corner and pop em as they rush. Rinse and repeat.
When a clicker does their RRRRRRAAAAACLIKLKLIKLIKLIKLIK thing, they're echolocating and can sense if you're close. But in 2 it seems to be if you're in front of them.
And you're almost at the end of halfway.
@Chance Thanks. Also how did I never know that was the signal they are echolocating? Damn.
Fucking amazing. It’s a shame it came at the cost of crunch, but, damn this is ND at they it best.
I can’t even remember Uncharted characters or even the plots, they just weren’t memorable to me. TLOU2 on the other hand was like reading a great novel, one of the best video games I’ve played
Nope. Still a monster, even if he just murdered that one person, because that one person meant something to someone. I don’t know why people are so quick to dehumanize Joel’s victim. I mean, I get the whole “Joel’s MAH BOIIIII” thing, but we are operating on information that the in-game universe literally shows us in conversations.
But humans ARE monsters. That’s one of the themes of most post apoc genre fiction. I think there is a more interesting question behind it both in the Last of Us 1 and the Last of Us 2. Something along the lines of “Yes, humans are monsters... but they are also still human”. It’s why both games are so compelling.
The point of Joel's choice in the first game (and several reactions to it in the second) is that it's really easy to see the obvious choice was to sacrifice Ellie. But when the chips are down, when things are life and death, it actually isn't an easy choice to make. It may be for someone who doesn't have their relationship. But imagine instead of Ellie it was your kid, or your parents, or your brother/sister, whomever. And don't just imagine it, because it's easy to say "oh well it's still obvious" but obvious doesn't mean 'correct' based on a person's personal history with the other. Joel is a lot more human because he makes the choice to pick one human over a billion others; that's what most people would do if it was their loved one. Even throwing aside the context of Joel's past, where Ellie is literally a stand in for a daughter he didn't have a chance to save. To Joel, he was making right on a wrong he had already seen happen once.
Yeah, Joel's a monster. We probably all are.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I think a lot of people want a power fantasy, and react negatively when that’s denied them. I agree that my favorite theme of TLOU is that people are monsters, but can still have good in them deep down, and they can learn and grow from it. But not everyone does. Some only want to indulge the power fantasy
like the rattlers
Almost every other game out there is more about indulging the power fantasy of players, the fact TLOU2 pushes back on that is what really makes me appreciate it
I was New Game+’ing it up, and my girlfriend, who has basically no exposure to any of the game, watched some of Seattle Day 1 while she was doing her homework for her class.
I got to the Music Shop section, and she stopped doing her work. “Aww, they seem like a cute couple.”
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This is what I was talking about! Non.
Holy shit. That is the now canon way it ends.
Edit:
Also even if it was going to work out you can absolutely say its not her responsibility to die for them and Ellie who is an experienced survivor but is also still a naive 14 year old girl isn't in the best place to make that decision for herself because it was mostly just born from the suffering she went through to get there and needing to feel like everything they went through wasn't for nothing. Not that she got to anyway, because she arrived unconscious and they were going to kill her regardless of her own intentions.
He was loving the game until Shimmer died, then his knee jerk reaction was for me to turn it off and stop playing it in the living room, but I told him to keep giving it a chance.
Enjoyed Dina, after initially thinking he wouldn't like her.
Ellie singing Take on Me was sweet but couldn't stop laughing for awhile about how that song was chosen over anything else.
After finding Leah's corpse at the TV station he thought "Oh great, now cultists, why are people even trying in this world? Why are they hanging around defending this dump?"
He fell asleep during Nora's chase and death but when I told him what happened he didn't care, and liked the idea of Ellie dragging her into a spore infested area because he was hoping that's how she'd deal with one of her marks.
Kind of zoned out during the Hillcrest section but Jesse got his attention. He thinks Jesse is great.
Did not care about Ellie killing Alice. "Goddamn annoying ass dogs" is what he said. He would have cared, had I not spent the previous hours shooting, bombing, and stabbing attack dogs in combat encounters. But by then they were no longer "animal in a game" like Shimmer the horse, which really upset him, but they were a bothersome combat mechanic.
He was literally standing up yelling at the screen "You dropped the fucking map you've been writing on! Why did you leave the map!? Somebody pick up the fucking map!"
Jesse's death shocked him with how sudden it was and he was still processing all of that by the time it loaded the beginning of Abby's segment and he was all "WHY are you playing as her again? What is this bullshit? Tell me right now, how long does this nonsense last? When I tell him "Around 10 hours give or take" He yelled what the fuck and got up and left.
So I start wandering around and he yells "Are you playing without me?" comes back in, sits down, and says "Okay Naughty Dog, "humanize" her for me. Let's see what you're going to do."
What ensued for the beginning of her campaign was a lot of insults, angry venting about having to spend so much time playing with her, and how ridiculous it was for her to act shocked that Joel's family came after them the same way she came after Joel. And *a lot* of Hulk Smash jokes. Those were good natured though, because he did like how muscular Abby was.
He loved the stadium setup, and said that even though we don't know what they are relying on for power it's probably a better source than a hydro-electric dam where replacement parts are definitely going to be impossible to get.
When I was playing fetch with the dog he said "Can you teach it to fetch a landmine? because that's it's future."
The "other side" of the rest of Abby's group did not impress. They were non factors and he didn't care anything about them, except for Owen. He warmed up to Owen a bit.
While playing as Abby though her better environments and more interesting story started to get to him, and then you met Lev, who he liked instantly. He started laughing at Abby's quips and her exchanges with Lev. When it came time for the sex scene he sad "Oh god Owen. NO. She has been crawling through mud and god knows what else and is COVERED in blood and fungus monster goo."
When it came time to go back for Lev and Yara hoped they'd be okay and he absolutely loved Abby's reaction to the Seraphite "bridge" on the top of the building.
It was at this point I asked him "So you're warming up to Abby it seems? And he said "Okay yeah, fine. I don't hate hate her, I'm just kind of still pretty mad at her, but I don't want Ellie to kill her, and I don't want her to kill Ellie. Why all the killing, what's even the point? The world's gone to shit, they were lucky to find a place like the WLF base. It was stupid to leave it just to kill one guy two states over."
So last night we left off at the cutscene after Abby and Lev get back from the Hospital.
As of that point here's where he's at.
Ellie - From please kill Abby ASAP to Maybe just beat her with a pipe a few times.
Abby - From please die ASAP to Why are you so fucking stupid to think people wouldn't just come after you for that.
Dina - From The Best to The Best and Pregnant.
Jesse - He really liked Jesse and I think he might have forgotten that Abby killed him.
Tommy - Has stupid hair.
All of Abby's crew is lumped together into "whatever, who cares." Except for Owen who got a "That's a shame, but what did they expect."
The only caveat to this is that he hasn't actually seen *how* Abby kills Joel. He made me skip that cutscene. If he'd seen it I think he maybe might have softened to her a bit, but not as much but I think he'd have problems reconciling that version of Abby who does something so sick and depraved, with the version he see's being helpful, hilariously afraid of heights, and making humorous quips with Lev.
I am very much interested in seeing how he reacts to Tommy guilt tripping Ellie to leave the farm.
EDIT: Yikes I did not mean to type that and leave it unspoilered.
Your fourteen year old son or daughter comes to you, willful and earnest, and advises you that it is their sole wish to die on an operating table for a cure that'll probably happen. Is it up to them?
Your nineteen year old son or daughter comes to you, sure and determined, and advises you that it is their heartfelt desire to die for a cure that might happen. Is it up to you?
As soon as that Doctor took up the scalpel I'd'a shot him in his fucking mouth.
Edit: And let's not pretend 14 year old Ellie had been informed even if you're prepared to say she could have consented. She and Joel were talking about what they would do back in Jackson after they were done - Ellie had no idea it meant her death, that day. She wasn't even given the choice, because some Doctors need to get shot in the mouth.
And by all of this, she meant all of it. In her mind she was supposed to be dead with her first love. Instead she gets to continue to live. And for what? What’s her purpose in life, being immune to the fungus?
Ellie wanted her immunity to be shared with all. Instead Joel murdered the one person who could end this hellish existence out of pure selfishness. Joel is so selfish that he couldn’t even tell Ellie the truth.
Against Lev's will, she sided with the good of the majority she chose.
Against Ellie's will, Joel sided with Ellie. Joel was on Ellie's side when no one else was. When even you wanted her to die, he protected her, and that's why Joel's m'boy.
Edit:
"C'mere, little man, I wanna' rap at'cha for a second. I am like six months behind on the mortgage, and I. Am. Worried."
A parent makes some very hard choices, and one can't suggest Joel didn't weigh his and pay for it later. I always interpreted "swear to me," "I swear" at the end of the first game to imply that Ellie knew full well he was lying, as evidenced by her insistence, and knows his promise is a lie - and I always thought he knew she knew it was a lie, too - but Ellie allows him to take that burden, in exchange for more time together. She agrees to pretend with him, at the end of the first game, that it's okay.
If Ellie didn't always know it was a lie, she wouldn't have, y'know, forced him to admit it in this game. She always knew. I reckon.
Ah. I'm not sure that's what I said. I wrote a lot about the degree to which a child has the ability to consent to risk their own life, but also the degree to which a parent should respect their child's agency and champion the safety of that child above all else.
Now if somewhere in that you read that "Joel's inability to have a conversation that references his emotions is good and healthy" and "saving someone's life is only ever a violent act," and also "get back in the kitchen" and probably "racist stuff too" (go back to the 50s? wtf?), well...
...shit I gotta' get better at typing, I guess.
spoilers for both:
- the moment in butch's story where he just casually machine guns down vincent vega emerging from the toilet, after all our investment in him: such a wonderfully undignified end
- rescuing your mortal enemy from a more depraved fate, like butch rescuing marcellus. and the special kind of righteous joy you get in killing the tormentors of your grand rival
did anyone pick up any other little similarities or allusions? pulp fiction definitely does the antihero thing a bit better. but it's fun to consider
He didn’t want them to kill each other and just learn that holding grudges in this world is a waste of time and energy.
He was furious with Tommy for trying to get her back on Abbys trail and was practically speaking all of Dinas lines verbatim right before she said them.
When you find Abby again he was really hoping Ellie would just let her go, have some final words with her, then go their separate ways.
When Ellie was all “I can’t let you leave” he said “I’m done. This is too stupid.” And just kept repeating how stupid that last fight was.
After the final scenes his opinion was that watching that game was a huge waste of time because that was a really stupid ending. He hated it.
He thinks seeing Abby strung up and knowing what she went through as a slave should have been enough and Ellie should have just let them go.
In the end he really liked Abby and Lev but didn’t give a shit about any of Abbys friends and their deaths. And that Mel was a jerk and Owen was a tomcat.
After this I showed him the scene he didn’t see of Abby killing Joel, and he said “That’s like a different character, how idiotic to write her that way in that part, how can some scenes be so good character wise but then shit like this and that dumb ending also exist.”
But I think if Abby had ever said let's be together and run away, he'd have gone in a second.
I asked if he wanted to play one of the uncharteds this weekend as a palette cleanser and he’s so just flat out annoyed with that ending and how they wrote Abby in the opening that he doesn’t want anything else to do with Naughty Dog at the moment.
I'm dabbling in prerelease indies (Griftlands & Hades - both excellent), but drifting back to my NG+ playthrough now. The gameplay's still exceptional and the presentation's still immaculate.
My podcasting buddy pointed out the other day that Elena became pretty 2-dimensional from Uncharted 3 onward and while I don't remember 3 super-well (great combat, meh story to me), I feel like it was definitely true in 4. ND's storytelling definitely peaked with TloU1, imo.
That's exactly why they split up, you're correct. To me, weighing Manny and Owen's fuckery circless back around to what is, imo, one of the central themes of the game - that sin and virtue are entirely matters of perspective.
(Again, back to our theme - we're blind to those women's experiences outside of how they represent their feelings in that moment - it's entirely possible Manny is monstrous, but it's hard to feel that way about him absent any evidence.) In general, good on Manny. Get some.
But then there's Owen. In this case, I'm on Abby's side - but not as Abby. I'm on her side more as the friend who wants her to be happy and isn't happy she genuinely loves Owen and won't get over him. Thing is, you're right, Alpha, Owen genuinely loves Abby back and would absolutely drop his pregnant apocalypse-wife to run away with our heroine (he begs her to) - thank God Abby's smarter than that.
Owen definitely has deep feelings for Abby, but when Abby made clear at the aquarium that she wouldn't... I don't want to say "put out," but when it was clear that for her, intimacy was on hold until she had resolved her feelings around her father, Owen had 3 options. He could've just fucked off, he could've remained Abby's bestie and stayed true, or he could both stay her bestie and go see if there was anyone else who would let him kiss on them, and he picked option C. He stayed close with Abby while starting a family with Mel, despite not actually wanting to start a family with Mel.
Now I'm not saying let's stone Owen because he got together with someone who wanted to get together with him, after being rejected by someone who didn't want to. That's life, and that's how it goes. Perspective.
'Course then he cheats on Mel with Abby. Perspective.
If we're on Owen's side, in that moment, and we want to empathize with him - this is what we've wanted for our friend ever since Abby rejected him at the museum. We know she is the love of his life. He reminds her that he's seen the worst of her and he's frankly scared of her but he still loves her if she could only see and then she kisses him. On Owen's side? This is yay. Mel who?
My perspective on these events is that of someone who wants Abby to find the light she's so desperate for, and maybe some happiness too. And as a friend, I'd tell Abby maybe don't trust the guy who'll cheat on his current flame and try to make roads with someone else. I know you got history with him and that's what makes it so comfortable and easy to want to feel that way again, but he'll burn you.
Maybe he'll pull that same shit on you when you're seven months pregnant with permanent bags under your eyes, Abby. I know you love him, but he'll let you down. And I'm not sayin' this 'cause I don't want you happy - I'm sayin' it 'cause I do.
Now let's consider a third perspective on Owen cheating with Abby.
What are you prepared to say Mel feels about it? (Oh I think we know!) But that's the point. Of the whole game. How we may devastate lives by doing what we feel is good and righteous and true. How every victory is always, also, a slaughter.
Horrifying.
As for the Joel Discussion I've been thinking about it. I'll spoil it just because.
That kind of flavored the end of 1 for me. Joel probably didn't need to blast all those people, kill the surgeon and steal Ellie away. But from his past experiences and the things he's seen and done, and knowing what he knows about the Fireflies, and what's at stake, he did what he did to try and ensure that it ended right then and there. And, to an extent, in regards to the first game and its self contained narrative, it worked. As to the morality of letting them kill Ellie and maybe derive a cure or going in and killing everybody to save her, I don't have an answer. She didn't know she was about to die. They kept that from her and did not give her a chance to decide for herself. It's made very clear that regardless of her choice she would've ended up on that operating table. And is that even really a choice?
Joel just didn't want to lose his daughter again. That's a powerful motivator. And Pt 2 does a little to show you he's softened, become more open to helping people he doesn't know and trying to be a better person. Him dying the way he did sucks but... it's kinda a live by the sword die by the sword scenario. I'd imagine very few people probably live to die peacefully in their sleep in this universe. So I don't think you can say, unequivocally Joel is a monster. But you also can't say unequivocally that he's good, either. The world of The Last of Us is not black and white, and I guess you have to ask what it is the writers are trying to say with the world they created and the people they put in it.
And that's kind of why all these apocalypse movies and games are so popular. It gives us, in our safe and modern world, a foil to ask "what would we do in order to survive, what would we do in order to protect the people we love? Do we have it in us to kill and make terrible decisions?" My thought process is that we largely will never encounter a situation even remotely similar. People are not inherently monsters. Our survival was largely predicated on us being social creatures and cooperating. That holds true today. Whatever happens, the community will be what survives, not necessarily the crazy prepper up in the hills.
Anyway. That's just my thought on the thing, having only beat the first game like, 4 days ago.
Joel is not a monster. He's a monster slayer.
Flamethrower is your friend.
Also:
I did get through it after bitching here lol
The Listening abilities are almost always worthless. You can do enough with the base ability, and 90% of the time they just spawn things in so your listening ability doesn't give you a warning AND the Stalkers cannot be heard EVEN THOUGH they're making noise. Or you have to unlock a bunch of fairly poor abilities so you can make extra arrows. It's crap.
First of all extra arrows is my jam.
Second yeah the skill trees are... pret-ty bad. But the whole save system is kinda' pretty bad too, and
It's fun don't get me wrong. I just would've much preferred to play it later as side content so I could kind of appreciate it more instead of lowkey wishing it would just finish.
No I meant I liked this:
Your thoughts on it, I meant.
S'pecially that last spoiler'd paragraph.
Ok no I can't do the whole post like that even as a joke
Anyway, I'm trying to re-play TLoU 1 before I jump into TLoU 2. I expected to be done before TLoU 2 even released but I forgot how frustrating it can be, especially clickers, who seem to succeed in their echolocation even if I'm not moving and I'm not that close. Is that just the game engine being kind of a dick to me or am I missing something?
I did take both of the shiv perks already so I'm hoping I can just let clickers find me and I can kill 'em dead with my full durability shivs. That's how it works, right? Just let em grab me and shiv? Playing in full stealth mode is just so frustrating.
I'm up to the section with Henry and his brother. About how much longer is this? I beat it but that was way back when, when it first came out on the PS3. Am I at least more than halfway? I mean I love the game but I have TLoU 2 installed and I just want to play that already.
Also, how long is Left Behind or whatever it's called? I never played that which is the other reason I wanted to get through TLoU 1 again before TLoU 2.
And you're almost at the end of halfway.
@Chance Thanks. Also how did I never know that was the signal they are echolocating? Damn.
Fucking amazing. It’s a shame it came at the cost of crunch, but, damn this is ND at their best.
I can’t even remember Uncharted characters or even the plots, they just weren’t memorable to me. TLOU2 on the other hand was like reading a great novel, one of the best video games I’ve played
But humans ARE monsters. That’s one of the themes of most post apoc genre fiction. I think there is a more interesting question behind it both in the Last of Us 1 and the Last of Us 2. Something along the lines of “Yes, humans are monsters... but they are also still human”. It’s why both games are so compelling.
Yeah, Joel's a monster. We probably all are.
Yes, they are.