AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
Yep, where I felt the first games story inherently relied on Joel and his toxic masculinity in denying Ellie a choice, I fully see the second game as a complete rejection of that. It's definitely not a traditional power fantasy and the game heavily pushes back on that in several scenes in particular. I'm curious to play Uncharted 4 at this point, because my only understanding of that games plot is (spoilers I guess?):
People being mad at Naughty Dog for the fact Drake gets beaten/outwitted by a black woman at some point
But it's a little down my list of games to play.
Edit: I saw this above, but I also hated the upgrade trees. I especially dislike that you have to play the game twice to get all of them as well, especially when some of the only really useful upgrades come at the end of their respective tiers. It's also weird having to find books to unlock all of them in the first place as well.
uncharted 4 is super interesting. it's definitely a post-TLOU uncharted. there are some interesting themes in there, as well as gameplay sections that hammer home the more nuanced aspects of its messaging
in many ways the uncharted series and tlou series are riffing on the same story, with 'treasure hunting' a more forgiving catch-all for the interrogation of player and character impulses to flirt with danger and take risks with the lives of those you love
bsjezz on
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
End Spoilers
Man, what a game that was. I think this may be the only time we'll ever see a AAA game argue against the power fantasy.
Abby was MVP. I think this may be the only time when a game will sit you down and say 'all these people has lives. Every death has a cost'. In fact, I felt the Rattler scene was a cop out, it was like the game was saying 'Here, you can kill these people guilt free'. But when we finally see what happens to Abby and Ellie still wanted to kill her. It was like....damn Ellie. Enough is enough. You don't have to carry the weight of Joel sins, you don't have to become the monster Joel was. The cycle of revenge has to end and sometimes it's best if it ends with you. But nah, Ellie still needed to get her murdergasm. And in that fight she lost a part of herself, literally. And when it seems like all was lost, Ellie finally was able to remember Joel being alive and happy. So she let Abby live. But at what cost? Ellie gave up everything. She gave up Dina and their kid. She lost Tommy, and her friend Jessie. She gave up her promise to JJ, teaching him to play the guitar. She gave up her future so she can dwell in the present. It'll be interesting to see what happens to after this, because Ellie can't go back to Jackson.
But, man, I hope Abby is able to find some sort of redemption. I can't imagine the weight of guilt Abby has to be feeling, being the cause to the death and falling out with all her friends.
Yep, where I felt the first games story inherently relied on Joel and his toxic masculinity in denying Ellie a choice, I fully see the second game as a complete rejection of that. It's definitely not a traditional power fantasy and the game heavily pushes back on that in several scenes in particular. I'm curious to play Uncharted 4 at this point, because my only understanding of that games plot is (spoilers I guess?):
People being mad at Naughty Dog for the fact Drake gets beaten/outwitted by a black woman at some point
But it's a little down my list of games to play.
Edit: I saw this above, but I also hated the upgrade trees. I especially dislike that you have to play the game twice to get all of them as well, especially when some of the only really useful upgrades come at the end of their respective tiers. It's also weird having to find books to unlock all of them in the first place as well.
Nadine Ross is fucking awesome and the one action scene I bring up as a positive for U4 is the one where Nadine punches Drake out a window, he climbs around the outside of the house she's beating his brother up in, leaps down through a hole in the roof, shouts "NADIIINE!" midair and punches her so hard they go through the floor together.
uncharted 4 is super interesting. it's definitely a post-TLOU uncharted. there are some interesting themes in there, as well as gameplay sections that hammer home the more nuanced aspects of its messaging
in many ways the uncharted series and tlou series are riffing on the same story, with 'treasure hunting' a more forgiving catch-all for the interrogation of player and character impulses to flirt with danger and take risks with the lives of those you love
I think I take a much more cynical view of these games, why they were made and how successful each is at its ambition.
To me, The Last of Us is kind of the ultimate realization of Naughty Dog's need to continue making the awesome action (see: excessive violence) of Uncharted, while actually having its most meaningful, authentic conversation about its characters ever.
TloU2 wants to be as clever as the first one, but it's just not. I don't know if that's due to Straley's absence or Druckmann's inability to listen to an editor or who knows. Who knows what the secret sauce was in why the first game's script is so gott-damned near flawless, but Part II is missing it. Part II drags. Part II has plot holes I can drive a truck through.
Part II has absolutely brilliant moments. It does. Repeatedly. I'm not tryin' to diminish that, and overall I'd give it an 8 - but there is still something inherently disingenuous about someone selling me a videogame in which I am required to brutalize people while browbeating me with how unhealthy and toxic pretty much everything I'm doing is. It's the warnings on a cigarette package.
Part II distinctly, to me, tastes of that conflict of interest. There's something very two-faced about it, something very pretentious. It's still hugely successful in a ton of ways. I absolutely love at least two of the new characters, multiple scenes moved me to tears, but it feels so performative to be told that all this violence is indicative of deep character flaws, during my triple-A Super Violent Killamanjaro Spree across Seattle.
TloU did the exact same thing - a very weird, hard thing to do. It just did it very, very well.
TloU2 wants to do the same thing, and it gets close, but it's just not as heartfelt and intelligent as the first game. Again, it's got a ton of awesome stuff, 8/10 - just tastes kinda' gamey. There's an aftertaste, there.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Perhaps it's that, at the end of TloU 1, the game itself seemed to make no judgment of Joel or Ellie. It told its story, and the judgment was up to us.
In TloU 2, the game has already judged everyone, and here's the verdict. That's less artful, less interesting, less perfect.
Perhaps I should point out before I'm told I'm what's wrong with men or something:
I agree with the lessons of the game and everything it's trying to represent. It's worth noting that I can't think of another game that's even trying to raise these points, and they should be raised and reflected on. I just think 2 doesn't do it very well.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Eh, the Last of Us 1 was so badly paced and such a slog that many people openly admit to never finishing it (even in this thread! And a lot of people just watch it being played instead!) Part of storytelling is the pacing, which is what makes, say, Lois McMaster Bujold such a good read.
I found the pacing of 2 to be significantly better for most of the game, and that is a combination of its refined mechanics (using horse sections as walk and talks) and its non-chronological and parallel narratives. It wasn’t until the last portions of the game that I was feeling my interest start to flag, and that was probably because of the natural denouement.
I also think a well-executed ending has a disproportionate effect on the overall experience. The Last of Us 1 had such a well-executed ending* that you could make an entire game out of the ramifications and nuances of it (which, as it turns out, was this game). The end combat section of The Last of Us 2 needs some tuning, I feel, even as I enjoyed the ultimate ending cinematic. The final steps TO that ending falters, and the game suffers a bit more than it should because of it.
* It also has a well-executed opening. The only other piece of media that has such an effective opening that I can think of is the movie “Up”. Or maybe “Lord of War”.
Were we supposed to think the Fireflies actually had a reasonable chance of making a vaccine in the first game? 'cause uh. Everything about their operation read as a hopeless amateurish joke to me, so I never got that whole "omg Joel doomed humanity" vibe from it. From the jump it looked like they were going to get Dr. Frankenstein to murder a 14 year old kid for nothing in their shitty scavenger hospital running on generators and surrounded by infected.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
Eh, the Last of Us 1 was so badly paced and such a slog that many people openly admit to never finishing it (even in this thread! And a lot of people just watch it being played instead!) Part of storytelling is the pacing, which is what makes, say, Lois McMaster Bujold such a good read.
I found the pacing of 2 to be significantly better for most of the game, and that is a combination of its refined mechanics (using horse sections as walk and talks) and its non-chronological and parallel narratives. It wasn’t until the last portions of the game that I was feeling my interest start to flag, and that was probably because of the natural denouement.
I also think a well-executed ending has a disproportionate effect on the overall experience. The Last of Us 1 had such a well-executed ending* that you could make an entire game out of the ramifications and nuances of it (which, as it turns out, was this game). The end combat section of The Last of Us 2 needs some tuning, I feel, even as I enjoyed the ultimate ending cinematic. The final steps TO that ending falters, and the game suffers a bit more than it should because of it.
* It also has a well-executed opening. The only other piece of media that has such an effective opening that I can think of is the movie “Up”. Or maybe “Lord of War”.
Ehh even years on I still remember 1 being a pretty cohesive indictment of Love's impact on the human spirit.
Joel loves Sara. Sarah dies - Joel is broken... but maybe not forever? How resilient is the human spirit, and what could make Joel live again? That's our inciting question (to me).
Joel is buds with Tess - and maybe more? Tess dies, but
Joel has met Ellie. Screw this kid, amirite?
J&E meet whatshisname who lives alone in the trap-laden town. Whatshisname has taken to living alone, since the love of his life died.
J&E meet two brothers, who are living for each other. One of the brothers dies, so the other brother kills himself.
Joel gets sick, but Elly loves Joel, won't let him die, and rescues him.
Elly gets captured, but Joel loves Elly, won't let that stand, and rescues her.
The end happens. It is either a specifically gendered indictment of toxic masculinity, which it never read to me as, or a more general one about how love makes death very easy to face, and its absence makes facing life unthinkable.
As a piece of writing I think it's very, very tight. Maybe there are pacing arguments - I'd have to go back, but going back never reflects well on a game in the however-many years game design has improved since.
TloU2 I think could have been more about the unhealthy things Elly learned from Joel, but it felt less like a deep exploration of that theme than a BONK THIS WAS A NASTY MURDER
BONK YOU GO AVENGE
BONK VENGEANCE GOOD
BONK MAYBE VENGEANCE
BONK NOT SO GOOD
BONK YOU NOT SEE THAT COMING
BONK me smart
TloU didn't feel nearly enough as much about its characters as it did the events that... the plot inflicted on them, often in very dissatisfying ways that were very convenient. I think there's seriously something to the notion that Ellie learned a lot of bad things from Joel, but it's never framed that way in this game. In fact it's explicitly laid at the feet of a far more boring story beat when Ellie specifically says
he burned her on her destiny, but that she wants to try to forgive him.
I think a far more interesting game would have been more about Ellie examining what she learned from Joel, what she wants to discard and what she wants to keep. In this game,
Ellie loses Joel and "walks towards him." She heads off in the only direction where the notion of Joel is around - let's get justice for him - and just keeps walking forward as if she'll find him at the end of it. In a lot of ways, she becomes him, she lets every part of him within her come to the surface - and she chases him into Seattle and back again, only relenting when she finally sees that Joel isn't a bloody face on the floor, gone forever, he's a comforting memory on a porch, strummin' a gee-taur.
And she finally stops walking towards him, because the part inside her that can only feel he will always have died also sees that he will always have strummed that gee-taur and asked her to forgive him. So it's lovely, but it's also... BONK JOEL GONE BONK FEEL BAD BONK JOEL WITHIN YOU FOREVER BONK YOU LOST DINA YOU MORON
I feel like this narrative started as one thing and then got chopped up and re-used in different areas and became this thing. And this thing definitely has its strengths and moments - primarily in its second half, for me - but because it wasn't built from the ground up to be that one thing, there's stuff missing that would support what it's trying to do, and there's stuff here supporting a whole different notion of what this story was going to be.
It's muddled. Which is perhaps why the second half works better for me. All the muddled-ness is to accommodate the "aren't I clever hurr hurr" narrative structure twist - the meat of the second half was the last thing added to the game and, for me, it's generally a lot tighter and tonally consistent.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Were we supposed to think the Fireflies actually had a reasonable chance of making a vaccine in the first game? 'cause uh. Everything about their operation read as a hopeless amateurish joke to me, so I never got that whole "omg Joel doomed humanity" vibe from it. From the jump it looked like they were going to get Dr. Frankenstein to murder a 14 year old kid for nothing in their shitty scavenger hospital running on generators and surrounded by infected.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
I always felt this way too.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Oh also @Hahnsoo1 you're probably absolutely right about this game's not-as-awesome ending negatively coloring it for me when compared to the first one.
And let's be fair, this game is only an 8 (narrative) in comparison to the last one.
If I were to compare TloU2's story to literally any other video game story I can think of, it comes up aces. Like I'm trying to think of a (current-gen) competitor, and the closest I can come is RDR2 - a boring, slog of a videogame with an incredibly well-realized story (the entire Cuba chapter needed to be cut, wtf).
TloU2 is fucking incredible. It's excellent compared to anything else in the video game space, imo. I'm just picking at nits and somehow coming away with paragraphs.
'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
It’s hard to judge TLOU industry capabilities cause writers takes a lot of liberties. Like, who is still making clothing? You could argue that all clothing is salvaged, but after 20 years of weathering you man to tell me that you can still find jeans that fits perfectly? How’s gasoline still useable? How are people still building and erecting windmills?
Which is why I think the situation in TLOU isn’t as dire as it leads you to believe. Just the tribes got smaller and you’re either living under a tyrant or lucky enough to live in a Jackson like town.
As for whether or not they could manufacture a vaccine? Well the first vaccine made was for smallpox back in 1796.
I didn't really want to fight Abby, and I died a few times just seeing what would happen if I didn't mash Square.
There was a gradual movement for me in this story, particularly in the square mashing (and I hope Naughty Dog has collected Analytics on those events).
At the beginning, I smashed that square hard without remorse. Around the time I was fighting Ellie with Abby my square mashing had slowed down to just minimum to pass the quicktime event. And then this leads to the final where I just died a few times because I didn't want to hit the square anymore.
It's great following the player's arc in this story, from wanting to murder face Abby and coming full reverse by the end. A beautiful accomplishment by Naught Dog.
It’s hard to judge TLOU industry capabilities cause writers takes a lot of liberties. Like, who is still making clothing? You could argue that all clothing is salvaged, but after 20 years of weathering you man to tell me that you can still find jeans that fits perfectly? How’s gasoline still useable? How are people still building and erecting windmills?
Which is why I think the situation in TLOU isn’t as dire as it leads you to believe. Just the tribes got smaller and you’re either living under a tyrant or lucky enough to live in a Jackson like town.
As for whether or not they could manufacture a vaccine? Well the first vaccine made was for smallpox back in 1796.
Actually, of all clothing jeans probably would hold up the best. I've had some vintage clothing like leather jackets from the 80's that still look pretty great now. Some stuff, like Joel's flannel? That would be ragged for sure. But thankfully some clothing being made of plastic fibers actually can help too, lol
Whew. That was something. The story is very much about the repercussions of vengeance. Violence begets violence in a brutal circle until somebody finally breaks the chain. Abby and Ellie are the same character with the same motivation but Abby is the only one who manages to lose everything, find some hope (in the form of Lev) and stay her hand despite what Ellie did. Abby decided to break the chain.
Ellie, beyond a certain point, was very much an antagonist. Seeing her be unable to let go, to throw away her new family and chance on life to track down Abby and threaten to kill an unconscious child in order to provoke a fight that Abby didn't want was hard to watch. That whole ending fight I was just saying "Ellie don't do this come on" to myself. And ultimately she didn't. She gave up on her vengeance, she lost Dina and the baby, her home, her health and her mind and had absolutely nothing to show for it in the end.
And really, I still can't say that either didn't deserve what happened to them. They both did horrible things motivated by very human and genuine emotions, but still horrible nontheless. Both have a lot of blood on their hands. Honestly, both probably deserved to die on that beach. There comes a point when the violence just isn't sustainable and to keep pursuing it will completely destroy you. You have to decide, no matter what sins you committed in the past, that you must be better and stop the cycle. Even if it means laying down your arms and dying for it. Ellie didn't see that until it was too late.
Anyway. I'm gonna have to decompress on this one a bit.
Were we supposed to think the Fireflies actually had a reasonable chance of making a vaccine in the first game? 'cause uh. Everything about their operation read as a hopeless amateurish joke to me, so I never got that whole "omg Joel doomed humanity" vibe from it. From the jump it looked like they were going to get Dr. Frankenstein to murder a 14 year old kid for nothing in their shitty scavenger hospital running on generators and surrounded by infected.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
That doesn't matter at all. It wouldn't change Joel's choice.
i mean i wonder what people thought they were doing with their time throughout the first game if they didn't think there was at least a slim chance of a real cure or vaccine
it's one of those things were you can't just reject it in the frame of the ending. you'd have to reject the whole conceit of the game
Were we supposed to think the Fireflies actually had a reasonable chance of making a vaccine in the first game? 'cause uh. Everything about their operation read as a hopeless amateurish joke to me, so I never got that whole "omg Joel doomed humanity" vibe from it. From the jump it looked like they were going to get Dr. Frankenstein to murder a 14 year old kid for nothing in their shitty scavenger hospital running on generators and surrounded by infected.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
That doesn't matter at all. It wouldn't change Joel's choice.
I'm not talking about Joel's choice, I'm talking about the player perspective. Because I view the game in the light that the Fireflies were frauds and were going to kill a kid for nothing, I don't see any real haziness around what Joel did. It seems like the obvious choice to me. Had the Fireflies not looked like frauds, I'd view it differently.
i mean i wonder what people thought they were doing with their time throughout the first game if they didn't think there was at least a slim chance of a real cure or vaccine
it's one of those things were you can't just reject it in the frame of the ending. you'd have to reject the whole conceit of the game
I mean, no?
We didn't see what the Fireflies were working with at their HQ until the end of the game. It was just "go to the Fireflies and they'll make a cure", so maybe nobody else did, but I started imagining a much better equipped location than what was shown.
If you got to the end and there was like some sweet Firefly city running off a stable power source a la Jackson that's a lot different than what they had.
For me it was like essentially being fed a lie the entire game. "We can make a cure, we can make a cure, oh whoops we have like 3 doctors, a scalpel, and this roll of duct tape but I swear we can definitely make a cure bro!"
I at least assumed that "find a cure" meant like, run some trials, take some blood samples, do some xrays and figure out why she's immune and if it can be duplicated. Like, do science stuff.
Instead you get there and they go straight to, "we gotta cut out her brain to figure this out."
To me, it felt pretty well understood that everyone involved thought they could figure out a cure. Yes, obviously there still wasn't a guarantee but they ran some tests, figured out why Ellie is immune (the infection itself mutated in her) and decided that the next step is to figure out what mutated, which they needed to cut into her brain to get to. As far as we know there's nothing actually special about Ellie herself, her blood isn't what made her immune. It was a freak mutation when she was initially infected. Of course, this isn't explained until you get her there, but being able to study the mutated infection itself was going to go a lot further than anything they had come up with so far. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, there's no way we get to know that, but I don't think arriving at "it definitely wouldn't have helped" was ever the intention there.
They go into this in 2 a bit as well
The doctor isn't some random doctor, his specialty is figuring out these types of things. They straight up say they had to completely give up on finding a cure because with him dead they had nobody else who could hope to figure it out. It's why they never came after Ellie. So yeah, the fireflies weren't just going to cut into some girl's head because they felt like it. Everyone, including the doctor himself, was convinced it would lead to something.
Were we supposed to think the Fireflies actually had a reasonable chance of making a vaccine in the first game? 'cause uh. Everything about their operation read as a hopeless amateurish joke to me, so I never got that whole "omg Joel doomed humanity" vibe from it. From the jump it looked like they were going to get Dr. Frankenstein to murder a 14 year old kid for nothing in their shitty scavenger hospital running on generators and surrounded by infected.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
That doesn't matter at all. It wouldn't change Joel's choice.
I'm not talking about Joel's choice, I'm talking about the player perspective. Because I view the game in the light that the Fireflies were frauds and were going to kill a kid for nothing, I don't see any real haziness around what Joel did. It seems like the obvious choice to me. Had the Fireflies not looked like frauds, I'd view it differently.
i mean i wonder what people thought they were doing with their time throughout the first game if they didn't think there was at least a slim chance of a real cure or vaccine
it's one of those things were you can't just reject it in the frame of the ending. you'd have to reject the whole conceit of the game
I mean, no?
We didn't see what the Fireflies were working with at their HQ until the end of the game. It was just "go to the Fireflies and they'll make a cure", so maybe nobody else did, but I started imagining a much better equipped location than what was shown.
If you got to the end and there was like some sweet Firefly city running off a stable power source a la Jackson that's a lot different than what they had.
For me it was like essentially being fed a lie the entire game. "We can make a cure, we can make a cure, oh whoops we have like 3 doctors, a scalpel, and this roll of duct tape but I swear we can definitely make a cure bro!"
You can choose this interpretation if you want, it's not invalid, but it is rather boring and convenient for Joel. The ending of LOU1 has zero impact if the whole thing is a scam and they're just more bad people who need to be killed. It completely absolves Joel of any wrongdoing which is clearly not what the writers intended with that ending.
To me, it felt pretty well understood that everyone involved thought they could figure out a cure. Yes, obviously there still wasn't a guarantee but they ran some tests, figured out why Ellie is immune (the infection itself mutated in her) and decided that the next step is to figure out what mutated, which they needed to cut into her brain to get to. As far as we know there's nothing actually special about Ellie herself, her blood isn't what made her immune. It was a freak mutation when she was initially infected. Of course, this isn't explained until you get her there, but being able to study the mutated infection itself was going to go a lot further than anything they had come up with so far. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, there's no way we get to know that, but I don't think arriving at "it definitely wouldn't have helped" was ever the intention there.
They go into this in 2 a bit as well
The doctor isn't some random doctor, his specialty is figuring out these types of things. They straight up say they had to completely give up on finding a cure because with him dead they had nobody else who could hope to figure it out. It's why they never came after Ellie. So yeah, the fireflies weren't just going to cut into some girl's head because they felt like it. Everyone, including the doctor himself, was convinced it would lead to something.
That context is absent in the 1st game, though. The information literally didn't exist till this game.
S'like
Game 1 :
A: I've come from the future to kill that baby.
B: Forsooth! Wherefor?
A: I'm not telling!
B: Well I'll not let you! Have at thee! Ha-hahhh! Gallantry has won the day!
Game 2 : The Baby Was Hitler.
Remember, what happens in the first game is Joel collapses near-death after seeing Ellie across the country just at the Fireflies, and they are rescued. Upon waking, Joel is told Ellie's gone for surgery, better if you don't say bye, better if you don't even talk to her about this, thanks for your work, bye bye now.
Fuuuuck that.That ain't some sit-down with the family where it's all laid out nice and plain. Ellie's never informed, Ellie's never asked, they are never even allowed to say goodbye. That's just "thanks for the little girl, Joel. No questions from here on out." Fuuuck that. Whatever the deal was, this was never it.
Joel's response at the time was 100% rational lol. The lie afterwards, well that's a more interesting conversation IMO.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
To me, it felt pretty well understood that everyone involved thought they could figure out a cure. Yes, obviously there still wasn't a guarantee but they ran some tests, figured out why Ellie is immune (the infection itself mutated in her) and decided that the next step is to figure out what mutated, which they needed to cut into her brain to get to. As far as we know there's nothing actually special about Ellie herself, her blood isn't what made her immune. It was a freak mutation when she was initially infected. Of course, this isn't explained until you get her there, but being able to study the mutated infection itself was going to go a lot further than anything they had come up with so far. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, there's no way we get to know that, but I don't think arriving at "it definitely wouldn't have helped" was ever the intention there.
They go into this in 2 a bit as well
The doctor isn't some random doctor, his specialty is figuring out these types of things. They straight up say they had to completely give up on finding a cure because with him dead they had nobody else who could hope to figure it out. It's why they never came after Ellie. So yeah, the fireflies weren't just going to cut into some girl's head because they felt like it. Everyone, including the doctor himself, was convinced it would lead to something.
That context is absent in the 1st game, though. The information literally didn't exist till this game.
S'like
Game 1 :
A: I've come from the future to kill that baby.
B: Forsooth! Wherefor?
A: I'm not telling!
B: Well I'll not let you! Have at thee! Ha-hahhh! Gallantry has won the day!
Game 2 : The Baby Was Hitler.
Remember, what happens in the first game is Joel collapses near-death after seeing Ellie across the country just at the Fireflies, and they are rescued. Upon waking, Joel is told Ellie's gone for surgery, better if you don't say bye, better if you don't even talk to her about this, thanks for your work, bye bye now.
Fuuuuck that.That ain't some sit-down with the family where it's all laid out nice and plain. Ellie's never informed, Ellie's never asked, they are never even allowed to say goodbye. That's just "thanks for the little girl, Joel. No questions from here on out." Fuuuck that. Whatever the deal was, this was never it.
Joel's response at the time was 100% rational lol. The lie afterwards, well that's a more interesting conversation IMO.
The situation was fucked up yes, and the Fireflies certainly aren't without blame. But Ellie would have given her consent had they asked her, and Joel knew that. Plus Joel didn't just rescue her, he also murdered the guy with the capability to make the vaccine, just to make extra sure.
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited June 2020
Joel murdered a man who was essentially unarmed. There was no need to kill the doctor.
In the end there's a lot of gray area there, but Joel killing the only people left to make the cure was definitely a bridge too far. We don't know if Ellie would have given herself up, but she deserved the option to make the choice. It did seem equally as fucked up they were just gonna brain her without giving her a heads up, though (From what I remember, anyways). They didn't seem like they were gonna give her than chance to say no.
It's intentionally messy because everyone has different experiences informing their decisions. I guess I like to imagine how it would have gone had the roles been reversed. Would Ellie have been cool giving over Joel, in his sleep and unknowing, to be lobotomized for science?
Joel murdered a man who was essentially unarmed. There was no need to kill the doctor.
Essentially huh?
He pulls a scalpel on Joel, stands between him and Ellie, and says "I'm not going to let you take her."
Now, while the player has some choice in this scene as to how badly they want to fuck these doctors up, if the player does *nothing* but move forward the only absolute requirement for the narrative is that Joel stabs that guy with the Scalpel he's holding so I guess he only "essentially" killed him. Joel can then pick up Ellie and run out without any of the other doctors dying.
What that tells you is that had that one guy just backed up, Joel would have taken Ellie and left without killing anyone in that room.
What it tells me is that Joel could have displayed any amount of restraint but still opted to go Brock Sampson on him. I can't imagine the doctor could pose much of a barrier even with the scalpel, Joel could have just laid him out or at least fired a disabling shot instead of going immediate kill. Joel is not incompetent in whether or not he wants to kill someone, he knew what he was doing and went for it.
Man the ending for the first game woulda' been so much less controversial if Joel had just gone through the proper channels and filed a request of adoption through the local authorities. Then he and his lawyer could have given those fireflies quite the legal tongue-lashing! What a pity he didn't consider all the proper procedures for preventing a little girl being killed in a lawless post apocalypse!
Good lord. Context, people! Lol
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Another bit of context. Hypothetically let's say they killed Ellie and actually managed a cure. Nothing about the Fireflies as a terrorist group makes me think this would be distributed ethically. Having a vaccine gives them maximum power and leverage over other factions and also makes them and the vaccine itself a huge target for others.
They would have absolutely immunized as many footsoldiers as they could at first and then exerted their force and will on every other group, and if you're immune to the spores, then the most natural way to exert dominance is to start using spores as weapons against your enemies. They'd basically become the next Fedra, just as the WLF made people fall in line with their agenda or die.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
Another bit of context. Hypothetically let's say they killed Ellie and actually managed a cure. Nothing about the Fireflies as a terrorist group makes me think this would be distributed ethically. Having a vaccine gives them maximum power and leverage over other factions and also makes them and the vaccine itself a huge target for others.
They would have absolutely immunized as many footsoldiers as they could at first and then exerted their force and will on every other group, and if you're immune to the spores, then the most natural way to exert dominance is to start using spores as weapons against your enemies. They'd basically become the next Fedra, just as the WLF made people fall in line with their agenda or die.
Not all Fireflies believe in terrorism and acting like the WLF, which is specifically mentioned, some believe in the goal of saving humanity.
such as Owen who explicitly says as much
So I don’t really buy into the “they would just become like the WLF”. But...
I would love to see where TLOU Part 3 picks up with Abbey and Lev and the reorganized Fireflies and assume that’s going to be a major plot point
And the doctor knew Ellie was the only real hope at a cure.
This whole argument also reminds me of the end of Life is Strange, where you can either save the town or save Chloe, most players choosing to sacrifice Chloe. What I love about TLOU is it doesn’t care what YOU think, this is what the characters think and do. It takes away the power fantasy from a player and makes them experience the characters’ decisions in the way a novel or film does. I’m glad they went that route and didn’t leave the choice in the hands of players
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I seriously can’t believe people in here is defending murder. A man with a scalpel is no threat to a man who has no reservation to kill and is armed with a firearm. The doctor had no intention in harming Joel. The doctor didn’t charge in to attack Joel, he stood his ground. Knowing Joel, he would’ve shot the doctor even if he was running, cause that’s how toxic males think.
The doctor had no intention of harming Joel? What? He literally grabs a scalpel, points it at Joel, stands between him and Ellie, and yells "I'm not going to let you take her!" Like, he was going to fight Joel over Ellie with the intent to kill Joel with a scalpel.
And no you can't say "knowing joel he would've shot the doctor even if he was running" because we don't need to "know Joel" we have the answer to that in the game, in that you are not forced to kill the other doctors, you can pick up Ellie and walk out. As far as the actual narrative of the first game goes, Joel just leaves those others alive because the game doesn't force you to kill them.
You can have your own opinions on if the doctor murdering Ellie was justified vs Joel murdering him in order to save Ellie's life. But you're just rewriting things that actually happened because you find them inconvenient.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
The doctor had no intention of harming Joel? What? He literally grabs a scalpel, points it at Joel, stands between him and Ellie, and yells "I'm not going to let you take her!" Like, he was going to fight Joel over Ellie with the intent to kill Joel with a scalpel.
And no you can't say "knowing joel he would've shot the doctor even if he was running" because we don't need to "know Joel" we have the answer to that in the game, in that you are not forced to kill the other doctors, you can pick up Ellie and walk out. As far as the actual narrative of the first game goes, Joel just leaves those others alive because the game doesn't force you to kill them.
You can have your own opinions on if the doctor murdering Ellie was justified vs Joel murdering him in order to save Ellie's life. But you're just rewriting things that actually happened because you find them inconvenient.
You can also argue the doctor was trying to protect the future of humanity. He didn't pick up the scalpel with the intent of killing Joel so much as out of a desire to protect the cure
After Joel was told, the option of ‘allow Ellie to be killed’ and 'kill the doctor’ seemed pretty binary, just as the doctor's choice was binary between 'kill joel' and 'harvest Ellie in hopes of achieving a cure'
All the stuff about 'The Fireflies very likely would have failed anyway' and 'even if they succeeded, would have used their resources tyrannically rather than altruistically' are accurate in my opinion, but ultimately irrelevant from Joel's POV considering (TLOU2 spoilers)
Joel freely admits that if he had the option to go back in time, with all the hindsight in the world, would make the exact same decisions
The conceit of the first game is 100% that Ellie's sacrifice would have created a cure. In no way is the player supposed to think that the Fireflies were going to fail in their efforts to create something or that they were even incapable of making a cure.
Of course it's fine to come up with your own interpretation but the game is pretty explicit in terms of what it's saying.
The conceit of the first game is 100% that Ellie's sacrifice would have created a cure. In no way is the player supposed to think that the Fireflies were going to fail in their efforts to create something or that they were even incapable of making a cure.
Of course it's fine to come up with your own interpretation but the game is pretty explicit in terms of what it's saying.
Eh, it's a chance at a cure, which is still better than No Cure. The game is showing us, hey this world sucks ass, but maybe Ellie is the key to a cure! The point wasn't "Ellie dying = cure 100%" but removing any agency she had in the matter is pretty bad
Wait, they already knocked her out? And calmly told Joel they're gonna kill her in her sleep to make a cure? Well hot damn, fire away doc!
Again I don't think if the roles were reversed, that Ellie would have let Joel die
The conceit of the first game is 100% that Ellie's sacrifice would have created a cure. In no way is the player supposed to think that the Fireflies were going to fail in their efforts to create something or that they were even incapable of making a cure.
Of course it's fine to come up with your own interpretation but the game is pretty explicit in terms of what it's saying.
Well, no, it's just that when weighing one person vs the entire human race, it doesn't really matter what the odds are, as long as it's greater than zero.
The game isn't saying that there definitely would be a cure, just that there definitely wouldn't be one without Ellie.
The conceit of the first game is 100% that Ellie's sacrifice would have created a cure. In no way is the player supposed to think that the Fireflies were going to fail in their efforts to create something or that they were even incapable of making a cure.
Of course it's fine to come up with your own interpretation but the game is pretty explicit in terms of what it's saying.
I think the Fireflies 100% thought they were capable of making a cure or, at the very least, everyone was desperate enough to believe it. But if the game wanted us to be as certain as they were I don't think it did its job. Up until you get to SLC, following the Fireflies is basically a breadcrumb trail of failure for a multitude of reasons. It doesn't engender confidence in their abilities to do anything worthwhile.
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But it's a little down my list of games to play.
Edit: I saw this above, but I also hated the upgrade trees. I especially dislike that you have to play the game twice to get all of them as well, especially when some of the only really useful upgrades come at the end of their respective tiers. It's also weird having to find books to unlock all of them in the first place as well.
in many ways the uncharted series and tlou series are riffing on the same story, with 'treasure hunting' a more forgiving catch-all for the interrogation of player and character impulses to flirt with danger and take risks with the lives of those you love
Abby was MVP. I think this may be the only time when a game will sit you down and say 'all these people has lives. Every death has a cost'. In fact, I felt the Rattler scene was a cop out, it was like the game was saying 'Here, you can kill these people guilt free'. But when we finally see what happens to Abby and Ellie still wanted to kill her. It was like....damn Ellie. Enough is enough. You don't have to carry the weight of Joel sins, you don't have to become the monster Joel was. The cycle of revenge has to end and sometimes it's best if it ends with you. But nah, Ellie still needed to get her murdergasm. And in that fight she lost a part of herself, literally. And when it seems like all was lost, Ellie finally was able to remember Joel being alive and happy. So she let Abby live. But at what cost? Ellie gave up everything. She gave up Dina and their kid. She lost Tommy, and her friend Jessie. She gave up her promise to JJ, teaching him to play the guitar. She gave up her future so she can dwell in the present. It'll be interesting to see what happens to after this, because Ellie can't go back to Jackson.
But, man, I hope Abby is able to find some sort of redemption. I can't imagine the weight of guilt Abby has to be feeling, being the cause to the death and falling out with all her friends.
Nadine Ross is fucking awesome and the one action scene I bring up as a positive for U4 is the one where Nadine punches Drake out a window, he climbs around the outside of the house she's beating his brother up in, leaps down through a hole in the roof, shouts "NADIIINE!" midair and punches her so hard they go through the floor together.
Not hyperbole. Real scene. Fucking awesome.
I think I take a much more cynical view of these games, why they were made and how successful each is at its ambition.
To me, The Last of Us is kind of the ultimate realization of Naughty Dog's need to continue making the awesome action (see: excessive violence) of Uncharted, while actually having its most meaningful, authentic conversation about its characters ever.
TloU2 wants to be as clever as the first one, but it's just not. I don't know if that's due to Straley's absence or Druckmann's inability to listen to an editor or who knows. Who knows what the secret sauce was in why the first game's script is so gott-damned near flawless, but Part II is missing it. Part II drags. Part II has plot holes I can drive a truck through.
Part II has absolutely brilliant moments. It does. Repeatedly. I'm not tryin' to diminish that, and overall I'd give it an 8 - but there is still something inherently disingenuous about someone selling me a videogame in which I am required to brutalize people while browbeating me with how unhealthy and toxic pretty much everything I'm doing is. It's the warnings on a cigarette package.
Part II distinctly, to me, tastes of that conflict of interest. There's something very two-faced about it, something very pretentious. It's still hugely successful in a ton of ways. I absolutely love at least two of the new characters, multiple scenes moved me to tears, but it feels so performative to be told that all this violence is indicative of deep character flaws, during my triple-A Super Violent Killamanjaro Spree across Seattle.
TloU did the exact same thing - a very weird, hard thing to do. It just did it very, very well.
TloU2 wants to do the same thing, and it gets close, but it's just not as heartfelt and intelligent as the first game. Again, it's got a ton of awesome stuff, 8/10 - just tastes kinda' gamey. There's an aftertaste, there.
In TloU 2, the game has already judged everyone, and here's the verdict. That's less artful, less interesting, less perfect.
Perhaps I should point out before I'm told I'm what's wrong with men or something:
I agree with the lessons of the game and everything it's trying to represent. It's worth noting that I can't think of another game that's even trying to raise these points, and they should be raised and reflected on. I just think 2 doesn't do it very well.
I found the pacing of 2 to be significantly better for most of the game, and that is a combination of its refined mechanics (using horse sections as walk and talks) and its non-chronological and parallel narratives. It wasn’t until the last portions of the game that I was feeling my interest start to flag, and that was probably because of the natural denouement.
I also think a well-executed ending has a disproportionate effect on the overall experience. The Last of Us 1 had such a well-executed ending* that you could make an entire game out of the ramifications and nuances of it (which, as it turns out, was this game). The end combat section of The Last of Us 2 needs some tuning, I feel, even as I enjoyed the ultimate ending cinematic. The final steps TO that ending falters, and the game suffers a bit more than it should because of it.
* It also has a well-executed opening. The only other piece of media that has such an effective opening that I can think of is the movie “Up”. Or maybe “Lord of War”.
If in canon they were supposed to have a shot of success then, woof, they really fucked that up from my perspective.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Ehh even years on I still remember 1 being a pretty cohesive indictment of Love's impact on the human spirit.
As a piece of writing I think it's very, very tight. Maybe there are pacing arguments - I'd have to go back, but going back never reflects well on a game in the however-many years game design has improved since.
TloU2 I think could have been more about the unhealthy things Elly learned from Joel, but it felt less like a deep exploration of that theme than a BONK THIS WAS A NASTY MURDER
BONK YOU GO AVENGE
BONK VENGEANCE GOOD
BONK MAYBE VENGEANCE
BONK NOT SO GOOD
BONK YOU NOT SEE THAT COMING
BONK me smart
TloU didn't feel nearly enough as much about its characters as it did the events that... the plot inflicted on them, often in very dissatisfying ways that were very convenient. I think there's seriously something to the notion that Ellie learned a lot of bad things from Joel, but it's never framed that way in this game. In fact it's explicitly laid at the feet of a far more boring story beat when Ellie specifically says
I think a far more interesting game would have been more about Ellie examining what she learned from Joel, what she wants to discard and what she wants to keep. In this game,
And she finally stops walking towards him, because the part inside her that can only feel he will always have died also sees that he will always have strummed that gee-taur and asked her to forgive him. So it's lovely, but it's also... BONK JOEL GONE BONK FEEL BAD BONK JOEL WITHIN YOU FOREVER BONK YOU LOST DINA YOU MORON
I feel like this narrative started as one thing and then got chopped up and re-used in different areas and became this thing. And this thing definitely has its strengths and moments - primarily in its second half, for me - but because it wasn't built from the ground up to be that one thing, there's stuff missing that would support what it's trying to do, and there's stuff here supporting a whole different notion of what this story was going to be.
It's muddled. Which is perhaps why the second half works better for me. All the muddled-ness is to accommodate the "aren't I clever hurr hurr" narrative structure twist - the meat of the second half was the last thing added to the game and, for me, it's generally a lot tighter and tonally consistent.
I always felt this way too.
And let's be fair, this game is only an 8 (narrative) in comparison to the last one.
If I were to compare TloU2's story to literally any other video game story I can think of, it comes up aces. Like I'm trying to think of a (current-gen) competitor, and the closest I can come is RDR2 - a boring, slog of a videogame with an incredibly well-realized story (the entire Cuba chapter needed to be cut, wtf).
TloU2 is fucking incredible. It's excellent compared to anything else in the video game space, imo. I'm just picking at nits and somehow coming away with paragraphs.
Which is why I think the situation in TLOU isn’t as dire as it leads you to believe. Just the tribes got smaller and you’re either living under a tyrant or lucky enough to live in a Jackson like town.
As for whether or not they could manufacture a vaccine? Well the first vaccine made was for smallpox back in 1796.
There was a gradual movement for me in this story, particularly in the square mashing (and I hope Naughty Dog has collected Analytics on those events).
At the beginning, I smashed that square hard without remorse. Around the time I was fighting Ellie with Abby my square mashing had slowed down to just minimum to pass the quicktime event. And then this leads to the final where I just died a few times because I didn't want to hit the square anymore.
It's great following the player's arc in this story, from wanting to murder face Abby and coming full reverse by the end. A beautiful accomplishment by Naught Dog.
Actually, of all clothing jeans probably would hold up the best. I've had some vintage clothing like leather jackets from the 80's that still look pretty great now. Some stuff, like Joel's flannel? That would be ragged for sure. But thankfully some clothing being made of plastic fibers actually can help too, lol
Ellie, beyond a certain point, was very much an antagonist. Seeing her be unable to let go, to throw away her new family and chance on life to track down Abby and threaten to kill an unconscious child in order to provoke a fight that Abby didn't want was hard to watch. That whole ending fight I was just saying "Ellie don't do this come on" to myself. And ultimately she didn't. She gave up on her vengeance, she lost Dina and the baby, her home, her health and her mind and had absolutely nothing to show for it in the end.
And really, I still can't say that either didn't deserve what happened to them. They both did horrible things motivated by very human and genuine emotions, but still horrible nontheless. Both have a lot of blood on their hands. Honestly, both probably deserved to die on that beach. There comes a point when the violence just isn't sustainable and to keep pursuing it will completely destroy you. You have to decide, no matter what sins you committed in the past, that you must be better and stop the cycle. Even if it means laying down your arms and dying for it. Ellie didn't see that until it was too late.
Anyway. I'm gonna have to decompress on this one a bit.
That doesn't matter at all. It wouldn't change Joel's choice.
it's one of those things were you can't just reject it in the frame of the ending. you'd have to reject the whole conceit of the game
I'm not talking about Joel's choice, I'm talking about the player perspective. Because I view the game in the light that the Fireflies were frauds and were going to kill a kid for nothing, I don't see any real haziness around what Joel did. It seems like the obvious choice to me. Had the Fireflies not looked like frauds, I'd view it differently.
I mean, no?
We didn't see what the Fireflies were working with at their HQ until the end of the game. It was just "go to the Fireflies and they'll make a cure", so maybe nobody else did, but I started imagining a much better equipped location than what was shown.
If you got to the end and there was like some sweet Firefly city running off a stable power source a la Jackson that's a lot different than what they had.
For me it was like essentially being fed a lie the entire game. "We can make a cure, we can make a cure, oh whoops we have like 3 doctors, a scalpel, and this roll of duct tape but I swear we can definitely make a cure bro!"
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Instead you get there and they go straight to, "we gotta cut out her brain to figure this out."
They go into this in 2 a bit as well
You can choose this interpretation if you want, it's not invalid, but it is rather boring and convenient for Joel. The ending of LOU1 has zero impact if the whole thing is a scam and they're just more bad people who need to be killed. It completely absolves Joel of any wrongdoing which is clearly not what the writers intended with that ending.
That context is absent in the 1st game, though. The information literally didn't exist till this game.
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Game 1 :
A: I've come from the future to kill that baby.
B: Forsooth! Wherefor?
A: I'm not telling!
B: Well I'll not let you! Have at thee! Ha-hahhh! Gallantry has won the day!
Game 2 : The Baby Was Hitler.
Remember, what happens in the first game is Joel collapses near-death after seeing Ellie across the country just at the Fireflies, and they are rescued. Upon waking, Joel is told Ellie's gone for surgery, better if you don't say bye, better if you don't even talk to her about this, thanks for your work, bye bye now.
Fuuuuck that. That ain't some sit-down with the family where it's all laid out nice and plain. Ellie's never informed, Ellie's never asked, they are never even allowed to say goodbye. That's just "thanks for the little girl, Joel. No questions from here on out." Fuuuck that. Whatever the deal was, this was never it.
Joel's response at the time was 100% rational lol. The lie afterwards, well that's a more interesting conversation IMO.
The situation was fucked up yes, and the Fireflies certainly aren't without blame. But Ellie would have given her consent had they asked her, and Joel knew that. Plus Joel didn't just rescue her, he also murdered the guy with the capability to make the vaccine, just to make extra sure.
It's intentionally messy because everyone has different experiences informing their decisions. I guess I like to imagine how it would have gone had the roles been reversed. Would Ellie have been cool giving over Joel, in his sleep and unknowing, to be lobotomized for science?
Essentially huh?
He pulls a scalpel on Joel, stands between him and Ellie, and says "I'm not going to let you take her."
Now, while the player has some choice in this scene as to how badly they want to fuck these doctors up, if the player does *nothing* but move forward the only absolute requirement for the narrative is that Joel stabs that guy with the Scalpel he's holding so I guess he only "essentially" killed him. Joel can then pick up Ellie and run out without any of the other doctors dying.
What that tells you is that had that one guy just backed up, Joel would have taken Ellie and left without killing anyone in that room.
Good lord. Context, people! Lol
They would have absolutely immunized as many footsoldiers as they could at first and then exerted their force and will on every other group, and if you're immune to the spores, then the most natural way to exert dominance is to start using spores as weapons against your enemies. They'd basically become the next Fedra, just as the WLF made people fall in line with their agenda or die.
Not all Fireflies believe in terrorism and acting like the WLF, which is specifically mentioned, some believe in the goal of saving humanity.
This whole argument also reminds me of the end of Life is Strange, where you can either save the town or save Chloe, most players choosing to sacrifice Chloe. What I love about TLOU is it doesn’t care what YOU think, this is what the characters think and do. It takes away the power fantasy from a player and makes them experience the characters’ decisions in the way a novel or film does. I’m glad they went that route and didn’t leave the choice in the hands of players
And no you can't say "knowing joel he would've shot the doctor even if he was running" because we don't need to "know Joel" we have the answer to that in the game, in that you are not forced to kill the other doctors, you can pick up Ellie and walk out. As far as the actual narrative of the first game goes, Joel just leaves those others alive because the game doesn't force you to kill them.
You can have your own opinions on if the doctor murdering Ellie was justified vs Joel murdering him in order to save Ellie's life. But you're just rewriting things that actually happened because you find them inconvenient.
You can also argue the doctor was trying to protect the future of humanity. He didn't pick up the scalpel with the intent of killing Joel so much as out of a desire to protect the cure
All the stuff about 'The Fireflies very likely would have failed anyway' and 'even if they succeeded, would have used their resources tyrannically rather than altruistically' are accurate in my opinion, but ultimately irrelevant from Joel's POV considering (TLOU2 spoilers)
Of course it's fine to come up with your own interpretation but the game is pretty explicit in terms of what it's saying.
Eh, it's a chance at a cure, which is still better than No Cure. The game is showing us, hey this world sucks ass, but maybe Ellie is the key to a cure! The point wasn't "Ellie dying = cure 100%" but removing any agency she had in the matter is pretty bad
Wait, they already knocked her out? And calmly told Joel they're gonna kill her in her sleep to make a cure? Well hot damn, fire away doc!
Again I don't think if the roles were reversed, that Ellie would have let Joel die
Well, no, it's just that when weighing one person vs the entire human race, it doesn't really matter what the odds are, as long as it's greater than zero.
The game isn't saying that there definitely would be a cure, just that there definitely wouldn't be one without Ellie.
I think the Fireflies 100% thought they were capable of making a cure or, at the very least, everyone was desperate enough to believe it. But if the game wanted us to be as certain as they were I don't think it did its job. Up until you get to SLC, following the Fireflies is basically a breadcrumb trail of failure for a multitude of reasons. It doesn't engender confidence in their abilities to do anything worthwhile.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...