Why do people believe Joel was wrong in saving Ellie? Why do the developers of the game think that he was wrong? The fireflies knocked Joel out when he was giving Ellie CPR, then refused to let him see her, went back on their deal with him, and then were going to force him out into the middle of an infected city at gun point without his backpack while they carved out Ellie's brain. And from the audio logs, many of the fireflies sound nuts or completely disillusioned with their group. At the end of the day, Joel was trying his best. The fireflies were not.
The funniest thing is that Marlene’s voice actress fully stands behind Joel’s decision and said that he did the right thing. Even the person who could be the most pissed about what Joel did in the first game agrees with him.
Ellie made every possible mistake during that "boss" fight. Blindsided Abby with a piece of wood even though she had a machete, a pistol, a shotgun and booby traps. She's constantly talking and calling Abby which gives away her position, When she was being choked, she chose to stab Abby in the thigh even though she could reach more vital spots like under her arms. Plot armour for days for our protagonist Abby.
And if someone wants to argue that Ellie tossed her handgun, she had a snub nosed magnum and what appears to be a Beretta (she only tosses one when she’s being held up). She even shoots at Abby with her second handgun from the theater curtains. Even then, she still has a shotgun, bolt action rifle, traps, and a bow & arrow like Carrion brought up.
@@darkpuppetlordful its not an excuse bro F.E.A.R is my favorite game off all time and id expect nothing more than something thats just about as good as it.
@@ant.onio.n They could have simply made a horde of Clickers appears as they were about to execute Ellie and Tommy and they decide to bail and boom, done. A excuse for letting them live and maybe some nerds of Abby's group die sooner! Cash money solution.
people should defend a man saved a zebra but tried to kill a kid unconscious with his poor doctor skills and fooled a group of terrorists that vaccine can cure fungus
1:56:28- Fat Geralt unironically showed more empathy and respect toward his own allies in a single scene than Abby did in the entire game. Mel could have taken an arrow to the stomach and Abby would have just told her to stop crying and deal with it.
It’s honestly amazing that the most likable character in the game is the one who was in it for less than 5 minutes and punched a child. That’s just where the bar is with the characters
@@jojonr619 Definitely offsets the previous 25 years of him having lie, cheat, steal and kill and other individuals having to do the very same thing to him. Oh yeah and him having to hold his own daughter in his arms as she chokes in her own blood as she was riddled with bullets. 5 years living in a dam always changes a man for the better. Let's them forget the atrocities that they commit and what atrocities were committed onto them. Incredible work of art.
@@jojonr619 He's not going to just suddenly forget 20+ years of survival in a post apocolapse. I know characters can do stupid shit sometimes but this made no sense imo
@@charlie1234500 sorry for getting back so late but others are still replying to this with the same thing. So here goes. Did you pay attention to the first game? -Joel is hurt- Joel becomes cold, distant, and damn right heartless to everyone he meets and knows after the death of his daughter “He ain’t even hurt” *runs over a random person. Yeah 20 years of an infection/survival instinct would probably do that to someone. -Tess- The only person who is with Joel and not even that close is Tess. Probably lovers at one point but clearly still distant showing Joel doesn’t want much with her much less anyone else. “Guess what were shitty people Joel” No we are survivors” -Ellie- It’s only after he actually spends time with Ellie who becomes a surrogate daughter to him does he start opening up to her and letting others in. In the beginning of the game he refuses to even be involved with her. -Henry and sam- Joel literally tries kill Henry no questions asked first time he meets him, also a second time after Henry ditches them but doesn’t and even Henry knows it. Showing that Joel has started to let people in “he’s mad be he’s not gonna do it” -Joel tries to ditch Ellie with Tommy- In a final attempt to not have others hurt him he tries to get rid of someone that has a chance to change him or get even closer to him. With his own brother no less. “Tommy, I need this” He ends up changing his mind and becomes very protective and caring of Ellie at this point. Proven even more in the winter part -The final section of the game- Joel is cracking jokes and telling Ellie how he’s gonna do all these cool things with her, all while heading back to Tommy’s to rejoin a group where he can be with others and LIVE A RELATIVELY GOOD LIFE. -Joel at the end of the first game- This is not the same person that we know from after the 20 years infection point. Joel slowly begins so change back into the person we see from the beginning of the game when he still had Sarah and all that happens in the span of a year(presumably). -Last of us 2- in all the flashbacks of the second game Joel is going off of his way for his ‘people’ taking Ellie out for her birthday and whatnot. He’s known around town as Ellie’s “old man”. Joel has become a lot more open with others and has more than likely not had to have bad confrontation with other humans in the 5 years since the first game since we don’t see any of it in the second game. -Abby- Joel makes one bad decision that leads to his death. He goes out of his way to save what he and Tommy believe to be a scared woman trying to run from the infected *which was only possible because he became a better person than he used to be*
You gotta remember the fireflies higher ups wanted Joel to be killed, before he went on his rampage, even, which shows they're hardly the angels the second game is painting them to be
The game pretty much tried to completely rewrite the fireflies. From terrorists that were on their last legs,engaging in ethically undefendable shit to somehow justify their sacrifices into saviours of Zebras and humanities definitive last and only hope. They even cleaned up the fucking Hospital ffs.
@@strugglesnuggledslime7040 Wasn't the US government still technically around in TLOU? They were the ones that branded the Fireflies terrorists to begin with. In fact when the game starts the Fireflies are already on their last legs, anyway. A bit of dialogue implies that schools even still exist; it's weird they've downplayed all that.
@@DeFactoLeader Thats...actually a good question. I dont remember the game really elaborating on that so what we see in the beginning of TLOU might as well just have been fractured remnants of military forces that took local control in the name of the defunct government. Though now that you say it...yes it really is weird how TLOU2 just kinda ignores all other preestablished possible political forces in favor of something like the WLF and the religional fanatics nonsense. oO
@@DeFactoLeader the First game opening credits has the Fireflies taking credit for terrorist attacks on Quarantine zones, and all throughout the game they are shown attacking QZs and Soldiers who are defending people from the Zeds... The US government may not have been the greatest organization in the Post Apocalypse, but the Fireflies were absolutely Terrorists. Many of the Former Members and people who worked with the Fireflies on occasion even believed so. But no, now in the second game they've been ret-conned into beacons of hope and humanity, saving the world and pregnant zebras from zeds and evil nasty soldiers... It comes across as the Devs seeing an opportunity to plaster their own Ideological sympathies toward real world groups onto a pre-existing story world and characters, even at the expense of the Story and characters.
Currently at the 47min mark. There's an easy solution to getting the immunity out there, it's called breeding. This is a perfect opportunity to make an ethical dilemma, do you do your duty and breed though there's no guarantee the child would have the immunity or stay true to your sexual orientation and live with the knowledge that you could have saved humanity There are no right answers but It's a huge burden to live with either way. We live in a world where responsibility is secondary to identity and feelings, so it doesn't shock me that this hasn't been brought up at all.
Current year developers wouldn´t even consider that dilemma, specially Neil-I have a secret agenda-Druckman. You are asking the apple tree to give you pears, like we say in our country.
Thats actually a really interesting and compelling idea, but i feel like it kinda dissolves under scrutiny considering gay couples get artificially impregnated all the time. Like, wouldnt ellie just say "fuck it, i like kids. Someone hand me a turkeybaster..." Theres a certain point where a human cant reasonably say no anymore. Raise the stakes high enough and theres little to no choice for a non-sociopath. Ask a person of jewish descent if they would have sex with Hitler and thats prolly gonna be an emphatic "no" to say the least. Ask a person of jewish descent if they would have sex with Hitler if it meant the Haulocaust would never happen and suddenly there is pause for thought. Its a crude analogy, but you get the idea of the point im making...
@@nomative8915 I don't remember where this came from, but apparently its not even Ellie. Its the specific strain of fungus that she got infected with that just stopped its spread. Apparently it is both dormant, but also overpowering and preventing other strains from taking her over. I've no fucking idea how that works.
The only compelling character arc of TLOU2 is watching Mauler go from happily talking about Molotov cocktails and exploring every area and saying he won't make a rage video to going 'hmm' a lot to, eventually, just kind of verbally scowling and asking over and over when the game will finally end
He went from him firmly saying that other people will make videos and he won't be to the game bashing him with a golf club enough that he finally gave in. This poor man.
That silence when Joel got murderalized and the game kept going. Rough and raw. I was wondering how he'd cope, rather than how he'd react, but he got legit distraught by the tism...
Joel and Tommy have perma idiot balls, but that isn't even the biggest issues, the # of interlinked contrivances that get him and Tommy into that situation with Abby is insane.
I'd file it under "Diabolus ex Machina" - Bad shit happens just because. "Idiot ball" is more like "character suddenly acts like an idiot for plot reasons".
@@lordfusiondar1003 Well with Ned you could kinda see his end coming when he openly told Cersei that he knew about her and Jaime, and when he trusted Littlefinger who didn't seem to be the most trustworthy guy even then. And of course because Joffrey is a psychopathic little shit.
LordFusionDaR huh? There was like 4 episodes of build up to Ned’s death, you could see it coming a mile away. Practically every decision he made in KL brought him one step closer to his end. Ned continuously demonstrated the qualities that would result in him being killed all season long
@@Egurius3 There was a lot of build up and Ned remained in character throughout, but the sheer amount of coincidences that pile up to make things happen the way they did definitely made it clear Martin had his thumb on the scale to make things happen that way. It gets worse when you consider the coincidence pileup that happens for the fall of the house of Stark in general as well as the sheer amount of coincidences that come together to save the Lannisters from a position of being completely screwed in the earlier books. Things like Cat's ability to think of what would be bad to do in a situation and then fish memory her way into doing exactly what she shouldn't do and the ridiculously perfect timing of a chain of events allowing the Lannisters to get an alliance with the Tyrells at just the right time and march massive distances with just the right timing that they could arrive at King's Landing when Stannis is partway through attacking. If they'd arrived just a little earlier Stannis wouldn't have wasted a lot of men on a siege that would never work or if they'd been later Stannis would have already captured the city, killed the Lannisters there and been able to put up a decent defence. Hell, I could go full LongMan regarding the overwhelming amount of coincidence that happens, like the timing of Robb hearing about his brothers just when he's stuck wounded at the Crag but then I'd be here all day. Suffice to say, Martin can write characters well, or 'political' world-building but he's terrible when it comes to constructing a plot that feels as natural as his best characters.
It's not even about Joel dying, it's the ridiculous coincidences that had to be set up for his death, and the out of character actions of both Tommy and Joel that left them completely oblivious to what was about to happen. It just shows how little the writers cared.
@@Birthday888 yeah i replayed 1 befor 2 and it just completely took me out of the story every with the "hes gotten soft" excuse but hed still smell that trap from a mile away shit we are talking about the man who could tell by looking at one man limping on the road that it was a trap
@@wednesdayapril5435 people say being in the community softened him like he wasn’t clearing the area constantly and lived in hell for 20 years. I guess ptsd mannerisms from being crossed and almost dying many times doesn’t exist.
Games like this look like a bad d & d game where the DM is RAILROADING you the whole way and you have no agency on what happens: so why "play" or make it a game just make it a move and let us watch.
This is I think the best one sentence description I saw on this game. Not that there is no possibility of a fun game that is heavily controlled by a DM but this really looks like one of those you would really want to leave.
I want to say something as this review begins. There was nothing absolute about the cure in the first game. In fact, if you read the doctors notes and listen to his recordings, what you find is a bitter, angry man who has failed to develop a cure for over a decade. He is nothing like the doctor portrayed in this game. He was desperate for the cure and had no compunction about opening up Ellie's head in hopes that this time would be different. He wouldn't even let her wake up. That was discovered on one of Marlana's recordings in the first game, where she doubted the cure was going to work. That was part of the ambiguity of the game. If the cure would have been a certainty, or even hopeful, then Joel would have been less sympathetic. The first game's ending is like the question posed in the film Passengers. The ambiguity is what made it good. Now Cuckman comes along and dogmatically states the cure was a foregone conclusion and Abby's dad was a humanitarian's humanitarian, and all around Ward Clever like good guy.
Also, wasn’t the original doctor a black man? Yet TLOU2 has him a white guy. This is one of my personal justifications for why TLOU2 is just a non-canon, crappy fanfic.
And more,it makes Abby s dad right for killing a lot of people in favor of the vaccine;so revenge is bad but indisciminate killing is cool as long you have motives,wtf game
TBF, the doctor with the recording at the university, complaining about not getting a cure in a decade, had to shoot himself when he got bitten by some infected monkeys so its not the same doctor at the Colorado Hospital
@@mrshmuga9 He was the lead director and showrunner for TV show Game of Thrones. Look up a channel called The Dragon Demands and you'll understand more than you want to.
Finished watching it and just noticed another very stupid thing: The farmhouse where Dina and Ellie stayed is not in Jackson. You would think that with a baby you'd rather stay in the well defended Jackson rather than have your own farmhouse. That's without not even taking into account 2 major things that the game (of course) doesn't explain: 1- where did the cattle come from? Did they find by chance those sheeps or did the people of Jackson for no good reason gift sheeps to a couple of people that were going to stay outside of their community? 2- and this is major - they said that there are mass migrations of zombies during winter. During winter that farmhouse, if it's in the way of one of those migrations would be a death trap for its occupants as the zombies would assault the house, walk all over the field ruining it and of course would devour also the sheeps. Obviously, the explanation is super simple: they decided on this location without any logic behind it whatsoever, they only did it because "oh, cool shot of a beautiful and peaceful field that's going to look like a paradise but it's going to be empty when we make Dina leave Ellie".
In Jackson, you'd have an entire community to rely on, people with weapons and various expertises that can help in case of emergencies and I guess also people with medical knowledge in case of an emergency regarding Dina or (especially) the baby. But hey, it's either that or the "cool field in the sunset".
@@Dieci-9 Bro, things go deeper. Where did all those freshly picked flowers in front of Joel's house come from? Where did the Apple's that the WLF leader eats get imported from? Why is there a Resident Evil zombie in the Last of Us 2?
I think one of the biggest sins of this game is the ruining of the original's ending. The whole point of that ending was to be ambiguous. Did Joel do the right thing? Do you agree with Joel? Did Joel doom humanity? Would Ellie stay with him? All those thoughts and more are wiped away. According to TLOU2 Joel IS the bad guy, and the fireflies WERE the good guys. Ambiguity is hard to pull off, but I feel the original is a great example.
Hell it wasn't the ambiguity in Joel's actions even. If you take a second to think about it Joel's actions are VERY damn justified almost immensely so even if selfish or otherwise.
I get the feeling that Druckmann didn't like the fact that the ending was ambiguous and that so many people agreed with Joel's actions at the end. The other writers and developers probably overruled his vision of the the game's ending, the version we see in TLOU2, because they knew it was shit.
@@Birthday888 That's a great point, and to add to it I feel Bruce Straley was sorely missed on TLOU2. I think it is clear now that he was the filter to Neil's ideas. It's interesting to note that when Neil was pitching TLOU1 he had the idea of a cross country revenge. That idea was shot down as being ridiculous. So weird to incorporate a plot point that was rejected. Neil can be a decent writer, but he was given too much free reign on this game.
This is TLJ of Video Games, but with 16 times the tisms. Mauler is lucky to be alive, that sheer amount of cognitive dissonance is lethal to most Longmen.
I laughed instantly when a million bullets started hitting Yara’s corpse. It was just so over-the-top edgy that it became funny. Tarantino did it in Django Unchained too, but it was supposed to be funny and over-the-top in that movie. Neil Druckmann wants you to take this game 100% seriously and hates the word “fun.”
46:11 See, there's this wondrous process called "writing shit down" that the doctor could've tried. Been done for thousands of years and I hear it works OK. Apparently they know how to record their voices too, so that may have been something to spend 10 seconds considering.
@@Zinlain Well one thing is for certain, i will NOT buy a single Naughty Dog game ever again. The people with talent that made the first game great has left the company.
@@AlexK42069 I still wonder where they go from here. I don't even know what i should expect from the next game they make, if they want to make games with a strong focus on identity politics then they can do that if this is what they want but atleast be open about it, cuz i don't plan to waste money on that shit.
@@brotbrotsen1100 and if that identity politics game ever gets created from ND then every villain will be an awful straight white male who hates women and the only reasonable people will be anyone who isn't white.
Not to worry. They'll fix it in the third game when Ellie and Abby team up to reform the Fireflies. Abby will become a surgeon, fix Ellie's fingers, save Tommy's marriage and bring Joel back to life. And then Ellie will remember she used to make good decisions.
It also draws doubt on the first game. Mechanically, this game isn't that much different from the first game. It's just the story generates a lot of ludo-narrative dissonance which makes people notice the game's absurdities even more.
@@michaelkitchin9665 nah, the third game will be abouw Abby and Lev trying to survive in this world. Well, basically it will be like the first game but with different and much more awful characters.
The moment I saw this: 58:53. I knew Abby was unsavable. A person would've looked at Ellie's reaction and saw herself in her. Ellie was Abyy in that moment but Abby still murdered Joel. She refused to change. No sympathy.
*Abby who supposedly wasted away on a cross into a less buff female athlete* "Oh man, I'm soooo weak..." *Lifts Lev like he weighs nothing.* "Sooooo weak.... I'm like stumbling and shit."
I honestly sympathize with all of those that finished the ENTIRE game. I was getting too much of a headache. I reached the part where Abby hunts Ellie in the theater and let Ellie kill Abby. When it tried to reload me to a checkpoint I quickly exited the game and proceeded to delete the it off my PS4 and accepted it as the ending. This game is such a fucking waste of time, energy, emotion, and investment.
Meanwhile smooth-brains smoke more woke crack and tell you about how much you just don't get it cause you didn't make up bullshit in your imagination to rationalize the awful writing. I swear this game is the second coming of Mass Effect 3 with how suicidal the writing is against itself and all the original fans.
@@gamingman21 It's fine for you to like both games. Some people don't want to think critically about a series of events that's fictional, which is fine. When a story has objective problems that other people notice, you liking it doesn't invalidate the existence of said problems. In fact, I'm glad you liked it; that somehow through all the bullshit, you managed to like it. I'm nearly 100% sure that it's because of some detail you've headcanoned, which again is fine, if it gets you to like something rather than be miserable. But some people cannot help but be miserable, because they take what they get on the screen and don't add onto it in their brains because their imagination is not what holds the actual story together, it's the actual series of events in the story that is, indeed, the story. I was on both sides of these two mindsets 8 years ago with Mass Effect 3. I know what it's like to see something that upsets me, but rationalize it in my brain to be something it factually isn't, but at least make it into something I could cope with, I could "like". But if you're an actual superfan of a series, you aren't going to stop there; you're not going to drop all thoughts about the series. You're going to keep thinking about it, and keep coming to terms with what the story factually is, and eventually realize that your headcanon isn't the actual canon. You're going to realize that factually, the thing you love was torn apart, and you will eventually find peace in appreciating what was good about what came before, without necessarily having a grief-stricken meltdown about what the thing you loved became. So I'm happy you love it. If you're a superfan, and a critical thinker, you won't love it forever. Cherish your time spent loving it, because my omen to you here is not going to be the last time reality calls to you in how you process the events of this parable. And I deeply empathize with what you are eventually going to go through. I hope it doesn't hurt you too much. I'm not kidding. Best of wishes.
Haven’t played in a while but how is “Revenge is a fool’s game” a core theme when the whole final mission is about revenge? Don’t get me wrong that game is amazing but I don’t see the correlation.
@@jonathandevers6609 Yes John got his revenge on Micah but the Bureau of investigation found him because of that and if you played the first game you know what happened next.
This really is the worst kind of fanfiction, where the author desperately wants you to like their OC and be totally on board with bashing the original main characters.
I can sympathize because I'm following an Assassin's Creed fic where an utter cunt of a Mary Sue is just wrecking canon characters, and the other calls you a stalker if you criticize her work.
Its Amy henning who made the first game. They kicked her to make this shit. If I were them I would make her ceo to write better stories than this shifty game.
TloU3: Fat Geralts Revenge The twist is that Fat Geralt didnt even know he had a brother, he just thinks the cards Ellie keeps picking up are for Gwent
Neil marketed the game to the fans of the first game, but intended it for another fanbase entirely, and that fanbase likes to tell us we need more empathy.
@@Biggiiful its fucking funny seeing them lose their shit and start resorting to name calling when all u do is give criticism toward their precious game 😂
If he made the game for a different fan base, why bother including things like Joel's watch, which would mean absolutely nothing to them? And knowing the real fan base is going to hate this, but act surprised and accuse them of being bigots?
31:45 Probably my favorite part, Mauler sounds so indignant at their bashing of Halloween. 58:48 That man saved a Zebra 1:23:39 Perfect representation of the failure of the game, a main character got killed , and the player doesn´t care, in fact, Mauler is happy he died. 1:29:54 Reality is breaking 1:42:36 Your critics are poor copypasta 1:55:48 Unironicaly the best part of the game
its how it fails to connect with the player on every single level.... when Elli discovers she killed a pregnant lady.... you laugh ^^ when there is a heartfelt moment and a sudden death of a charakter you are supposed to care about,,, you cheer...... when a story is conrived and makes no sense and everybody behaves stupid ... you just cant connect... thats why story is important
@@unknown_individual7050 i love the way you put it: "this" ^^^^-- in spanish we say "incalificable" wich basically means "ther is no words for this" ^^
Is anyone gonna mention that they took a morally questionable situation that felt real just to replace it with a ham-fisted and blatent view of how the developers want you to think, turning something almost real and complex into something simple and broken and filled with coincidences
Its funny, while i was playing I could constantly almost hear Cuckman's voive in my head. "Feeeeeeeeeeeeel for Abby, FEEL FOR HER U FUCKING PEASANT". And then I remember there was over 100 million thrown at this game and then I kinda just die inside
I need an edit with the classic Iron Man, (the first movie), scene, just with everyone's face being Abby and related fu*ktards... I can picture it fine, just a mech suit dropping from the sky and wasting about a dozen assholes in less than three minutes. Why? *Subversive catarcism*
I love how this game tries so hard to make the fireflies look good and be these saviors of the Earth as opposed to Joel who ruined their chances, even though 1)Ellie's sacrifice wouldn't guarantee a vaccine. All we knew was that she was immune to the infection, not that her blood could 100% cure everything (especially since vaccines are NOT the same thing as cures) 2)The fireflies did not give a rat's ass about Ellie and Joel. If a vaccine was to be made, they were gonna keep it to themselves, because that's all they care about: themselves. 3)Even if a vaccine was made, how the hell would they be able to distribute and make more samples for the vaccine. I highly doubt they have the resources to do that. Especially during a FUCKING APOCALYPSE. 4)Abby's dad wasn't even gonna tell Joel about the possibility of Ellie possibly dying for nothing. He was willing to go through with this, no matter what the consequences were. From what I can tell, Joel had every right to do what he did and Abby's father can fucking rot in hell
Ellie's crying seems so forced when Joel tells her the truth. It doesn't seem like a crying matter to be honest. Angry or disappointed, sure, but crying because your life got saved? Come on now...
What annoys me about that is Ellie holds this against poor ol' Joel for a LONG time. She doesn't once think about WHY Joel saved her. Nope she was just like "Joel Y u do dis? No talk me. I angy" She really took him for granted.
NoNameforNow EXACTLY! I got so mad when she was such an asshole to him for those years and never once looked at things from his POV. It’s like her character was thrown in the garbage alongside everyone else except ~Abby~
For some reason Joel never explains why he did what he did, other than Ellie would have died if he didn't save her. Never explains the Fireflys were literally clutching at straws and the fact they screwed him over, with no payment at all. Even if they made a cure, there were a terrorist group, so would have used it only for their own gains.
I don't know why everybody is claiming abby is on steroids... Um, spoilers, her father saved a female sasquatch and they fell in love and had a daughter together, abby is half squatch. It's also why she has fuzzy hobbit feet.
Does anyone but me notice how little characterization Deena has in this game? We always see her with Ellie; she has no other scenes that establishes her character other than the ones with Ellie; we also don't know anything else about her life before Ellie, other than her being with Jessie before they had a falling out. There is barely anything noticeable about Deena other than being Ellie's love interest. Saying that she's a flat character at this point maybe stretching it a bit.
GNackers53 that and not shutting up about being Jewish for a half hour. What was the point of that? We never see her pray, she never does any rituals, we never see her turn down a plate of shellfish, she doesn’t even where a Star of David. What does it matter if she was Jewish if it’s not going to be part of her character?
That’s one of the biggest problems with this game. How all of the side characters are just props. What happened to the interesting conversations of the first game? It feels like this was written by a different team entirely. If the characters are boring how can i care about them?
Another part of her character is constantly trying to one-up Ellie. "Oh you killed this many, well I killed more" "you had to kill your friend? I had to kill someone and take care of family" "oh you're immune? I'm pregnant". It's honestly impressive how strange the interactions can be.
@Dog House I don't think I ever saw an actor do it. But it's really to their detriment. People don't tend to take their opinions seriously because of it.
I'd love to see a video of Druckman forced to watch people mocking his artistic vision for how poorly executed and hamfisted the delivery was. Especially a montage of people getting Abby killed on purpose.
@Christopher Marlowe It's not about some behind the scenes secret he knows. The game is out, so he knows what all of us know in the least. People just want to hear his unfiltered opinion and why he thinks that way and have a conversation.
Mauler sparing that woman only for her to draw a weapon on him reminds me of when I played Saints Row and obeyed traffic laws. I'd slowly roll down the road and have people on the sidewalk freak out and shout about how I almost killed them, because the game devs simply never thought someone in Saints Row would play the game and drive safely, and so the NPCs have no appropriate reaction. Except the devs here never thought a player would spare an NPC begging for their life.
The game uses Abby's story to show why revenge is bad. She lost all her friends, got fried up in Santa Barbara, and due to Ellie's lack of common sense, got to get away with all the shit she did.
@@AlexK42069 Do you define the fact that she didn't feel one bit better after Joel's death, lost all her friends, and was banned from the WLF as scottsfree. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing.
After all of this shit I still cant believe that during the theater scene the game actually makes you play as Abby while fighting Ellie. *Spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2:* (I know RDR2 is unrelated but hear me out) Imagine if in RDR2 you play through all of the story as Arthur, and then right before the big climactic fight with Micah on the cliff at the end, you flashback to Micah's childhood and see how his father abused him or something and that's why he's such an asshole. Then you get to replay the entire game from Micah's perspective, all leading up to the big fight only to end up playing as Micah beating the shit out of Arthur. I know what you're thinking... that would fucking suck. And you're absolutely right it would. No amount of humanization would matter at that point because we've already grown attached to the character that was set up to be the protagonist and grown to hate the character set up to be the antagonist. That's how stories are meant to work. I'm seriously tired of all this narrative subversion crap that's ruined storytelling.
Star Wars? All because Jar Jar's grandfather kicked Palpatine's dog to death... Now think of yourself as Ol' Palpatine, zapping Luke in the everything for minutes on end... Dude loved his dog, so 100% make sense. Why so serious?
That's completely different, Micah is portrayed as the evil guy who likes being evil throughout the whole game. You´re meant to hate him from beginning to end. Aside from the revenge theme, both games are VERY different, characters, settings, motives, etc..
@@TheLynx30 That's the point I'm trying to make, Micah was portrayed as being a bad guy and was clearly set up to be the antagonist. And eventhough Abby isnt as evil as Micah, she was also clearly set up to for the player to hate her when she kills Joel. But the point I'm trying to make is that you can't just retroactively make you're audience sympathizes with your villain just by switching to their perspective after they've done something many would see as unforgivable. I was just using Red Dead as an extreme example of how that kind of story structure dosen't work, and Red Dead did it alot better. Oh and eventhough Micah is probably more evil than Abby, he's still a way better character and has consistent motivations that make sense.
@@MrZomBie775 "you can't just retroactively make your audience sympathize with your villain..." Yes they can, and they did. And despite all the hate the game is getting, there's still a lot of people who liked it and were able to sympathize with Abby (I'd say more than 50% even). Where I live for example (not USA), the game has been getting tons of praise. And how is Micah a better character than Abby? He's just your evil guy within your group who nobody seems to care until he kills someone and that will obviously betray you at some point." Micah just does what he does because he's the game's evil character. Abby had her reasons, the very same that made the player hate her, in fact. I mean, I get why people wouldn't like part 2 but most of the reasons given kinda feel like excuses just to not say "they killed Joel."
@@TheLynx30 Tbh I have zero problems with Joel being killed or even that he was killed in such a gruesome manner, you could have pulled that off, but TLOU2 did not pull that off in any way that's at all meaningful. There is so much wrong with the game outside of Joel's death. There is narrative inconsistencies, characters making decisions that go against their established personalities and goals, plot contrivances, impossible coincidences, and terrible pacing. None of this has do to with the fact that Joel died, and trying to say that is the only reason people are mad is idioic. It's fine that you like the game, but dont try and boil my argument down to "this guy you liked died so that's why your mad".
Remember: According to Cosmonaut Variety Hour, this game has some of _the_ best stealth action ever put to a vidya game! 10/10 stealth, right here, for sure.
Ellie: *kills hundreds of people by cutting their throats, burning them alive and turning them into red smudge with EXPLOSIVE ARROWS* Game: I don't see a problem with this... Ellie: *tortures someone once by smacking them to death with a pipe* Game: Don't you see how horrible and evil Ellie has become?! She's loosing it!
Currently engaged in a active and apparently escalating turf war? No sweat, you also got time for a quasi cross country trip to possibly get revenge because you don’t actually know if the person your after will be there... or is even still alive with how dangerous the world is...
Who was so insignificant that his character model made him look like he spent most of his time sniffing glue in a dumpster. Maybe that's why he couldn't take a brain biopsy without killing his patients?
Cranes being on buildings wasn't the problem. Cranes somehow magically being 'shoved" inside the centres of two buildings instead of collapsing to the ground is tism. Also too many games and films overstate how strong steel and buildings are.. cranes are meant to hold weight in a very specific manner. Those cranes shoved into buildings where so warped and broken they'd buckle and break under their own weight. ^.-.^
@@Beuwen_The_Dragonwell how about they just *fell* and it naturally got stuck in between two buildings, one day the weight was to much and it fell on the other building, and the people were like hey let's used this as a bridge
@@Edax_Royeaux It's not, he does it in the final mission leading up to the big fight. He literally just crawls through 30/50 enemies it's insane and you wouldn't miss it lol.
Ellie's bites really should've infected people, if we're being honest. Remember the first game where the infection detector device caught her? I'm surprised she's not breathing spores at this point.
As usual, lazy plot writing takes care of everything, Ellie was apparently kissed by a girl after said girl finished making a tattoo on her and she didn't turn so ellie figures she can't spread it anymore, which is dumb for a multitude of reasons, not least of which because the only reason the plot point was even added was because of the backlash from the trailer.
@@DigitalGame18 Lets be frank here,the entire reason why that plotpoint made it in was because otherwise it would have been hard to sell the lesbian relationship(which they failed at anyway). Always fucking impressive how weak progressive writing turns out.
the only argument people have in favor of the fireflies is "she would have consented if she was awake" which is not a position I thought I'd see women ever defend on Instagram.
Tommy being alive after being shot in the head is definitely cheap emotional manipulation. Like, if he only got shot in the cheek, then Why didn't he immediately grab his face in pain? Instead, he laid there motionless for the rest of the scene as though he was shot in the brain. That's so misleading in an unearned, cheap way.
While I agree that the headshot is emotional manipulation, a shot to the head knocking someone out makes perfect sense as it would cause significant shock to the brain.
He gets shot in the back of the head but when we see him later he has a scar on his eye?? They’re implying that the bullet went through the back and came out right in the middle of his eye. How the fuck did he survive that? He should be braindead at the very least.
Yeah Druckman can’t direct. The game looks tedious and the story looks like a mess of jumps in time. I don’t recall the first game having as many cuts.
The first game had its infamous timeskip cuts as well(which were rightfully criticised). You would think they had learned from that(not that any aspect of tlou2´s design shows actual evolution...outside of graphics but considering the supposed slavery going on to achieve them even that falls flat).
There seems to be a pattern in modern day entries into long standing series: make long-standing do things they would never do, and have lots of contrivances.
If watching this has conveyed anything to me, it is that the writing team at Naughty Dog's combined writing skill is that of a 3rd grader. Amy Hennig's shoes are not so easily filled.
Look, I understand Joel’s death. But they did him and Ellie dirty. Adding on that they tried to make Abby, the villain, sympathetic is just adding salt to the wound.
They literally ripped off the Negan scene from Walking dead for a quick shock death. None of it was earned. Glenn and Abraham's deaths made sense, even if they were picked at random. Ned Stark's execution made sense. We didn't switch to Joffrey's POV a week earlier and see he was really a nice kid all along. Zemo's motivation in Civil War made sense. It's like they tried to lump all 3 of those things together into one, but somehow failed almost completely. I will say that Joel's actual execution was fucking brutal. There's just something about that kind of killing that actually disturbs me, and I give it credit for doing that. Not even Andrew Ryan's death in Bioshock has that weight, because he's commanding you to do it. (and you pretty much want him dead anyway)
Joel death scene is brutal and would propably be fine if we weren't forced to sympathize with abby later in the game. First impressions are hard to wash off, and no matter how many zebras she and her father save is going to make the audience like her after seeing her torture Joel to death.
Bludgeoning deaths always disturb me. There's just something extremely unsettling about being beaten to death with an object, having your body being slowly obliterated internally and externally. It's an awful way to go.
7:03 "Can I play as Joel?... Nooo.... It's gonna be Abby" 😂🤣 Last of Us 2 in a nutshell 7:54 "What are the Odds of this?" Also last of us 2 in a nutshell 10:19 MauLer proceeds to pause the game for 20 seconds and sigh after Joel's likely demise. Also Last of Us 2 in a nutshell 16:54 Exploring Joel's house after death "I think this is the most I've ever been encouraged to stop playing a game in my entire life" definitely Last of Us 2 in a nutshell
I still kind of wished the writers explored the idea of Abby getting along with Joel at first, only to realize he killed her dad (which would have been more interesting if it was a father from the group of cannibals). Or, make it seem like Joel survived his torture by having Tommy seem to be the one who died, then reveal later on that Joel actually died and that Joel the whole time was Ellie’s mental image of him as they went out on her revenge quest. They could even use wordplay to make Ellie say, “This whole thing was for you Joel.” Play on the idea that Joel wants revenge for his brother, when it’s Ellie wanting revenge for him instead.
@Darek Baird Thank you, I appreciate the compliment, but I should also mention that apparently a lot of people thought Joel would be dead or a ghost in this game according to other TLOUP2 videos. That’s because of the first teaser and how dark the tone seemed leading to the game’s release. Also, the idea of Abby getting along with Joel at first isn’t my own, Mauler (and I think Angry Joe) brought it up in either EFAP 97, 98, or 99 and I thought it was a genuinely good/heartbreaking idea. To get along with the guy who killed your loved one and see the good they’ve done, is a very conflicting circumstance, and leads to many options story wise and strong character development.
47:02 Ellie acting like Joel did something unforgivable to her is the most ret*rded part of the whole thing. Yes, even worse than Joel's death. She listened to the tapes. She knows the Fireflies were going to kill her without even waking her up and asking her. But now Joel is the villain? Because he took that "choice" from her? B*tch, the Fireflies were going to take a lot more than a "choice" from you. Your "friend" Marlene was cool with making that choice FOR YOU. But Joel is the bad guy? And the moron (Joel) just stands there and takes the abuse for years and years, never explaining or defending his position. "Ellie, you can't cure a fungal infection with a v." Roll credits. Not to mention how those incompetent butchers (Fireflies) had no means whatsoever to mass produce and mass distribute a cure, or convince anyone to take it. Were they going to give "the cure" to the soldiers, too? And what would that magic "cure" fix, exactly? Would it make the infected revert to normal humans? No. Would it magically provide resources for all the human factions fighting for food and scraps? No. It would only protect you from the spores. Like the gas masks. "Cure for mankind," my ass. Oh, and they even have the nerve to try to rehabilitate Marlene here, after what we heard her say in the tapes in the original game. She literally says she's exhausted and just wants it to be over. They were obsessed with a "cure" they could never produce, after experimenting on other people, to justify all the horrible stuff they had done. She literally says that. Another thing. What does Riley tell Ellie at the end of Left Behind? "We fight for every second we get to spend with each other." Just like what Joel tells her at the end of the main game. "You keep finding something to fight for." But noooooo, now the ONLY way her life could have meaning is if the Fireflies used her like another lab rat. Neil completely and sadistically deconstructed and destroyed every character, and made the original pointless. Sarah died for nothing. Tess died for nothing. Henry, Sam, etc. It was all for nothing.
Abby’s dad dies for nothing too. Abby kills Joel but doesn’t even gaf about completing what her dad died trying to do. She follows Joel across the country and just kills him cause fck you. Doesn’t care about a cure or anything. She EVEN KNOWS that Ellie didn’t have a choice and was gonna get killed but is mad at Joel cause he wanted to save his surrogate daughter.
@@yung_wise5861 He dies for nothing? He was about to murder Ellie. He had been experimenting on other people. He was threatening Joel with a knife. That's not "nothing." But yeah, the rest is accurate. Abby has no business blaming Joel for saving Ellie. And Abby was more than willing to kill and torture people along the way to get to Joel. And HE SAVES HER LIFE.
@@miller-joel from Ellie/Joel’s standpoint yeah he has a reason to get offed. From Abby’s standpoint, he died for nothing even after killing Joel because she doesn’t even care about why he died or completing his goal. She just kills Joel and leaves.
@@yung_wise5861 "part II" tries very hard to paint Joel and Ellie as the bad guys, Abby as the victim, and say "see? There's another side." And it fails miserably, because Joel and Ellie are not the bad guys, and "the other side" is a sociopathic killer.
40:23 Norah's model literally glides outside the door through walls and doorways in 2x the speed so we the players cant catch up to her. Meanwhile in RDR2, we can literally catch a little basterd and cut the whole 5 min scripted chase mission if we close enough to grab him.
I still cannot believe there are people who think this was a good story with good gameplay.... Oh wait, People love TLJ and TROS and GOT season 8.... Of course I can believe it... ^.-.^
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](/img/n.gif)
Why do people believe Joel was wrong in saving Ellie? Why do the developers of the game think that he was wrong? The fireflies knocked Joel out when he was giving Ellie CPR, then refused to let him see her, went back on their deal with him, and then were going to force him out into the middle of an infected city at gun point without his backpack while they carved out Ellie's brain. And from the audio logs, many of the fireflies sound nuts or completely disillusioned with their group.
At the end of the day, Joel was trying his best. The fireflies were not.
Because potatoes. That’s the only answer I have.
Exactly
The funniest thing is that Marlene’s voice actress fully stands behind Joel’s decision and said that he did the right thing. Even the person who could be the most pissed about what Joel did in the first game agrees with him.
@@DiddyBohlen you do know that the voice actor and the character are two separate people right?
FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE THAT UNDERSTANDS IT
Ellie made every possible mistake during that "boss" fight. Blindsided Abby with a piece of wood even though she had a machete, a pistol, a shotgun and booby traps. She's constantly talking and calling Abby which gives away her position, When she was being choked, she chose to stab Abby in the thigh even though she could reach more vital spots like under her arms. Plot armour for days for our protagonist Abby.
And if someone wants to argue that Ellie tossed her handgun, she had a snub nosed magnum and what appears to be a Beretta (she only tosses one when she’s being held up). She even shoots at Abby with her second handgun from the theater curtains. Even then, she still has a shotgun, bolt action rifle, traps, and a bow & arrow like Carrion brought up.
@@GJGaming208 programming Good a.i and writing a good fight is hard
@@Replica_Films2000 not an excuse lol
@@darkpuppetlordful its not an excuse bro F.E.A.R is my favorite game off all time and id expect nothing more than something thats just about as good as it.
@@Replica_Films2000 I know. I'm just saying the. challenge being hard isnt an excuse for failing
Every Frame A Sigh
And Long game bad
02:05:30
"I can feel your anger..."
Joel Miller's Force Ghost
Every Frame A Groan
Every Frame I Die ):
EFAS
I learned that revenge is awesome, but you have to do it right. No loose ends.
Abby and her gang should have just killed Ellie and Tommy. I didn't want them to die but leaving witnesses alive in that situation is so dumb.
A wonderful story about never half-assing something. Always whole-ass a thing. No witnesses.
@@ant.onio.n They could have simply made a horde of Clickers appears as they were about to execute Ellie and Tommy and they decide to bail and boom, done. A excuse for letting them live and maybe some nerds of Abby's group die sooner! Cash money solution.
*General Shepherd wants to know your location!*
Also, eat 8 meals a day and snort creatine
I can’t believe Ellie killed that dog. That dog was Abbys dad. It probably saved a zebra.
people should defend a man saved a zebra but tried to kill a kid unconscious with his poor doctor skills and fooled a group of terrorists that vaccine can cure fungus
You think that's bad? That dog was going to cure mankind with a magic bite!!!
😂
'he was like a brother to me... and my grandfather... like my son...'
1:56:28- Fat Geralt unironically showed more empathy and respect toward his own allies in a single scene than Abby did in the entire game. Mel could have taken an arrow to the stomach and Abby would have just told her to stop crying and deal with it.
It’s honestly amazing that the most likable character in the game is the one who was in it for less than 5 minutes and punched a child. That’s just where the bar is with the characters
@@sirprize275 that was one hell of a punch, though.
"you are my people" is the last thing i wanna hear from she hulk who (used to) enjoys killing immigrants
@@smugalice6206 legit man, he came in with the fists of god and slammed ham in the thunderdome
@@smugalice6206 He punched him with the POWER OF THOR!!
"I spared your life!"
"No, you didn't; you ruined my death!"
10/10 reference from MauLer.
I guess Joel "just kinda forgot" people are dangerous.
Joel’s been living a somewhat good life with everyone else for the last couple years. It’s only fair he’s be more trusting of others.
Moon Raven
There were notes telling Joel that he needs to abandon his “Kill All Outsiders” policy he had in the first game.
@@jojonr619 Definitely offsets the previous 25 years of him having lie, cheat, steal and kill and other individuals having to do the very same thing to him. Oh yeah and him having to hold his own daughter in his arms as she chokes in her own blood as she was riddled with bullets.
5 years living in a dam always changes a man for the better. Let's them forget the atrocities that they commit and what atrocities were committed onto them.
Incredible work of art.
@@jojonr619 He's not going to just suddenly forget 20+ years of survival in a post apocolapse. I know characters can do stupid shit sometimes but this made no sense imo
@@charlie1234500 sorry for getting back so late but others are still replying to this with the same thing. So here goes.
Did you pay attention to the first game?
-Joel is hurt- Joel becomes cold, distant, and damn right heartless to everyone he meets and knows after the death of his daughter “He ain’t even hurt” *runs over a random person. Yeah 20 years of an infection/survival instinct would probably do that to someone.
-Tess- The only person who is with Joel and not even that close is Tess. Probably lovers at one point but clearly still distant showing Joel doesn’t want much with her much less anyone else. “Guess what were shitty people Joel” No we are survivors”
-Ellie- It’s only after he actually spends time with Ellie who becomes a surrogate daughter to him does he start opening up to her and letting others in. In the beginning of the game he refuses to even be involved with her.
-Henry and sam- Joel literally tries kill Henry no questions asked first time he meets him, also a second time after Henry ditches them but doesn’t and even Henry knows it. Showing that Joel has started to let people in “he’s mad be he’s not gonna do it”
-Joel tries to ditch Ellie with Tommy- In a final attempt to not have others hurt him he tries to get rid of someone that has a chance to change him or get even closer to him. With his own brother no less. “Tommy, I need this” He ends up changing his mind and becomes very protective and caring of Ellie at this point. Proven even more in the winter part
-The final section of the game- Joel is cracking jokes and telling Ellie how he’s gonna do all these cool things with her, all while heading back to Tommy’s to rejoin a group where he can be with others and LIVE A RELATIVELY GOOD LIFE.
-Joel at the end of the first game- This is not the same person that we know from after the 20 years infection point. Joel slowly begins so change back into the person we see from the beginning of the game when he still had Sarah and all that happens in the span of a year(presumably).
-Last of us 2- in all the flashbacks of the second game Joel is going off of his way for his ‘people’ taking Ellie out for her birthday and whatnot. He’s known around town as Ellie’s “old man”. Joel has become a lot more open with others and has more than likely not had to have bad confrontation with other humans in the 5 years since the first game since we don’t see any of it in the second game.
-Abby- Joel makes one bad decision that leads to his death. He goes out of his way to save what he and Tommy believe to be a scared woman trying to run from the infected *which was only possible because he became a better person than he used to be*
You gotta remember the fireflies higher ups wanted Joel to be killed, before he went on his rampage, even, which shows they're hardly the angels the second game is painting them to be
The game pretty much tried to completely rewrite the fireflies.
From terrorists that were on their last legs,engaging in ethically undefendable shit to somehow justify their sacrifices into saviours of Zebras and humanities definitive last and only hope.
They even cleaned up the fucking Hospital ffs.
@@strugglesnuggledslime7040 drunkmann retconned the hell out of tlou1
@@strugglesnuggledslime7040 Wasn't the US government still technically around in TLOU? They were the ones that branded the Fireflies terrorists to begin with. In fact when the game starts the Fireflies are already on their last legs, anyway. A bit of dialogue implies that schools even still exist; it's weird they've downplayed all that.
@@DeFactoLeader Thats...actually a good question.
I dont remember the game really elaborating on that so what we see in the beginning of TLOU might as well just have been fractured remnants of military forces that took local control in the name of the defunct government.
Though now that you say it...yes it really is weird how TLOU2 just kinda ignores all other preestablished possible political forces in favor of something like the WLF and the religional fanatics nonsense. oO
@@DeFactoLeader the First game opening credits has the Fireflies taking credit for terrorist attacks on Quarantine zones, and all throughout the game they are shown attacking QZs and Soldiers who are defending people from the Zeds...
The US government may not have been the greatest organization in the Post Apocalypse, but the Fireflies were absolutely Terrorists. Many of the Former Members and people who worked with the Fireflies on occasion even believed so.
But no, now in the second game they've been ret-conned into beacons of hope and humanity, saving the world and pregnant zebras from zeds and evil nasty soldiers...
It comes across as the Devs seeing an opportunity to plaster their own Ideological sympathies toward real world groups onto a pre-existing story world and characters, even at the expense of the Story and characters.
Currently at the 47min mark.
There's an easy solution to getting the immunity out there, it's called breeding.
This is a perfect opportunity to make an ethical dilemma, do you do your duty and breed though there's no guarantee the child would have the immunity or stay true to your sexual orientation and live with the knowledge that you could have saved humanity
There are no right answers but It's a huge burden to live with either way.
We live in a world where responsibility is secondary to identity and feelings, so it doesn't shock me that this hasn't been brought up at all.
While Reproduction is effective Ellie is unnecessary. There is a good chance that people born post outbreak could be immune.
Why can't they just study Ellie's blood? Find what makes her immune.
Current year developers wouldn´t even consider that dilemma, specially Neil-I have a secret agenda-Druckman.
You are asking the apple tree to give you pears, like we say in our country.
Thats actually a really interesting and compelling idea, but i feel like it kinda dissolves under scrutiny considering gay couples get artificially impregnated all the time. Like, wouldnt ellie just say "fuck it, i like kids. Someone hand me a turkeybaster..."
Theres a certain point where a human cant reasonably say no anymore. Raise the stakes high enough and theres little to no choice for a non-sociopath. Ask a person of jewish descent if they would have sex with Hitler and thats prolly gonna be an emphatic "no" to say the least. Ask a person of jewish descent if they would have sex with Hitler if it meant the Haulocaust would never happen and suddenly there is pause for thought. Its a crude analogy, but you get the idea of the point im making...
@@nomative8915 I don't remember where this came from, but apparently its not even Ellie. Its the specific strain of fungus that she got infected with that just stopped its spread. Apparently it is both dormant, but also overpowering and preventing other strains from taking her over. I've no fucking idea how that works.
The only compelling character arc of TLOU2 is watching Mauler go from happily talking about Molotov cocktails and exploring every area and saying he won't make a rage video to going 'hmm' a lot to, eventually, just kind of verbally scowling and asking over and over when the game will finally end
I lost it when he got to the farm and said "3 more hours? How is it not over?" LOLOL
He went from him firmly saying that other people will make videos and he won't be to the game bashing him with a golf club enough that he finally gave in. This poor man.
“Ugh just cut to credits”
Me in JC Denton voice: “No...not yet.”
That silence when Joel got murderalized and the game kept going. Rough and raw. I was wondering how he'd cope, rather than how he'd react, but he got legit distraught by the tism...
It’s the first time I’ve seen him get salty at chat as well.
Not sure how I got this from typing fat geralt, but I'll TAKE IT.
Lol
Same bro. Fat geralt is the pathway to good memes.
1:55:26 is the timestamp for FAT GERALT!!!
ditto
@@nadrewod999 May he bless us all.
"reverse plot armor" is what we call "an idiot ball." When a character is killed off to progress the plot with little to no build up.
Joel and Tommy have perma idiot balls, but that isn't even the biggest issues, the # of interlinked contrivances that get him and Tommy into that situation with Abby is insane.
I'd file it under "Diabolus ex Machina" - Bad shit happens just because. "Idiot ball" is more like "character suddenly acts like an idiot for plot reasons".
@@lordfusiondar1003 Well with Ned you could kinda see his end coming when he openly told Cersei that he knew about her and Jaime, and when he trusted Littlefinger who didn't seem to be the most trustworthy guy even then. And of course because Joffrey is a psychopathic little shit.
LordFusionDaR huh? There was like 4 episodes of build up to Ned’s death, you could see it coming a mile away. Practically every decision he made in KL brought him one step closer to his end. Ned continuously demonstrated the qualities that would result in him being killed all season long
@@Egurius3 There was a lot of build up and Ned remained in character throughout, but the sheer amount of coincidences that pile up to make things happen the way they did definitely made it clear Martin had his thumb on the scale to make things happen that way.
It gets worse when you consider the coincidence pileup that happens for the fall of the house of Stark in general as well as the sheer amount of coincidences that come together to save the Lannisters from a position of being completely screwed in the earlier books.
Things like Cat's ability to think of what would be bad to do in a situation and then fish memory her way into doing exactly what she shouldn't do and the ridiculously perfect timing of a chain of events allowing the Lannisters to get an alliance with the Tyrells at just the right time and march massive distances with just the right timing that they could arrive at King's Landing when Stannis is partway through attacking. If they'd arrived just a little earlier Stannis wouldn't have wasted a lot of men on a siege that would never work or if they'd been later Stannis would have already captured the city, killed the Lannisters there and been able to put up a decent defence.
Hell, I could go full LongMan regarding the overwhelming amount of coincidence that happens, like the timing of Robb hearing about his brothers just when he's stuck wounded at the Crag but then I'd be here all day. Suffice to say, Martin can write characters well, or 'political' world-building but he's terrible when it comes to constructing a plot that feels as natural as his best characters.
"This game alright" before Joel's death
"I don't care.....sigh" after Joel's death.
It's not even about Joel dying, it's the ridiculous coincidences that had to be set up for his death, and the out of character actions of both Tommy and Joel that left them completely oblivious to what was about to happen. It just shows how little the writers cared.
@@Birthday888 so true
@@Birthday888 yeah i replayed 1 befor 2 and it just completely took me out of the story every with the "hes gotten soft" excuse but hed still smell that trap from a mile away shit we are talking about the man who could tell by looking at one man limping on the road that it was a trap
@@wednesdayapril5435 people say being in the community softened him like he wasn’t clearing the area constantly and lived in hell for 20 years. I guess ptsd mannerisms from being crossed and almost dying many times doesn’t exist.
@@unknown_individual7050 idk why this poped up on my notifications but i couldn't agree more with ya
Games like this look like a bad d & d game where the DM is RAILROADING you the whole way and you have no agency on what happens: so why "play" or make it a game just make it a move and let us watch.
At least in those games you can start messing with the DM just to see the DM's reaction to figure out how to railroad you more.
HL2 is a railroaded game as well, but it is fun
This is I think the best one sentence description I saw on this game. Not that there is no possibility of a fun game that is heavily controlled by a DM but this really looks like one of those you would really want to leave.
@@krismoe31 HL2 doesn't shove a cinematic every 2 minutes in your face.
@@Darkko88 i didnt say that, but you dont make any choices that affect the story in HL2
I want to say something as this review begins. There was nothing absolute about the cure in the first game. In fact, if you read the doctors notes and listen to his recordings, what you find is a bitter, angry man who has failed to develop a cure for over a decade. He is nothing like the doctor portrayed in this game. He was desperate for the cure and had no compunction about opening up Ellie's head in hopes that this time would be different. He wouldn't even let her wake up. That was discovered on one of Marlana's recordings in the first game, where she doubted the cure was going to work. That was part of the ambiguity of the game. If the cure would have been a certainty, or even hopeful, then Joel would have been less sympathetic. The first game's ending is like the question posed in the film Passengers. The ambiguity is what made it good. Now Cuckman comes along and dogmatically states the cure was a foregone conclusion and Abby's dad was a humanitarian's humanitarian, and all around Ward Clever like good guy.
Also, wasn’t the original doctor a black man? Yet TLOU2 has him a white guy.
This is one of my personal justifications for why TLOU2 is just a non-canon, crappy fanfic.
And more,it makes Abby s dad right for killing a lot of people in favor of the vaccine;so revenge is bad but indisciminate killing is cool as long you have motives,wtf game
Abbys logic, you took away the cure which could’ve saved people. Also Abby, top scar killer
Review?
TBF, the doctor with the recording at the university, complaining about not getting a cure in a decade, had to shoot himself when he got bitten by some infected monkeys so its not the same doctor at the Colorado Hospital
>"Highlights"
>over 2 hours long
Ah yes, the power of the long man
The Tall Woman would so have the hots for him. XD
long long maaaannnnn
"longm'n"
I'm watching this in bed on my TV rn and I'm so happy it's over 2 hours long because I'm feeling so chill just living life post-Christmas vibing haha
@@wednesdayapril5435 Best advert of all time
"That man saved a zebra" truly the best writing. No one can match the intellect of the writing staff of this game. Groundbreaking.
A game about empathy made by a man who had none for his programmers.
Or artists...
Or whatever poor mocap people where involved in the sexscene with his char and Abby.
Or artists...or level designers...or animators...
Technically this game is amazing it's really just Neil's writing that shits the bed
@@fiel81 wheres multiplayer?
@@TheYetixOUTx you tell me, i have no idea
The book in Abby's room "Written by David Benioff"...it's like the jokes keep writing themselves.
Cuckmann said he liked GoT's ending, so yeah.
Neil liked Star Wars too the new movies.
Imagine there's a young woman out there who really enjoys reading David Benioff's smut. As unlikely as it sounds, that person exists.
I don’t know who that guy is. Care to explain the joke?
@@mrshmuga9 He was the lead director and showrunner for TV show Game of Thrones. Look up a channel called The Dragon Demands and you'll understand more than you want to.
Finished watching it and just noticed another very stupid thing: The farmhouse where Dina and Ellie stayed is not in Jackson. You would think that with a baby you'd rather stay in the well defended Jackson rather than have your own farmhouse. That's without not even taking into account 2 major things that the game (of course) doesn't explain:
1- where did the cattle come from? Did they find by chance those sheeps or did the people of Jackson for no good reason gift sheeps to a couple of people that were going to stay outside of their community?
2- and this is major - they said that there are mass migrations of zombies during winter. During winter that farmhouse, if it's in the way of one of those migrations would be a death trap for its occupants as the zombies would assault the house, walk all over the field ruining it and of course would devour also the sheeps.
Obviously, the explanation is super simple: they decided on this location without any logic behind it whatsoever, they only did it because "oh, cool shot of a beautiful and peaceful field that's going to look like a paradise but it's going to be empty when we make Dina leave Ellie".
In Jackson, you'd have an entire community to rely on, people with weapons and various expertises that can help in case of emergencies and I guess also people with medical knowledge in case of an emergency regarding Dina or (especially) the baby. But hey, it's either that or the "cool field in the sunset".
@@Dieci-9 Bro, things go deeper. Where did all those freshly picked flowers in front of Joel's house come from? Where did the Apple's that the WLF leader eats get imported from? Why is there a Resident Evil zombie in the Last of Us 2?
The plural of sheep is sheep.
You posted this same exact comment on another video. It's a good point, but damn you really hate that farmhouse.
No wonder I first thought this was a dream sequence
I think one of the biggest sins of this game is the ruining of the original's ending. The whole point of that ending was to be ambiguous. Did Joel do the right thing? Do you agree with Joel? Did Joel doom humanity? Would Ellie stay with him? All those thoughts and more are wiped away. According to TLOU2 Joel IS the bad guy, and the fireflies WERE the good guys. Ambiguity is hard to pull off, but I feel the original is a great example.
Hell it wasn't the ambiguity in Joel's actions even. If you take a second to think about it Joel's actions are VERY damn justified almost immensely so even if selfish or otherwise.
I get the feeling that Druckmann didn't like the fact that the ending was ambiguous and that so many people agreed with Joel's actions at the end. The other writers and developers probably overruled his vision of the the game's ending, the version we see in TLOU2, because they knew it was shit.
@@Birthday888 That's a great point, and to add to it I feel Bruce Straley was sorely missed on TLOU2. I think it is clear now that he was the filter to Neil's ideas. It's interesting to note that when Neil was pitching TLOU1 he had the idea of a cross country revenge. That idea was shot down as being ridiculous. So weird to incorporate a plot point that was rejected. Neil can be a decent writer, but he was given too much free reign on this game.
@@johnfinnegan9446 *Press* *X* *to* *doubt*
@@h_chase1974 hurr durr fanboy stress signals off the charts
This is TLJ of Video Games, but with 16 times the tisms.
Mauler is lucky to be alive, that sheer amount of cognitive dissonance is lethal to most Longmen.
It certainly earned the title of TLJ of videogames. And Mauler is a warrior for enduring 20+ hours of that shit.
He suffered so we wouldn't have to. The Don bless our Longman!
Also hi Rogue!
Hi!
@@IronTulikettu Don bless! And may Fat Geralt bless him, as well.
I wouldn't say it's on THAT level of bad, but you are still certainly right. This is indeed to The Last of Us what TLJ was to Star Wars.
I like that the deaths of NPCs are so over the top manipulative that it's funny.
I laughed instantly when a million bullets started hitting Yara’s corpse. It was just so over-the-top edgy that it became funny. Tarantino did it in Django Unchained too, but it was supposed to be funny and over-the-top in that movie. Neil Druckmann wants you to take this game 100% seriously and hates the word “fun.”
@@colten53 well this game made me hate the word "Neil" now.
@@drakashrakenburgproduction5369 Neil before Zod!
46:11 See, there's this wondrous process called "writing shit down" that the doctor could've tried. Been done for thousands of years and I hear it works OK. Apparently they know how to record their voices too, so that may have been something to spend 10 seconds considering.
Right
But That’s stupid, i should keep the important information everyone Can benefit from to myself.
Meh, dumb argument. You think you could do surgery and virology by reading a textbook?
Dr LMAO you can’t create a vaccine with tests from a single person. So it really doesn’t matter anyway
@@zarlei6048 a textbook is better than nothing. For someone who cared so much about a vaccine for humanity, Abbys dad was extremely reckless
Ellie kills Mel.
Unreal Tournament Announcer: DOUBLE KILL!
Brutal!
Savage. 😂
"Smell their own farts" the videogame.
"How to suicide your previously great game" the game
Which is why i have taken to calling creators like Neil Druckmann "Flatulence Sommeliers"
@@Zinlain Well one thing is for certain, i will NOT buy a single Naughty Dog game ever again. The people with talent that made the first game great has left the company.
@@AlexK42069 I still wonder where they go from here. I don't even know what i should expect from the next game they make, if they want to make games with a strong focus on identity politics then they can do that if this is what they want but atleast be open about it, cuz i don't plan to waste money on that shit.
@@brotbrotsen1100 and if that identity politics game ever gets created from ND then every villain will be an awful straight white male who hates women and the only reasonable people will be anyone who isn't white.
The Last of Us 2: the game so bad its hard to even watch other people play it.
Right?! I'm cringing just watching this and it's only clips
TLOU2 should have cut 20 hours of boring repetitive gameplay and just been a movie.. our Suffering would have been lessened. ^.-.^
Not to worry. They'll fix it in the third game when Ellie and Abby team up to reform the Fireflies. Abby will become a surgeon, fix Ellie's fingers, save Tommy's marriage and bring Joel back to life. And then Ellie will remember she used to make good decisions.
It also draws doubt on the first game. Mechanically, this game isn't that much different from the first game. It's just the story generates a lot of ludo-narrative dissonance which makes people notice the game's absurdities even more.
@@michaelkitchin9665 nah, the third game will be abouw Abby and Lev trying to survive in this world.
Well, basically it will be like the first game but with different and much more awful characters.
31:51 Mauler: JUST Halloween stuff?
Ellie: I'm not a fan.
Mauler: NOT A FAN?! * immediately forces Ellie to self-immolate *
I literally DIED laughing when he did that. And honestly, Ellie deserved that.
Tasha Glam how are you typing this comment if you literally died
@@gub4941 obviously hes a ghost.
Fr i felt like that shit was so out of character for Ellie.
@@johnb.d It's a reaction to the events of the Left Behind DLC for the first one.
Fat Geralt is my favorite part
The absolute pure jubilation coming from MauLer when fat Geralt punched lev was more contagious than the rona
@Dog House wdy? Manny dying is up there.
1:55:48 annihilated
Fat Geralt is the only good character.
Cracks me the fuck up how literally *everyone* has the same reaction to that scene.
The moment I saw this: 58:53. I knew Abby was unsavable. A person would've looked at Ellie's reaction and saw herself in her. Ellie was Abyy in that moment but Abby still murdered Joel. She refused to change. No sympathy.
*Abby who supposedly wasted away on a cross into a less buff female athlete*
"Oh man, I'm soooo weak..."
*Lifts Lev like he weighs nothing.*
"Sooooo weak.... I'm like stumbling and shit."
@Acesahn Also the fact we see Abby go from She-Hulk to one quarter portion, and Lev remains virtually the same. Lev should be dead many times over.
@@immelmannace4067 There must have been a taxidermist among the cultists.
*she.
You objectively cannot change your gender.
@@DaMaster012 I legit can't tell what it is or originally was.
@@immelmannace4067 Lev shouldn't have even been on that post in the first place considering that hay maker from Fat Geralt would've killed him.
I honestly sympathize with all of those that finished the ENTIRE game. I was getting too much of a headache. I reached the part where Abby hunts Ellie in the theater and let Ellie kill Abby. When it tried to reload me to a checkpoint I quickly exited the game and proceeded to delete the it off my PS4 and accepted it as the ending.
This game is such a fucking waste of time, energy, emotion, and investment.
You are not alone. Too many people try to perform mental gymnastics to justify this story and its events....
Meanwhile smooth-brains smoke more woke crack and tell you about how much you just don't get it cause you didn't make up bullshit in your imagination to rationalize the awful writing. I swear this game is the second coming of Mass Effect 3 with how suicidal the writing is against itself and all the original fans.
@@oinkleberry I loved the first game and loved the second one, I'm not a real fan?
@@gamingman21 It's fine for you to like both games. Some people don't want to think critically about a series of events that's fictional, which is fine. When a story has objective problems that other people notice, you liking it doesn't invalidate the existence of said problems. In fact, I'm glad you liked it; that somehow through all the bullshit, you managed to like it. I'm nearly 100% sure that it's because of some detail you've headcanoned, which again is fine, if it gets you to like something rather than be miserable. But some people cannot help but be miserable, because they take what they get on the screen and don't add onto it in their brains because their imagination is not what holds the actual story together, it's the actual series of events in the story that is, indeed, the story.
I was on both sides of these two mindsets 8 years ago with Mass Effect 3. I know what it's like to see something that upsets me, but rationalize it in my brain to be something it factually isn't, but at least make it into something I could cope with, I could "like". But if you're an actual superfan of a series, you aren't going to stop there; you're not going to drop all thoughts about the series. You're going to keep thinking about it, and keep coming to terms with what the story factually is, and eventually realize that your headcanon isn't the actual canon. You're going to realize that factually, the thing you love was torn apart, and you will eventually find peace in appreciating what was good about what came before, without necessarily having a grief-stricken meltdown about what the thing you loved became.
So I'm happy you love it. If you're a superfan, and a critical thinker, you won't love it forever. Cherish your time spent loving it, because my omen to you here is not going to be the last time reality calls to you in how you process the events of this parable. And I deeply empathize with what you are eventually going to go through. I hope it doesn't hurt you too much. I'm not kidding. Best of wishes.
@@gamingman21 loving something doesn't make it good. I greatly enjoyed Wagons East but that doesnt make it a good movie.
The idea that "Revenge is a fools game" was done so much better in Red Dead Redemption 2
And that wasn't even the core theme lmao
And Dishonored nailed the “actions have consequences” while also centering on revenge
Here you go you got 69 likes now
Haven’t played in a while but how is “Revenge is a fool’s game” a core theme when the whole final mission is about revenge? Don’t get me wrong that game is amazing but I don’t see the correlation.
@@jonathandevers6609
Yes John got his revenge on Micah but the Bureau of investigation found him because of that and if you played the first game you know what happened next.
Welcome to TLOU2: Where the female protagonists have plot armour, and the male characters/protagonists have plot hole armour.
That’s what happens when devs want to push an agenda first and make a story story.
This really is the worst kind of fanfiction, where the author desperately wants you to like their OC and be totally on board with bashing the original main characters.
So basically every sequel to the franchise's we love these past years
I can sympathize because I'm following an Assassin's Creed fic where an utter cunt of a Mary Sue is just wrecking canon characters, and the other calls you a stalker if you criticize her work.
Bashing...literally. With a fucking golf club
Its Amy henning who made the first game. They kicked her to make this shit. If I were them I would make her ceo to write better stories than this shifty game.
i read fanfictions that have better characters than this game
Ellie didn't kill Fat Geralt. That was his twin brother's, nephew's, cousin's, former roommate's stunt double.
TloU3: Fat Geralts Revenge
The twist is that Fat Geralt didnt even know he had a brother, he just thinks the cards Ellie keeps picking up are for Gwent
EmptyAltruism, best fucking comment. 😂
@@seriouschuckles5015 Best fucking username
So what does that make them?
Absolutely nothing.
It was Overweight Geraldo
Neil marketed the game to the fans of the first game, but intended it for another fanbase entirely, and that fanbase likes to tell us we need more empathy.
While being some of the least empathetic people on earth.
@@Biggiiful its fucking funny seeing them lose their shit and start resorting to name calling when all u do is give criticism toward their precious game 😂
If he made the game for a different fan base, why bother including things like Joel's watch, which would mean absolutely nothing to them? And knowing the real fan base is going to hate this, but act surprised and accuse them of being bigots?
Mauler gets more character development than any other character in this game lol
51:45 I love how MauLer just laughs when Ellie discovers Mel was pregnant.
Yeah he sees the blatant manipulation. It's like seeing the puppeteer pulling the strings
@@xrphoenix7194 Writers: Don't you feel bad now, player?
Mauler: *wheezing*
@@bipstymcbipste5641 If only Mel hadn’t tried to attack Ellie. Did the game really expect us to feel bad for self defense?
@@sirprize275 But Revenge Bad
@@madcapmakov2 tell that to Mel, it’s her fault for not forgiving Ellie after killing her husband
31:45 Probably my favorite part, Mauler sounds so indignant at their bashing of Halloween.
58:48 That man saved a Zebra
1:23:39 Perfect representation of the failure of the game, a main character got killed , and the player doesn´t care, in fact, Mauler is happy he died.
1:29:54 Reality is breaking
1:42:36 Your critics are poor copypasta
1:55:48 Unironicaly the best part of the game
its how it fails to connect with the player on every single level.... when Elli discovers she killed a pregnant lady.... you laugh ^^ when there is a heartfelt moment and a sudden death of a charakter you are supposed to care about,,, you cheer...... when a story is conrived and makes no sense and everybody behaves stupid ... you just cant connect... thats why story is important
I think they also failed to recognize why people loved 1. Especially when you forget the narrative setup of 1 in favor of well, this.
@@unknown_individual7050 i love the way you put it: "this" ^^^^-- in spanish we say "incalificable" wich basically means "ther is no words for this" ^^
Is anyone gonna mention that they took a morally questionable situation that felt real just to replace it with a ham-fisted and blatent view of how the developers want you to think, turning something almost real and complex into something simple and broken and filled with coincidences
Its funny, while i was playing I could constantly almost hear Cuckman's voive in my head. "Feeeeeeeeeeeeel for Abby, FEEL FOR HER U FUCKING PEASANT".
And then I remember there was over 100 million thrown at this game and then I kinda just die inside
I needed this video
Definitely
I need an edit with the classic Iron Man, (the first movie), scene, just with everyone's face being Abby and related fu*ktards... I can picture it fine, just a mech suit dropping from the sky and wasting about a dozen assholes in less than three minutes. Why? *Subversive catarcism*
RIP Jake Miller, may your socks remain wet.
He's a good friend of Jake Skylewaker.
@@shaecouture7480 And Jake Lannister and Jake Snow.
kasaibou F29 And Jake The Dog
@@kasaibouF29 Stop using Jake for shitty character writing. It makes people like me who have that name feel bad..... 😪
I love how this game tries so hard to make the fireflies look good and be these saviors of the Earth as opposed to Joel who ruined their chances, even though
1)Ellie's sacrifice wouldn't guarantee a vaccine. All we knew was that she was immune to the infection, not that her blood could 100% cure everything (especially since vaccines are NOT the same thing as cures)
2)The fireflies did not give a rat's ass about Ellie and Joel. If a vaccine was to be made, they were gonna keep it to themselves, because that's all they care about: themselves.
3)Even if a vaccine was made, how the hell would they be able to distribute and make more samples for the vaccine. I highly doubt they have the resources to do that. Especially during a FUCKING APOCALYPSE.
4)Abby's dad wasn't even gonna tell Joel about the possibility of Ellie possibly dying for nothing. He was willing to go through with this, no matter what the consequences were.
From what I can tell, Joel had every right to do what he did and Abby's father can fucking rot in hell
But but but muh zebra lol.
"You're just saying that because you hate zebras!"
Ellie's crying seems so forced when Joel tells her the truth. It doesn't seem like a crying matter to be honest. Angry or disappointed, sure, but crying because your life got saved? Come on now...
What annoys me about that is Ellie holds this against poor ol' Joel for a LONG time.
She doesn't once think about WHY Joel saved her. Nope she was just like "Joel Y u do dis? No talk me. I angy"
She really took him for granted.
NoNameforNow EXACTLY! I got so mad when she was such an asshole to him for those years and never once looked at things from his POV. It’s like her character was thrown in the garbage alongside everyone else except ~Abby~
Basically what Ellie was stupidly doing in that scene was:
"You ruined my death Joel! How fucking dare you?!?!"
For some reason Joel never explains why he did what he did, other than Ellie would have died if he didn't save her. Never explains the Fireflys were literally clutching at straws and the fact they screwed him over, with no payment at all. Even if they made a cure, there were a terrorist group, so would have used it only for their own gains.
@@StellaSteve80 Ellie emotionally castrated the poor dude and kept on poking those scars for years.
“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"revenge is bad and stuff, k?" - Ghandi, 2029
Love to see how he’d react to this story XD
@@EmptyAltruism "fuckin set your enemies on fire with petrol while the are tied to a tire" - Nelso Mandela except im not even joking
@@jeangreffsbp i gave it a cursory glance and its called 'necklacing'. Didnt wanna read any more. Damn, fuckin ppl
"Revenge is bad except when it involves nuclear weapons. Now give me gold or I'll nuke you." - Gandhi, Civilization I-VI
I don't know why everybody is claiming abby is on steroids... Um, spoilers, her father saved a female sasquatch and they fell in love and had a daughter together, abby is half squatch. It's also why she has fuzzy hobbit feet.
Wait........ THAT ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE!!!! HOLY COW!!!! And when her hormones kicks in, she just grew! Like crazy! Damn! That's actually good!
It's too late to check now, but when I come back here tomorrow, I'll better find a supercut of Mauler saying "Chriiiiis" somewhere in this.
0:39:41
@@flubber11usa7 Nice. The Toxic Brood never disappoints.
@@Bilbosilius_Zwackelbaggins I am so proud of this community
Does anyone but me notice how little characterization Deena has in this game? We always see her with Ellie; she has no other scenes that establishes her character other than the ones with Ellie; we also don't know anything else about her life before Ellie, other than her being with Jessie before they had a falling out. There is barely anything noticeable about Deena other than being Ellie's love interest. Saying that she's a flat character at this point maybe stretching it a bit.
GNackers53 that and not shutting up about being Jewish for a half hour. What was the point of that? We never see her pray, she never does any rituals, we never see her turn down a plate of shellfish, she doesn’t even where a Star of David. What does it matter if she was Jewish if it’s not going to be part of her character?
That’s one of the biggest problems with this game. How all of the side characters are just props. What happened to the interesting conversations of the first game? It feels like this was written by a different team entirely. If the characters are boring how can i care about them?
@@SAMSARALIVEEEEEE Bill had more characterization than any side character in this game
@@sirprize275 It explains her Dorito nose, at least.
Another part of her character is constantly trying to one-up Ellie. "Oh you killed this many, well I killed more" "you had to kill your friend? I had to kill someone and take care of family" "oh you're immune? I'm pregnant". It's honestly impressive how strange the interactions can be.
The panic everyone gets during the sex scene will never not be funny
Imagine if you had to square button that scene.
@@miller-joel rapidly press square to drill. Triangle to prolapse.
As much as I hated the scene, I had to rewind back just to hear Mauler panicking
Thanks for making this. I love Mauler's videos, but I couldn't suffer through the entire game with him.
fair point lol
Not everyone is willing to waste a full day of their life to watch a shite game. ^.-.^
I'm playing PREY and listening to this while gathering materials/ressources...
Day and night.
Beuwen The Dragon 🐉 I gotta is this
@@flubber11usa7 you throw a brick at a kid who was playing a snowball fight you are sick in the head.
Man i would love mauler in a EFAP talking to Troy Baker and he trying to explain all the points Mauler makes , i will pay top dollar for that
Troy would never talk to Mauler lol.
Talent and all that aside, actors love living in their echo chambers. They'd never debate with people with different views.
@Dog House I don't think I ever saw an actor do it. But it's really to their detriment. People don't tend to take their opinions seriously because of it.
I'd love to see a video of Druckman forced to watch people mocking his artistic vision for how poorly executed and hamfisted the delivery was. Especially a montage of people getting Abby killed on purpose.
@Christopher Marlowe It's not about some behind the scenes secret he knows. The game is out, so he knows what all of us know in the least. People just want to hear his unfiltered opinion and why he thinks that way and have a conversation.
Mauler sparing that woman only for her to draw a weapon on him reminds me of when I played Saints Row and obeyed traffic laws. I'd slowly roll down the road and have people on the sidewalk freak out and shout about how I almost killed them, because the game devs simply never thought someone in Saints Row would play the game and drive safely, and so the NPCs have no appropriate reaction. Except the devs here never thought a player would spare an NPC begging for their life.
Revenge bad, unless you're Abby... Then it's rad!
The game uses Abby's story to show why revenge is bad. She lost all her friends, got fried up in Santa Barbara, and due to Ellie's lack of common sense, got to get away with all the shit she did.
Player1
That’s a pity. Because I feel she kinda deserves it. She’s never shown any remorse to what she’s done to Joel
@@GigaChadh976
Who said anything about sympathy? Abby killed Joel and was not rewarded for it. She was punished?
@@AE_Sunset-Nutrix_AE no she got away scottsfree and now she has Lev and Ellie has no one. Stop defending crap writing.
@@AlexK42069
Do you define the fact that she didn't feel one bit better after Joel's death, lost all her friends, and was banned from the WLF as scottsfree. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing.
After all of this shit I still cant believe that during the theater scene the game actually makes you play as Abby while fighting Ellie.
*Spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2:*
(I know RDR2 is unrelated but hear me out) Imagine if in RDR2 you play through all of the story as Arthur, and then right before the big climactic fight with Micah on the cliff at the end, you flashback to Micah's childhood and see how his father abused him or something and that's why he's such an asshole. Then you get to replay the entire game from Micah's perspective, all leading up to the big fight only to end up playing as Micah beating the shit out of Arthur. I know what you're thinking... that would fucking suck. And you're absolutely right it would. No amount of humanization would matter at that point because we've already grown attached to the character that was set up to be the protagonist and grown to hate the character set up to be the antagonist. That's how stories are meant to work. I'm seriously tired of all this narrative subversion crap that's ruined storytelling.
Star Wars?
All because Jar Jar's grandfather kicked Palpatine's dog to death...
Now think of yourself as Ol' Palpatine, zapping Luke in the everything for minutes on end... Dude loved his dog, so 100% make sense. Why so serious?
That's completely different, Micah is portrayed as the evil guy who likes being evil throughout the whole game. You´re meant to hate him from beginning to end. Aside from the revenge theme, both games are VERY different, characters, settings, motives, etc..
@@TheLynx30 That's the point I'm trying to make, Micah was portrayed as being a bad guy and was clearly set up to be the antagonist. And eventhough Abby isnt as evil as Micah, she was also clearly set up to for the player to hate her when she kills Joel. But the point I'm trying to make is that you can't just retroactively make you're audience sympathizes with your villain just by switching to their perspective after they've done something many would see as unforgivable. I was just using Red Dead as an extreme example of how that kind of story structure dosen't work, and Red Dead did it alot better.
Oh and eventhough Micah is probably more evil than Abby, he's still a way better character and has consistent motivations that make sense.
@@MrZomBie775 "you can't just retroactively make your audience sympathize with your villain..."
Yes they can, and they did. And despite all the hate the game is getting, there's still a lot of people who liked it and were able to sympathize with Abby (I'd say more than 50% even). Where I live for example (not USA), the game has been getting tons of praise.
And how is Micah a better character than Abby? He's just your evil guy within your group who nobody seems to care until he kills someone and that will obviously betray you at some point." Micah just does what he does because he's the game's evil character. Abby had her reasons, the very same that made the player hate her, in fact.
I mean, I get why people wouldn't like part 2 but most of the reasons given kinda feel like excuses just to not say "they killed Joel."
@@TheLynx30 Tbh I have zero problems with Joel being killed or even that he was killed in such a gruesome manner, you could have pulled that off, but TLOU2 did not pull that off in any way that's at all meaningful. There is so much wrong with the game outside of Joel's death. There is narrative inconsistencies, characters making decisions that go against their established personalities and goals, plot contrivances, impossible coincidences, and terrible pacing. None of this has do to with the fact that Joel died, and trying to say that is the only reason people are mad is idioic. It's fine that you like the game, but dont try and boil my argument down to "this guy you liked died so that's why your mad".
"Joel! Don't go yet! There's one more to kill!"
Mauler's commentary is almost exactly what I would say.
Remember: According to Cosmonaut Variety Hour, this game has some of _the_ best stealth action ever put to a vidya game! 10/10 stealth, right here, for sure.
Got to love shill game journalists
When your only means of content is being a contrarian.
The man who also defended the new watchman series as genius
I mean he is right...if we had 1997.
Who listens to that smug massive anyways?
Mauler monologuing to Nora is the best thing to come from this game
His monologue is 100x better than any dialogue in this game.
Timestamp please?
@@cartoonking1789 42:20
I never heard Mauler be so bitter after that Death scene. That part was not well written in the slightest.
“Written by David Benoiff...*wretches*”
Ellie: *kills hundreds of people by cutting their throats, burning them alive and turning them into red smudge with EXPLOSIVE ARROWS*
Game: I don't see a problem with this...
Ellie: *tortures someone once by smacking them to death with a pipe*
Game: Don't you see how horrible and evil Ellie has become?! She's loosing it!
Currently engaged in a active and apparently escalating turf war? No sweat, you also got time for a quasi cross country trip to possibly get revenge because you don’t actually know if the person your after will be there... or is even still alive with how dangerous the world is...
AAA writing at its greatest my friend.
*Jumps off cliff*
She just shoots fat Geralt?
Telltale games gives you more choices than TLOU2.
Well say what you want about Telltale but Telltale makes games with way better stories.
Remember when the doctor was in a dirty hospital room...and Black
Yes
For a game that really seems to love diversity and being woke as hell it sure was weird that they literally white washed a character.
Who was so insignificant that his character model made him look like he spent most of his time sniffing glue in a dumpster. Maybe that's why he couldn't take a brain biopsy without killing his patients?
Even in the remake he's still black, lol
Ellie: My life would've fucking mattered!
MauLer: Whot?!?!
Ellie: But you took that from me.
MauLer: WHOT!!?!!!?!?!?
I still don't get why mauler got mad at cranes being on towers, but not the wood that was somehow placed on the cranes with no way to hold it down
Tism overload Im thinking lol Too much bullshit to notice it all on the first go.
I think that the whole "damaged crane bridge over a massive chasm" concept was too much for Mauler, boards and all.
He's already said it's like TLJ, everything you look at it the more the problems stack up and the game ears itself
Cranes being on buildings wasn't the problem. Cranes somehow magically being 'shoved" inside the centres of two buildings instead of collapsing to the ground is tism.
Also too many games and films overstate how strong steel and buildings are.. cranes are meant to hold weight in a very specific manner. Those cranes shoved into buildings where so warped and broken they'd buckle and break under their own weight. ^.-.^
@@Beuwen_The_Dragonwell how about they just *fell* and it naturally got stuck in between two buildings, one day the weight was to much and it fell on the other building, and the people were like hey let's used this as a bridge
I wish you had the part where he turned on game journalist mode, I was dying when that happened
I think 49:48 is game journalist mode. Or maybe I missed with MauLer did that.
@@Edax_Royeaux It's not, he does it in the final mission leading up to the big fight. He literally just crawls through 30/50 enemies it's insane and you wouldn't miss it lol.
@@Newby1 Oh, I really need to finish part 3 then, I only caught certain parts of it live.
That feature would have been a hilarious jab at games journalists if it wasn't sincere.
Ellie's bites really should've infected people, if we're being honest. Remember the first game where the infection detector device caught her? I'm surprised she's not breathing spores at this point.
As usual, lazy plot writing takes care of everything, Ellie was apparently kissed by a girl after said girl finished making a tattoo on her and she didn't turn so ellie figures she can't spread it anymore, which is dumb for a multitude of reasons, not least of which because the only reason the plot point was even added was because of the backlash from the trailer.
@@DigitalGame18 Lets be frank here,the entire reason why that plotpoint made it in was because otherwise it would have been hard to sell the lesbian relationship(which they failed at anyway).
Always fucking impressive how weak progressive writing turns out.
the only argument people have in favor of the fireflies is "she would have consented if she was awake" which is not a position I thought I'd see women ever defend on Instagram.
Tommy being alive after being shot in the head is definitely cheap emotional manipulation. Like, if he only got shot in the cheek, then Why didn't he immediately grab his face in pain? Instead, he laid there motionless for the rest of the scene as though he was shot in the brain. That's so misleading in an unearned, cheap way.
While I agree that the headshot is emotional manipulation, a shot to the head knocking someone out makes perfect sense as it would cause significant shock to the brain.
He gets shot in the back of the head but when we see him later he has a scar on his eye?? They’re implying that the bullet went through the back and came out right in the middle of his eye. How the fuck did he survive that? He should be braindead at the very least.
@@jonsimpson6240 also he would bleed out before he got proper help even on the off chance he survives the shot
Dinah played Arkham Knight and tried to get a multi-takedown through the skylight. Needless to say, she was no Batman.
Yeah Druckman can’t direct. The game looks tedious and the story looks like a mess of jumps in time. I don’t recall the first game having as many cuts.
I don't think it had any cuts, manly because you stayed with the same characters the entire time
The first game had its infamous timeskip cuts as well(which were rightfully criticised).
You would think they had learned from that(not that any aspect of tlou2´s design shows actual evolution...outside of graphics but considering the supposed slavery going on to achieve them even that falls flat).
The first Game was directed by two people, just like uncharted 4, the last of us 2 is directed by niel only.
Is yara loading her gun with a two handed animation when she has one arm?
"Hey Abby, how many dads do you think you've killed?" XD Fucking GOLDEN
That's "part III," right there.
Part 3, Revenge of the Dads.
I’d play it. It’s gotta be better than this shit fest… right?
There seems to be a pattern in modern day entries into long standing series: make long-standing do things they would never do, and have lots of contrivances.
1:04:45
Mauler: "We should kill Manny... he spits on good characters."
Me: "Wait. He only spat on Joel."
Mauler: "Precisely."
If watching this has conveyed anything to me, it is that the writing team at Naughty Dog's combined writing skill is that of a 3rd grader. Amy Hennig's shoes are not so easily filled.
The best part of this video is Mauler losing his shit, laughing his ass off. Great video.
Look, I understand Joel’s death. But they did him and Ellie dirty. Adding on that they tried to make Abby, the villain, sympathetic is just adding salt to the wound.
@Akrim totally agree.
It’s Shepherd killing Ghost and Roach, but Soap and Price let him get away
This entire plot COULD more or less stay the same and be made decent. But you'd need good writers to completely rework it...
No one is a hero or villain
They literally ripped off the Negan scene from Walking dead for a quick shock death. None of it was earned. Glenn and Abraham's deaths made sense, even if they were picked at random.
Ned Stark's execution made sense. We didn't switch to Joffrey's POV a week earlier and see he was really a nice kid all along.
Zemo's motivation in Civil War made sense. It's like they tried to lump all 3 of those things together into one, but somehow failed almost completely.
I will say that Joel's actual execution was fucking brutal. There's just something about that kind of killing that actually disturbs me, and I give it credit for doing that. Not even Andrew Ryan's death in Bioshock has that weight, because he's commanding you to do it. (and you pretty much want him dead anyway)
Joel death scene is brutal and would propably be fine if we weren't forced to sympathize with abby later in the game. First impressions are hard to wash off, and no matter how many zebras she and her father save is going to make the audience like her after seeing her torture Joel to death.
Bludgeoning deaths always disturb me. There's just something extremely unsettling about being beaten to death with an object, having your body being slowly obliterated internally and externally. It's an awful way to go.
7:03 "Can I play as Joel?... Nooo.... It's gonna be Abby" 😂🤣 Last of Us 2 in a nutshell
7:54 "What are the Odds of this?" Also last of us 2 in a nutshell
10:19 MauLer proceeds to pause the game for 20 seconds and sigh after Joel's likely demise. Also Last of Us 2 in a nutshell
16:54 Exploring Joel's house after death "I think this is the most I've ever been encouraged to stop playing a game in my entire life" definitely Last of Us 2 in a nutshell
Dyna and Tommy are dead, the whole ending is a dream.
That's what people deffending this game are reduced to: "it's just a dream"...
The word you're looking for is "nightmare".
40:47
MauLer: This game won't let her escape forever.
This Game: Funny you should say that because *Cut to Black*
I still kind of wished the writers explored the idea of Abby getting along with Joel at first, only to realize he killed her dad (which would have been more interesting if it was a father from the group of cannibals). Or, make it seem like Joel survived his torture by having Tommy seem to be the one who died, then reveal later on that Joel actually died and that Joel the whole time was Ellie’s mental image of him as they went out on her revenge quest. They could even use wordplay to make Ellie say, “This whole thing was for you Joel.” Play on the idea that Joel wants revenge for his brother, when it’s Ellie wanting revenge for him instead.
Shit, you should be writing this not Neil.
@Darek Baird
Thank you, I appreciate the compliment, but I should also mention that apparently a lot of people thought Joel would be dead or a ghost in this game according to other TLOUP2 videos. That’s because of the first teaser and how dark the tone seemed leading to the game’s release.
Also, the idea of Abby getting along with Joel at first isn’t my own, Mauler (and I think Angry Joe) brought it up in either EFAP 97, 98, or 99 and I thought it was a genuinely good/heartbreaking idea. To get along with the guy who killed your loved one and see the good they’ve done, is a very conflicting circumstance, and leads to many options story wise and strong character development.
10:20 You can practically feel the longman facepalming into oblivion.
Cue Tony Stark sigh
Reverse Plot armor, aka “Plot induced Stupidity”
Chronos371 AKA holding the Idiot Ball
Plot Madness? o.o
I can’t believe Mauler never addressed the fact that Neil Druckman doomed humanity in the Last of Us universe by making Ellie gay.
1:00:20
Druckman put a book by David Benioff in the game. By God. That... explains so much. It's like poetry
For someone out of the loop, what does that actually mean?
@@lukegrenfell8228 It’s a George Lucas quote look it up
47:02 Ellie acting like Joel did something unforgivable to her is the most ret*rded part of the whole thing. Yes, even worse than Joel's death. She listened to the tapes. She knows the Fireflies were going to kill her without even waking her up and asking her. But now Joel is the villain? Because he took that "choice" from her? B*tch, the Fireflies were going to take a lot more than a "choice" from you. Your "friend" Marlene was cool with making that choice FOR YOU. But Joel is the bad guy?
And the moron (Joel) just stands there and takes the abuse for years and years, never explaining or defending his position. "Ellie, you can't cure a fungal infection with a v." Roll credits.
Not to mention how those incompetent butchers (Fireflies) had no means whatsoever to mass produce and mass distribute a cure, or convince anyone to take it. Were they going to give "the cure" to the soldiers, too? And what would that magic "cure" fix, exactly? Would it make the infected revert to normal humans? No. Would it magically provide resources for all the human factions fighting for food and scraps? No. It would only protect you from the spores. Like the gas masks. "Cure for mankind," my ass.
Oh, and they even have the nerve to try to rehabilitate Marlene here, after what we heard her say in the tapes in the original game. She literally says she's exhausted and just wants it to be over. They were obsessed with a "cure" they could never produce, after experimenting on other people, to justify all the horrible stuff they had done. She literally says that.
Another thing. What does Riley tell Ellie at the end of Left Behind? "We fight for every second we get to spend with each other." Just like what Joel tells her at the end of the main game. "You keep finding something to fight for." But noooooo, now the ONLY way her life could have meaning is if the Fireflies used her like another lab rat.
Neil completely and sadistically deconstructed and destroyed every character, and made the original pointless. Sarah died for nothing. Tess died for nothing. Henry, Sam, etc. It was all for nothing.
Indeed. And yet still baffles me how people keep saying ND didn't retconned their own characters, when is clearly they did.
Abby’s dad dies for nothing too. Abby kills Joel but doesn’t even gaf about completing what her dad died trying to do. She follows Joel across the country and just kills him cause fck you. Doesn’t care about a cure or anything. She EVEN KNOWS that Ellie didn’t have a choice and was gonna get killed but is mad at Joel cause he wanted to save his surrogate daughter.
@@yung_wise5861 He dies for nothing? He was about to murder Ellie. He had been experimenting on other people. He was threatening Joel with a knife. That's not "nothing."
But yeah, the rest is accurate. Abby has no business blaming Joel for saving Ellie. And Abby was more than willing to kill and torture people along the way to get to Joel. And HE SAVES HER LIFE.
@@miller-joel from Ellie/Joel’s standpoint yeah he has a reason to get offed. From Abby’s standpoint, he died for nothing even after killing Joel because she doesn’t even care about why he died or completing his goal. She just kills Joel and leaves.
@@yung_wise5861 "part II" tries very hard to paint Joel and Ellie as the bad guys, Abby as the victim, and say "see? There's another side." And it fails miserably, because Joel and Ellie are not the bad guys, and "the other side" is a sociopathic killer.
That moment mauler went silent after the first club swing, priceless
Long Highlight Man good.
This game taught me that even when women are on murderous rampages, they are still indecisive. What a great life lesson.
"written by David benioff" I feel like one of the animators wanted to warn us there xD
I was playing and looking to find that Easter egg and I didn’t know i had to zoom in that book as Abby.
Mauler makes the best villain monologues 42:45
Furry?
@@questioneverything6667 Yes
@@Karter_Blackpaw same uwu
🤢🤢🤮🤮
40:23 Norah's model literally glides outside the door through walls and doorways in 2x the speed so we the players cant catch up to her.
Meanwhile in RDR2, we can literally catch a little basterd and cut the whole 5 min scripted chase mission if we close enough to grab him.
I still cannot believe there are people who think this was a good story with good gameplay....
Oh wait, People love TLJ and TROS and GOT season 8.... Of course I can believe it... ^.-.^
Fat Geralt is turning in his grave.
I would like to point out that Joel died with an "open mind."
1:29:49 Must've been the wind.
Please...stop...
@@speedyacorn2520 I didn't say it, Troy did.
"I think I'm hitting her!"
Abby: Stop killing your imaginary friends!
1:55:47 can we appreciate how HARD fat geralt just goes IN for that punch. he knocked the sense out of lev, he made lev do a SPIN,
I hope all the "He saved a Zebra" moments are in there !
And they were