Joel Did Nothing Wrong - The Importance Of Ambiguity
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ส.ค. 2024
- Sometimes the questions you ask in a story are more important than the answers, and sometimes a character's actions are neither right nor wrong. In this video, I want to take a look at the value of ambiguity in storytelling, and some examples of where it's been done well.
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No
Ok
If someone is trying to kill you or someone else you have the right to defend yourself or them, even a 3rd party does. If it wasn't moral or leagl there would be no justification for the justice system.
How many of you guys want to see the Drinker do Anime Reviews and Which Anime do you want to see the Drinker review?
Just finished your first book. Great story, and the mystery of Anna had me guessing throughout! Looking forward to starting book 2.
"Sometimes you can make no mistakes and still lose. That's not weakness, that is life." A lesson that people need in this day and age.
Funny how I have just read a post on reddit stating this exact quote, about the collapse of Nokia, a mobile phone titan. Something about Nokia refusing to adapt to a more "modern" aproach, refused to take risks because they fear that would end up in failure, ended up dying anyway.
That's when cheating becomes the winning option.
@@gyrozeppeli00 Nokia's real reason for collapsing was hiring a Microsoft executive to run their company, who immediately cancelled their new OS (Meego) before the first (and critically lauded) model running it, the Nokia N9, was even released. Said executive then had them go basically all-in on Windows Phone as OS, which ended up with Nokia as a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Seriously, check out the reviews for the N9, its Meego OS and its, at the time, revolutionary swipe-based GUI. The only reason reviewers gave for not buying it was that the ecosystem was killed off before launch.
Picard?
Sometimes you can make all mistakes and still win. That's neither strenght nor capability, that's Kathleen Kennedy´s whole life.
IGN Japan put it best: "It's a story about right and wrong told by people who think they're always right"
Based
DAMN
Welcome to Western ‘woke’ culture, my Asian friends!
Good one!
Amazing line
Honestly, the fire flies really gave Joel every reason to turn on them. They attacked him twice both when he was saving Ellie’s life and secondly, when he was trying to get out of the bed, they also asked Marlene to just kill Joel while he was sleeping. This meant that they were never going to give him his supplies or his reward for delivering Ellie and while he was being marched out by that fire fly, he never got the opportunity to grab his backpack, which had a supplies and weapons in it, implying heavily than the best case scenario, he was being robbed, and sent out into the world without anything to protect himself, and worst case he was being marched out somewhere to be killed quietly they also never woke Ellie up from her near death experience meaning that they never asked for her consent in the situation, and even if they did would a 14-year-old kid who has gone under a years worth of stress and pain and loss really be able to consent properly to having her life taken away for the greater good
That's a really good point. In retrospect it makes his decision to kill Marleen that much more sad. It seems like she was the only one who really sympathized with him and gave him a chance. You get to see what makes her a charismatic trustworthy leader in the midst of a paranoid desperate militia, and how they disband without her.
“For the greater good” is the biggest reason people commit atrocious things. Ellie wasn’t gonna die for the greater good, most likely. The game alludes to the idea that many people went under the same experiment and died in the process. With out success. If Ellie’s death would be for the greater good, then so was Sarah’s. The most optimal way to control the spread would be to kill incalculable numbers of people. That being said, I think another reason Joel was right was because he was give absolutely no choice. He was likely going to be robbed of his payout, his newfound happiness and daughter, and possibly even his own life all at once.
@@Crazyperson04 To add to this, tlou2 shows the doctor is a vet so likely even less chance he could pull off a cure.
Not to mention the cure wouldn't necessarily have done that much. All it would really do is replace the need for masks and only until the fungus mutates to be immune to the cure. Even in the magical scenario it ended the infection globally somehow, things wont just go back to how they were 2 decades prior, infected were not even the most significant threat in the game for a reason.
@@Sam-vp3pw True, it would probably take over a century for things to be relatively normal again. Wiping out raiders would be the hardest part
@@Sam-vp3pw Very true, plus we don't even have a single working fungal vaccine today, in 2023. The likelihood of some unqualified dude with no materials, no equipment and no staff would be able to produce a fungal vaccine is laughable to begin with, and even more so after we find the recordings that more or less confirm they'd already tried. Ellie would've died for nothing.
I don’t think anyone with a child could ever question Joel for a second regarding his choice with Ellie.
As a father myself, he did what any father would in my opinion.
Wasn’t his child though
@@123ShadowMario Aren’t you a funny little smartass.
Got some more good anecdotes, even though you got the point for sure?
@@123ShadowMario Not a biological child, but adopted children exist, and they are no less than biological children.
100%. An obvious choice for a dad.
The problem I have with Joel is not that he saves her, it is why. The game makes it clear that Joel has done horrible, perhaps monstrous things to survive. Tommy talks about having nightmares about what Joel did and made him do to survive. I find it hard to believe that killing or allowing kids to be killed was beneath him. Ellie becomes a surrogate for his actual daughter, Sarah, who dies in the prologue. While I believe he loves Ellie, and genuinely wants to protect her, it is also pretty clear that Ellie would have been willing to sacrifice herself for a cure. She almost says as much before they get to the fireflies. Joel's ultimate motive is selfish. He wants to protect Ellie who he sees as a replacement for his daughter that he could not save even though he is pretty sure she would consent. Joel is also clearly a bloodthirsty person. This is made apparent from the information about his past and what he has done. The most clever way this is shown is in the scene you actually rescue Ellie. It is not necessary to kill the doctors. The game will allow you to jus take her. Most players kill the doctors because at this point in the game, anyone who is not an ally is presented as an enemy to be killed, perfectly displaying Joel's mindset AND the basic flaw in it.
For me, The Last of Us was a story about finding a way to save the human race, but by the end of your journey, you realize there's nothing left to save. In the end, Joel must choose between preserving his humanity or simply preserving human existence, making the point the latter isn't worth saving without the former.
How did everyone forget the evidence you find in the hospital that confirms they have done this to several others and had no viable results? Drinker doesn't even bring that up either.
@@thedreamer6930 It was removed in the remake so from a story perspective that piece of lore is not canon anymore. I personally think this was the right decision to make as it changes things from Joel was 100% right and Ellie would had died for nothing to a more ambiguous and complex problem. It also shows that the game developers from the first game cared a lot more compared to the sequel.
"what is the point of saving humanity if we lose ours in the process?"
@@thedreamer6930 I've never heard that before, and I've played through the game an embarrassingly high number of times. I can't find proof of it though.
no bro revenge bad bro
He did save the world in the first game. Ellie was his world.
*Cries uncontrollably.
A world without Ellie is a world not worth living in. Then that world decides to off him with a golf club.. sigh....
@@dm3402 just makes you think the huge difference in quality the writting team had between the first and second one. So much so that TLOU became a Netflix teen drama and just bringing the point of "I think the writing was bad" causes an endless civil war between people who loved it and people who disliked it.
OK that hurt
@@dm3402 yeah its almost like he's a killer in a world of killers
@@joaquincasascortes624 why would they make the last of us part 2 a TV show before the first? Do you hear yourself? Should they start the Uncharted movies with uncharted 4?
We all forget that for all their talk about "the greater good" and "what Ellie would want," the Fireflies never actually asked Ellie what she wanted to do. Whatever you think that Ellie would want is irrelevant if you don't have the spine to be honest with her.
And even if they did, it's important that she's a child. Does a child really have the mental capacity to rationally consent to such a decision?
Also the cure was not a cure. At best it would be a vaccine for those few humans who were still uninfected. And we have to believe they could produce this vaccine with old dilapidated equipment and then somehow mass produce it and some how get it to all the fractured groups of people throughout the world. It's crazy far fetched.
Even worse, why do a surgery that will kill her instead of studying the fungus that makes her immune while she's alive? Or allowing her to reproduce and see if her kids are also immune? If she's dead that's it. If the surgery didn't work she died for nothing. There are no other immune people and you lose your last hope.
And they could've done it in a way that _doesn't_ kill the golden goose.
@@hellacoorinna9995 Well that would kind of ruin the tension now wouldn't it xD
A VERY important note about this situation is that there no guarantee that killing Ellie would’ve actually yielded a cure. They simply were going through a trial and error process
But when you point that out, you’re either “praising the villain” or people flat out denying the evidence in game that shows the cure is not guaranteed and Ellie could die for nothing
There is never going to be a guarantee for anything, but from what the game gave us, all the doctors and information we are given says that it's very likely they could of made a cure from Ellie's brain sample. Saying "well there is no guarantee!" is something fans say to cope with Joel's decision and try to find an easy way out of the moral dilemma between sacrificing Ellie and saving humanity from extinction.
@@danielshepard1449 Humanity cannot be saved in the Last of Us scenario. Even when we hypothesize the best-case scenario where the cure somehow destroys the zombies as well, that will not stop humans from still killing each other and the peaceful world before the outbreak will never come back.
@@legionreaver LOL wtf
@@imlivingunderyourbed7845This is some real comic book villain Thanos type logic. "Humanity cannot be saved, so we will just let millions of people die and doom them to extinction without a vaccine."
His only mistake was to save Abby's life.
A mistake Ellie SHOULD have corrected, permanently.
Nah all Ellie needed was a flashback of seeing Joel playing a guitar to calm her down... after losing her fingers and loved ones.
Oh and Abby getting away because she couldn’t make up own mind.
@@RogueFox2185 dumb writing
@A Light Skin With Taste See, it's not even impossible to do a story about the danger of revenge. God of War, Red Dead Redemption and Afro Samurai are good examples. The thing is, we don't even get any Fucking revenge.
john fkng marston finshed the job like man
So as kratos
So as cap price
Ellie is coward and... Many things
Being willing to sacrifice the entirety of humanity for your baby girl is the definition of being a father.
Hell Yeah!
It is not like other people would let you choose anyway
It seems like the cure wouldn't be a sure thing not to mention there's no infrastructure to deliver and manufacture such a cure. Joel made the best choice given the options. Also i can't imagine any adult willing to put a child in harms way like that.
Asura appreciates this comment
#DaughtersLivesMatter
The sad thing is that the first game and the DLC show Ellie probably would have consented to the surgery for all the WRONG reasons. Marlene knew her mother and acted as a surrogate guardian, she felt intense survivor's guilt over Riley, she asks Joel something akin to "I need my immunity to mean something" after Sam and Henry die, all the deaths (Rileh, Tess, Sam, Henry) impact her and she is almost killed (and worse) by David. She was too young, too naive and traumatised to make a decision.
What? "Ellie would have consented to the surgery, for all the wrong reasons, like having empathy for her friends" is a wild take to have. "She was too young to make a decision" is a hilarious excuse for Joel's actions. Why did Joel get to make the decision for her and not the fireflies then? If Joel actually cared about what Ellie wanted, he wouldn't of immediately lied to her about what happened.
@@danielshepard1449 The Fireflies were a dangerous incompetent militia that butchered every immune person they had their hands on before. They knocked out Joel (understandable due to the situation but still not gonna win any points with him), denied him the weapons he was promised for the long trek to return Ellie, prevented him from seeing Ellie and marched him out at gunpoint to presumably kill him. The dilemma at the end fails when you realise there was no way the cure would both happen and be distributed by these chuckleheads. Joel was justified.
@@danielshepard1449 No. I believe ellie would agree to save the world, but at that time she would have agreed for the wrong reasons. Feeling guilty about Riley and all of deaths in her life It's not "caring about her friends" It's survivor's guilt and this is not okay. Even in Tlou2 she says to Joel her life would have had any value like she doesn't see the importance of her life +just reinforces the Idea that she would sacrifice herself for the wrong perspective. It's the same thing asking to a suicidal If they wanna sacrifice themselves for someone, of course they would. This is not trying to justify Joel's actions (even If I totally understand him) but It's just facts. It's not about age, but she wasn't in her right mind to make this decision and she have never been, honestly.
@@princeali4157 ur spreadin misinformation here, the fireflies never met other immune people you silly little acorn, that recording you find in the first game reveals the tried to experiment on INFECTED people, not IMMUNE like ellie, ellie is the only person we know of that is immune.
@@danielshepard1449 you seriously think trusting the fucking fireflys would be the right move?
At least with Joel he actually loves her, and did what he did to save her no matter how bad it was.
And you think the right decisions was to have a fucking CHILD sacrifice their life in ATTEMPT to make a cure that was said to NOT be garrenteed to work at all, for the sake of (again, try)saving the world that is beyond saving?
Yeah you have fucked up logic buddy.
I love the whole “Joel doomed the rest of humanity” thing. Yeah, look at what happened when Joel needed humanity the most in his life. It took a daughter from him, so he’ll be damned if he’ll let it happen again.
people also assume the development of the vaccine would have undoubtedly been successful. imagine it only worked for some, or not at all? id certainly have my doubts about such a monumental task turning out successful in a post apocalyptic world.
Joel 'dooming humanity' is literally contradicted by Part 2, because Jackson and even the WLF were thriving despite there not being a cure. There was no indication whatsoever that the world was doomed. Only a faction war that made very little sense anyway.
@@TukenNuken Wdym? Humanity is doomed. There’s an ever evolving fungus that’s easily able to enter humans and kill them in minutes. Billions of people have died from the virus and all governments have fallen. The only thing left are organizations with thousands of people. There are TH-cam channels with more people following them than people who exist in these groups
@@Dashinvader At it's lowest point in hunter-gatherer times human population dropped to somewhere between 1000 - 10000 and still managed to repopulate the earth in very harsh conditions with very primitive technology, so population size and lack of government is not an issue. We also have no reason to believe the population is that low, there could easily be millions of people still alive in North America alone. The fact that Jackson and WLF has not only survived 25 years into the apocalypse but grew considerably, as well as the fact they find their lives easy enough to go to war with other factions or dedicate incredibly valuable resources for revenge quests clearly show they aren't particularly pressed by the infected.
The only true existential risk is the fungus mutating to infect other animals (which could have been an amazing sequel).
Also, part of the point is that even if humanity was doomed, it would not be Joel's fault, but the Fireflies', whose incompetence and lack of ethics caused that entire situation.
I liked this comment because your profile pic is Hell on Earth.
Correct me if I'm wrong, because this is something few people ever bring up, but Ellie wasn't the 1st person to be Immune, and they actually killed several people trying to Make a cure, so there was no guarantee sacrificing Ellie would even work in the 1st place.
That actually puts Joel's actions in a more positive light.
He Always was right
Yes in the first game you can find audio logs in the hospital from doctor's that say that they have killed many people like Ellie but every time it ended with nothing the where desperate so that is why they wanted to cut out Ellie's brain.
I honestly never found that audio log
And it's tiny micro details like this people overlooked in the game that would've painted a clearer picture.
I never found those audio logs either. Only the ones where the leader is fucking desperate. Maybe I have to replay it.
The Last of Us was truly a great game, too bad they didn't make a sequel.
I heard somebody got enough money to make their fanfiction into a game and called it the sequel. How they weren't struck for copyright infringement I'll never know.
Idk man, sequels don't always live up to the original. I think we're just fine with out a sequel.
@@onyxrose4349 me either. They must have robbed a bunch of people to get that money
True
I think there's a golfing simulator out there that might spur some memories...
I'm no doctor or scientist or prospective MENSA applicant but I'm pretty sure scanning and observing the affected brain tissue while the host is still living would yield better results in determining exactly what's going on as opposed to ya know digging out a chunk of brain from whom could potentially be the only immune human on the planet, having a good stare at it and coming to the conclusion of "yep! that's not normal! just as I suspected!" which was pretty much the extent of the Fireflies plans.
They didn't know what they were doing and there's a pretty good chance Ellie isn't the only one who's immune.
Its just that in the world of The Last Of Us folks die more often from gunshots; self inflicted or otherwise.
Joel made the right call.
Abbys Dad has to be given a lot of slack to assume he even knew what he was doing at all. It was a shot in the dark, and the truth is if the guy promised a 1% chance of saving humanity in exchange for her, the Fireflies would have been totally OK with that. They'd sacrificed so much it was small potatoes to kill one little girl. I'm sure a lot of 'the many' would also agree, great odds to save the world.
Putting aside that 1% is generous. That a freezer could fail and the work could be ruined. That 'the few' have every right to resist being killed. Just because you're the majority or believe you act in their interests doesn't mean people won't fight back. It's not evil to defend yourself and those you love. What Joel did wasn't evil. He didn't do it for himself.
I love how Joel lies in the end. And she knows, or seems to, but she accepts it. Love is a fickle and ambitious concept. Hopefully everyone finds their own love!
Ellie: wakes up in the back of a moving car in nothing but a medical gown.
Joel, covered in bloodspatter and reeking of gunpowder: "Oh, yeah, they've totally given up on making a vaccine. They said they don't even need you."
Ellie: "Yeeaaaah. . . ."
He wasn't even prepared to lie lol
I mean it's pretty clear from the ending of the first game that Ellie knows he's lying, but she accepts the lie because she begins to come to the realization that ultimately, it doesn't matter. She has a chance at life with Joel and the other survivors, which is what matters more
@@kimmeeb and the sequel ruin it
@@kimmeeb I think it''s more that she realizes the fireflies never told her that they were going to kill her to try and make a cure.
Ellie: Wakes up in the back of a moving car in nothing bud a medical gown.
"Hey you, you're finally awake."
Joel:
“Hey, I saved your life!”
Ellie:
“You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death!”
(Thanks for the +3 thousand likes!
Also, Naoko is insane. Don’t provoke them, they’re clearly still a child learning about how the real world works.)
Ellie is a Krieg guardsman? Oo
@@thedragon133 The Incredibles...
Bruh,Ellie would die in vain.....
Change my mind
Joel has been outed, forced to live his life as his alter-ego and go into a government protection programme.
Seriously. :)
I always stuck with what Marlene herself said to Joel in the hospital, “COULD produce a vaccine.” I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not going let go of someone I love over a slim chance of an outcome. Vaccines are never guaranteed to even work.
I can’t imagine losing everything and everyone I’ve come to know and love. Joel developed this feeling for Ellie that he hasn’t felt in 2 decades and he is absolutely not going to let anyone take it from him again.
Albeit, selfish in its own aspect; Joel is completely justified for his actions. I wish they would’ve made Ellie realize why Joel did what he did but instead they made her resent him and painted him to be a bad person outright.
Fungal vaccines are also currently impossible to create, imagine trying to do so 20 years after the catastrophic collapse of society.
@@jacklang3314 They already killed many other immune children and failed. Not to mention who said they'd share a cure if they had one.
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 Yeah, I did remember that.
Vaccines don’t work on Fungus, plus if everyone’s infected it’s not gonna do shit, plus Ellie has a different strain of Cordyceps so her immunity means nothing to anyone else, Joel made the morally correct decision.
Vaccines work very well.
What's wrong with the story is that it is dealing with fungi, not viruses. Anti fungals would work very well in a fungi outbreak. It acts nothing like a virus.
What Joel did was a callout of lack of knowledge. Either way, he made the right choice. Ellie was young and unconscious.
Just putting this here as an added note. I met Troy Baker (Joel's VA) and he, as Joel, said, "I'd do it all over again." Honesly made me tear up. I don't care that it's just a story because "in the end, we're all stories."
He’s just the voice. He did a phenomenal job voicing Joel. The writers on the other hand, not so much with part 2.
@@co7769 your loss
@JadedJester doesn’t sound like I’m the one who has to cope. You’re welcome to explain how they act out of character.
@@user-jt1js5mr3f and the loss of MILLIONS OF OTHERS including myself. I'm not a fan of being lied to in trailers and watching my favorite character to be made into a weak dumbass in the prolonged and then have the pleasure of spending 10 hours playing as someone I want to see impaled. Big F for neil
@@robogreek3157 age nerfs us all. Get over it.
The moral of the story is "revenge bad" even though Ellie genocides everyone. EXCEPT the girl (lol) who murdered Joel.
Even worse is that aside from Abby and Lev, nobody gets a semi-happy ending either.
Thanks Neil for subverting our expectations and making us hate you more than we could with Rian Johnson.
Whoops! At least the game makes you hate playing it, right?
Prolly cuz she left her the two "most useful" fingers
Break the cycle of violence, that's the growth
That's not the moral for fuck sake is not a children's book
She killed everyone in self defense, the game clearly showed that
The truest and greatest line ever spoken by Picard, or anyone in Star Trek. "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."
There was a really great episode where they found a bunch of rich people frozen in space . "We live to better ourselves". I based my life on that .
@@peacefulscrimp5183 I remember that episode. I remember the businessman they saved, who they treated as a monster the whole time, saving them because he understood the mindset they were dealing with. I remember him coming off as the more reasonable one, in that he didn't understand Picard and company, but he didn't take them to task over it. At the end, Picard was shown to have the maturity to realize he'd been the one acting the fool, though it didn't change his convictions. I really like the writing done there, and miss that quality of storytelling in media.
I actually added this to my collection of good quotes. I really like this one, because it's simply an undeniable truth.
People seem to forget that the fireflies never asked if they could take Ellie’s life for the hope of a cure. They essentially kidnapped her and were going to murder her, but we gloss over that fact to proclaim Joel was the bad guy.
The one good thing from tlou2 is that line joel says at the end: "I would do it all over again". Idk if they thought that line would demonize him or what, but for me it made him the only consistent character in that fanfic
Played the whole game mad, when I saw that scene I broke down crying
Are you seriously suggesting that the writers put that line in there to make people MAD at Joel???
I seriously don’t know what to say anymore. TLOU2 haters are just fucking delusional, dude. Did you stop to consider that MAYBE the game wasn’t actually saying that what Joel did was right or wrong?
I mean, except for lying to Ellie afterwards. Repeatedly. That part was wrong.
@@meh23p I don’t think it was meant to demonize him, I think it was a way of showing that even though everyone was angry at him, or hated him, none of that mattered to him because he loved Ellie, and would make that choice again in a heartbeat
@@alexthegamer8433 Yeah, and specifically Ellie. She was sad because she couldn’t find meaning in her life and angry because he had lied for so long and delayed her dealing with it. I think when he finally says out loud that he’d save her life all over again, she’s actually extremely touched because Joel so rarely, if ever, tells her how he feels, and that is as close as it gets to him saying “I love you and you deserve life because you are valuable in and of yourself”. And I also like that for the first time she’s honest with him about how hurt she feels, but that she would still like to rebuild their relationship. Truly a heartbreaking scene.
@@meh23p I seriously can’t understand why TLOU2 gets as much hate as it has. I think people freaked out when the story was leaked, hated it, and then refused to open themselves up to it when they played it. IF they actually played it. Also I’m sure a good dose of homophobia/transphobia has something to do with it.
People who condemn Joel's choice always conveniently forget that Ellie was unconscious and couldn't consent to the surgery the fireflies were going to put her through. She had zero idea she would die if they got the cure from her, if she had said yes and Joel killed the fireflies the 2nd game would be justified in condemning him from taking away her choice, but she didn't.
Also it's so annoying how they go out of their way to make the Fireflies look like humanities only hope. They were insanely incompetent in the first game, creating a cure came off more like wishful thinking from a group of idiots then an absolute guarantee.
Yeah the cure for the fireflies seemed more like a power play they needed against fedra then anything regarding saving humanity
It's pretty heavily implied that their kill ellie cure had almost no chance of working anyway
Like I said above.. a doctor doesn’t kill a healthy patient even though he could save 6 people with the organs.. this is similar individualism vs collectivism
@@ettoreozzy9932 immagine them saying they had a cure(or at least something that makes them immune) that would make everything tip in their favor. It does not even need to be true.
but wouldn’t that in of itself be ambiguity and raise question to discuss.
are the fireflies skilled/organised enough to distribute a cure. would they distribute a cure. would the use it for a power play. would getting the cure be successful. would it even work.
all of that is ambiguity and another factor to consider when determining what you would do and what kind of man Joel is.
Best quote I‘ve heard was “tlou2 is like a fan fiction written by somebody who utterly hated the first game“
Neil Druckman is drinking your tears.
@not kevin ouchhh that hurt me good lol. Cry me a river.
@not kevin real question is you? This game def got you in your feelings since daddy Joel got clubbed.
@not kevin using the same boring insult. Ik you can do better.
@@everettenjeze6276 both of you need to go take a shower and go outside
When I was a kid, I hated the ending. I felt robbed of the choice to save humanity. Now that I am a father, I wouldn't have it any other way.
the game is 6 years old what are you, a weird cryptid?
@@MrOneil76 it released in 2013, that was 10 years ago
@@MrOneil76 how is it worse?
Joel does not find out at the climax of the story ( 3:03 ), the story is about him knowing about Ellie’s immunity the whole time, but growing to rethink his values once he finds out her life would most likely be lost just like number of others whose immunity was “studied” prior to Ellie.
*Revenge is bad.* BUT, killing hundreds of people on your way to get your revenge is absolutely acceptable. As long as you don't get your revenge.
*credit rolls*
Not the message
@Egg Not the INTENDED message.
Of course, as white heterosexual males who made games over the past few decades have found out what you intentions were are irrelevant. Whats relevant is only what a bunch of agitated people can read into THINK your intentions were.
Lol exactly. Dumb as hell this game.
yeah let's just cut out all the gameplay
its how we do it when we let our emotions control us, but in the end when ellie saw abby all fucked up, she had some sort of empathy towards her, ellie stopped hunting for abby for a while til she cant sleep because of it, she met abby once again all fucked up, maybe its about "karma is a bitch" not "revenge is a fool's game"
"Played college golf, you know. Could have gone if I hadn't transitioned"
Senator Abby Armstrong
"You can't hurt me, Joel!"
ROFL
I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE
God I love Senator Armstrong. He is unironically the best.
Nano-tranmachines, old man! They harden in response to revenge and golf clubs!
He was a man put in an impossible situation. I remember the feeling of beating the game the first time: I had won, and I got what I wanted, but there was an empty feeling of all the desolation I'd caused in achieving it. It was a pyrrhic victory, but Ellie was there with me, and that was all that mattered.
Tell that to the millions you let die
One thing that not a lot of people realize is that if Joel actually sacrificed Ellie, the Fireflies would most likely create like a dictatorship of some kind, and they alone ruled the world, which would cause insanely catastrophic problems, becuase the Fireflies are unstable af. If anything, Joel actually did humanity a favor.
Not to mention a vaccine isn't going to cure a fungal infection, it's the equivalent of using water stream from a fire hose to stop a tank.
So in addition to being incredibly unstable, they're also really retarded.
Well if they managed to get the cure - they're too incompetent to keep it secret and secured. Everyone would've had it probably
Wow yep never rlly realized this
Knowing Joel, he would've considered helping the fireflies take Ellie in the proposal if he knew the fireflies were genuinely good people. There is a reason that Tommy left.
You act like the fireflies could have actually developed a cure, rather than pointlessly butcher a child.
Lying to Ellie was wrong. Not that it really matters because she knew it was a lie anyway despite what Neil Druckmann's disaster retcon says.
You could tell she knew in the First game....
You Always Could tell
@@baohweeb6935 It's in the way she says okay. During the entire game every time Joel tried to lie to her she saw right through it.
@@baohweeb6935 she knew he was lying about something. But it's difficult to prove if she suspected in the firefly deaths.
@@NobleRenegade7 probably did
But Neil didn't retcon it though. It was evident in the first scene (guitar scene) in TLOU 2 when they were back in Jackson that Ellie and Joel had an awkward rift because Ellie always knew that Joel was lying to her.
The Fireflies were portrayed as complete assholes in the first game. Joel's whole mission was to travel across the country and deliver Ellie to them on a silver platter.
What he gets when he arrives is he gets knocked upside the head unconscious while defenseless and trying to save Ellie's life, Ellie gets forcefully taken from him, Joel get told he isn't allowed to talk to her or say goodbye, and gets escorted out via gunpoint without even getting a payment of some sort. Nobody tried talking to Ellie either to see what her final thoughts or words were, they drugged her while she was still unconscious and prepared her immediately for the surgery.
The Fireflies were hyped up to be this special group trying to save humanity, but the way they treated Joel proved they were just assholes like all the other groups he encountered though his journey.
In Part 2 they wanted to portray Joel as this evil monster that screwed humanity, and it was just awfully done.
IMO Joel was actually justified in what he did.
Exactly!!! All clues point to these guys being batsh*t crazy and killing anybody they suspect of being immune, there’s audio evidence that the surgeries aren’t successful and wouldn’t work. They’re just desperate people grabbing at straws to justify their actions. Like everybody else!
Completely agree and to further your point were they just gonna hand everyone the cure or would they use it to control the people? Does anyone else realize they could basically enslave anyone who wants the cure?
@@luisfuentes3846 There's not audio evidence, that's false, but fireflies wanted more power to be the leaders I guess; having the cure on their side would have made them the most important group
Well said man. Did these idiots who defend 2 not actually play 1 lol? What choice did Joel or Ellie have?
Go ahead and take away my kid or my surrogate kid and tell me we're killing them for a "possible" cure and you can't say goodbye.
Fuck off. I would have been right next to Joel shotgun in hand mowing fuckers down
@@zerot480 You can find audios in the first hospital in Salt Lake city stating that the surgerys failed lol
If you have kids, it's simple... you protect them (at all costs). The end of TLOU was Joel's character arc PEAK. He suffered UNBEARABLE loss in the beginning, came across Elle, and with time found someone to "father." He found purpose. There was ZERO guarantee for a cure, and like I said... MOST parents out there would say what Joel said, "FIND SOMEONE ELSE." No, Joel did nothing wrong. Should he have told Elle right after? Why? Why give her that guilt and possible resentment. Shes alive.
Joel didn't just lie to ellie though, he took her choice away from her as surely as the Fireflies did. The Fireflies wanted to sacrifice her, Joel wanted her to live, neither asked Ellie what she wanted to do. She went under thinking she was going to save the world all by herself, and she very well could have. But by the time she was awake, her foster father had just murdered a village's worth of people AND what the story frames constantly as the last, best hope for humanity and he just tells her "eh, on second thought, you were never gonna save the world. Actually, you and people like you are a dime a dozen, so I just took you and left."
Joel is a great character, its a wonderful gutwrenching scene. As you said, it is peak Joel. But let's not pretend that Joel was being a good person or father. Pushing Ellie out of the way of a moving car is heroic and selfless. Doing what he did is not, and the game goes to great lengths to tell you that.
@@jolt187 How could Joel have taken away her choice if she was already unconscious by the time the idea of killing her was even mentioned?
@@basilcook4280 There is certainly a world where he rescues her without murdering the entire hospital and at *least* the room of unarmed doctors, who were the only people able to perform the procedure. So when he domed him while he begged for his life, that’s how he took Ellie’s choice.
@@jolt187hank god everyone forgot about this shit show so media with good fucking writing can take center stage unfortunately I can’t believe I’m gonna have to watch all this garbage transpire in TV
@@basilcook4280 Killing Marlene, killing the doctors, not telling her (so she could go back by her own) made his choices selfish and taking away her choice. His decisions are understandable, but ultimately selfish.
Also, even then, the story is not only about the choices, but about the consequences as well.
Even if you agree with his choice given the circumstances (as I do), you have to accept that other people will have their say about his actions, most importantly Ellie. Being lied to have it's consequences on trust, and there's a process to make sense of the complexity of Joel's decision when Ellie finds out. We discover that she was willing to work it out with him, and that is the greatest gut wrenching discovery at the end of the second part.
Druckman took such a heaping shit on Joel. I'm still not over it.
Me either
You do know Troy baker doesn't even like Joel
@@SICPARVISMAGNA3018 I could care less, still was shitty writing and even shittier execution how he was killed. Made no sense in terms of consistency of character
"I swear."
"OK."
One of my favorite endings, not just in gaming, but in all of fiction. The juxtaposition of the simplicity of the interaction and the complexity of everything behind the action is just incredible. ANYTHING which resolved the ambiguity was ALWAYS going to lessen it.
Yeah, that was so powerful, how you can tell that she CHOOSES to believe his lie, for his sake. She was the one who told him that if he wasn't around she would not be more safe, she would only be more scared. She had to overcome him trying to get rid of her, so she more than anyone could understand him not wanting to lose her. Because she was already there. She didn't want to lose him.
Even though she said she was waiting to die, Joel said that you find things to live for. I'm sure he wanted to die when his daughter did. But he chose to live, even if it meant bad things. And by accepting Joel's lie at the end, Ellie shows that she has begun to understand. She was willing to die, but because Joel needs her to live, she will live for him. And that's beautiful.
some people enjoy ruining things for others, not everyone is on the same page, people will have conflicting views and interest, what one person finds good another person will despise.
They could've made The Last of Us an anthology series focusing on the stories of a new group of survivors in every game.
Instead we got a Joel in One.
totally agree
I groaned when I heard that a sequel was being made, for the reasons you give. As time went on I almost came round to the idea (think I was just won over by the idea of playing more Last of Us rather than story points), but then the leaks came, the game dropped, and although I refuse to ever play that sequel I feel like just KNOWING what happens spoils the first game for me. I adored the first one and now I doubt I'll ever play it again.
What TLOU fails to hammer home to the player in any meaningful way is that the Fireflies are terrorist, as if the game somehow forgot that part of the lore. Hypothetically if they were able to derive some form of cure to the fungus then they would have just used it for their own means under the guise of self righteousness, that they think they're the saviors of mankind.
But what the game also shows, almost ironically, and what TLOU2 definitely pretends never happened, was that the Fireflies were NOT a well put together organization. They constantly fight with what's left of the military and constantly lose people and resources, turning to private individuals to get them to run missions for them; ie Joel and Tess. They also can't seem to maintain any sort of base for an extended period of time, either being taken out by infected, raiders, or their own incompetence; the base at the college mid game where one of the doctors released a whole group of infected monkeys from their cages and got bit himself, nice job genius.
Then the fact that Marliene told Joel that she had lost half her people just trying to make it across the country; HALF! I don't know what kind of operation these people think they're running, but everything in the game is telling us that the Fireflies in no way shape or form are competent enough to survive this world, let alone save it. Which brings us to the ending contrivance of apparently the one doctor man in the whole end of the world who can apparently find the cure to save all of mankind, and his first action is the kill the only immune subject they know about? No test? No blood work? Nothing? Just straight to cutting her brain open to just look at it? Real geniuses working for the Fireflies.
In conclusion, Joel did nothing wrong, not only for being a father choosing to save the life of his daughter, but because the game ironically justifies his actions in almost every way possible by the end sequence by showing that the Fireflies, the "saviours" of mankind, have absolutely no idea what the hell they are doing, and were probably gonna get themselves killed off in a month or two anyway. Oh not to mention that they didn't even pay Joel for his work and were going to walk him out of the hospital at gunpoint without his equipment, without his payment, and without his daughter; yeah no, fuck that noise.
And they were going to kill Joel while dissecting Ellie anyway, like a wounded dog being taken out behind the shed.
Absolutely correct. They wind up dead at every turn in the first game and now they are somehow competent enough to cure mankind?
The Fireflies were nothing more than a well-armed cult who believed a particular human sacrifice would save the world. When that didn't work they just would have found some other little girl to kill. Seriously, they come off like a barbaric tribe that must kill a virgin girl every so often to appease their gods.
They also forgot that the government or military still existed, we know from the first game that they are still working and have resources
yeah I'mma be honest if their security is bad enough that their entire main base can be exterminated by a guy they already disarmed who single-handedly overcomes all of their troops through a series of hallways... I'm kinda thinking their chances of surviving long enough to distribute their anti-fungus vaccine (???????) are slim at best.
My biggest problem with this game is that there was massive retcon that drives the whole plot of TLOU2. Ellie at no point in the first says "I want to die for humanity" in fact she was talking about what her and Joel were gonna do after this was all over. Yet in the second game Ellie is now super vocal about wanting to die for the greater good. You cannot rewrite the first game to fit the narrative of the second that isn't how sequels work.
Exactly, and you think after seeing your best friend die for lowering your guard you won't just smoke weed and have sex while on patrol duty...
I don't think it's ambiguous at all when you think about what the Fireflies are doing, or rather what they aren't doing. Why is fatal brain surgery step 1? They have no reason to assume that they need her brain removed. There should be about a thousand tests, experiments, and exploratory surgeries before resorting to a 1 and done last resort. The Fireflies were simply too incompetent to be trusted with this task.
Exactly
If druckmann left this series alone everyone would still think he's a brilliant writer. Now everyone knows he was just piggybacking on Bruce Straley's and Amy Hennig's work
Druckmann was the sole writer for TLOU. Not making excuses for the guy but get your facts right. There's nothing wrong with his skill. Hes quite talented. But unfortunately he allows social politics to imprint on his work too often. But Part 2s biggest problem was that the game was in essence a generic revenge plot. It just felt so uninspired when you think about all the amazing things he could've done with the world he built and instead settled for less.
He may have been sole writer, but was still hold back by Straley. Druck wanted to make TLOU 1 about revenge, but he wasn't allowed. When Bruce was out, he went all in and lost
@@thomaslombard8058 It was shit. Plain and simple.
I'm willing to believe that Neil Druckmann can be both a talented writer, and yet also capable of writing contrived garbage--He wouldn't be the first such.
I think the main issue with TLOU2 is that a fundamentally simple yet deeply moving story about a man and his surrogate daughter was hijacked and driven off the rails to focus on an unlikable character nobody cares about, at the direct expense of one who they were deeply invested in.
The strong undercurrent of divisive politics was only the cherry on top, but served as an excellent smokescreen for the actual character and story issues once the criticism began.
So, he had people keeping him in check. It's a bit like George Lucas. Only, in Lucas' case, when he ended up putting out stories so many people found unsatisfactory, he never lashed out at the fans or tried to shut down their ability to speak.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty
When he looks at Deckard struggling to stay alive, yells kinship and saves him. That moment when he feels empathy for the person who's been hunting him still kills me. More human than human indeed.
My favourite Batty boy!
Very long; Did read. Enjoyed very much.
@@MrHarrystank The book was pretty good, but I do prefer the movie.
Regardless of what the doctor’s say, Joel’s decision is based explicitly on his first hand experience with how humanity is for him in the present an a bit in the past. That soldier shot at him and killed his daughter for no good reason other than to cover up a government mistake. The outbreak comes and the people are essentially ostracized and condemned to a life of servitude to the militant occupation of federal workers and officials. They forced to perform jobs that would give the average person nightmares and for scraps each day. Then he travels to take Ellie and he runs into Cannibals, murderers rapists, drug dealers and a wide variety of other terrible kinds of human beings.. all the good ones they encounter die or were already dead long before they may have discovered their bodies.. and Joel is suppose to somehow sympathize with a disease like humanity over a disease that turns people into exactly what they are Monsters in exchange for Ellie’s life? Cmon on now we all know deep down we’d choose Ellie over humanity given the circumstances humanity had its chance and it burned out.. and it continues to show why it’s irredeemable even as the last days hang over it 🤦🏾♂️
It makes no sense for Ellie to be mad at Joel for saving her. She loved him. In the first game, she had a meltdown when Joel tried to hand her over to Tommy because she is terrified of losing people she's attached to. Even if she didn’t agree with Joel's actions, she would understand and give him a chance to explain himself. Nothing about her behavior in the sequel made sense for her character
Thats just not true. For one her survivors guilt would lead her to sacrifice herself to "mean something" and he not only took that from her, but lied about it. From her point of view its completly understandable (also lets mention that in the second game she is just 19 i am sure you were dealing with your often conflicting emotions in a very mature way at 19... i sure as hell wasnt). Also one can both love someone and be angry at them at the same time and Ellie ultimately does forgive Joel or at least tries to reconstruct that relationship after he gets the chance to explain himself. I think in the first moment she found out it wasnt only about her wanting to be the savior, but about him lying to her for years about something that was so important to her. The anger in that situation is understandable, or at least i would think so.
@@the_occasional1764 He didn't take ANYTHING from Ellie. The Fireflies did. They were gonna murder her for an operation without her consent out of fear that she'd say no and rob Joel of all of his belongings, leaving him to die in an apocalyptic world without protection. Also Joel from Part I wouldn't have just sat there with a sad face when Ellie got angry at him when he told her the (half) truth. He would have been authoritative and doubled down on his choice right then and there similar to their argument when Ellie confronted him about wanting to leave her, and on the way back to Jackson, Ellie would be the one in thought soaking it all in and ultimately coming to forgive Joel by the time they got back to Jackson.
@@alexdeghost2729 I am talking about her point of view. From that, he did take her option to be the savior she wanted to be. And when you feel as if someone took away from you something that defined your life or your self worth you will get mad. His lying (because it was just lie no half truth what are you even talking about) was the thing that may have hurt even more than the actions he did.
And "Joel of part 1" beeing authoritative with her? You mean how at the end of part 1 he doubles down on the lie?
What you wrote is a fantasy of people beeing rational and having no conflicts. Do you think people are like that? Should our stories not reflect the reality of our messy relationships and contradicting nature instead of this fantasy? I am not saying what Joel did was wrong or right, but Ellie has every right to feel the way she feels in part 2 and she indeed eventually comes to forgivenes but that stuf takes time. Ellie or Joel arent different people in part 2 they are just older and their relationship got messier - that happens especially when lying is involved in any relationship.
When the leaks came out I generally thought Joel’s death scene was like a joke or dream sequence the fact that anyone green lit that scene is actually disturbing
When Uncharted 4 was still in development, fans thought that ND will kill off Drake in his final game. But devs said in some interview that there was no such plan and they think that killing off main character is just cheap and it's very lazy manipulation of players emotions.
But now the tables have turned somehow.
@@GonzoInside I honestly think that because Bruce Straley left after uncharted 4 there was nobody to keep druckmann in check so he went full blown woketard with last of us 2.
Denial isnt just a river in Egypt.
i fucking loved the over layed subtitles of the doctor in the first game when Joel is coming up to him.
"Get back! I have a daughter, she works out and plays golf!"
@@charliegoldrick2442 i agree.
"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them." - Chekhov
Then why is it that everybody is jumping to the conclusion that the writers/developers were making a moral condemnation of Joel just because Ellie had a problem with Joel? They literally don't answer any moral questions and they're being treated as if they did.
You better listen to Chekhov, he's got a gun
@@Mcat_XX Nice.
"What are stories but mystery boxes?" - JJ Abrams
You don't have to answer every question, but you should have an intended answer.
@@Mcat_XX I mean Chekhov was a fantastic writer with a methodology, but I think the reason he's being evoked here isn't because his quote applies but because he's an authoritative voice people won't question. Just like Orwell when he advocated using as few words as possible, or simple words in place of complex words, Chekhov didn't follow this rule all the time either. Using old quotes in place of a real argument is a pet peeve of mine.
Joel wasn't really amoral here. They were going to kill ellie without either one of their consents / not even informing them until it was too late
I'm glad Critical Drinker mentioned that first game's ending, which I loved.
One of the things that bugged me about the sequel is the certain flashback of the fallout between Joel and Ellie, when the ending of Part I indicated that SHE ALREADY KNEW he was lying to her but decided to stick with him anyway. Yes, other flashbacks showed she was getting suspicious over time, but it's still depicted in Part II as if she originally believed him at first.
A question left unanswered at the time was, Would she live with him after that ending, content with that lie? Or would she go into Jackson and then stay in her own corner, keeping away from him because she didn't trust him? Would there always be this silent tension between them even if they lived together? Different fanfiction written after Part I went in different directions about it, since all of those were valid.
The sequel just going, "She lives with him, but THEN she got mad about it years later" just ignores one of the best things about the ending. Neil Druckmann clearly didn't write and edit the first game's story, and it shows.
We must have interpreted that flashback completely different then. My interpretation of the events of Part 2 is that she always knew he was lying and continued to distance herself over time, until finally going to the hospital to learn the truth that she always suspected happened, finally forcing him to admit he lied to her. I don't think that Part 2 ever tries to make it she just believed him, it just goes along with the fact that she suspected he was lying and her trust with him broke down over time.
What if Joel didn't stop Abbey's Father?
Abbey's Father: *removes Ellie's brain and heart and all kinds of shit* "Alright, I'm done. Now I can go back home to my daughter, Abbey."
Joel: "..."
Oof ;(
LMFAO
4 years later:
Abbey's Father: "Damnit! We still haven't found a cure! I've deceived and put people to sleep, then murdered them while they were under, and then removed their brains and other vital organs...hundreds...maybe even thousands...coming here thinking we were going to find a cure...and we are nowhere, I mean absolutely nowhere near finding a cure at all! Should I have like...taken blood samples or something instead of doing all that other stuff?"
Jerry was literally trying to save humanity. Jfc you people are literally impotent crybabies.
@@XxBlumannxX And? Abby didn't give a shit about that, she wanted revenge for her dad. It was personal for her, just as it was personal for Joel to save Ellie. Whatever Abby's father was attempting, Abby doesn't get to claim that as her moral high-ground, because she had nothing to do with it, and didn't care about it.
That's what's being pointed out here.
Why won't anyone ask the *important* questions, damnit!? What is Elly's sexual orientation?
I think I remember hearing somewhere that she was initially intended to be either bisexual or pansexual, but they just ended up making her fully lesbian in the second game for some reason.
Blergh
@@carterholcomb1072 Of course they did.
She was lesbian in the first one too. If you played the dlc from the first game, you'd see it establishes that.
Filthy Frank can tell a better story then this.
There's no choice for Joel when deciding to let Ellie die. She is his only reason to live so if she dies, he dies with her.
And about the so-called doctors in the Fireflies, why are they in so much of a rush? Sure, thousands of people die every second but they're not under the pressure of a doomsday clock because doomsday already happened.
What is so wrong about waiting for Ellie to wake up and let her have a moment with Joel to see if she would be okay with dying? If anything, that might've resulted in Joel accepting Ellie's fate and give the Fireflies what they want anyway.
100% I love both games and its crazy because people dont realize just how hard a decision like this is. Like you gotta be a father yourself to truely relate to this. In part 2 when marlene ask abby's dad if he'd sacrifice abby for a cure he stood shut and didn't say anything. It sucks on both ends. The 2nd part honestly challenges our perspective as human beings because im pretty sure people would feel some kind of intense anger if someone killed their mom or dad while they're innocently just doing their job. Or imagine having to go through the pain of losing a daughter a 2nd time. This game is just nuts man.
The Fireflies are hypocrites. They didn't want to risk Ellie saying no. Because they knew what they were doing was wrong. Because it was stupid, and a long shot. And if she resisted they'd be forced to confront what they were doing. If they had truly believed in what they were doing, they would have given her a choice. But at this point they were past the point where they cared about saving anyone, just hyper focused on 'The Cure' while leaving out all the actual details.
Because they DIDN'T know if Ellie would agree or not. They just rushed to it and bullshited Joel by claiming that it is what she would of wanted to not look bad.
@Ultimate Sora how was that kingdom hearts 3?
@Ultimate Sora Oh really. Go ahead and tell me that if the Military guy that shot Sarah would still have been around at the time of the first TLOU and Joel found his location, that Joel wouldn't have gone full terminator across the country to delete him of the planet... A plot just like TLOU 2. It has been 20 years and he still hasn't accepted what happend. He could easily have had another child the age of Sarah by that point. 20 years and he still had walls of reinfoced concrete around his heart. Still holding on to his anger.
(I'm not even sure if he really moved on. He just replaced Sarah with Ellie and called it a day)
The thing is like it or not, what the military did was not only resonable it probably was even correct. They tried to contain it humanely in the hospitals but obviously that failed. So they had to resort to bombing cities and shooting anything that looks suspicious on sight that night in order to safe humanity. Or like taking Ellies life in order for a chance of a cure for millions of people.
The first game introduced us to Joel's loss of Sarah and him coping 20 years later by adopting Ellie.
Joel chose emotional solitude and shuting everyone out. The game showed us simmilar people in similar situations and different perspectives on how that can turn out. And the second game showed us how Ellie and Abby cope with their losses. We got to know Joel from Ellies perspective in the first game and in the second game we see them from Abbys perspective.
The fact that people react to Joels death just a poorly as Ellie did even years after the game while blasting 0 star reviews. Unable to connect their reaction to Ellies and Abbys, also unable to accept and move on, just makes it better.
I’ve always found it annoying when people keep saying sh*t like “oh Joel is so evil blah blah”. Joel was never a hero to begin with but nor was he really an evil person, he was simply just a man. I know the whole decision he makes has divided the fan base with the half vilifying Joel while the other half totally get Joel and stuck with his decision. I like the thing it’s trying to go with “what would you do?” While many people would probably have an answer, you never really know until it happens. So I completely understand and side with Joel when it comes to this. It was never really clear that a cure would’ve worked anyway and the bond between Joel and Ellie’s father/daughter relationship was something I believe you could understand why a decision like Joels would be made.
So yeah, I agree with Drinker; Joel did nothing wrong. And I will always stick with that side
I kinda agree with what youre saying. Joel is definitely just a man. Ellie filled that void in Joel’s heart. But personally, I think I would’ve sided with the Fireflies/Marlene. If there is a chance for a vaccine, that should be taken. Although the damage to society has already been done and if I were in Joel’s shoes idk what I would’ve done. Yea sure Joel did nothing wrong, but he wasn’t right either.
@@MajorPickleSwag yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle as well, where YES I do believe Joel was wrong to do what he did BUT I completely understand why he did it and am glad he did. Joel Miller is a monster..but then again in the world of tlou..who isn't?
The Last of Us was a fucking masterpiece, almost brought me to tears on some occasions. There is no "Last of Us Part 2", only a mockery.
Yes, there is. Cry more, bitch.
Is it really that bad? I just finished the first game and I really liked the story/characters, but the gameplay was sometimes painful. I find it hard to believe the second game is that much different on the writing side. It's done by the same people, or not?
@@faktickyneviem it's not made by the exact same people the main writer behind the first didn't work on the second.
@@faktickyneviem Should look up the development of the game, was a shit show.
bro last of us 2 is my favorite game, i think its so much better than part 1
Stargate SG1 loves to have “ethical dilemma” episodes as well. They didn’t always hit the mark but it was a sincere effort at higher-minded concepts that elevated the show above others and let it transcend its budget sets and Canadian forest planets. I appreciate that more given the current woke wasteland that is Hollywood.
I loved that show. I had a big crush on Samantha Carter.
"Canadian forest planets" XD I can only think of a handful of episodes that tried this and failed to give both sides a fair shot, but I would agree that SG1 and SG A both did this pretty well.
And then SG:U threw that all away for contrived conflict and drama so that they could be BSG.
But in seriousness, Stargate was an expert of making opponents that are powerful enough to be threatening but vulnerable enough to be defeated. The Goa'uld were vastly more powerful than SGC, but they were a feudal system ruled by paranoid megalomaniacs constantly backstabbing each other (especially with the power vacuum left with the death of Ra)
Someone mentioned Stargate! I click like!
Stargate was pseudo intellectual A-Team shlock in space. B tier at best.
I always thought Ellie's hate toward Joel was misguided, unnecessary, and irrational. He saved her life. Point. Blank. Period.
@@Teejay765 Did you forget that the Fireflies lied to Ellie too? They coerced her to do it WITHOUT telling her she'd die in the process. Ellie didn't know the procedure would kill her and when she finds out the truth she ignores that small yet significant detail. Joel did the most reasonable thing anyone with a good conscience would do; stop the whole thing. He not only saved her life, but brought her to a flourishing community living a far better life than she was in Boston. It would be much different if Ellie knew the consequences and outcome, still chose to do it, and Joel deliberately prevented it. But that didn't happen..
@@Teejay765 Survivers guilt isn't an excuse to "end her life" or be angry at Joel for saving her life. Anything GOOD Ellie got or will have after being saved she owes to Joel. Years down the line when Ellie is truly happy with whatever life she lives, it will solely be because of Joel. Her life didn't get worse, it got better. Did he have to lie? Probably not. I understand Ellie being angry *at first*, but to completely disown him for years is extremely harsh and something he did not deserve.
People forget something that now the show reminds us, Joe has heard about a possible cure multiple times before, when tommy was a firefly and when he worked for Marlene, so Ellie dying meant nothing certain except him loosing someone else, in TLOU 2 they kill everything they built in the first one. even the whole one man against the world until the mission is completed, but nothing happens, Joel dies, the villain escapes, a lot of innocent people die, Ellie looses everyone or pushes everyone away, looses a couple of fingers, the villain escapes again and everything remains the same.
Joel: *saves Ellie’s life but killing a doctor in the meanwhile*
Abby: So anyway I started golfing
Joel: kill a doctor
Abby: so you chose golf
Not a doctor, an attempted child murderer. There is no question that Joel was right.
Honestly, I expected to hate abby but she turned out to be my favourite character in the second game.
@@keithdeegan462 she had the most interesting story. Also, she grew the most.
@@strict5797 if the first game started from her point of view you'd probably hate Joel for what he did, I was a big fan of Joel but I got where abby was coming from
I suppose while some might argue the ending was ambiguous and Joel's actions debatable, I never saw the ending as open-ended or have any doubts towards its resolution. There is not hints but direct statements and actions for what transpired. This is going to be a long one so buckle in. Also...spoilers.
While we first hear of the Fireflies in the intro video, after the initial sequence, they come across as freedom fighters. However, our first genuine encounter is a terrorist-like attack on a checkpoint. This immediately draws negative parallels to real-life terrorist organizations. From meeting Marlene on to escaping the city with Ellie, we already see they are a desperate group fighting a losing war, far from a capable and organized force.
In exploring Philadelphia, you can learn that many cities went South like Philly after Firefly support. Uprisings started but then the Fireflies could do nothing to keep cities from falling to chaos and were rejected. Again, even among fellow fighters, they lose support and are not capable of "freeing" anyone.
Fast forward to the campus. Again the Fireflies have been forced out and we learn of more of their failures in the scientist's recordings. He rants how ineffective they are and incapable of performing the research needed. This is only proven further in his own incompetency to release an infected monkey, leading to his own demise. Failures and foolishness continue to plague this group.
Now we come to the ending. Our protagonists have arrived barely alive to the Fireflies. Despite posing no threat and begging for help, he is knocked unconscious by FF guards. He awakes to learn several key points. They are going to attempt to create a vaccine from Ellie. It will require her to be killed and is being performed without her consent. Joel, under threat of death, is forced to leave without his gear or the promised compensation.
Let's tackle this. First, a fungal infection is not going to be effectively treated by a vaccine, which is for viral infections, but more often than not some type of drug.
Next, creating any type of treatment from Ellie's immunity would really be about blood samples and her antibodies, not carving up her brain. Killing the only known immune individual is mad-science. There own incompetence is further highlighted in recordings that show their failures in previous subjects yet they still rush to off the only known immune person.
All of this would be done without Ellie's consent. Some said Ellie was ok with dying for the greater good and I refuse to acknowledge any sequel to this game. This opinion is not true. During the campus gameplay, you can hear dialogue of Ellie sharing she believes it all to be simple tests and blood work and further sharing her own fear of needles. She also talks to Joel after the giraffes about a future with him. These are the not the words of anyone with a death wish. Her own notable survivor's guilt didn't demonstrate a desire to die and have purpose but rather she wanted to have her immunity be worth the losses along the way. Simply, the Fireflies were going to murder a girl who very much wished to live.
Finally we get to Joel. The Fireflies, already demonstrating their incompetence and misguidedness, proved themselves to be evil. After everything he did, they essentially are murdering Joel. Breaking their initial promise of giving him his payment, they march him into the wild and don't even return his survival gear, ensuring his death. He is to be killed by bullet or by infected but its clear that they are making sure he will die.
Being told his adoptive daughter is being murdered, which he even calls Marlene out as being full of it, and having his life threatened, Joel fights back and goes to save Ellie. At this point, I can't believe anyone could call this ambiguous. It's self-defense and a rescue of a murder attempt. All those he kills threatened his life. The only optional deaths (beyond stealthing the guards) are the two nurses in the surgery room. Let's not forget the doctor takes initiative and threatens Joel with a scalpel. Even Marlene had a gun on Joel at the elevator (and was responsible for having him marched to his death earlier). Again, I can't see anyone believe his actions are anything but self-defense and rescuing a loved one. There is no vaccine and the Fireflies are terrorists. This is very much demonstrated in-game.
Last, we get to the ending. The lie. Was their ambiguity? Again, I say no. I don't think that was the point of the ending. Joel lied to spare Ellie. He had reached a point of truly loving someone again and would protect her. He had grown and now had a future. Ellie accepted the lie to accept Joel. She knew it was a lie but was questioning if it mattered or not. Ultimately, she recognized her own growth in making the hard decisions and accepted him and now had a future. The ending is resolved and we know these once lonely and family-less people now had found what they were looking for.
At this point, there was no need for a sequel. The only path for a sequel with these two characters was to betray this ending. The far better path would be to have made The Last of Us an anthology series that could focus on larger world-building and tell new stories. The much despised Abby story could have made for a better standalone story about finding commonality with your enemy. It could have just been about Abby and the Scars and worked far better than dragging the first game into it. This could have led to the franchise being a platform for new stories, new gameplay, and allow for a deeper experience overall. Too late now.
Why does this not have more likes? This was done beautifully.
True words 🙌
I don't think players were exclaiming on the spot with "wait. You don't treat fungal infections with vaccines!"
The surgeon's recorder transcript doesn't even say the word "vaccine". It's just that words like "treatment" and "cure" and "vaccine" are ubiquitous in meaning - which is the potential reversal of a disease or condition.
And I really don't think players were taking note of the Firefly's laboratory incompetencies to ultimately come to the conclusion that they just wanted to straight up murder a girl with absolute zero (debatably) altruistic motives.
Joel still missed his daughter. He saved Ellie for selfish reasons. That's all there really is to it.
@@MrCerebellum2 lol, so now, there are good and bad reasons to save people :°D. What a wonderful world.
There's also reason why Marlene is forcing her hand, unlike the sequel told by Jerry.
Fireflies is feeling dissident against Marlene as you have quoted, for incredible incompetence in leading the fireflies and they are ready to kill Marlene few days away until Joel and Ellie have arrived in Salt Lake's quarantine zone.
Why do the Scottish have great voices for commentary. You, count dankula, I could listen to you guys forever.
Scottish accent is horrible
"The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few" is largely taken out of context. Spock chose for himself to sacrifice himself to save others. Thats different then sacrificing an unwilling individual to save others.
The other people the fireflies murdered didn't yield a cure so why would carving up Ellie yield any different results? There is a recording in the first game that shows the Fireflies did dissect other people like Ellie and... nothing. It didn't yield a cure or treatment or anything.
unwilling or too young to consent..
No it's very much in context, Spock by in large was a logical person so it was more a clearly mathematical choice for him, one life verses many, whether you choose to sacrifice yourself for the greater good or someone else for the greater good it still comes down to the math, the "question" is the morality in that choice.
@Jin Sakai cordyceps is harmless to humans because he never evolved to hijack more complex brain structures but that doesn't mean he can't evolve to do that and how cause a pandemic you just need to look how COVID spread happened
@@forgivemenot1 it was still his choice and thats the important aspect thats what makes it heroic ie morale.
"Ellie is gay by the way"...gay like happy, happy to be saved by Joel.
Good one!
Underrated comment
Finally, the right definition.
It was so obvious from the first game!
It was ambiguous enough in the first game and then revealed in the dlc for the first game... so yea
"The writers of the game were smart enough not to make arbitrary judgements about Joel's decision or tried to lecture us about what he should have done".....lol no they did that in the second game !
How could they not see what made the first game so great ? I agree with you, the nuances of the first game were completely ignored and destroyed under the patronising jack boot of moral lecturing.
You summed up both games beautifully.
I guess for most gamers who loved the ethos of the first game and really bought in to it, Joel's death also signified the death of all they loved about the first game and the hope it would continue. Fans of the first game can only hope there will be a Last of Us one and a half, where the story is told between game one and two.
I'm currently playing through The Last Of Us Remastered on PS4. No matter how many times I see it, Joel's daughter's death always makes me tear up because I have 3 sons. I couldn't imagine how he would have felt through 20 years of animalistic existence.
Wow, posted 9seconds ago.
TLoU2 is nothing less than extremely cheap attempted emotional manipulation.
Yeah
JJ Abrams: *hold my beer*
There were a lot of ways joel previous actions could have caught up with him
Firefly jobbers though just no they were effectively dead to rights
Just like the latest Star Wars trilogy.
The dogs part of the game is pathetic.
You literally play fetch multiple times with Abby side. And you kill dogs multiple times with Ellie side. LOL
Joel and Ellie are still together surviving in Jackson, TLOU: Part 2 is a Elseworlds story of what would have happened if Joel had gotten sloppy and didn’t exterminate everyone in the Firefly base.
Agreed. This is the way.
EXACTLY!
Absolutely.
The fireflies did have quite a bit of firepower and Joel wanted to save Ellie was his top priority so I can understand why joel didn’t kill everyone my problem is how did Abby survive the collapse of the fireflies and a few decades of the apocalypse with minimum training
Part 2 is an alternative timeline where everyone is an idiot, the black doctor in the dirty operation room changed to a white doctor in a clean operation room confirms it.
The same people who criticize Joel for saving Ellie, are the same people who agree when captain America told vision "we don't trade lives"
i would've done the same thing as Joel, even if I had no emotional attachment to Ellie like he did. Why? I am strongly against the murder of children, and that includes sacrificing them for the sake of humanity. Frankly, I believe that Ellie being immune was just natural human evolution designed to have future humans not be affected by the fungal zombie virus. Ellie just happened to be the first of them. Any humans later on would have a chance of gaining that mutation. Unfortunately, humans in the game weren't able to consider it. Why? they were desperate to bring the world to how it was immediately. However, they have no way of knowing if they'd be successful even if they could create a vaccine/cure from Ellie's mutation. Chances are, it would fail even if it succeeded everytime in their simulations.
That and they didnt even give Ellie the choice as horrible as that would have been to do to a child. They were seconds from killing her without asking so Joel had to make the decision for her.
@@evankrueger7321 indeed.
Not only that but you have to consider...well, say you get a cure distributed? What do you do about the fact that society has collapsed into warring tribes, gangs, outposts, clans, villages, and occasional towns here and there? What do you do about the fact that 99% of humanity has died up to this point? How can one simply rebuild?
And also, even if we're talking about "oh she's not his daugther and he was selfish" Joel would still be right somehow. He's a smuggler who smuggled something across the country to get a payment that was promised to him. He did his best for this mission and Tess even died for this mission JUST for the fireflies deny the payment?? So, "smuggling-talking", the fireflies were wrong either.
@@-TakingSomeLs hadn't thought of that, but I 100% agree.
What Last of Us 2? Are we talking about some fan fiction? The Last of Us had a perfect ambiguous ending that made the player reflect and think about the moral ramifications of the Fireflies and Joel’s actions. Only a complete moron would try to ruin that ending with a sequel that makes the whole game a boring black and white conflict that vilifies one character.
Making a Last of us 2 (or even the dlc) was like Naughty Dog hitting on 17 in blackjack.
Preach👏👏👏
Yeah but majority of people somehow someway convinced themselves that everything was going to be fine for the second game and that Joel's actions weren't going to completely get him killed. Once again one point out these people are slow minded and have no idea how the real world would work because Joe as soon as he got out of that fucking fireflies hospital was a dead motherfuker. There was no saving him there was no nothing that no one ever could have done he was dead from that moment plane simple. You people need to realize this
Unfortunately it happened in the most ME TOO movement way by making the scared child the butch lead 🤦🏻
A complete moron who wants more money😄
My favorite part about the TLOU2 is the part where the infected don't actually exist unless the plot needs them to push the characters along. Not a single person in the entire game talks about them even once, and none of the factions in the game even care about them. I don't know how "Joel doomed humanity" when the threat to humanity isn't even an issue apprently.
it's almost like humanity is really good at killing things and a infection like that would burn itself out and it was a temporary problem that can't be sustained as an ongoing plot
My two favorite parts is the fact that I didn't waste my money buying it and I didn't waste my time playing it. Other than that, the game sucks.
Oh my god this is a super good point honestly haha brownie points for you man
@@michaelkeha well, if it was scientifically correct in the first part, then the only surviving people would be always wearing masks outside of their few isolated bunkers cause you know - fungus spores are everywhere in the air and land and even beyond it in the cosmos they can survive for many years.
@@jimdavis1566 so you’re talking about a game you didn’t play. That makes sense.
The only lesson I learned from TLOU2 is to be careful what I wish for. I was desperate for a sequel. Then I got one. Now I can't look at the original in the same way. The perfection of the original and the Left Behind DLC is, in my opinion, tainted. Not sure if that's what ND was going for, but that's what I got from it.
Let's also not forget that Red Dead Redemption 2 explored the same themes of revenge, fate, death, loss, legacy etc two years earlier and did it with ten times the care and maturity of TLOU2. Oh god, ellie killed a pregnant lady, isn't that horrible?? Yeah, but that's not exactly the moral ambiguity I had come to expect from TLOU. Compare that to the ending of RD2. Arthur's sacrifice, since we know what happens to John at the end of RD1, is ultimately meaningless, because, like Arthur, the consequences of John's actions catch up with him. If John had just left well enough alone at the end of RD2 instead of going after dutch, he probably would've lived the peaceful life that Arthur wanted him to live. But John wanted revenge for Arthur. It consumed him, poisoned him, and ruined him. But does that make Arthur's sacrifice meaningless? There's your ambiguity.
One game was committed to the philosophy of its original conception. The other game tried to roll back its own message in favor of a more contrived one to the detriment of the entire series.
They should've just left it alone. One off games are rare anyway. One off masterpieces are even more rare and that's what the original last of us was. I guess part of me believes it still is, but it's hard for me to say for sure.
100% I tell people to this day, TLOU2 is the best game I'll never play again.
With RDR2 - I think the beauty of Arthurs sacrifice is we get to then see the events of John's redemption. As opposed to how RDR1 ended, we now get to see John and Abigail at possibly their most joyful. The part where you go on an actual date, and then propose to Abigail on the water...on my second playthrough I ended the game there, right at sunrise on the next morning.
Joel lost one child. He didn't have the strength to lose another.
He did what any parent would have done.
Ellie on the other hand thought her life only had one meaning which was to die to maybe help the ones she couldn't so their death had some sort of dignity. It was a two way street. First game was built on love and the second on hatred.
Abby is just as compelling as Bryce Walker from 13 Reasons “starting a conversation” Why
Abby wasn’t a bully rapist, she was a girl who lost her dad and was consumed by revenge. It could happen to any of us. Hell, it almost happened to Ellie.
@@kylemajerczyk8160 Quiet simp
@@kylemajerczyk8160 But both characters have the writers pretend that they're deserving of sympathy despite all the bad things that they did
TLOU2 was just more consistent about it (badly written) while 13RW just flipped the switch when they're about to write Bryce's death (inconsistent bad writing on the other extreme)
@@kylemajerczyk8160 Ellie was consumed by revenge it’s only at the very end drunk man decided to subvert expectations giving Ellie the bleakest of ending and Abby an effective get out of jail free card
@@kylemajerczyk8160 I mean, yeah. But do remember that they, ND, made it seem as if Joel was a mass murdering monster, who killed her father for nothing, and rather then killing him quickly or even with some sort of dignity, especially after he saved her life, she proceeded to kill him in front of Ellie in the most brutal way possible, and in the cruelest way possible, while then having ND proceed to make her out as if she was some sort of paragon. Face it, the hypocrisy and disrespect of a fan favorite character is what people really had a problem with. Not to mentioned the false advertising.
Joel did the right thing. Ultimately there is no guarantee that the cure was actually possible unless you 100 percent believe those scientists. So, since the scientists are coming at him and Ellie with hostile intent Joel has the right to defend himself.
doesnt the doctor failed many times already and lead a lot of death for this "Cure"? Yeah, i don't think it was even close to 10% when it come to successfully getting the cure
@@G1assWater also there's no such thing as a vaccine for fungi, and if it is they rarely work. Its much better to let Ellie reproduce and let anti-fungal genes pass on
Vaccines are always preventive;
Vaccines take years of test to be safely ready (we’re ignoring this lately for cονιd hysteria);
Therefore, all the infecteds would still be wandering around the world and, if everything goes right, people would be immune if bitten. But one always can be shattered by a horde, so immunity wouldn’t be relevant on this case.
The game would have to demonstrate that somehow Ellie’s death could really bring a cure. The vaccine was a terrible plot.
@@joshgroban5291 there's also no strain of cordyceps that turns humans in to zombies, if you wanna be like that.
In today's modern science and medicine there's no vaccine for fungal infection. In the game the world ends in 2013 and in 2013 they didn't have a vaccine for fungal infection either so 20 year later after civilization collapse the vaccine stlll wasn't possible. But if the fireflies wanted to try to extract a vaccine from Ellie they should have look into Ellie's antibodies and not murdering her and dissect her brain with no consent. Abby's daddy is a dumbass and the worst vaccinologist ever!
I never understood why they had to remove her entire brain, like a biopsy is a thing they could just take a small piece of it to run their tests on.
2:01 that quote from Picard is a REALLY good quote
As far as I'm concerned last of us 2 doesn't exist and it never happened. Joel and ellie went to live with Tommy and lived happily ever after
TLOU suffers from sequelitis syndrome: making a sequel for no reason other than for it to exist. Some stories just actively prohibit sequels, especially stories heavy on theme and/or with all plot lines and character arcs neatly resolved. What more was there to say by making a sequel to TLOU that wasn't said in the first game? Other than, perhaps, finding a cure to the infestation that doesn't involve murdering a child, which itself would undermine the moral dilemma and character conflict that comprised the entire basis of the story.
Sometimes, writers and fans just need to learn when to leave well enough alone. So you enjoyed something. Great! But you're not necessarily going to enjoy it once more just because you do it again with a different coat of paint next time, and it might even end up undermining what you loved about it in the first place.
They could just expand "the cure of the virus" theme. None of that was expanded in part 2
Honestly, I think that if they kept using it, they should’ve made it an anthology. Just a series of stories about the people surviving and trying to claw a life for themselves out of the world.
@@StupidAnon-gn8ih I just look at a lot of sequels and recognize a few things about all of them, even the good ones:
1.) They repeat the plot or basic premise of the first film with no variation whatsoever. (The Mummy sequels)
2.) They *try* to do a different story from before but since themes have already been addressed and character arcs have already played out, the writers struggle to find a premise that works (Kingsmen 2, TLOU2, Blade Runner 2)
3.) They do basically the same thing over and over again, only they change the situation, the context, the premise, the thematic framing, and maybe add a new villain every time. (Die Hard movies, almost any action movie).
What people really want is to have more of our beloved characters and fascinating worlds shown to us. The problem writers have is finding an excuse to.
A good story tends to start with a clear vision. Everything about the story, from the characters to the world to the themes and even the music, stems from that vision. Which is why characters and events can often seem so out of place in sequels, to the point that characters no longer even resemble themselves (John McClain, Luke Skywalker), and events contradict to the point of breaking continuity. They're literally characters in search of their story, in a story in search of a point.
@@StupidAnon-gn8ih I think a good example of a series where most of the sequels improve and build on the previous games, was the Legacy of Kain series. The main thing about that series that everyone loves and remembers is the story. It's why games with weaker stories or no real story of their own, like Blood Omen 2 and that one battle royal game, Nosgoth are not looked back on favourably and are at best tolerated. Though those games have a running narrative, a strong story that ties them all together, unlike TLOU which ended where it should have, with some ambiguity. There was no reason the sequel even had to include Joel and Ellie again, this is an extinction level apocalypse, there's literally a whole planet of survivors to work with. They could have made a spinoff game, something like Dishonored: Death of the Outsider i.e, canon but not the next mainline game. Hell they could have introduced Abby that way, setting up for a better TLOU2 =/.
“All the fake awards in the world doesn’t make up for the fact that no one liked your fucking game Neil...” Quote of the century.
And it's actually wrong. Plenty of people liked it and it sold like hot cakes. He was obviously joking.
@@faktickyneviem not joking, he has talked about it a lot before and it was all in a serious tone.
Last of us 2 turned what was before an HBO flagship show into a Netflix teen drama. People like such shows but it doesn't mean they are of high quality. Additionally, the downgrade in quality also angered most of the og fan base to the point there is a civil war in the fandom whenever someone opens a discussion about the storyline in the franchise.
@@faktickyneviem
People who liked the 1st bought the 2nd.
And were disappointed because it's crap.
Even those who knew the 2nd was shit bought it, to "end the saga".
The same way those who know the Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 movies are shit watched them anyway.
It is a phenomenon well known in psychology and exploited in marketing.
No you’re wrong. IGN liked it...
bro last of us 2 is my favorite game, i think its so much better than part 1
The thing that alot of people forget to mention in this dilemma of moral ambiguity, is that if the fireflies were successful in extracting ellies brain and concocting a cure is how exactly would it be distributed? The fireflies were/are in essence, domestic terrorists. They're seen as raiders, and met with disdain by any who learn of their whereabouts. If you were to be living in one of the few QZ's left standing and you were constantly in mortal danger due to the self righteous war that the fireflies were waging, would you believe them if they were to come peacefully and declare that they had a cure to the cordyceps? Nevermind that question of hypotheticals, how exactly would the fireflies mass produce the cure if the surgery was successful? Who's to say that the fireflies would simply create enough doses for their own faction and leave the rest of the population to its own devices? Joel's decision to save ellie and kill everyone can be perceived as evil, but ultimately its equally selfless. By saving Ellie, Joel redeems himself and fully opens up discarding his once standoffish and brooding persona at the start of the game, and prevented a domestic terrorist faction from becoming immune in the process. There are to many what if scenarios and the grand scheme of a cure for humanity is unrealistic. Power in the wrong hands would lead to further disarray and chaos.
There was no reasonable argument for not waiting for Ellie to regain consciousness and simply ASKING her permission, (which Ellie seemed very likely to agree to).
Nor is there a reasonable argument for why the doctors would immediately go for the "kill Ellie" option when doctors are supposed to look for alternatives that won't kill their patients.
Normally it's not reasonable, but that's assuming you value a person's right to consent.
The writer of TLOU2, Neil Druckmann, protected a sexual predator. He sees consent as "I want to harm people, and I have that right."
@@crazyinsane500 Wait, what? Really?
@@KuroNoTenno Oh yeah, the predator's name is Robert Cogburn. He was the lead multiplayer developer, and once he was fired (Because someone went to Sony HR, not Naughty Dog HR as Naughty Dog HR was covering it up) Naughty Dog hasn't released a multiplayer component to their games.
So on top of just generally being Neil Druckmann's best friend, he may have been instrumental to ND's multiplayer development. That and nobody wants to work with Neil Druckmann in the industry, it's kind of an open secret.
@@crazyinsane500 I'll look it up later, thanks for the info.
To me, what could have made this story more flushed. Is the creators say yes we’re making last of us 2, it will feature a story not connected to 1 and exploring the apocalypse with a new group, we may revisit Ellie and Joel in the future. And you play as Abby, see her life, surviving, falling in love etc. and the ending is her walking in to see what Joel had done. A reveal moment they don’t tease and a full on surprise so when the last of us 3 is made you legit will be torn for team Abby or team Joel/Ellie. They tried so hard to make you root for Abby but all you wanted to do was kill her... and even that can’t be done.
This would've been amazing tbh.
@@RaSkipper it would
It didn't help that they used every single cheap trick in the book to make you like Abby and hate Ellie. Giving her all the good guns, memorable setpieces, rat king boss, and narratively as well like stuff with Alice.
When you have a new character kill a old and loved one, you aren’t going to root for them unless they try so god damn hard that isn’t just “Old Character was so bad and mean”
I never played tlou2, but that does sound better than what cuckman did in the end.
Ellie's life is worth millions to Joel, a worthy tradeoff in his mind.
Only because his daughter got killed. If she hadn’t he wouldn’t have thought twice about saving her.
@@dagdabelenus6654 rainbows are only possible after a great storm. (Or maybe a little mist. But you get the point.)
@@adameins5622 huh? My point was we knew she was gay from the first game. So his remarking about being a lesbian (repeatedly) was kind of redundant as it wasn’t new in the second game. We knew, it’s not like we were blindsided by social justice virtue signalling. I mean I suppose you needed to play the dlc but you know, that probably required playing the first game (which I’m beginning to doubt he did). If anything, the ambiguity of Joel’s actions are mirrored by Abby and ended in a way that makes people realise that revenge is kind of pointless. Saying that, I bet Joel would have took a golf club to the head of the people who shot his daughter too.
Idk if you've seen the Game theory video but there is no cure because the cortiseps infection is a fungus and funguses can't be vaccinated against so ye
@@Glue.Man. I'm pretty sure the plan was to cultivate the non-invasive fungus inside Ellie's brain and use the spores to provide others with that variant of the infection, providing "immunity" in the same way Ellie has it,with "vaccination" being a sort of catch-all term. Whether or not that's possible or would even need Ellie to die is debatable, but we're already stretching the science to breaking point from the word go so why not?
Scientifically speaking Joel did the right thing. There is no way they could have created a cure by doing what they planned to do.
"Ellie's gay, by the way." LOL, how you threw that in as if it wasn't important, because it really isn't, made me giggle.
I always thought that deep down, Ellie was happy that Joel saved her life at the end of the game. Which made part 2 worse for me.
The only thing TLOU2 succeeded at was making me hate the characters.
She had severe survivor's guilt. She wanted the choice to end her life, hope it had meaning. Joel took that from us. That's why the final decision is so emotional
@@alecross5255 except now she know that her life has meaning - for Joel she is more important that every other human alive. If anything it would make her fall for him and be happy with herself, though some guilt would surely be there too (until she births like 3rd immune child).
@@dimas3829 except she literally doesn’t. At no point does she acknowledge that she basically helped restore Joel’s humanity. And no point does she acknowledge that’s she was important to him in anyway.
@@frenchfriedbagel7035 you missed it then. She is quite playful about him taking the role of a loving parent in the first game. She teases Joel to no end. She wouldn't do it if she didn't care.
Joel... a big, badass, calculated, brutal Texan. Taken down by someone on too much HRT
And that was freaking dumb to trust on a stranger
@@baohweeb6935 something Joel would not have done
Or just ate a lot of steak
@@lukebailey3662 exactly
@@baohweeb6935 EXACTLY
Joel was NOT morally wrong to kill the Fireflies. The moment they refused Ellie the ability to choose they all become accomplices to attempted murder and Joel had the right to use lethal force to prevent them killing Ellie. Joel was 100% morally right to do what he did. The only thing that was questionable was executing Marlene (though understandable, since she'd proven she wouldn't shy away from murder if it was for the 'grater good', and he had no reason to think she wouldn't try again). Lying to Ellie was the only thing he did that was morally wrong.
The Fireflies on the other hand were willing to commit murder for what they thought of as the 'greater good', and even if that is also understandable, it is definitely not morally right.
Don't forget they were doing bombings in settlements in the first game.
@@Tucker_EgoDrone Firefly attacks were what actually led to the fall of Pittsburgh, which became overrun with hunters. This is revealed in a note from the game.
My biggest problem of if Joel did let Ellie die and create the cure is that we have no idea if it would actually work or not. There is no proof it would be viable for other people not sharing Ellie's DNA. On top of the fact you spend the whole game tracking down the fireflies who have been proven to be incompetent and just honestly bad soldiers. Who's to say if Ellie died that the cure would work or that the fireflies charged with distributing it wouldn't just die like they have the entire game. It's not a matter of many vs the few anymore it's a matter of sacrificing the one's closest to you for a very very small chance at hope. At that point in the game there would have been no other choice. The fireflies would never be able to have made the cure nor distribute it. They would have died one way or the other.
There’s something about the ending to the first last of us game that I honestly feel like nobody mentions. I fully believe the fireflies were always going to kill Joel. Marlene knows how much Joel loves and cares about Ellie and there is no way she would just let him go and not expect him to come back. Notice how hostile the guards are towards him, I really think that if Joel kept following the guard. The guard would have killed him.
they were attempting to march him out without his supplies notice the guard walks him past all his stuff. if they werent gonna shoot him they were gonna leave him defenceless to the clickers
That's complete BS, players are making up things that are not in the game to cope with Joel's decision. There is no reason to kill Joel, as far as they know, he's just a smuggler they hired to do a job. During the flashbacks to the hospital in the 2nd game, no one indicates they are going to kill Joel, and Marlene even says they are letting him go. They obviously aren't going to give him his guns and weapons until he leaves...and why would guards for a mercenary organization not be "mean"?
@@danielshepard1449 Ahh. A young one. You sound green my friend. I hope I share your optimism in life's perspective.
@@septacular7 LMFAO
@@danielshepard1449 ngl i had that same reaction my boy, this dude acting like he master oogway or sum shit ong
Why, Joel did chose to save the world. It's just that his world was Ellie.
A true parent's answer
@@dedf15 exactly. Anyone with kids likely understands Joel did the only just thing. Sacrificing Ellie would have undermined his entire humanity.
Based.
Yeah, he was a selfish POS. Joel is a bad human being, should've considered how much positive impact her sacrifice would've had. He took that from her. "His world" is far less important than the future of humanity. The dumb girl ended up being the worst kind of sub-human in the sequel, too.
@@FFFan3445 Why sacrifice the life of someone you love for an empty future? It’s the apocalypse, fuck everyone else.
God damn I needed this video. I just saw a video where someone seemed logical but then took the LOU2 directly in a narrative the writers were trying to feed everyone. Then when he got to the Abby swap he defends it as you're emotionally drained but come back and resume the game with a mind that slowly starts to see why Abby was in the right while Ellie was in the wrong. He also skips over this happy go lucky Abby without ever mentioning how unhinged with revenge and rage she was. Never mentioned it. Mentioned it with Ellie. Which I had to disagree with him, that when we were done with Ellie my mind was taken off the story and focused on the writers, not Abby. You feel manipulated as they take character traits and swap them in a character assassination. Essentially Ellie got Luke Skywalker-ized without the privilege of the iconic actor of that character come out publicly and say as much. This video was a good reminder that yeah, there definitely was a problem how they presented everything. Thank you, sir. Not only did they cuck Ellie hard once, they cruelly bring you back to her, happy, with girl and child and they screw her over a second time making you go through a second senseless revenge plot. Jesus Christ, Neil, you already told me not to care about Ellie anymore because you did her wrong, now you're going to do it again? FFS... I wish EFAP would dissect this guy's video...
Funny thing recently there was an IGN video I think discussing how there was no guarantee of a cure.
Yeah maybe they're finally getting their eyes opened now that they aren't paid to say nice things anymore. Funny how Game Theory has a few videos picking Naughty Dogs theories apart. I heard one TH-camr cop out with "You can't hold real world science to this game because it's not the world the writers made" which I replied if the writers don't set that up as a rule then we as an audience take it as real world to game world 1:1. It's like talking to a battered house wife that's not ready to leave the relationship yet.
Joel didn't "doom the rest of humanity" or anything like that. If you listen to the one tape by the doctor, he says "like the other subjects the (sciency talk) is fused with the brain. So to remove it, will kill the host.... I don't know if I can keep doing this." Something like that. So in other words, Ellie isn't the first to have this done to her. That's the reason Joel told her that there isn't a cure. Because he heard them admit that there isn't.
That might not have been his motivation for going after her. But he lost his faith in the Fireflies long ago. Him and his brother had a falling out over it. So Joel always thought they were full of shit.
The other subjects are the infected. Not an immune person like Ellie.
@@sijay9481 So? That doesn't really mean anything. And any doctor that says they could make a cure out because one girl is immune, but still has the growth in her brain, is a liar. Really, they have no idea why she is immune. And killing her, just throws caution to the wind. What they should've been doing, if they wanted to make it believable and correct, she should've been studied. They would've had to do all kinds of tests before they would even know if they could use her. And, there would've been animal trials before killing her.
Killing her is the stupidest thing they could've done. If they wanted a cure, they would've have needed to kill her. Objectively. You can biopsy parts of the brain. It's dangerous, sure.... but it's not outright killing on a whim. Which is what they were going to do to her. Joel did the right thing.
And seeing as how most people hate the second one, most people feel it's completed without "Part II" because they made it that way. They even said it when interviewed about a sequel. That it was a completed story.
Like Star Wars did.... all they did is make everything worst by having a second game. And now we have this ULTRA "woke" HBO show that race swaps important characters, turns Tess into a someone she wasn't, and also picked the worst people to play their roles. Oh, and then they had to dedicate an entire episode to how super gay Bill is. When the game never even brings it up. The only reason you know is because of the gay porn.
And then they said Ellie is gay when the game had nothing to back that up with besides her saying "I don't see what all the fuss is about". And while I don't remember the DLC, I don't remember them being romantic at all. More like best friends.
There's also the importance of keeping in mind the differences between cinematic storytelling and interactive storytelling.
In cinematic storytelling, we are an observer and the choices characters make are just part of the story. Interactive though, they have a different weight to them. Throughout all of TLoU 1, Joel's actions, while often harsh, are depicted as the right thing to do. Yes, he had a dark past, where he did some bad stuff, but we never are asked to partake in any of that. Because of this, when your one and only option during the climax is to control Joel as he mows down the doctors to save Ellie's life, while in the story it is depicted as morally ambiguous it also is expressed as the correct, good thing to do from a gameplay standpoint.
Fast forward to TLoU2, and we are expected to sit there and be berated the whole damn game over a choice we didn't make. To be punished for caring for a character whom the designers failed to express as being quite as cut and dry evil as I suppose they were shooting for in the first place, accidentally making a complex interesting character by mistake. Now we are tasked with doing tons of crap that nobody wants to do. Kill dogs, kill pregnant women, and let's not forget play AS the person who killed Joel on a quest to kill Ellie.
Watch any Let's Play of TLoU2 when Abby, in the control of the player, is tasked with killing Ellie in a boss fight. Without fail, everyone ignores that command and just makes Abby stand there out in the open, letting Ellie kill her.
The hours leading up to that showdown were the moments the game tried to sell the player on Abby's redeeming qualities, but in that again they failed miserably. Not in so much that Abby did something that could never be redeemed, even though she did, but in how the game goes about "redeeming" her.
Like many a strong, amazing and loved female character, Abby is simply surrounded by people who talk about how kind and awesome she is, and how much of a piece of shit Joel was and how Abby honestly went easier on him that he deserved by a long shot. Torturing someone and beating them to death in front of a loved one is actually merciful if you think about it, right? Obviously, this tell don't show storytelling does fuck all to redeem the character in a medium where the best kind of storytelling available is "don't show, do."
And yes, after all this time I still have an axe to grind. My fiancee loved TLoU 1, and did avoid the spoilers. I had to watch as she went from absolutely elated as the story opened to Joel and Ellie and guitar lessons - something she struggled with, being disabled, to absolute horror and confusion and disgust. Having nightmares, forcing herself to finish the game to see if it ever got any better. Letting Ellie kill Abby at the boss fight, and eventually saying she regretted getting it digitally, because that means she can't sell it now.
All this time, I wanted SOME kind of show of remorse from Neil. Some apology, that he was at least off the mark and didn't read the room right. Some acknowledgement that he hurt people, and not EVERYONE who disagreed with the direction of the game did so out of bigotry.
Instead, I've blocked him on Twitter because I got sick and tired of him showing up and bragging about all his fucking awards.
You are asking the wrong questions. I’m hardly as competent as the person who creates the video, but I was always surprised at the softness of the fans of Last of us 2.
The problem is, snowflakes would not have survived the post-apocalypse. They would die or become someone else.
Druckmann is not a genius, just soy-boy. It was obvious to me from the first part. Naive romanticism, a green world full of animals ... It's anything but not post-apocalypse. It's like The Hunger Games (Twilight in disguise)
Abby is not an accident, but a pattern. Druckmann never hinted that characters like her would be killed or punished in the harsh world of the post-apocalypse.
Also, the question is not which is better, cinematography or interactive, but that Abby had no right to revenge.
Firstly, she is not a successor to the affairs of her father or Cicada, but simply a mercenary.
Secondly - logically, she should have hunted Ellie, because of her Joel killed her father.
Thirdly, according to Druckmann's logic, if Abby (the daughter of the butchers from Cicada) has the right to revenge, then even the relatives of the cannibals from the first part had the right to come for Joel.
I’m really sorry your wife didn’t enjoy the game. It is way more violent and harsh than the original. But I personally never saw Joel’s choice in the first game as the “absolute correct choice.” Just because we’re playing as him, doesn’t mean everything we did as him was right. Joel was a complicated man who loved his family and friends, but couldn’t bear to lose any of them again because of what happened to Sarah. He had good attributes and bad attributes; that’s what makes him a person. It’s only natural that some people wouldn’t see him as an absolute good guy, especially the daughter of the scientist he killed so suddenly. And Abby gets called out on her own shortcomings all the time in the game. Yeah, some of her friends, like Manny, Owen, and Mel, agree killing Joel was the right thing to do because they respected Abby’s father and want revenge. But Mel also calls Abby out for sleeping with Owen even though they’re not in a relationship anymore, and Lev critiques Abby for her use of anti-Seraphite language. No one walks away from this story looking perfect, because no one person is perfect. Even if you play as them and see things from their perspective, they can still be wrong.
@@janussimonsen24, > But I personally never saw Joel’s choice in the first game as the “absolute correct choice.”
Why? The world coped without a vaccine. Ellie's immunity became irrelevant in the second part of the game. There are as many people as in the first game (or maybe more)
No offense, but Last of us 1-2 (including DLC) is naive romanticism for women and gays. This is not a post-apocalyptic world with deep and interesting characters.
Joel is a typical mercenary. Ellie is just a lesbian tomboy. Dina is just an unattractive bisexual and tart (
Although she is obviously a lesbian, the LGBT woman asked me to edit this comment, accusing me of intolerance and disrespect for bisexuals
.)
Abby is a transsexual version of Bane from The Dark Knight. Lev is just a girl who considers herself a boy and the game approves of it.
There was not a single ambiguity moment in the game. This is just a fairy tale for woke folks.
Tell me, at least in one of the Last of us games, the hero blackmailed a cannibal selling human meat in order to get some of his money? Or support the government of thugs and slavers, simply because without them, slaves will still be left without protection? Were there any actions in the game that could be associated with terrorism or war crimes? Hardly.
Then what kind of ambiguity are we talking about? Last of us 1-2 is a straightforward game for the same people. There is no deep morality.
@@ahoramazda6864 The fact that you’re simplifying and misrepresenting all the characters shows that you have no real criticism to make about the games. Joel isn’t a typical mercenary, because then people wouldn’t care so much about him. The world clearly has not coped without a vaccine, because people getting infected is still a huge issue. Refusing to engage with the characters in any meaningful way doesn’t make you a legit critic, it makes you an intolerant person who just wants the world to fit their viewpoint and not the other way around. Come back if you have some legit criticisms, and not just buzz words to make yourself feel smart.
Edit: And it’s the Fireflies, not Cicadas. Try playing the games if you’re going to talk shit about them
@@janussimonsen24, >Joel isn’t a typical mercenary, because then people wouldn’t care so much about him.
The exception only proves the rule. If Joel hadn't been a mercenary in the first place, he wouldn't have gotten into this situation with Ellie. He would simply refuse to bring the girl anywhere. Cicadas could be slavers or just perverts. And only having already become attached to Ellie, Joel began to perceive her not only as a package.
>The world clearly has not coped without a vaccine
Then why do the Seraphites exist? They are technologically the most backward group. Although in terms of survival - the best. They are the only realistic faction in the entire game. But they were made villains, not anarchists from the city where Ellie was kissing on a dance night with another lesbian.
>because people getting infected is still a huge
So what? Let me tell you a big secret - in a good post-apocalypse, the reason why the end of the world has come is not so easily corrected.
> it makes you an intolerant person who just wants the world to fit their viewpoint and not the other way around
I just want a post-apocalypse created by people who have ever been outside the office and comfort zone. Do you think these are such high requirements?
Joel: you cant make a vaccine for a fungus ellie!
Ellie: Oh, ok then
everyone happy in the end
I mean you really can't. An infectious fungus would be more like a parasite, than a virus, and your immune system would be totally useless against it. What you'd need to do is actually *make* a virus, that kills the fungus in your body.
@@EvanOfTheDarkness What if it's not so much Ellie that is immune but it's her fungus that is mutated. She is infected but has no symptoms. They collect her mutated fungus and infecting yourself with it means you can also never turn into a clicker. To me that makes more sense than trying to make a vaccine for a fungus out of someone's natural genetic immunity to the symptoms of the fungus. She's not really immune after all if she's infected.
@@chamoo232 Yes, and I think the game implies that this is indeed the case. Still, it's not a vaccine, vaccination works by teaching the immune system. And you would only need a vial of her blood to extract the mutated fungus anyway, so they are quacks anyway, and Joel should look for someone with *actual* medical knowledge.
@@EvanOfTheDarkness The writers twisted logic a bit for the sake of story and gameplay. The whole cure for a fungus is not the worst of it. Why is there still running cars 20 years later when gasoline starts to degrade after three to six months?
@@chamoo232 I guess they're diesel? Zombie games always have some logical pitfalls.
For example fungus spores go literally everywhere, that's why you get mold when something spoils. In that city anyone would be infected in mere seconds, just from the spores in the air.
"Ellie's gay, by the way" coming out of nowhere just like the game itself. Love it.
1:33 its comments like this that keep me coming back to this channel. CD thanks for the laughs!
“Nope you are nitpicking and homophobic, I win bye bye”
-Neil Druckmann
Its like writing a good story at Neil Druckmann's house.
Ironically the man who came up with that meme liked TLOU2
@@wyattshoemaker7018 who came up with that meme
@@benjaminlrd9599 VideogameDunkey
Just Neil?
A society that forgets how to tell stories is doomed.
It didn't forget
You just didn't like it and instead of moving on like a normal human you guys keep kicking a dead horse and treating it like a conspiracy or an evil thing
We're being oppressed by powers in high places. Free Speech is the true freedom fighters.
@@shorewall and how is TLoU 2 tied to that ? How is anything we are talking about have to do to what you are talking about ?
@@plaguedoctorjamespainshe6009 dude, what the hell are you on about?
@@jude8943 Lol, you don’t like the story of one game, so now it’s time to make an overly dramatic statement about S O C I E T Y. We’re truly living in one, smh.
The increase in allergies is because less people get sick during early childhood so their immune systems don't learn what's ok or bad. It's called the hygiene hypothesis and is also the reason for the spike in autoimmune disorders
Note to self: never trust anyone named Abby if a zombie apocalypse happens.
Nah just never trust anyone who looks like they take steroids in the apocalypse and you’ll be good, in fact just Snipe them from a distance just to be safe.
Well no, just dont trust someone with a female head and a male body 😂
Or when that person wants to hunt ghosts, based on a successful franchise.
i'd rather have Abby on my side then against me though.
"HI my names Abby-"
*everyone in the group empties their magazines at her*