I know in the grand scheme of things this shouldn't bother me BUT I wanna know how after Joel gets impaled and later passes out by the horse how does he get stitched up?

I mean Ellie can't lift a full grown man back onto the horse and even if she managed to get him back on it how did she stitch him back together without infecting him as she already carries the virus. Ive played all the uncharted games and know the writers style for leaving gaps in the plot so everything isn't always explicit about how what and when things happened but still this was something that stood out to me.

Anyone else feel this?

This isn't a plot hole at all. I think you misunderstand what a plot hole is....

Ellie is a pretty strong girl, and if you haven't figured that out by the time this all happened, I am not sure what game you were playing. We have to assume that Ellie did everything in her power to save him, and that is good enough for me. She has an incredible will and toughness.

Maybe its just me

And don't forget that the gap between the end of spring and winter must have been months.

It spreads through bodily fluids and spores. Ellie doesn't emit any spores and didn't get any bodily fluids in him while stitching him up.

Not a plot hole. It's one of those things where if you think about it, it's on you to fill in the gap. It's not important to the story at all, so it doesn't matter

However I did think about it, and came to the conclusion that ellie is resourceful enough to stitch a wound herself.

Yeah, as long as she didn't bleed into him or spit in his wound while stitching him up, he should have been fine (relatively speaking).

Ellie did it....that was easy enough to understand I thought

DLC

I kinda thought he would die, as I doubt anyone would survive an injury like that (especially in the stomach) without getting to a hospital. But then again, realistically Joel should have been dead many times over before then.

Maybe a tad unrealistic but I think weight of that part would not be the same if it wasn't such a serious injury. Naughty dog wanted to convince you he wasn't going to make it. It made it a lot more powerful and the season gap helped cover over the realism of the recovery for the most part.

So was all that military academy stuff Ellie spouted just a joke I didn't get? I thought she really was trained to be a soldier in her even younger years. She would know how to treat wounds to a certain degree if that was indeed the case.

She tied him up behind the horse, and used the horse to drag him to safety. Then used fire to disinfect the needle and alcohol to disinfect the wound. And BAM good as new :)

I'm leaning more towards this. She was with the Fireflies, so I'm sure she knew how to treat wounds and whatnot. That seems like a very basic skill to have in the world that they live in

never underestimate the power of love, homie

You can still survive if you lose one kidney and to me the wound looked pretty stitched up when Ellie looked at it in the basement. She also had alcohol to disinfect and later got antibiotics. So while it's not likely that someone would survive this, it's not impossible.

I was more bothered by Joel suddenly going out and fighting off an army through a blizzard after looking like he was still on the verge of death just earlier that morning than I was by how Ellie got him to the resort in the first place.

That's deep, bro.

Well, Ellie gave him that magical medicine that cures all right before that.

This part did bother me as well a bit. I assumed when you start playing with Ellie that Joel was basically on his death bed and would not be a factor in the rest of the game. I would of preferred you played as Ellie for the remainder of the game but the ending they went with wouldn't of allowed that, obviously.

Feels like a nitpick though when I enjoyed the overall story as much as I did.

This whole part of the game is just your standard "it's a videogame, deal with it". Trying to explain it by Ellie having some sort of training or anything is just a bad excuse. Noone would survive being impaled without proffesional surgery, and even if they did they would not recover that fast.

I didn't really think that was a plot hole, the only plot hole in the game I found was the surgery at the end of the game. The doctors didn't even try to create a vaccine from blood samples, they went right to cutting her open and killing her.

Ellie saw Joel naked.

Its called a videogame for a reason. Thats what I tell my Ten year old son.

Depending on how ND structures the DLC I could see them filling in the gap in a few spots where there was a time elapse. It would be interesting to see DLC where Ellie learns how to hunt, stitches up Joel, and basically fends for herself for the first time. They have all the assets, texture, and basic layout of the town where she holed up, it would be a big stretch to imagine this.

If this was a movie, you just know that during the ellie stitching up joel scene, she would prick her finger or something accidentally and the camera would zoom in on the blood droplet in agonizing slow motion as it falls... and misses infecting joel.

@supercycle: I believe that was explained in a audio recording. They said she didn't actually have an immunity but the virus had mutated around her brain, this created a shell that normally infected the brain but this one had stopped and instead became a barrier against the infection. They needed to take out the shell to see what had caused the mutation as well as find a way to make it happen on their own.

I appreciate the pun in the title.

Actually, I didn't think Joel would've survived being impaled like that, either, but it was still a pleasant surprise that he actually made it with their semi fake-out with how winter started off with a solo Ellie. I just suspended my disbelief that he survived after the reveal he was indeed still living and went with it.

Maybe they found a old country physician who patched Joel up with a stern but caring demeanor and a dark past of stitching up any man good or evil according to his unbreakable moral code.

The same reason why Nathan Drake is dying from heat exhaustion, yet somehow has the energy to engage in another gun battle--cause vidya gaems, lol.

It's not a plot-hole, but for a game that strives to be as detailed and fairly grounded than your average game, Joel being fine after a little penicillin made me roll my eyes a bit.

The stitches looked pretty sloppy, so Ellie most likely did it herself.

And he is also an alien from Mars, who holds the Matrix Cube. Which Ellie steals to save the moon men from martian tyranny. The moon men high council appoint her queen of the moon, but.... she turns it down for a quiet life with Joel, hunting rabbits & macheting dudes in the face.

A wizard did it.

@handlas said:

At least Joel was writhing in pain while moving around. Though I do agree it could've been a little better despite how much I loved most of the game.

How lewd.

@dark: Then why did they have to take the whole shell out, they surely could have only taken a piece. Given her a lobotomy, and she wouldn't have had to die. Why did it have to be within the first few hours, why not give her a brain scan. The whole immediacy of the situation was strange. You would think they would want months of studying her, to see if she was truly immune or if she was a carrier, or had a different strain of the virus, to see if it was just effecting her at a slower rate. They didn't even try to save her life, if I was Joel I would realize that these weren't the best doctors in the world and I would've killed them all too.

This is a fourteen year old who grew up in a militarized quantine zone with limited food and medicine who, because daily life wasn't exciting enough, snuck into a sealed off shopping mall containing infected for some down time.

She was probably given very specific instruction on suturing at some point during her childhood, putting a rudimentary frame together to safely transport Joel behind the horse would have been an easy solution once she calmed down.

Here's a thing about plot holes for you.

i might be wrong but as far as i can remember its fairly simple there are really no plot holes. in the cutscene he gets on the horse him self and they ride of. he passes out and falls of. but they are not in a city at that point they are in the middle of the road so im guessing he gained consciousness and dragged his ass back up on that horse and rode on to the town they are in. now getting off the horse is no big problem really and down in to the basement. either she dragged him or, most likely he was still conscious enough to drag himself down there, where she did the suture, she properly learned some first aid seeing that she was part of the firefly's and is most likely fairly common thing to learn when trying to survive you know everything there is out there.

and as to why she did not infect joel. well why would she. its not like the touch of her skin is infecting. she might have infected him if she did a blood transfusion which would be more impressive.

and i would rather have the game have done what they did instead of explaining exactly what she did. its a broad stop, and then it just says winter, and you only play as ellie for a good amount of time thinking he died and your doing to only play as ellie now. if they had shown them getting to the town and her suturing him up it would have given hope that he was alive this broad stop at least in my opinion gave a better feel

well the way i saw it was sure he was in pain from the impalement but the reason he looked so much in pain before she gave him the medicin, is that he had an infection you know the normal kind and she gave him some antibiotics that she traded for the deer, that helped with the fever and pain. now when he wakes up its hours later.

Pretty sure it was fall and winter. This caught me off guard too until I realized that the snow falling at the end of the fall chapter was perhaps meant to signify that the events were closer than a full season apart.