@deathstriker: Man, kinda proving my point here.

You, or any fans, do not own these characters. Nor are you entitled to them acting or doing things just because it would be "respectful to the fans." I'm tired of seeing it online. It's childish fanboy shit that needs to just die already. How it works is whether or not these characters fit into the narrative of its story. Whether or not the character arcs are successful is debatable, and that's what we're discussing right now. So far, I'd argue that the character motivations fits in line with both the original game as well as the themes of its sequel.

Also...that hypothetical that supposedly makes it "more respectful?" Intradictus is right, that is some formulaic, goofy hollywood shit right there.

Joel and Tommy were not behaving like themselves in the early part of this game

Ummm what? Never mind that I have no idea what this even means. Apparently letting a person get ripped apart by an army of zombies is somehow consistent with their characterization...how? That's especially not true when considering Tommy is consistently shown to be the more self-less of the two even before the outbreak happens. More importantly, considering how close they were in order to save Abbey, they had to have been in danger as well and figured an extra gun would improve their chances of survival. How that goes against the "canon of TLOU" is beyond me.

If the fireflies had talked to Ellie, gave her all the info, and let her choose then that's a different story, but they were going to do it all without her permission.

And yet you miss that Joel ultimately does the same exact thing that the fireflies do: That rather than be upfront that the procedure would likely kill her, lies because he might lose her, both literally and figuratively. He robs her of her agency the same exact way that the fireflies were willing to do. Just because he "saves her" doesn't some how make it better. Hence why the first game ends the way it does, and why Ellie ends up disowning Joel in the second game.

@deathstriker: Yeah man, your fix kinda shows that you think Joel having a big hero moment is what would "fix" his death . That is pretty far out of the world that the first game established. As for your other points, I'm curious, did you watch/read leaks? Or did you play through the game?

@kemuri07: Yeah, Joel taking away Ellie's agency like the Fireflies is something a lot of people seem to have missed or forgot. He also definitely knows that there's a better than good chance that she would have stayed which is why he lied and didn't tell her the procedure would have killed her and that they hadn't just decided that suddenly she was not the only immune person out there.

As for Joel and Tommy, you're missing that Joel is a big survivman that trusts nobody, never turns his back to anyone, and would sooner kill Tommy than let him tell their names to a single stranger that they saved from zombies while quite obviously managing to gain a bit of trust and help keep her from panicking /s lol

That and somehow if Abbey abducted Ellie, and gunned down Joel in front of her, but because she "stuck to her word and not killed Ellie," that would make her more honorable and somehow more sympathetic? there is so much wrong here I don't even know where to start. But, like most of these criticisms, it serves solely to turn Joel into a tragic, heroic figure, which misses the point of the first game so hard it hurts.

Joel's the best and he's always been the best. That is all.

As has continued to be the case since all this broke the most troubling aspect of The Last of Us discourse continues to be people.. not just missing the mark on Joel as a character but not even looking in the same direction.

@efesell: Yeah, I think Joel is a great character, but a hero he is not, even if he did nothing wrong during the events of the game he very clearly did some shit post-outbreak to pre-game. Also he gets ambushed a few times in that first game, he is not ambush/mistake proof as some seem to think

@intradictus: @efesell: Agreed

@intradictus: I think it's more complicated than that. He is a hero. He does heroic things, great things, selfless things. He also does bad things and things that are at the very least morally questionable.

I think that The Last of Us raises questions of what a hero is, and can someone's actions be both heroic and despicable depending on the moral lens through which you view them?

He's not a pure hero like Captain America but he is very heroic. He risks his life over and over in order to bring Ellie to the Fireflies and he only does the thing he does at the end because he's faced with the risk of unimaginable loss and unimaginable guilt (since he would have felt responsible for what happened to her) when other people decide to do something that could reasonably be seen as evil. Even then he is taking enormous risks to protect someone else, which is heroic.

The fact that he is sort of both a hero and a villain depending on which of his actions you look at and what your perspective is is what makes him interesting and also feel kind of real.

@bigsocrates: Oh don't get me wrong, Joel does things that would be considered heroic, when I'm saying he's a not a hero I mean in the "Joel did nothing wrong" camp that takes issue when you point to any moral nuance with him. It's one of the reasons I think that the second game works, the inciting incident of the game doesn't work if you think Joel is all bad, but the second half also wouldn't work if Abby was completely unjustified in having a reason to want revenge on Joel in the broadest of possible strokes

@someoneproud: #Joeldidnothingwrong!

To be sure, Joel is an interesting character because it's so difficult to neatly place him in a box like that. He does very heroic things, although I might argue that he never does anything for a truly selfless reason, and he also does horrible unconscionable things.

It's why I can, at the same time, feel bad that he is so callously drubbed to death and also just sorta be like Well the chickens do come home to roost after all. Even Joel understands in the end.

He is basically a character from the 100, every character in that show is a mass murderer and occasionally reflects on whether they are the bad guys or just survivors.

@intradictus: The first game was very clear that Joel was not some pure hero even ignoring the way that game ends. He did messed up stuff before he even meets Ellie and the first game opens with him and Tess going to torture and kill a guy who cheated them in a business transaction. More importantly, the way Joel kills people in that game is very ugly. Stealth take downs are just brutal in both games, and they are that way to force you to confront the violence that you're doing. Even if the people Joel is killing aren't good people, choking dozens of men and women to death is not exactly socially acceptable behavior.

I think the people who believe "Joel did nothing wrong" fall into one or both of two camps.

1) People who identified with Joel during the game and feel like that if he was morally compromised they would also implicitly be less than morally pure. There are a lot of people who think like this and try to justify anything they may have done even in a video game. It's silly, because it's just a game (so there's no real world moral consequence to the action) and there are lots of games where you play as morally compromised characters. A lot of these people would be okay admitting that the GTA protagonists are bad people (though some wouldn't) but because they like and relate to Joel they aren't willing to do the same there.

2) People who struggle with moral ambiguity in general. They see people as all good or all bad and can't see that everyone is morally compromised in some way. Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife and Gandhi did some really messed up stuff. That doesn't mean they weren't great people, it just means that basically nobody is all good or all bad, but a lot of people struggle with that idea in real life and with characters.

@kemuri07: Hahaha, nice to see you're still in favour of broad assumptions/trying to put words in my mouth duder :) I never said that he did nothing wrong, and yet he's still the absolutebest (partly because he isn't cut from some boring good guy/bad guy template)

@kemuri07: I never said I own the characters or acted like it. There's nothing wrong with analyzing characters or a story. The idea that Abby and crew sees Jackson, a town of thousands, then 20 minutes the person they're looking for just falls in their lap and keeps saying his name is too convenient, the entire situation was too easy. In TLAU1 Joel could smell an ambush coming and ran a guy over based off a hunch, and he was right.

No one expected Ned Stark to die so early, yet it didn't piss me off or most other GoT fans. What happens to Arthur Morgan was a shocker that came out of nowhere and was sad to see and not heroic, yet I love RDR2. This idea that "you idiots only dislike the game because the story didn't play out exactly how you wanted" is silly and really, it's gaslighting. A story doing the thing that people don't want can be powerful, when it's done right. What happened here with Joel, plus Abby being playable was the wrong call, much like making Luke Skywalker a bum or Bran Stark the king.

The golf club/Negan ripoff scene felt like the director was thinking "this is so edgy brah". The only positive thing I can say about the game's director is that he's willing to take risks, but when you do that be ready to deal with the backlash and negativity. For newer Star Wars movies that led to smaller box office returns and executives getting fired/replaced, even with silly critics rating the movies highly. If there's a third game I'm willing to bet it won't sell as well as this game, since this game is selling based off the love for TLAU1. Good luck with the HBO show now too.

For the firefly situation, they knocked out Joel, he woke up and at gunpoint they tried escorting him out as Ellie was currently unconcious and about to be dissected, so he had to act quick. I do agree that he should've told her the truth soon after. Joel is no saint nor devil, I think most people get that.

So you don't have any problems with the devs falsely editing scenes to add Joel in advertisements or lying about Ellie being the only playable character? As far as the quick example I gave on how to change the story, I thought of that in like 20 seconds and it was just an example. In general, it's easier to root for an honorable villain than a psycho villain. Abby is introduced as a psycho villain.

I do not really understand why you would.

Putting aside everything else you said here, because those are separate issues, you understand that this is intentional, right? They made her seem like a psycho in order to make it more challenging to get you to root for her, then they tried to make you root for her (or at least care about and identify with her.) Whether they pulled it off or not is subjective, but they weren't trying to make it easy they were trying to accomplish something challenging. They wanted to introduce a character, make her do something that would upset basically all the players, continue to build her as this awful antagonist, and then see if they could get you to see things her way.

It's valid to say you think they failed and weren't up to the task but it's weird to criticize them for trying the more challenging thing.

How anyone could say the story is bad is just - what? Do people not understand character development? Do people expect characters to remain static as new events unfold around them?

It is not perfect, but relative to the industry, the story is the best in show. The argument over the “political” parts I could give a shit less about. I really don’t care to listen to a chud struggle with the concept of genders and sexuality outside of straight, white males. Fucking cry about it.

That said, I understand the gameplay or how they achieve their storytelling goals (the player agency argument) just not being for you.

It is undeniable that Naughty Dog puts out games that are at the cutting edge of technology, so even if the game is not your cup of tea (which is okay!) I would still recommend a play through to avid video game players because this game will inform how game development is approached in the future.

@bstnrich: You can understand character development and still think the story is bad just because it doesn't resonate with you. I didn't personally think it was bad but I definitely would not call it best in show. My issues with it are mostly around the pacing (often glacial), the various examples of Deus Ex Machina, and the fact that the characters seem to know that they're in a video game. They are all totally willing to take on whole armies alone and clearly believe themselves to be basically invincible. When Ellie and Dina go to Seattle, which is a huge city, and find it to be basically a war zone they're still totally convinced they can somehow find Tommy. The enemies are sometimes like "a few trespassers shouldn't be causing all this trouble" and it's like "yes, you're right, this is silly."

I do not think they resolve the tension of trying to tell a story about cycles of revenge while also having your characters kill hundreds of other people, whose stories and feelings are totally ignored because they're just faceless grunts and not part of the main cast. Are we supposed to feel that characters are morally redeemed when they let one other person go after they've killed dozens upon dozens in pursuit of vengeance?

The themes are just hopelessly muddled, the pacing is way too slow, the characters are living in a cartoon world, and it takes itself so incredibly seriously that it just didn't fully work for me. That has nothing to do with understanding character development, which isn't even one of my major criticisms.

@bigsocrates: I'm saying they dug such a hole for themselves with Abby that they couldn't get out of it, even with cheap tricks like with the dog.

I mean do we have to like the avatar we're controlling now?

@deathstriker: So you're saying that instead of a full grown attack dog the dog should have been a border collie puppy named Mr. Fluffy Lumpkins?

A lot of video game fans are not used to talking about their dislike of a game in more nuanced terms than bad and good. So we get stuff like “the writing is bad” when they maybe didn’t dig what the story is putting down.

The game is far from perfect. It has some tone and pacing problems. Naughty dogs problem of not telling you where you are going in each “encounter” makes it hard to stealth through those encounters. I have mixed feelings on how detailed the key murders are, which are hyper detailed almost to a “pornographic” degree.

But it is a compelling game with real merits. We don’t often let women be the center of stories like this. Or be as angry and ugly as Ellie and Abby get to be.

I was reminded of a scene in the HBO series His Dark Materials where the young girl protagonist escapes the matriarchal antagonist and both are on opposite sides of a door. The antagonist banging to be let out, screaming in frustration. The protagonist also starts screaming back, again in frustration of being harassed for the entire series. The screaming is rage filled, ugly and weirdly satisfying. It is a really compelling scene partly because rarely see women in media get to be that pissed. The LoU2 compels me in the same way, though the rage and frustration are not productive in this game.

Also, the character designs for Ellie and Abby are both really good. They both look capable in their own way, while being clearly different based on how they have decided to navigate the world. Again, it is nice to see lady characters who are not being sexualized while moving through the game world or while in conflict.

@bigsocrates: Uh... no, lol. Having a character care about an animal then someone hurts or kill it is kind of the easiest way in the world to generate sympathy for said character. That situation and what happens with the pregnant women felt like writing 101.

For the record, I don't think the game is trash. It's the best looking console game, the gameplay is good, and the story/set-pieces have their moments, but I think they screwed up the story, characters, pacing, order of events, and millions of people will probably bail from the series now. The game is around a 7/10 for me. Considering I thought TLAU1 was the best game last gen, that's a hell of a drop in quality.

@deathstriker: I more or less agree with your take on the game, though I'd probably say closer to an 8.5/10 than a 7. I personally don't think that the Joel stuff was too bad. One thing you have to remember is that he's been living in Jackson, among friends, for four years at that point, so he's gotten softer than he was in the prior game, and feeling like you're home and safe can make people comfortable with risks they wouldn't otherwise take. For a real life example look at Chris Kyle, the famous "American Sniper" who got shot to death by a guy he took to the shooting range and who he was texting with his friend seemed dangerous before he literally gave the guy a gun. People make mistakes, and Joel isn't in "constant threat" mode anymore and hasn't been for years. He's been living an easier life, surrounded by people he loves, in a place he feels safe. He's going to act differently in that situation.

I also think terms like "betrayed the character" almost never work. The character is a work of fiction. They didn't set out to make Joel look stupid or bad. You might say they wrote him badly in this game, or it was a bad scene or whatever, but it's not a "betrayal" it's just...a less than successful attempt at something.

I think the game has a lot of story issues but everything was done in good faith to try to accomplish something. Whether that's something they should have tried to do, and how successful they were, are different questions.

As for the marketing manipulation stuff...eh. It's marketing. They wanted to try to surprise people. It's not like they falsely advertised the program. If you wanted a game where you play as Ellie you got that. Joel is in the game as a companion. A lot of games actually have trailer material from scenes that were cut or whatever. The intentional manipulation isn't great, but it's not a huge deal to me.

@deathstriker: I mean, speak for yourself, I liked Abby by the end of the game, and it seems like a fair number of other people did too, if you didn't like her that's cool too

Not to mention that it isn't even Joel that says their names first, it's Tommy, someone who in the last game clearly had issues with Joel's way of doing things (although that might be because he has an infinite ammo cheat and super fast reload perk). They also weren't just hur-dur following Abby because they felt like it, they were in a blizzard and being overwhelmed by a horde of infected that was literally overruning Tommy and Joel's fallback position. I guess the real survivor move is to ride into the blizzard and try to get to Jackson?

@intradictus: Obviously everything being said here about what someone likes or doesn't is subjective and them "speaking for themselves". TLAU went from an overall beloved series to now divisive, I wouldn't say that's a good thing.

@bigsocrates: it always surprises me that people get upset about trick marketing when movies have been doing it for longer than I have been alive. It’s like they skipped the class in understanding media that details how all marketing is manipulation. Any super cut of action moments is not the game, and the song that is playing during it isn’t in the game either. Personally I’m thrilled that Naughty Dog pulled that trick because was deeply concerned they were gunna fridge a queer girl like so many movies with queer women.

And it is sort of awesome that Naughty Dog has forced the discussion of Joel being a selfish monster into the center of the narrative and discourse. Because a lot of folks did not see him that way and that always bothered me about the first game.

@deathstriker: eh, divisive media is often the best media. I’m 100% on board with all of the decisions, but I respect that Naughty Dog did things they knew would upset fans of the first game to try something. It isn’t the game I would have made, but I support any game that makes me play the final boss(for the main line story) for the first half of the game. And making that boss the lovable girl from the first game is equally striking.

The more I read complaints about this game, the more I come to love it. I've been pretty thorough in this and other threads on this forum about all the ways the story might have been structured better, but I've been going back to watch scenes that people are complaining about and thinking about the "character flaws" people are proposing and constantly coming away from the re-watch going, "man, that was incredible."

I always find questions of "convenience" far too nit-picky for a storytelling medium as well. At some point, you've got to tell your story and sometimes that means it takes Abby a single day and a couple of hours of gameplay to find Joel in Jackson due to a contrivance while Ellie stalks her prey meticulously over 3 long days in Seattle.

This strikes me as a real bummer of a place to end up in. I don't know if it's what you intended to say but what I hear from this is like.. okay if you have a hit stay the course and don't take big risks.

@efesell: To me divisive means a large part of the fan base didn't like it. If that happens it's usually for a reason, it doesn't mean creators shouldn't take risks, it just means the risk or their decisions didn't work for many people. I've given examples in here where risks worked (RDR2, early/mid Game of Thrones) and I gave examples where taking risks or the creators decisions didn't work for a lot of the fan base (TLAU2, newer Star Wars, Game of Thrones season 8). I never said they shouldn't take risks.

The concept of the “fan base” is extremely nebulous in these arguments. Are those of us that liked the risks not part of the fan base? How does one determine what the fan base likes or dislikes?

To the people judging Joel, being in constant threat/ paranoid awareness mode literally drives you insane. Flooding your brain with adrenaline constantly is one of the causes of PTSD and one of the reasons soldiers sometimes struggle to even understand why they have PTSD when they don't feel like they should.

It would be weird for him to be living in Jackson for 4 years trying to rebuild a relationship with a daughter surrogate and still be as sharp as he was while on the road during the first game.

That, and I think the idea that "fans" know whats best for a franchise--and in most cases, no they do not--is just as problematic as well. That's how you get Rise of The Skywalker, kids: a movie that tries to appeal to everyone, and pretty much fails entirely.

It is very, very, very rare for subversive media to be accepted by a wide audience. A good many of the film classics that we take for granted as being masterpieces, were initially met with cool or outright negative reviews from critics and audiences before critical re-evaluation got them the respect they receive to day. I largely expect TLOU 2 to follow the same path.

Judging the subreddit and Youtube you'd think the game was doomed before it even came out, however it hasn't stop it breaking sales records and the rating on PSN is sky high.

I'm pretty sure most of the folks hating on the game never bought it or had any intention of doing so, for most who don't follow any of this unaware TLOU2 will simply be an excellent game.

If anything the negativity is signal boosting and with Ellie it could easily appeal to a broader audience than usual.

I feel the same way about it as I did the first one. It's a really good game but nowhere near the masterpiece it's being hailed as by some, and definitely not the disaster others are deriding it as.

I actually replayed a bit of TLOU1 recently and was reminded how mediocre the actual gameplay was. TLOU1 is an okay game with a better than average story; TLOU2 is far and a way the better game in both gameplay and narrative.

@someoneproud: dude it was a joke.

chillax.

@kemuri07: NO, YOU CHILLAX!!!!

@deathstriker: man, I love that this game is so divisive.

I wish more massive mainstream stuff was as divisive as this.

I think it’s a shame that some people resort to expressing their dislike or appreciation with toxicity but when two vast swathes of audience have very different opinions on something, that’s where the best conversations happen and we all learn a little bit more about both our own tastes and how they line up with others’ tastes.

@trulyalive: Totally agree, huge divisive mainstream stuff is actually what moves thing forward alot of the time.

Why would you even want a TLOU 2 with a "safe" story?

I'm a little disappointed to see people thinking Joel's death and how he died is some sort of moral judgment on him and how he lived. His death has nothing to do with that. The game clearly loves Joel no matter his transgressions. His death is just a result of the "cycles-of-violence" theme this story tells.

I'm curious how many people who dislike the game saw the two spoilers. Joel dies and you play as the character that kills him.

Did you see this before playing? Cuz on paper I can see this seeming like a pretty bad story. But in execution, there is so much more going on.

@drbroel: I'd argue that Joel's deathis very much a case of poetic justice. And while I don't think the game outright hates him, it's absolutely on the side that Joel's belief that the end justifies means is the wrong take, and he meets his own death by someone who shares the same philosophy.

Joel is a likable monster. But he is still a monster.

@kemuri07: very much disagree that its poetic justice. I think its more the metaphysical world they live in. but we can agree to disagree. it is a very complicated work of art.

Just finished the game, managed to be spoiler free the entire time and I was enraptured from start to finish, I thought it was an amazing experience, unless Cyberpunk blows my socks off this is my GOTY if not generation.

Spoiler thoughts.

Probably in the minority here? but I ended up being a big fan of Abby and enjoyed seeing her side of the story and seeing her grow from the number one WLF Scar killer to a person able to show true empathy to what were her enemy and in the end her obvious care and affection for Lev, Naughty Dog got me to care about a character that tortured and splattered Joel across the carpet, I absolutely did not think they could but they pulled it off fantastically and I want an Abby/Lev DLC escapade!