@video_game_king: "it completely goes against previously established moods for no good reason."

this makes no sense. it's dumb.

What? What were you expecting? What "moods"?

I also really want to see your justification for this. What arguments do you have for it? If I have to wait for the blog, fine, but don't dance around it with dumb references and constantly interrupted sentences.

As a side note, what other games would you say are "literature-worthy"? From what I've played, I agree with @hh. There are a lot of enjoyable stories in video games but this is the only one I've played that measures up to something a little more. I hear good things about Planescape Torment, though, so I need to play that at some point.

How does it not make any sense? The game had, until that point, established a morally ambiguous world wherein people were more or less trying to live their lives. In addition, Joel was a thoroughly ordinary person in this world; there was nothing to set him apart. The ending abandons both of these premises in favor of a morally clear cut world. We're now supposed to side with Joel's reckless heroics and his "screw your rules, I'm doing what's right" mindset. In that sense, it completely goes against previously established moods. (I'd also mention a major plot problem, but theme is more my issue.)

Also, I might point out the irony of implicitly calling me an idiot ("wasted on gamers") while your own arguments are literally nothing more than calling my position "dumb."

you may have missed what i said earlier in the thread -

"it's the perfect book-end for his daughter getting shot at the start. it's an iron rod that the story - joel's struggle with his newfound responsibility - is built around, and he makes the choice that the state dictated at the beginning by shooting his daughter and ripping his heart out."

this betrayal sets joel apart, and makes him the wrong person for the fireflies' job.

and there is nothing morally clear cut about the ending, we are not supposed to side with joel's decision, we are supposed to observe it, and see it for what it is - entirely possible, likely even. that's all.

and you haven't convinced me at all that there's even a basis for your argument that it goes against anything that comes before.

Ah, all right. This is where the "literature" part comes in. The Last of Us isn't necessarily asking you to agree with Joel, it's just book-ending its story. I think someone else used virtually the same language. It begins with Joel unable to save his daughter, it ends with Joel doing everything he can to save someone who he's come to care for as his own daughter. Joel did what he had to. He couldn't have lived with himself if he let her die. It doesn't go against previously established moods, it goes with Joel's previously established character. "Morals" don't really have anything to do with it. It fits. It works.

Inciting discussion is one of the things that literature does and, as we've seen from this and the other thread, The Last of Us's ending has done a pretty good job of just that.

I agree. I have absolutely no idea how the ending is morally clear cut.

Joel has been an stupid, egoistical and irresponsible prick the whole game so the ending fits the mood perfectly. The real question is what Ellie makes of all this, she has proven more than once she doesnt take any shit and is a supersmart girl.

Joel came to love Ellie, and would burn the world down before letting anything happen to her. Ellie finally got someone who would never abandon her. Pretty simple and beautiful story of two people finding love and life in the worst of situations and past experiences.

@hh said:

@video_game_king said:

@hh said:

Joel's dilemma is the only literature-worthy piece of writing games have ever seen, and are likely to see for a very long time.

that's right, give yourself credit for not being able to see it. well done.

I disagree, Well did you play Planescape Torment? That game has arguably the best story out of any video game.

It's so good that there is the novelized version of the dialogue.

I'll leave you with a snipet of the great writting:

At what point does the I get separated from the we? At what point am I freed of the shackles of the actions of these other incarnations? At what point am I allowed to be me, without the weight of these past lives?

I'm cool with the ending. I didn't drag Ellie across that wasteland just to sacrifice her.

Tommy's village wasn't a bad place to be, but you have to take in account the events that happened while Joel and Ellie were there: the attack. Both the enginners that made the turbine work to generate electricity got killed and so did a whole bunch of other guys from the village. With this arises an interesting question: how many attacks can the comunity allow itself to face before its population starts dwindling? Does it have the means to really support the community it wants to foster longer than the failed quarantine zones? Or is the human race just slowly circling down the drain?

Plus there would be more than a few people, groups interested on getting their hands on that settlement...

For a more realistic approach to this scenario you could read The Walking Dead and see that even a village like this is no paradise.

As a curiosity, the way Walking Dead settlements deal with the problem of population is inviting promising groups of people to live within, so the population is periodically replenished. Still they dwindle with all the deaths by the infected, rival groups, disputes and natural causes.

That doesn't make him any less of a piece of shit. Joel didn't save Ellie for her benefit. He did it because he's selfish and mentally unstable. Most of the game he doesn't even want to bother with Ellie. If it makes you feel any better, Joel was a piece of shit long before he met Ellie.

you may be right, i didn't get far enough in that game to tell, and by the above quote that game could well have existential themes that have an impact on the player, but are they as relevant as the central theme of TLOU?

Last of Us draws a direct line to all the disenfranchised members of our own society, disenfranchised by the way our society is run from the top down, all the school shooters that pervade the news these days, these are a symptom of our way of life, this is a real problem, people who develop nothing but resentment for the world, in response to how they are treated by others, and people who actually see harm in new life - a population spiralling out of control, in the face of an energy crisis that no-one has an answer for, what's going to happen when the oil runs out? an end to globalization? a complete dependance on locally grown food? a huge population decline? does it even make sense to save every life? are we making the underlying problem worse? are we too sympathetic now to even stop ourselves? are we compelled to save every life no-matter the consequences? no movie or book i've come across has addressed this pressing issue, but TLOU did it superbly.

I say the relevancy depends on both the person and the moment they live in. Like the lyrics of Demons by Imagine Dragons:

When the days are cold

And the cards all fold

And the saints we see

Are all made of gold

But I see your point, still to me that pales in comparison with other problems. Especially because we created this world. It was born from our thoughts, born from our flaws, and without addressing those flaws do we have a chance to make the world a better place? To some extent possibly... but that extent is limited.

Yeah, but you can't deal with something it still hasn't happened. You can make plans, but there is no guarantee they will work, and to what extent they will work. Of course they will be as accurate as the effort and inteligence put behind them. ahah

Wasn't Joel kinda not a throughly ordinary person? He was a hardcore bandit that than integrated into one of the safe zones and became a succesffuly smuggler...

Also he was always kinda of a piece of shit, but since you could actually understand his motivations for most of the game it was harder to notice.

In the end for me i did not side with Joel, and I saw him as the villian of the game, even if I was glad him and Ellie got to "live happily ever after".

Also Planescape torment does have the best story video game story ever.

Its fine if console plebs haven't played every game ever but than don't make such silly hyperbolic statements as this:

Joel's dilemma is the only literature-worthy piece of writing games have ever seen, and are likely to see for a very long time.

1. Joel was an ex-bandit turned smuggler/gun runner, not exactly ordinary
2. If the ending was "morally clear cut" we wouldn't have a thread and a poll full of people arguing the morality or Joel's actions, with a 64:36 split.

There is no right or wrong answer. Needs of the many outweigh the few and all that but Joel made the most human choice. You can argue ethics and right and wrong all day but there is no right answer. I can't say I would make a different choice, especially in the moment. And I wouldn't consider myself a "piece of shit".

It's pretty easy to align yourself on the moral end of that argument. So I wouldn't feel proud of having a high and mighty attitude about being against Joel's choice. It shouldn't be that easy of a choice and that's the genius of that ending.

@azrailx: hey man, if you've got examples please provide, i've already conceded planescape's claim, although i don't think it's as rightful as TLOU's. and don't make the mistake of thinking literature means good, i'm not talking about good stories, the lord of the rings is a great story, but it's not relevant to the world we live in, and therefore you won't find it on university curriculums. if game history is brimming with stories that are relevant that I don't know about, and there are no reasons why it should be really, please enlighten me.

calling me a console pleb was a really ignorant opener by the way, i bought planescape when it came out.

I disagree with you, but certainly don't think your reasoning is dumb. I thought the games ending was completely ambiguous and far from being some happy ending where Joel gets to live happily ever after. Joel potentially sacrificed a cure for the human race as well as murdered a shit ton of people because he couldn't cope with losing Elle again. Joel didn't think what he did was right; the game ends on Joel lying to Elle about what really happened at that hospital to emphasize this very point. If the game wanted to end with Joel as a good guy or have us on his side, he would have told Elle the truth and she would have accepted it without question.

I thought the entire point of the of the game was that the human race dose not deserve to survive, Joel for instance is not a good guy, we know he was once a hunter, he admits it, through the game we see the strong taking form the weak.

The hunters, the army, the fireflies, the guy voiced by Nolan North all out for their own goals, to protect their own little kingdom, you could argue Joel does the same in protecting Ellie

Maybe he made that choice for Ellie, because maybe he did not think that she had the capacity to see the real hell that the world of the last of us is, she does have a bit of a messiah complex instilled form Marlene, what teenager would not like to be the centre of hope for the world (see teen fiction rise over the past 10 years).

Side Note (if it was all real)

As far as the viability of the cure, it would cure people of the infection only if they were treated within the first few days right? Even if they could have gotten the cure in a non-invasive way, the surviving humans would only have an inoculation against getting infected, they still would have to kill all the infected who had entered the runner stage, right?

i was being inflammatory to be inflammatory, does anyone ever say console pleb seriously?

but you win kind sir, good day!

If the village has grown by quite a bit, as it seems to have at the end of The Last of Us, then they clearly have the means to defend themselves and they clearly aren't dwindling.

Also, as Tommy's village grows, they will have better and better defenses, while those bandits will just keep shooting whoever isn't a friend and stealing all of their stuff.

I do wonder how the bandits would do without David, mind. The man had charisma.

The same could probably be said about the abandoned quarantine zones. They had electricity and defenses too... yet they were abandoned.

With Ellie's sacrifice the world had a chance of becoming a better place than what already was, without the sacrifice and without most of the Fireflies, the world of the Last of Us is worse for it. The Fireflies weren't a very competent force, but their heart were in the right place most of the time in the game.

Idealistic? Geez, that's going a bit far don't you think? Forget all the stuff about consent, there's not a medical professional alive that could believe for a second this scenario would work. A shitty, run down, dirty hospital, surrounded by murderous monsters... this is where they'll find the cure? Ok so they're desperate,but they knew instantly, without any tests or whatever, that Ellie would have to die so they could extract a potential cure? At no point during the final section of that game did I feel like the Fireflies plan would work. How many times did Ellie nearly die getting to that lab? Why the hell wasn't she escorted by armed guards across the country if she's that important? They've waited years for this cure too, what if the surgery was a huge mess and they had to try again...? nope sorry, the only person to ever survive this disease is dead.

If a person was found tomorrow who had any of the world's deadliest diseases and managed to cure themselves thanks to a genetic abnormality killing them for sciencewould be the last option, not the first.

I really liked this game, I'm fine with the ending and the emotional arc of Joel and Ellie works very well. But the writers absolutely failed to suspend my disbelief when it comes to the denouement. I would have preferred a more intimate story rather than one about saving the world. But whatever, I've written too much negative stuff about a game I actually like.

...Yes, I agree with you, I've been saying that people who would sacrifice Ellie for a cure are too idealistic, mainly for the reasons you've noted. I was agreeing that if this were going to happen, it should be Ellie's choice, and not a 14 year old Ellie.

But Tommy's village was growing, that's the part of my argument that you're missing. They must be doing something right.

I cannot agree with the morality of sacrificing a person on a chance. I'm sorry. Where does that end? You sacrifice one person, no results. You sacrifice another, no results. You sacrifice, what, a hundred? No results? How do you justify that?

Having your heart in the right place doesn't mean that your actions are justified or admirable. Some people might frown on linking to TVTropes, but I think that a good look at this page will help you understand why.

I'm feeling la bit alone in this thread with my take on this matter. I think the decision should have been up to Ellie and not Joel or the Fireflies. Do the rest of you disagree, take that as a given, or something else?

I do agree with you, but I think that Ellie should have been given the option as an adult. A 14 year old isn't mature enough to make that decision on her own. Someone else in this thread pointed out that Marlene wasn't just going to give her that choice, she had worked too hard for someone to just say "no" and had placed all of her faith in coming across a cure. The Fireflies are, frankly, too reckless to be the ones searching for a cure. You finally get someone who is immune and you decide to kill them? Isn't that a decision that should take months of testing, debating, and studying to come to?

But I guess I'm one of the few who thinks that Joel did the right thing, everything considered. The Last of Us is too morally ambiguous for a clear-cut "right" answer, something with no moral threads left hanging.

And to think that my first post in this thread was a suggestion that the old one just get bumped. Ah, well.

Think what you will about Joel, the important thing is that his decision was entirely justifiable and consistent as far as his character goes.

One thing I'll point out here: There could very likely be more people immune. The only way to find out is to get bitten or infected and not turn. Those are some pretty dire conditions for finding out if you're immune. Most people that come into contact with the infected aren't making it out of the encounter, so an immune person could easily be killed by an infected.

If they really wanted to go dark with things, well, if they wanted to continue going dark with things, they could have a faction purposely infecting people looking for an immune person. Don't see why this couldn't be the Fireflies since they are privy to knowledge that an immune person exists.

@believer258:

I guess for me, in my State (Washington) 13 is considered old enough to consent to things like mental health services. It's still young, but I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about age. Ellie had shown herself to be competent and mature so I think she should have been given the choice and it respected. As Joel I would have respected her decision either way and tried to help her. But the Fireflies and Joel were both selfish and stubborn and didn't care about anyone or thing else and Ellie was lost in the shuffle.

It's a great ending because it's so ambiguous. But in that position I would have wanted to make sure Ellie's decision was honored no matter what it was.

I'm with you.

Perhaps, but remember that Joel spent a decade or two haunted by his daughter's death. Ellie was his second chance. You might have been able to stand back and give her the choice. He couldn't. I couldn't let her make that choice at 14 because the Fireflies are a dwindling terrorist group that clearly don't have good ideas on how to go about getting a cure.

I hardly think that Joel "didn't care". He saved her because he did care about her, very much, which is why he shot his way through or snuck his way around a bunch of Firefly soldiers, picked Ellie up, carried her out, shot Marlene, and then lied to Ellie. I'm not going to call it a selfless series of actions, but he certainly did care about Ellie the person and not just Ellie his second chance.

As for Ellie's maturity - eh, she runs away on a horse at one point and I think that alone is a good sign that she isn't as mature as she seems to be. I don't doubt that she's a pretty smart girl, or that she's pretty mature for her age, but "for her age" is the key phrase there. She's still very much a young teenager.

What I think he meant is that Joel cared about Ellie in as much as how she mattered to him, and not about what she would wanted. That first one's quite selfish to the point where you could ask if the person does really care about you.

But since nobody seemed willing to ask her how she felt about the matter and since I'm doubtful that anything good would have come out of the scientists doing what they were gonna do I think Joel taking her out of there was better than the alternative. I still think it would have been best to ask what she wanted to do. That was the best solution, if you ask me. It's her life, it's her choice.

As a father...I would burn the world to the ground for my little girl. No question. Fuck everybody else. Team fuckin Joel!

Made the right choice in my eyes. Fireflies are nothing but murderers, so the only way to cure humanity dying is to kill the killers.

What a bunch of fucking assholes trying to ruin a perfectly amazing ending.

I think Joel did what made sense to him at the time. I don't particularly know or care if it was the 'right' thing to do in anyone's eyes. Putting someone to the scalpel without their consent, if it doesn't concern a life-threatening emergency, is honestly an invasion of privacy in my eyes, but I understand where people are coming from on the stance that it would have been better to have tried for a cure and failed than not tried at all. Nobody knew if Ellie would ever wake up from that coma to give her consent, and nobody knew whether there would be anything to gain from the parasite after she died. On the other hand I don't think the notes, however the lead writers may stomp their feet and say it justified it, gave me, or more to the point would have given Joel, any particular confidence that the Fireflies had any idea what they were doing.

The ending gives fodder for debate and discussion and that's what I really like about it, more than anything. It's nice to see discussion about it even a year later.

And she wasn't immune. She still had a head packed full of mushrooms. That's not immunity. That's stubbornness. She could easily become the world's deadliest mushroom, over time.

I got this PS3 video game at launch.

I still haven't played it.

Did you notice Joel subconsciously rubbing his watch in the ending cutscene? I thought that was a pretty clear message that he had his daughter in mind as he was lying to Ellie.

@jasonr86: Yes, and at the end Joel lies to Ellie. Not to protect her from the truth, not for any altruistic reason, but to hide what he did because he worried she wouldn't approve and she'd leave him like his daughter did. It was a purely selfish decision. It was not altruistic or to give Ellie what she wanted/deserved. He couldn't lose her again. So he did what he did and lied to her afterwards.

And maybe to an extent she lied to herself too, lied that she actually believed him.

Joel isn't a hero at the end of the game. He's a man who's sick of losing everything that matters to him and he's not going to let it happen again, damn the consequences.

@ryanmgraef: soooooooo, your evil? only a very slight amount of sarcasm to my post

Also Ellie might be 14 years old but she would be much more mature than your average 14 year old now-a-days, as living is a harsh world would make her grow up quickly.

Well the two enginneers that put the turbine working are goners, for once. I hope there are more there... Or the electricity is going bye bye if there is a malfunction at the powerplant as well as the electrified fences. The fact that the village seems to be growing doesn't mean anything when there are plenty of dangers, from infected, stragglers and military that would crave for the type of setup they have there.

I think everything is worth sacrifying for hope. The death of a hundred is justified if the race would find a cure and survive. Because otherwise they really are the last of us, like the name implies.

I at least respect the actions of a person with their heart in the right place. And this time I respect the decisions of the Fireflies, and if I were in their shoes I would fight to resist the urge to do the same thing they did. Because they are sacrifying everything for the hope of a better life, and that includes not only Ellie, but themselves too.

Joel already lost a daughter and wasn't going to lose another one. End of story.

@jeust: I've already talked about Tommy's village enough. I don't need to elaborate further, because there's a bigger point that really bugs me. It's not just you, a lot of people have brought it up and I haven't fully expanded.

I think everything is worth sacrifying for hope. The death of a hundred is justified if the race would find a cure and survive. Because otherwise they really are the last of us, like the name implies.

All right. So you sacrifice one girl on just a chance that it will save the human race. I'll talk about the "what-if-it-works" in a minute; for now, what if it doesn't work? One of two things will happen - you'll stop or you'll keep looking for another immune person. If you stop, then you will be admitting that you killed a little girl for nothing and this will bother you until you die. If you still believe that you did the right thing, then you'll keep looking for another immune person. If you find one, you will kill that person in pursuit of a cure. And you'll keep going down that same path until the day you die. Every time you choose to keep looking, you'll reinforce the belief that it will eventually work and you won't stop. People will keep dying because you can't let the idea go that maybe, just maybe, you'll save the human race. That is why I cannot accept laying a person's life on a maybe. Such thinking just contributes a pile of bodies to the human race, which is also why I disagree with this:

I at least respect the actions of a person with their heart in the right place. And this time I respect the decisions of the Fireflies, and if I were in their shoes I would fight to resist the urge to do the same thing they did. Because they are sacrifying everything for the hope of a better life, and that includes not only Ellie, but themselves too.

"Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions". I didn't think I'd be quoting Jurassic Park 3, but hey, it fits the situation.

So what if it did work? You're in Marlene's position and you found a cure. Congratulations. Now, as above, one of two things are going to happen. You're going to do your best to mass produce it (something likely impossible for the Fireflies in the first place) and suddenly every faction with an itchy trigger finger is going to come after you. A cure means power, and the Fireflies are all but gone by the end of the game. They can't defend themselves against everyone coming after it. You'll have incited something approximating a war. You'll just have faction after faction fighting over it, leading to a bigger pile of bodies than that what-if-it-doesn't scenario could ever hope to achieve. To avoid this, you'll have to keep your cure secret and only give it to a select few people, effectively rendering it almost useless. Also, a pretty good chance of rumors about a cure spreading and said power struggles happening anyway.

So, in the best case scenario, you've got the death of a little girl on your hands and it was useless. You go on with your life tormented by guilt. Is that "chance" still worth it? Finding a cure isn't going to be the end of it, that isn't going to magically save humanity.

And I think that's all I really need to say on this topic for the moment.

The opposite choice hinges too much on the Fireflies being capable enough to carry out the nearly impossible series of events that would need to occur for this theoretical cure to actually mean anything.

So yeah, I'm with Joel. Definitely a favorite ending to one of my favorite games of all time.

So personally I understand Joel. At one point in the plot, when he decides to follow trough with Ellie, he kind of snaps. Ellie becomes his daughterand his opportunity to reclaim his failed life.

If I was in his position, I don't know what I would do. I would have likely tried to save her too, but obviously, there are degrees.

I tried to justify him a bit: For example I thought that it seemed unlikely that the fireflies would actually manage to synthesise and distribute a cure even if they killed Ellie. But it doesn't seem like he really thought about that. Or I even supported his decision to ignore Ellie's opinion thinking that teenagers are idealists and don't know what is really good for them.

All things considered, to me, at the very end, Joel goes down the deep end. He starts talking about Sarah, and how they'd be friends. He is selfish, he doesn't care about her wishes, and seemingly feels no regret for anything he's done. I honestly felt a bit uncomfortable, hearing him drone obliviously on and on about his dead daughter to Ellie, about teaching her how to play guitar, like an old mildly demented man, incapable of actually getting back what he lost, but deluding himself into thinking that it'll all be ok.

All in all I think we all wish to know what Ellie would have really decided if she was asked. It was her choice to make, but none of the sides really cares about her opinion one way or the other.
(as a reflection, though. She also tries to "save" Joel when he is in trouble.)

In the end, Joel could really be the monster who cursed the future of humanity, but he doesn't seem bothered by that prospect.... His world is already broken, and thats all he cares about.

It becomes a closer parallel with David, willing to do anything for what he perceives is right for him and those around him. Man as an animal, product of it's environment.

I find it is a brilliant ending. I felt actively guilty for having enabled Joel, but at the same time, couldn't help but understand him. Ellie hints that she knows that he is lying or at least not telling her the full truth, and she herself declares that she actually wished to sacrifice herself. There is a huge lie between them now, they need each other, but there is now that tinge of distrust.

Very demonstrative of ridicule of the noble heights and despicable lows of Humanity.

(a lot of people will laugh about reading so much into it, but having studied a fair bit of classic literature, I really do consider that it is probably one of the most meaningful and powerful narratives in the medium available today... planescape torment is a wonderful game, but the plot has a lot more fantasy-unnecessary-nonsensical-gamey aspects, which are understandable, but do dampen the impact... in my personal opinion)