The Last of Us Part II announced
- Thread starter Greatest Ever
- Start date
Chuck Norris
Banned
Why keep her unconscious then?
The Fireflies were just as willing to rob her of a choice as Joel. Marlene says "it's what she would have wanted", but that is Marlene putting words in Ellie's mouth to justify her goals. Maybe she would have said yes but the Fireflies wanted no chance of that and instead decided cold blooded murder was the most logical choice to develop their vaccine
And I hardly think their goals would have been beneficial for mankind. The Fireflies proved throughout the game that they are simply mercenaries looking for power
dragonbane
Member
It was certainly purposely left open in that regard. The game makes sure of that by placing a lot of notes that explain the firefly standpoint reasonably enough and ofc you know Joel's view. I personally disagree with what he did and hope he gets punished for it in the second game, but I can see where his supporters are coming from too. I wonder if they will just sidestep it to avoid having to decide for one interpretation (Ellie is cool with it vs. not).
Talking about Sara is one thing, talking about how he associates Sara with Ellie is another. Like much of the game's narrative, it's ambiguous, and I feel that's deliberately done to give you a feeling of uncertainty about Joel. It's effective writing in the sense of classic horror, where the less you know for certain that something's there the more on edge you are. It might be innocuous, but Joel is unarguably an emotionally broken man with his most sensitive area being his daughter, for which he is willing to go to extremes to. That places his mental framework of Ellie under suspicion, which is probably the best place for it to be in terms of making him an interesting character.
Regardless, the original discussion point was "Would he hit/rape Ellie" I fucking doubt that. His unhealthy views on life make me weary of saying he has a positive relationship with Ellie, but whether he views her as Sara 2.0 or not and he'd arguably manipulate her if need be, but no way he'd try to do anything he'd perceive as harmful to her.
dragonbane
Member
This whole segment is definitely not optimally written which makes this discussion quite a bit harder. I definitely don't think of the Fireflies in that way but I can see where you are coming from with what's presented in the actual game. The entire hospital scene was written to provide a quick conflict even if logic is kinda thrown out the window a bit. No matter how desperate they are it really doesn't make much sense to kill Ellie and risk losing the key to the vaccine without having tried everything else first. Makes it seem like weeks have passed already. The writing definitely antagonizes the Fireflies there without it making much sense for them to do that in the way presented. I guess it's whether you take it at face value or not.
Uno Venova
Banned
this fucking thread
I don't get why you would give them the benefit of the doubt over Joel.
Like, why is Joel a bad guy to some people for saving his daughter from people with uncertain motivations and shady information? "Ellie wanted to die" is not justification, she was 14 and the Fireflies actually had no idea if her death would cure anything at all. Joel was put into a position where he had to kill them all to save her.
Lys Skygge
Member
lol I think of that every time I hear the mention of drugs.
AudioEppa
Member
The place where I object is that the idea that Joel had any of these things in mind.
Take the possibility of a cure for example. Joel isn't stupid, but he's very blatantly uneducated. He has no idea what it takes to create a vaccine. If the doctors say that this is the best route to do so, he has no basis on which to dispute them. He didn't intellectually dispute what the doctors were trying to do "What if they can't actually find a cure?" The words out of his mouth when he realized what they were doing were "Find someone else." So it's perfectly fine if they find someone else's daughter to murder for a cure, just not his.
You can come up with reasons for why saving Ellie was the right thing to do. I just don't think any of those reasons were Joel's. He's a self centered person, whose view and compassion to the world are limited only to himself and those around him. He wanted Ellie to survive because she soothed his pain. She was his key to survival as a human being. Elsewise, he just goes back to being an animalistic survivor who can't process grief.
Heckler456
Banned
Isn't that that one idiot that just didn't get the game around release?
fake edit: Not saying he's an idiot for not liking the game. Just saying he was being an idiot about it.
I don't think "find someone else" necessarily means that, and he disputed them because the military killed his daughter 15 years ago or however long, the same types of people you should ostensibly trust as knowing "what's best". The doctors are working under the same type of militaristic assholes.
dragonbane
Member
Since the game is presented very realistically up to this point I guess I simply followed my real life logic instinct which tells me the Fireflies are probably not that bad and the game simply tries to make me hate them now at all costs to have a dramatic finale. I still loved the ending, but I was very off put by the final encounter which I think is not exceptionally well written and not very realistic (that's also why I stealthed this segment). I cannot really buy into the "Fireflies are just evil mercenaries and want to gain control with the vaccine" theories because of all the various notes that you find up to this point. Every single Firefly individual you find accounts off both at the university and the hospital seemed genuinely invested in finding a cure for the sole sake of it. Watching them suddenly be dicks and Marlene supposedly losing control over them came very out of the blue imo. Being desperate is one thing, but killing Ellie asap without even extracting a sample first is just plain retarded and I can't really believe any doctor would go through with that nor that any discussion about this was made by Marlene or Joel. I guess I'm just at odds with the writing of the hospital encounter, but I ultimately felt that the game was trying to cheat me by forcing me into an encounter and that Joel is pretty self centered and selfish for starting it in this way. So I guess all of that made me fall back into the Firefly camp despite their writing issues.
I'm on the boat that even if they did go through with the operation on Ellie, it's been 20 fucking years. Whatever shred of humanity that's left, everything else is just way too far gone.
Not to mention that them doing the procedure didn't even guarantee they could make a cure.
Not saying Joel isn't a selfish, questionable dude. Pretty sure most everyone agrees on that.
Not to mention that them doing the procedure didn't even guarantee they could make a cure.
Not saying Joel isn't a selfish, questionable dude. Pretty sure most everyone agrees on that.
Heckler456
Banned
You know how Ellie is Joel's reason to live?
Finding a vaccine is Marlene's reason to live, and to a certain extent, I'm sure the rest of her band as well. It's that "something" that Joel refers to at the end, that keeps her fighting.
Don't forget that they didn't leave much up to chance either. They rushed Ellie from where they found her, unconscious, to the operation room.
I dont understand people that dont understand Joel's decision in the end of the game.
I mean, do you have a daughter? Hell, do you have somebody that you love? Would you sacrifice this person's life for the so called "greater good"? Even more specifically, would you sacrifice the life of the one person you love for the sake of the people that took everything you loved away from you? The humanity that constantly shows you they are not worth saving? How can you answer "YES" for these questions and then proceed to call Joel a "monster" or "the bad guy"? There is no way you can question his morals if you are willing to let someone you love dies for the prospect of a cure you dont even know if its going to work. In fact, I would say those that think Joel is a "monster" because he doomed mankind are even worst than him. I dont think there is a single good father in this world that wouldnt do the same thing Joel did. Is it selfish? It sure is. But that is the human being in a nutshell for you.
Speak for yourself. Doing whatever has to be done to save your daughter is basically the last thing I'd call selfish.
Heckler456
Banned
This is almost certainly nothing, but who sets up IMDB pages? More specifically, who writes the little blurbs?
She isn't his daughter. She's a figure that he projects his dead daughter on to.
Let's not pretend that Joel isn't selfish for killing a fucking BRAIN SURGEON from attempting to make a cure for the human race. even if it isn't certain. For the reason that he didn't want to lose the one thing that gave his life meaning beyond only survival finally.
On top of straight up lying to Ellie at the end, Joel is absolutely a selfish person. That being said if I were in his position and went through the things he did, I probably would have done the same.
None of those things are really connected to one another. "Find someone else" I feel means exactly what it typically means: Find someone else. If he meant "Try something else", he'd have said that. Find someone else is pretty clear in it's meaning. He's always been a-okay with other people dying. His life philosophy is that he and his should survive and everyone else he's ambivalent about. So yeah, he's perfectly fine with someone dying, just not Ellie.
And just speaking from the matter of logic, just because some military guy was wrong about his daughter being infected, that isn't reason to believe everyone is wrong about everything ever, which is the logic that has to be taken here because there is literally no connection between the military dude and the doctor here. He had reason to dispute the military guy's rightness because he saw, clearly, that his daughter wasn't bitten nor was he. He has no idea what the fuck the doctors know or don't know about Ellie's condition.
The only commonality they have is that they are threatening the life of his daughter, which isn't really a reason to distrust them so much as a reason to dislike them.
Edit: I do find it odd that people are okay with soldier's dying, but not doctors. They are in the same moral position: Lets kill the little girl so we can hopefully get the cure to humanity. Their function is different, sure, one performs the surgery that kills her while the other protects them while they kill her, but it was always such an oddity that people seem disturbed at the doctors he murders but not the soldiers.
It's like you didn't even play the game. It's not just projection from Joel, they saw eachother as family by the end of it. And sometimes family lies, doesn't make them bad people.
You said it meant he didn't care if they find another 14 year old girl. Not necessarily true at all.
Probably.
I've never really watched Funhaus before, but my friend linked me this video knowing it would annoy me.
Heckler456
Banned
Here are some straight-up, cold hard facts:
- Ellie never explicitly said that she's be willing to die for making the vaccine
- Ellie explicitly mentions "doing whatever Joel wants to do after they're done"
- Joel has saved Ellie's life, and Ellie Joel's. That makes them at minimum trusted partners
- The Fireflies absolutely refused him from seeing her, more than likely out of the same fear Joel had when telling his lie: Which is that she might actually not be willing to die for the vaccine, which apparently isn't a chance Marlene is willing to take, seeing as how she keeps Ellie sedated.
At the very least, you don't just let some group of outsiders kill your partner without you making sure your partner is somehow OK with it. Also, Ellie clearly cares for Joel in a much deeper way as well. Otherwise, she wouldn't have tried to probe deeper into his past, or stolen and subsequently given Sarah's photo to him. She also didn't want to be abandoned by him either. If she didn't care for him on a deeper level, she would have just gone with Tommy.
This is the thing I don't get when people interpret the ending as Joel purely selfishly taken what he thinks is his. It's the fact that those people are just straight up ignoring entire passages of the game.
I am pretty sure he doesn't. Like, he doesn't specifically want any kid to die, or any particular person, but if Marleen had told him "Yeah, we have a few other kids with immunity we can try this on", he'd have certainly said "Use them instead". There's nothing to suggest he has a soft spot for kids in general. He treated Ellie with indifference when they met, and gave the same general treatment to Sam when he was stuck with him. He doesn't care about kids in general, just the ones he gets close to.
I've played the game many times actually. I love it.
That being said I'm not disagreeing with you that they saw each other as family. And I understand the actions he took when that's the context.
However, there's kind of a lot of uncertainty still about how Ellie feels about everything from the hospital to the ending. She was brought to the hospital still unconscious. She had no idea about the procedure taking her life. We don't know if that's what she would've wanted by that point.
I'm not saying Joel is a "bad person". But this wasn't really some sort of white lie. He didn't tell her anything that the fireflies told himwhile she was on the operating table. Instead fabricating a story that they found someone else and further cementing his lie with the "I swear" at the end.
On top of that he also didn't tell her that he murdered a shit load of fireflies, a brain surgeon and then killing Marlene execution style before leaving.
Had Ellie known all of this I'm sure that her opinion of Joel would change in SOME way. And Joel didn't want to risk losing her after almost losing her life at the hospital.
Again if I were Joel I'd most definitely do the same thing.
Treating kids with relative indifference automatically means not caring if they die. What an absurd leap in judgment, don't even know where to start with this one.
How about some burden of proof then.
We have some pretty strong examples of Joel is indifferent to the suffering of others so long as it means his and his family's survival and wellbeing.
Do you have any evidence to suggest this would be otherwise the case with kids?
Because given his character and his literal words, it seems to me that his only criteria for being okay with the procedure is "not Ellie". I have no reason to think he'd object to any replacement, regardless of age.
I'm still amazed about how the Fireflies handled the initial encounter with Joel and Ellie. As they were half-way drowned and Joel begging for help. They slam a rifle butt into his skull and he's later told that killing Ellie is the only option to develop a vaccine. No explanation to both of them of the options and outcome or anything that would have presented Ellie's clear wishes to Joel. I still feel that those initial interactions caused something to snap in him. A government agent gunned down Sarah and him on the basis they might be infected. The fireflies seemed ready to kill Ellie on the basis she might have a cure. I am not surprised Joel reacted swiftly and violently to that.
Chronospherics
Member
I'm not in for this unless ND demonstrate that they will be supporting Factions properly.
No peer to peer, and the tick rate needs to be more than 15! I loved TLOU but I'm a multiplayer guy and Factions was a phenomenal multiplayer experience, but it lacked features that are usually taken for granted, really undermining a very well designed multiplayer game.
No peer to peer, and the tick rate needs to be more than 15! I loved TLOU but I'm a multiplayer guy and Factions was a phenomenal multiplayer experience, but it lacked features that are usually taken for granted, really undermining a very well designed multiplayer game.
Heckler456
Banned
Another possible interpretation of the lie is that he protects Ellie at the potential cost of their relationship.
All things being equal, and disregarding what the official canon might be come Part II, you can't deny that the ending is basically the absolute best ending for Ellie, barring the ending where she cured humankind AND got to live happily ever after. She gets to live guilt-free without the knowledge of what Joel did to get them to that point, she has a fatherfigure and isn't alone anymore, and possibly has another shot at some semblance of a "normal life". If Joel told her what he did, then what?
Oh I'm not disagreeing with you at all on that. I completely am in agreement with this. I love the ending and thought it was perfect in just about every way.
I was mostly just talking about the nature of Joel's actions and words being selfish. Not that he shouldn't have done anything he did to save and keep her.
Then she'd have to live with the burden and doubt that her life might mean the survival of humanity, and she'd have to decide what to do with that decision. It's a heavy choice, but basically what this is is freedom in it's most basic sense. You are allowed to be your own person by making your own decisions. Many people would say that is worth it regardless of what hardships come with it.
I personally don't know. And with Ellie doubting Joel's story, it's possible that she has figured out that's her position, minus the ability to make her own choice about it.
I honestly don't know what I'd do if I were in Ellie's position.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yo what the fuck is happening ITT??
Heckler456
Banned
Is the ability to make one's own choice really a boon in the case of someone like Ellie? Why not wait until she's cooled down a little from having lost her friend; went on a harrowing cross-country trip going through all kinds of horrible shit like being raped by a pedo cannibal and losing ANOTHER friend; only to be a potentially 14 year old coerced pawn in a game played between the Fireflies and FEDRA?
This is what's difficult about this interpretering this game. There's no telling what is intent by the writer, and just detail added for the sake of detail. I'm really quite anxious which way he'll go for part 2.
Well, I never care what the writer intended, only what the writer wrote.
The problem with that rationale is that in the world of Last of Us, traumatizing events are literally just right around the corner. And the longer you wait, the less choice Ellie would have. Like, if Joel waits a year and tells her when she's 15, she's not going to just be able to go back and find the fireflies and be like "Yo, changed my mind!" They'll have moved on and I'd suspect if Ellie was willing to die, she'd want assurance that it was from someone who knew what they were doing.
My general rule is that you always want to be accurately informed. But this would be one of the few situations where I'm hesitant. Especially since Ellie is a teenager, and her personhood is only so far developed. Again, I don't think for one second that Joel is refusing to tell her because she's not ready as opposed to the fact that it opens up a possibility that he'll lose her...but when you get down to it, a 14 year old isn't ready to decide what to do with their lives. That's why we don't let them vote or work major jobs and discourage them from sex until their older. They're still kids.
So idk. It's a tough position. Joel may have made the right decision. I just don't think, with what I know about the character, that he made it for the right reasons. He's never cared about right when it comes to matters of life and death.
She knows he is lying to her in the end. She wanted to live. Her "okay" was a testament of that. She accepted Joel's decision by replying "okay" to his lie. She loves Joel and finally has someone that loves her too.
I think nobody have ever think about it, but Ellie's decision in the end of the game (her acceptance of Joel's lie) actually made her as selfish as Joel. She doesnt want to know what really happened, she just wants to have an opportunity of a real life by the side of someone she cares about. She chooses ignorance, even though she absolutely knows he is lying for her and there is more to that, she doesnt care.
funkystudent
Member
Tthe entire narrative of the game was always build around the message of "what will you do to save the ones you care about" and Marlene was willing to sacrifice her friends daughter to do it, Joel was willing the doom us all to do it. He was also willing to stab that surgeon in the face and murder Marlene in cold blood. Thats the story of TLOU.
No need to overthink that stuff.
But if the teaser is any indication and Part 2 is about the Fireflies coming for revenge for Joel's actions and then Ellie going on a revenge tale then thats gonna be intense.
I hope if Joel hasnt told her the truth between the games (which I assume hasnt happened) that they dont drag the reveal out until the end. If the handle that early on that seems like it would be far less predictable. Not sure where the game would go with all that.
No need to overthink that stuff.
But if the teaser is any indication and Part 2 is about the Fireflies coming for revenge for Joel's actions and then Ellie going on a revenge tale then thats gonna be intense.
I hope if Joel hasnt told her the truth between the games (which I assume hasnt happened) that they dont drag the reveal out until the end. If the handle that early on that seems like it would be far less predictable. Not sure where the game would go with all that.
Psychological Intellect
Banned
Heckler456
Banned
Was letting Sarah die the right choice? It was essentially speaking for the same cause, which is the greater good. Sure, there were more deaths weighed in the balance for keeping neighboring towns safe, but at that point we're back at the "what's the value of a human life" question.
It's like I said. It's not that he made the wrong or right decision regarding saving Ellie by cutting a bloody swath through The Fireflies. It's that, from his perspective, there never was a choice to begin with.
Which, in my opinion, only leaves the lie ambiguous. Was it out of selfish reasons? Or was it out of altruistic reasons?
Can I just say how cool I think it is that I can still have discussion about this game three years on.
Altruistic IMO, 100 percent. Telling her the truth does nothing but make her feel terrible and indirectly responsible. Sometimes lying is the right choice.
I also seem to remember a conversation during the game, possibly an optional one, where Joel talks about the circumstances with people feeling the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or whatever, and Ellie saying that that was stupid.
Whats the value of a human life? A lot. But what is the definition of human life? Whoever is in his clan. Those other people, they're not humans, their the 'others'.What Joel practices is basic othering. When people are enemies or atleast obstacles, he dehumanizes them. That's how he can inflict the kind of pain and suffering like he does and not suffer from any kind of guilt or remorse. It's an extremely common thing people do, even today. Literally everybody close to him, when they reflect on the bad things they did, they admit they were bad (Tommy "I got nothing but nightmares from those years" and Tess "We've been shitty people for a really long time, Joel"). Each time, he rebuffs those claims that they were just surviving. As long as it's for survival, everything is permissible and he defends that stance every time it's challenged. Even in the final cutscene, when Ellie just starts casting doubt about the firefly event, his first response is "You find something to survive for." He's a broken record about it.
I feel like you think by calling him selfish, we are not considering his perspective. I feel I go out of my way to explore his psychology, citing examples of how he thinks. From the very beginning of the game, he's shown to eschew the wellbeing of others for his own family (Tommy wanted to stop and let the people on the street at the breakout, while Joel told him to keep driving. "They got a kid, Joel!" "So do we!" Which, btw, for Chumley, is evidence that he doesn't consider kids an exception to survivor philosophy that I just remembered now).
So I disagree that he doesn't have a choice, he simply makes it according to his values, and those values are, by literally every piece of evidence I can remember from the game with nothing to dispute it, "Me and Mine first". It doesn't matter if you also have a kid, it doesn't matter if you are a good person, it doesn't matter if you've done nothing to him, he's shown time and again that when it comes down to himself and his or someone else, it's always going to be himself and his, without exception or remorse.
And I don't see how you can make the argument that that isn't an inherently selfish philosophy, regardless of whatever baggage placed him there. It doesn't mean I don't sympathize or empathize with him. He really is in a shit position. But it is what it is. If you want to ask the value of a life is to him, then ask him about what about the lives of the people he killed because that's the real answer. He'll answer, not proudly but unrepentently, that they were between his and his family's survival and are therefore expendable. He'll go to hell for the life of his family, especially his daughter, but he is apathetic at best to everyone else.
And if you have evidence that disputes that, some scene I somehow missed where he shows concern for the world outside of his small circle of family, please cite it, because I got nothing. As far as I can recall, he shows nothing but indifference to the world when it's outside his personal tribe.
Edit: https://youtu.be/uMCktOgaC5I?t=104
I still don't think that Joel will ever hurt Ellie, but this does cast some doubt. When someone refuses to back down over forgiving Joel for his actions for survival, he can get violent. Enough to shove his brother, atleast. It might be possible there will be a scene in part 2 where Ellie decides that it would have been better for her to die on that table. We'll see how that turns out.
I think you pretty much got it, but Joel does show a bit of sympathy towards children in general. Like the small grave with the Teddy bear and the kids in the sewers.
That's pretty interesting. What could there even be in Ellie's past that affects Joel significantly? Did she order the soldier to open fire in the prologue or something?
Now I'm really curious how rigorous IMDb is with these or do they just pull things out of their ass.
TLOU has 4, technically.
Stalker
But yeah, there should be more variety. More gradual changes would be great too, It's not like the infected magically jump from stage to stage. Imagine if there's a sort of clicker-ified infected but you're not quite sure if it can still see or not. Or a half-bloater that's tanky as hell but almost as fast as a runner. That's nightmare fuel right there.
Radical Edward
Member
The doctors got what they deserved... El Diablo
Anyone who killed the other two is a monster. A monster!
flaxknuckles
Member
I killed them because I didn't see a prompt to pick up Ellie so I thought they had to die to make the game go forward. Sorry humanity.
alexbull_uk
Member
especially if they used the flamethrower.
i remember shooting the first doctor who pulled the scalpel on joel because i was actually afraid he would stab me if i got too close, so i guess i inadvertently ended up doing the more merciful thing. the other two i left alone
