Ellie is the main playable character in The Last of Us: Part II

What in the hell is going on in this thread? Is it still necessary that there be discourse on if there should be a female lead or not? Are there really people complaining about it?

She's a goddamn good character and I have trust in ND and that they'll get it right. But the fact that there's even questioning the idea is kinda embarrassing.
 
legacyzero said:
What in the hell is going on in this thread? Is it still necessary that there be discourse on if there should be a female lead or not? Are there really people complaining about it?

She's a goddamn good character and I have trust in ND and that they'll get it right. But the fact that there's even questioning the idea is kinda embarrassing.
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Girls have cooties
 
theWB27 said:
It was a really stupid response. It's human nature to feel like you can trust the people closest to you not to lie to your face when it comes down to it.
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Ok, yes, but people lie all the time. Especially something like this, where Joel knows that Ellie feels a great deal of burden for the deaths of those around her. She has a great deal of survivors guilt.

The lie was just as much to protect Joel from Ellie's full knowledge of his actions, as it was to try and have Ellie forgive herself.

Which comes back to the lie and how complicit she is with it. People lie all the times, especially to themselves. Joel gave her a way out of the guilt of knowing that there was actually a way to have everyone she knew who died to have not died in vein.

I view the ending as Ellie accepting the lie, not only to save face and keep Joel happy, but to try and lie to herself and save her own crushing guilt of her journey.

The sequel is obviously going to tie into this, how much does Ellie resent Joel? You can love someone and resent them at the same time. This is especially reinforced at the (pretty much cannon based on the PSX panel that was today) secret live acted section that took place off-camera at the live event last year with Joel trying to talk to a very distant Ellie, playing the Guitar to her and getting her to come out of her shell.

Hubb said:
No evidence that is true. I'm sure it wouldn't matter who it was though. Nothing stops the Joel train.
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it was a joke (but most likely not far from the truth)
 
legacyzero said:
What in the hell is going on in this thread? Is it still necessary that there be discourse on if there should be a female lead or not? Are there really people complaining about it?

She's a goddamn good character and I have trust in ND and that they'll get it right. But the fact that there's even questioning the idea is kinda embarrassing.
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A few people seem to think that it's not the best decision, lots of people disagreed with them, and a few people overreacted.
I don't know what all the fuss is about considering how few people are actually against this.
 
timetokill said:
Clearly understood it better than you guys.

The ending is interesting because it completes Joel's transformation into the villain. The quest is really Ellie's, Joel is just getting her there. If it were a film, Ellie would have been considered the protagonist. But gameplay requires action, so they have you control Joel to protect Ellie. There's a reason added on the front on the box, and why the DLC is about her.

For you guys, villains apparently have to be blatant and obvious. David is a villain to you guys because he's a cannibal.

But what Joel does is arguably worse. After all they have been through, Joel decides to rob Ellie of her agency, much like everyone you consider to be a villain in the game. What makes Joel different? That you controlled him at some point? Who cares?

If nothing else, the railroaded ending proves that they wanted Joel to go full villain at the end.

By the end, Joel doesn't view Ellie as her own person that can make their own choices, or as an adult. He doesn't respect her at all. Instead, he violently and selfishly takes away her choice, then lies to her face about it. And she knows it. She's stuck with yet another person who won't let her make her own choices. She's stuck with a man who will murder innocent people to ensure she doesn't get that choice.

So what game were you guys playing?
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In all your rambling you still didn't mention why would Ellie kill Joel.

Even then, Joel didn't take away her choice, the Firefly didn't mention that she would die in the process so let's not act like she knew full well what was going to happen.

Furthermore being selfish doesn't mean that you're a villain, it just mean that you're flawed. You're the one painting things as either black or white, not me.
 
TheLostBigBoss said:
Ok, yes, but people lie all the time. Especially something like this, where Joel knows that Ellie feels a great deal of burden for the deaths of those around her. She has a great deal of survivors guilt.

The lie was just as much to protect Joel from Ellie's full knowledge of his actions, as it was to try and have Ellie forgive herself.
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Bingo. At the end of the game she even says "I'm still waiting for my turn." She doesn't say "Damn, you know, I was really hoping that I would be the cure," so I don't agree with the people who see Ellie as having altruistic motives.
 
TheLostBigBoss said:
Ok, yes, but people lie all the time. Especially something like this, where Joel knows that Ellie feels a great deal of burden for the deaths of those around her. She has a great deal of survivors guilt.

The lie was just as much to protect Joel from Ellie's full knowledge of his actions, as it was to try and have Ellie forgive herself.

Which comes back to the lie and how complicit she is with it. People lie all the times, especially to themselves. Joel gave her a way out of the guilt of knowing that there was actually a way to have everyone she knew who died to have not died in vein.

I view the ending as Ellie accepting the lie, not only to save face and keep Joel happy, but to try and lie to herself and save her own crushing guilt of her journey.

The sequel is obviously going to tie into this, how much does Ellie resent Joel? You can love someone and resent them at the same time. This is especially reinforced at the (pretty much cannon based on the PSX panel that was today) secret live acted section that took place off-camera at the live event last year with Joel trying to talk to a very distant Ellie, playing the Guitar to her and getting her to come out of her shell.



it was a joke (but most likely not far from the truth)
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We got different thoughts on it.
 
legacyzero said:
What in the hell is going on in this thread? Is it still necessary that there be discourse on if there should be a female lead or not? Are there really people complaining about it?

She's a goddamn good character and I have trust in ND and that they'll get it right. But the fact that there's even questioning the idea is kinda embarrassing.
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No, it's about how Joel is a bad guy and deserves to be blown away by Ellie via cannon.
 
Bookmark this post.

Ellie leaves Joel in the beginning of TLOU2 to go do something on her own. She needs to do this on her own. Joel questions if she really needs to go through with this.

Later on she returns to the town where Joel lives, only to find it destroyed. The Fireflies had tracked Joel down while she was gone, looking for Ellie, the only cure for humanity.

She enters her old bedroom, and finds Joel dead on the floor. She's trembling. To calm her nerves, she picks up the guitar in the corner of the room, the guitar that Joel had taught her how to play, and strums a tune that he always used to play. She remembers that day that Joel stood in her doorway, that day he asked her if she really had to go through with it alone, and she regrets leaving. She regrets not being there to save him.

There's nothing she can do about it now. Joel's gone. But she'll avenge him. She'll find the Fireflies, and kill every last one of them.
 
pastrami said:
Bingo. At the end of the game she even says "I'm still waiting for my turn." She doesn't say "Damn, you know, I was really hoping that I would be the cure," so I don't agree with the people who see Ellie as having altruistic motives.
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I think the smartest motivation for ellie being so morose and angry (you know aside from the environment they are all in lol) would be her realizing her life had a purpose at one point and Joel took that from her, it would be understandable if she resented him for that in some way all those years.

Also it's nuanced too. Games wear their shit on their sleeves too often, this would be a nice departure from that.
 
Hmm, the song the Ellie sings in the Trailer is "Through the Valley" from Shawn James

According to the Panel one of the first things Neil said to Ashley about the game was to learn that song. Maybe only for the Trailer but still, if he knew from very early that he wanted that song he could very well think that this song captures alot about the themes of the game.

Now in the trailer she sings the following part:

I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I fear no evil because I'm blind to it all.
My mind and my gun they comfort me,

because I know I'll kill my enemies when they come.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell on this earth forevermore.
I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul,
but I can't walk on the path of the right because I'm wrong.

Already fitting yes, but the original songtext goes a bit further, and it stays thematically very near on the last of us and could therefore maybe be interesting, this is how it goes on.

Well I came upon a man at the top of a hill,
call himself the savior of the human race.
Said he come to save the world from destruction and pain,
but I said how can you save the world from itself.

I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I fear no evil because I'm blind.
I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul,
but I know when I die my soul is damned.


Sounds pretty fitting for Ellie's situation.
Who knows, maybe a bit forshadowing about Ellie's path or at least her mindset in the game.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Huh? I didn't twist anything, I quoted you verbatim. You compared playing "a teenage girl" (not specifically THIS teenage girl, you specifically wrote "a teenage girl" to be as unrelatable and off-putting as playing a convicted rapist. That is what you wrote.
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The very simple point I was trying to make is that if you don't like a character - for whatever reason - then it may not be the game for you. It just seemed to me like you were taking two different opinions that had similar thinking and twisting them to make it sound like I was saying teenage girls are rapists LOL!

There are several female characters in games that I like - as a matter of fact the supporting cast of female characters in The Last Of Us are exceptional.

Like I said, I just do not like Ellie. I didn't like her in the original game and I don't think I'm going to like her in the sequel - but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. I will try The Last of Us Part II and if I like it, I will eat crow ... with seasoned salt, lime and chili pepper :)

SomTervo said:
That's totally fine. Again, I'd say don't make your argument reductive by making it about her age or sex. She could be a tryhard teen boy and be equally unappealing. Or she could be 50 but have a similar demeanor/design/attitude that you dislike.

Your earlier posts indicated it was all about "i don't relate to teen girls" rather than "i didn't like her as an individual". Characters are more complicated than that.

What did you think of Riley in Left Behind? Very different.
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Female characters of all ages are fine - as long as they're written well; as are male characters only if written well. I just don't like Ellie - I just didn't think that she was written well enough to be as integral to the story in an emotional capacity as Joel was. Something about Joel's character just resonated with me. You could just feel the heartache and pain that he's been through. I had a really rough year this year, I lost the love of my life two months into it and then in October, I lost my father. I can definitely relate to someone that's gone through tremendous loss and then come out the other side with a fighting spirit. I don't feel Ellie has those qualities yet, but like I said, I'm going to play the game and form an opinion for myself :)
 
gkovacs314 said:
I'm cool with this change, per se.

But what is strange, is that it feels more like a forced political statement than a fluid storytelling device, like an executive order to be more PC. This is evident from the DLC of Uncharted. Don't be fooled, they are doing to be more PC, not because they want a female lead. This is bad type of feminism and it works against the females.

Imagine working in a meeting on the draft of the script and even suggesting to not choose a female lead? Is not socially appraisive nowadays. So, there is no arguing against it.

Everyone is using all types of media to manifest political views, more and more. Not that is something wrong with it, but kinda turn off the escapism of the gaming media. To the trained mind, you can easily spot this stances. Feels too forced.

I'll not support this, even being a feminist, because of the sense of a forced political agenda that puts female on a pity zone.
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I want my brain cells back
 
Awesome! Looking forward to it :)

One thing I do find interesting is her age... at 19, if the Joel is dead theories are right, that means they only spent 5 years with each other :(

I would have preferred 20s or heck... even 30s? Not sure if we have ever had a mainstream AAA game with an older woman as the MC.
 
kiguel182 said:
He is as bad as the guys he kills, yes.

Up until the end when he kills the fireflies, the surgeon and Ellie's guardian.

Ellie wants them to do the surgery so this is all against her consent.
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We didn't know the surgery kills her till that point, neither did she.
Joel is already a killer and, wtf? Everyone practically is a killer in TLOU, the game shows us what we become when you take away all our shitty laws and wipe the slate clean with a nice depopulating apocalypse wow.

I don't care how many bodies Joel has piled up. We know the man has a fucking heart and can be a reasonable guy when he's not fucked with or forced to flip the Death switch on.
How is he the villain? To me that ending can be taken how you want, it seems that it is left to open interpretation, unless there is a solid word from Druckmann or Straley says otherwise.

Personally, I think he saw a Daughter in her. Was it selfish? Fuck yeah it was, but did he care for her in the same vein? Abso-fucking-lutely.
 
Azzanadra said:
Awesome! Looking forward to it :)

One thing I do find interesting is her age... at 19, if the Joel is dead theories are right, that means they only spent 5 years with each other :(

I would have preferred 20s or heck... even 30s? Not sure if we have ever had a mainstream AAA game with an older woman as the MC.
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I think Aloy is in her 20s. You also have chloe for uncharted lost legacy
 
Azzanadra said:
I would have preferred 20s or heck... even 30s? Not sure if we have ever had a mainstream AAA game with an older woman as the MC.
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I generally would also prefer her to be older, but it could make sense for it to not be that long after the first game especially if Joel still has an active role. Remember Joel was already in his fifties in the first game, so if it would be too long Joel would probably not be capable of that role.

As for other games......Tomb Raider, Lara Croft should really be an grown up Woman in her thirties....i really dislike that they made her a "girl" in the reboot.
 
Well, as much as I didn't want the game to focus on Joel and Ellie (I'd have preferred just Ellie or completely new charcters), if I was to play as one of the two, I definitely prefer Ellie. Joel's take on this is defenitly more "done" than Ellie's, and they could tell a far more intresting story in this game with her than with Joel.
 
Naughty Dog flexing that clout by making Ellie the main. With the uncharted dlc, mass effect showing the female character first, horizon, and Ellie as the main character.... the time of the female femme fatale is here and I'm glad. I always choose female characters in games. Lean and quick is my game
 
Saying this now,That guy in the trailer is Tommy.
The Fireflies killed Joel hence why Ellie is pissed.
 
Corpsepyre said:
Umm, it's going on a lot now. Horizon? Chloe in the new Uncharted standalone game? Hellblade too, even though that's not exactly AAA.
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I think Sony is trying to tell me something!

Cidd said:
Saying this now,That guy in the trailer is Tommy.
The Fireflies killed Joel hence why Ellie is pissed.
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I'd guess she met someone and lost them again but can't handle/hold it in as long as Joel did to not react that bad with Tess's death.
oh and he's dead and a mind ghost
 
Hemingway said:
Bookmark this post.

Ellie leaves Joel in the beginning of TLOU2 to go do something on her own. She needs to do this on her own. Joel questions if she really needs to go through with this.

Later on she returns to the town where Joel lives, only to find it destroyed. The Fireflies had tracked Joel down while she was gone, looking for Ellie, the only cure for humanity.

She enters her old bedroom, and finds Joel dead on the floor. She's trembling. To calm her nerves, she picks up the guitar in the corner of the room, the guitar that Joel had taught her how to play, and strums a tune that he always used to play. She remembers that day that Joel stood in her doorway, that day he asked her if she really had to go through with it alone, and she regrets leaving. She regrets not being there to save him.

There's nothing she can do about it now. Joel's gone. But she'll avenge him. She'll find the Fireflies, and kill every last one of them.
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I'm more with the Ellie killing Joel theory, but goddamit this post gave me feels imagining it
 
I wasn't interested at all at first (I liked TLoU but didn't love it), but Ellie being the main character has me extremely interested. I hope it turns out well.
 
What if
In the very last scene, we get a glimpse of her fungus infection granting her telekinesis powers before cutting to black...
 
Deckard Chapel said:
And he
ages 10 years in the game
- so?

I'm not a female, nor am I a teenager - so that makes me not relate to Ellie and makes me uninterested in playing as her. Noctis is a male - which I am also - but I'm not 20. But I love anime, fantasy games and action games, so therefore he's a very relatable, likeable character to me. Ellie is a whiny, stubborn, too-cool-for-school, grungy teenager that has a chip on her shoulder and if I played The Last of Us Part II, I'd be forced to only play as her.

That doesn't seem very interesting, fun, worthwhile or a good way to spend my entertainment time.
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Are you honestly saying you can relate more to Noctis because he's from an 'anime fantasy' setting? And not to Ellie because she's whiny and stubborn? Weird things to compare there.

Should I remind you how whiny and bratty Noctis is at the start of the game? You can relate more to a spoiled prince who can't take his tomatoes in food than to a girl having to fend for herself all alone in a post apocalyptic future.

Okay.
I have nothing else to say.
 
Man you guys are an argumentative, opinionated bunch.Just wait for the damn game.
I just hope it doesn't look or run like shit on the non-Pro PS4s.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Man you guys are an argumentative, opinionated bunch.Just wait for the damn game.
I just hope it doesn't look or run like shit on the non-Pro PS4s.
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naughty dog will get the most out of the playstation as usual but i think by the time this is out even a PS4 Pro might be too weak to do the game justice. I'll get it day 1 but i will also get the inevitable PS5 remaster. this probably won't be out until at least the second half of 2018 or maybe 2019 so a PS5 shouldn't be too far away at that point. the OG ps4 got 3 years. PS4 pro will get 3 years.
 
blly155 said:
naughty dog will get the most out of the playstation as usual but i think by the time this is out even a PS4 Pro might be too weak to do the game justice. I'll get it day 1 but i will also get the inevitable PS5 remaster. this probably won't be out until at least the second half of 2018 or maybe 2019 so a PS5 shouldn't be too far away at that point. the OG ps4 got 3 years. PS4 pro will get 3 years.
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Yeah, the earliest I give it is maybe May 2018 but 2nd half seems more likely.
 
When I think TLoU,I immediately think Ellie.

Everything good about TLoU emanates from her.She made that game what it is.

There couldn't have been a better choice for a lead.She is so well established now & her infection immunity grants her a unique position within the world of TLoU.
 
idonteven said:
what ?

the last of us is nothing like tomb raider...playing as a female doesnt mean that the game becomes tomb raider
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Metroid? Tomb Raider. Mirror's Edge? Tomb Raider. Did you know that the original Resident Evil was half survival horror, half Tomb Raider?
 
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