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hinch7
Member
Ellie was pissed because she wasn't given a choice. Given how fucked up things are in that world, and beleiving that one could've made a difference. Though she had no say in the matter either way. Tbh, many would feel the same. But in the end she regretted how she treated him and understood why he did what he did, only after losing everything at the end of the second game.
Its a sad story with love and and lies with a lot of tragedies that could've easily been avoided. But a lot of bad decisions, all lead to one another. We got an epic story out of it though,
Its a sad story with love and and lies with a lot of tragedies that could've easily been avoided. But a lot of bad decisions, all lead to one another. We got an epic story out of it though,
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captainnapalm
Member
Would you kill one person to save a 1000 or a million? Not really an interesting or deep question, because the answer is always 'no' if you care about that person, and we all understand that at a basic level. We don't take lives to save lives - particularly not a child.
Just like we wouldn't martyr ourselves for others if given the choice based on a hunch - which is why I don't buy Ellie's righteous anger at Joel. People have a basic sense of self-preservation and no one would get that angry at not being allowed to die - not even incredibly heroic and diverse video game characters. Especially after going through everything they did in the first game. Ellie's basically Jesus I guess.
Scratch at the supposed depth of the storyline, you see there's really not much depth there. Also, having the roided-up daughter of a random doctor Joel killed on the way to saving Ellie kill him makes the whole story seem like a sad, stupid joke. The whole thing just descends into comic absurdity.
Just like we wouldn't martyr ourselves for others if given the choice based on a hunch - which is why I don't buy Ellie's righteous anger at Joel. People have a basic sense of self-preservation and no one would get that angry at not being allowed to die - not even incredibly heroic and diverse video game characters. Especially after going through everything they did in the first game. Ellie's basically Jesus I guess.
Scratch at the supposed depth of the storyline, you see there's really not much depth there. Also, having the roided-up daughter of a random doctor Joel killed on the way to saving Ellie kill him makes the whole story seem like a sad, stupid joke. The whole thing just descends into comic absurdity.
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Eiknarf
Banned
Not to mention, lets say they opened Ellie's skull and pulled out enough of the shit on her brain to make ONE vile of vaccine that works...etc OK, how would they make more?????? How would these dunces expect to extrapolate that little bit to make hundreds of thousands of vial's of the vaccine? Do they even have hundreds of thousands of glass vials with sterile needles and jet injectors??????????
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Its entirely consistent with the character of Ellie as written in the first game and its DLC.
I mean, its spelled out during the Giraffe chapter following her killing David. Ellie's traumatized and ignoring Joel, and seeing this he makes one last attempt to tell her that they don't need to continue to Salt Lake and the Fireflies. At which point she tells him flatly that after all that's she's gone through, IT HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING.
The reason's why she reacts like this lead back to the events with Riley in the DLC.
Her character is basically defined by her survivor's guilt. Being the one left standing when all those around her she cares about are worm-food.
She's pissed at Joel because they both knew damn well that had she been asked by the Firelies to lay down her life in order to give the world a chance, she would have done so in a heartbeat.
So when she discovers that Joel not only denied her accomplishing thing that would give her life (and their journey together) "meaning", but did so by making a unilateral choice to stop her then lied to her face about it... she's naturally pretty pissed!
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Raven117
Member
I took it as she knew he was lying, but accepted it for now.
Muffdraul
Member
"Joel did nothing wrong!" simps are bad enough without the copium.
Ulysses 31
Member
Eh, really? After all that clinging she did to get Joel to see her as "family", at the same time she was ready to drop him in a heartbeat? Without even a goodbye? At the start of the game sure but by the time they're in Salt Lake City, I'm having difficulty believing that. If she'd been given a choice, I'm 50/50 she would've accepted(let's not ignore how much she bonded with Joel at that point).
It's either a serious mean streak in Ellie's character or it's something the writers didn't really think through with what TLOU2 adds.
Why are the Fireflies completely off the hook here again? There was no ticking time bomb in the story, they could've taken the time to ask Ellie and it seriously would've weakened Joel's position had she agreed but since they force the issue, it's on them that things got messy. Joel was stupid to keep lying about it for years though, I grant that.
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Angry_Megalodon
Member
I think the saga (especially the second game) makes it clear that the whole vaccine thing is pointless.
In the first Abby's flashback, she tells her dad she would sacrifice herself for humankind. Shortly afterward, she doesn't give two fucks about Ellie and doesn't kill her out of guilt. The story doesn't mention any search for a cure. It's not even a secondary topic in the overall narrative. So, if the writer doesn't give a damn, why should we? There's never a moral dilemma. The game is all about human relations. The plague, the zombies and the cure are just background noise. They only appear as plot devices.
In the first Abby's flashback, she tells her dad she would sacrifice herself for humankind. Shortly afterward, she doesn't give two fucks about Ellie and doesn't kill her out of guilt. The story doesn't mention any search for a cure. It's not even a secondary topic in the overall narrative. So, if the writer doesn't give a damn, why should we? There's never a moral dilemma. The game is all about human relations. The plague, the zombies and the cure are just background noise. They only appear as plot devices.
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CliffyB's Cock Holster
The character conflict between Ellie and Joel is fundamentally that she's not completely cynical in the way that Joel is. Ellie still believes the world can be saved.
That's why she'd accept (hypothetically) sacrificing herself, whereas Joel would only sacrifice himself to save her because he's long since given up on humanity generally.
They aren't. They are just as ruthless and desperate as Joel is.
The whole point of this sort of post-apocalyptic dystopia is to provide a blank slate upon which individual characters inscribe their contrasting beliefs through deeds and actions without moral constraint.
There's no absolute right and no absolute wrong; every character is written in shades of grey. Its why Abby is the way she is in TLOU2, she's really no better or worse than anyone else, its just that some people got weirdly over-attached to Joel seemingly ignoring the more monstrous aspects of his character.
I mean, the interesting part about how he's written is that he doesn't really have a redemptive arc! Even when he's being "noble" he's acting like a villain!
We get some backstory to humanize him, but throughout the events of the first game he's a cold-blooded killer.
The irony being that the people bitching about TLOU2 "ret-conning" his character are the ones who are attempting to rewrite history! Joel in the first game is far from the infallible action hero; Ellie repeatedly saves his life. And of course the biggest laugh of all are the complaints about the sequel being "woke". Did these people actually play the first game? Because if they did and evaluated it by 2020's culture war standards, and not of those way back in 2013-2014, they'd have ton concur that the original is just as woke in terms of its cast of strong women, mostly passive men, and minority representative groups filling out the supporting cast!
mayham2199
Member
I do think she went a little to hard with how angry she got about the whole thing. Also someone mentioned that Joel killed Marlene. That's true so maybe Ellie does have a reason to be mad especially if she was ok with being killed which I can't remember anymore but I assume she was if she was that angry.
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Ulysses 31
Member
That doesn't seem like an answer to the question if Ellie was OK with leaving Joel under the conditions we see in the game(IMO no since she'd at least would want have final goodbyes and tie up loose ends first).
IMO the writing fails to present the Fireflies as a understandable alternative POV from Joel's when held under scrutiny. They don't bother to verify with Ellie while they have plenty of opportunity to. There's not enough in the game to show that the Fireflies could've made a difference. This detail is important since that's the difference in the story being about Joel dooming the world(though IMO TLOU2 shows otherwise) because of his "selfish love" or a father saving his daughter from delusional child killers. In the latter it's pretty simple to tell who's right or wrong.
I'd disagree Joel was not on any sort of redemption arc, he was improving: first he was a hunter and did horrible things when robbing/killing people, then he became a smuggler where his MO wasn't mainly robbing others and later he did want to join a community with Ellie and live out their lives there as contributing members of society and protecting Ellie/Jackson.
I have things to say about how Abby's written but that's not in the scope of TLOU1's ending.
Hawking Radiation
Member
And yet Ellie loses her shit when Abby gets a 2 under par on the 18th hole with Joel's cranium.
This love/hate relationship is fecking weird.
Doom85
Member
I didn’t realize someone being furious with you meant they would automatically be chill with someone murdering you…..
Hawking Radiation
Member
I didn’t realize someone being furious with you meant they would automatically be chill with someone murdering you…..
That's right. Ellie took offence by the fact Abby used a 9 iron instead of a putter.
Joel was an asshole
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ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
Is it? There's no way of knowing that for certain because they don't talk about it.
farmerboy
Member
Seeing as we play as Joel and I am a dad with two daughters, I was totally on board with how things transpired. Ellie was still a child and somewhat naively thought this decision mattered.
Joel knew (and also personally knew, as its alluded to that he has "done things") that it did not matter. That humanity (on a larger scale at least) was gone, and that there were many not worth saving. Especially if it meant sacrificing Ellie to do so.
He had already given up so much, including his own humanity, that any such further sacrfice was just too much. Not to mention that any humanity he had lost had been granted back to him in the relationship he forged with Ellie.
For all these reasons, he was hell bent on protecting that little sphere of influence around him, and as a dad I get it totally.
Joel knew (and also personally knew, as its alluded to that he has "done things") that it did not matter. That humanity (on a larger scale at least) was gone, and that there were many not worth saving. Especially if it meant sacrificing Ellie to do so.
He had already given up so much, including his own humanity, that any such further sacrfice was just too much. Not to mention that any humanity he had lost had been granted back to him in the relationship he forged with Ellie.
For all these reasons, he was hell bent on protecting that little sphere of influence around him, and as a dad I get it totally.
Madserb2023
Member
I get the story and Abi's reason for killing Joel is understandable if a little less relatable to me personally. I just find the whole thing contrived as her dad was just some random character. I probably killed about 500 potential fathers by the end of the game. You literally slaughter a huge number of people who are just trying to get by... technically. To then moralise it is silly. I just hope in Last of us 3 they replace health kits with bigot sandwiches.
Hudo
Member
Imho, he lied to her because he didn't trust the Fireflies (and he was right not to) and he opened himself up and let himself be father figure to her (and to himself),
which was denied to him when he lost his daughter and he clearly was haunted by that ever since. So he also used Ellie as a projection of what he would've liked his relationship with his daughter to be. Did he potentially doom the world by denying it a possible cure? Sure. But considering the state the world was in and the things he and Ellie went through, it's hard to not sympathize with the "well, everything's and everyone's fucked anyway. So who cares. All that matters is that we're happy for at least this brief time".
And then ND and Druckmann fucked everything up with TLoU 2, where he and his mates apparently forgot how to write, pace and structure video game. But hey, at least it has brain-dead, "shocking" gore moments, I guess.
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kazuyamishima
Member
I prefer the story in part II, alongside the gameplay of course.
Majima Everywhere System
Member
The entire game is a cascading series of scenes, where any positive situation is dashed by a bleak twist. Nice farm = cannibals.
With this world set up, you walk your pseudo daughter into a ramshackle operating room to develop a vaccine and the procedure kills the donor. Within the established world, there is also no reason to believe that they can make 1 vaccine from this science, make more vaccines to save the planet, and are not just child sacrificers not too different from the Aztecs.
Replace “saving the world” with “we think the gods will be pleased and give us a good harvest”. Congratulations, you successfully have absorbed the message the game hammered into you from the start.
Now do you save the girl? Yes! Now, do you tell her the last hope of science was another rug pull? Maybe you don’t take your daughter’s hope for humanity away and suffer that yourself. Maybe she hates you, but she hates you with the ability to still hope.
Unfortunately Naughty Dog observed that absolutely zero people got it due to their absolute trust in modern medicine. They made a really expensive story about not trusting a vaccine, and realizing no one got it, decided that explaining the game would be lost on people with near absolute faith in this one particular institution. They would look like kooks, so they didn’t explain the whole thing to let people have their one last hope. They even made a sequel about interpersonal drama.
So then Joel was just doing daddy shit, and Ellie resents daddy. Yeah, that the story we were setting up. Sure was…
With this world set up, you walk your pseudo daughter into a ramshackle operating room to develop a vaccine and the procedure kills the donor. Within the established world, there is also no reason to believe that they can make 1 vaccine from this science, make more vaccines to save the planet, and are not just child sacrificers not too different from the Aztecs.
Replace “saving the world” with “we think the gods will be pleased and give us a good harvest”. Congratulations, you successfully have absorbed the message the game hammered into you from the start.
Now do you save the girl? Yes! Now, do you tell her the last hope of science was another rug pull? Maybe you don’t take your daughter’s hope for humanity away and suffer that yourself. Maybe she hates you, but she hates you with the ability to still hope.
Unfortunately Naughty Dog observed that absolutely zero people got it due to their absolute trust in modern medicine. They made a really expensive story about not trusting a vaccine, and realizing no one got it, decided that explaining the game would be lost on people with near absolute faith in this one particular institution. They would look like kooks, so they didn’t explain the whole thing to let people have their one last hope. They even made a sequel about interpersonal drama.
So then Joel was just doing daddy shit, and Ellie resents daddy. Yeah, that the story we were setting up. Sure was…
Good post. Personally I always found the idea that she'd obviously be furious about it unconvincing and really annoying.
You're right that the first major problem was that she'd never even consented to being sacrificed. That's never even really explored, and it's obviously a big fucking deal.
Even conceding that, the idea that she'd JUST be angry and not at all grateful - you know, CONFLICTED - just always seemed ridiculous. It actually made me really dislike her. Just turned her into an entitled brat in my eyes, tbh.
I think the main fault with the writing is that I just never related to the idea of being crazy angry with someone that close to you essentially for denying her the opportunity of some Jesus like legacy. Like, do normal people ACTUALLY think like that? I don't think so. Maybe in that situation, MAYBE. But the situation is extraordinary and therfore unrelateable. And that's weak writing.
GymWolf
Gold Member
They retcon the fireflies to look way more capable than they are in the first game (and it was still silly to think they could find and distribute a cure to the entire world)
People have no idea of what is needed to make millions of vaccines, distribution etc.
But ellie is too fucking stupid to realize that, joel should have left her ass on that bed and go search some coke and whores instead
People have no idea of what is needed to make millions of vaccines, distribution etc.
But ellie is too fucking stupid to realize that, joel should have left her ass on that bed and go search some coke and whores instead
StereoVsn
Member
The first game had a very good narrative, IMO. In second Druckman just hamfisted whatever the fuck he wanted inThey retcon the fireflies to look way more capable than they are in the first game (and it was still silly to think they could find and distribute a cure to the entire world)
People have no idea of what is needed to make millions of vaccines, distribution etc.
But ellie is too fucking stupid to realize that, joel should have left her ass on that bed and go search some coke and whores instead
And yes, there is 0 chance Fireflies could establish modern vaccine manufacturing or hell, even research considering the state their facilities were in.
There's no "naturally" about it.
The entire premise is totally remote from all human experience.
"Hey, imagine how YOU'D feel if the only father you've ever had prevented you from making the sacrifice you'd PROBABLY have made (as a whiny juvenile, no less) in order to save humanity and allow you to achieve Christ-like glory in death! Just IMAGINE!"
Errrr, I can't imagine, because that's a completely and utterly unknowable experience. So much for empathy and believable motivation; just trust us - she'd be pissed!
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CliffyB's Cock Holster
Well for a kick off the world of TLOU is pretty far from "normal". Then there's the matter of Ellie herself being uniquely different thanks to her immunity from infection by a disease that both directly and indirectly has cost literally billions of lives and laid waste to humanity!
These aren't minor details, and yet you want to treat Ellie as just another teen girl?
There's a lot to unpack in constructing and/or judging a character like that especially when you have to factor in how this secret aspect, particularly within a highly militarized and institutional environment.
The reality is that we're a character like that to actually exist they'd be so psychologically and emotionally damaged they'd be barely functional.
So frankly expecting Ellie to be some sort of model of mental health and sound judgement is simply laughable.
She is just as damaged as Joel is, just in different and less obvious ways because being a grown adult Joel is much better equipped to rationalize his experiences.
Like I wrote before the basic premise being worked is characters in extremis. And if you don't appreciate that, or factor it in, you've got zero chance of understanding what drives and motivates them
The Cockatrice
Member
The fireflys were fucking terrorist so ud have to be a fucking idiot to trust them. The world was already fucked. A cure wouldnt have made much of a difference when humans were at eachothers throats. Ellie was an idiot. Abby did nothing wrong and i wouldve done the same as her to Joel. Its the way they chose to pace and tell their stories that pissed me off a bit.
Eiknarf
Banned
How would they have been able to make more of the vaccine?
How did they expect to extrapolate that little bit from Ellie’s brain and make hundreds of thousands of doses?
Did they even have hundreds of thousands of glass vials with sterile needles and jet injectors to be able to administer them to “all of humanity”?
How did they expect to extrapolate that little bit from Ellie’s brain and make hundreds of thousands of doses?
Did they even have hundreds of thousands of glass vials with sterile needles and jet injectors to be able to administer them to “all of humanity”?
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that these are extraordinary circumstances therefore these characters could never be understandable, and yet admit that they can't be realistic representations of how such people might actually be anyway because that would ruin the story.
We seem to agree therefore that some artistic licence is required to tell an entertaining story about such a world.
I just think it was a big mistake to rest that story on stakes that are impossible for real people to truly empathise with. The pain of being denied a small chance of glory in death for redeeming the world just isn't something that resonates with me.
I don't know, maybe that's more personal to you. No big deal either way.
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CliffyB's Cock Holster
It's not an either-or thing. You need to factor the world-view into the characters' outlook because that's foundational to their motivations.
Joel for instance is almost entirely motivated by self-preservation, and only extends empathy to a handful of close associates. In our "real world" that would make him sociopath, maybe even a psychopath, but the context of the lawless post-apocalyptic world of TLOU (and particularly in light of his tragic backstory) it comes across as a necessary adaptation for survival. The context makes his behaviour seem understandable, relatable and to a degree forgivable.
I say to a degree because throughout the first game we are presented with events solely from his perspective. However, as the sequel demonstrates, from the standpoint of other characters living in the same benighted world, he's a monster; undeserving of sympathy or understanding.
I think there's a core disconnect as a result of the in-game Joel being by definition "a hero character" in terms of function, despite being written as a deeply-flawed anti-hero in the text. There's an inarguable need to make the gameplay entertaining, and as Joel is the vehicle by which that entertainment is physically communicated for the overwhelming majority of the story, that version of "Joel" is the one that a lot of players are attached to. Not the one written into the text.
Its a similar thing to people harping on about Nate Drake being this affable, flippant mass-murderer! He kills a lot of people to serve the mechanical needs of the genre, but his characterization is much softer and more relatable.
The problem with TLOU2 is that Abby kills BOTH Joels with the same 9-Iron!
I'd argue its purely a matter of attachment. The journey we took as Joel and Ellie in the game was such an impactful experience that people wilfully chose their perceptions of the characters over how they were actually written and presented in the story.
As I've remarked on numerous occasions discussing the game over the years, Joel in many people's memories is a whole other character to the one actually depicted in the first game. The guy killed and its suggested cannibalized other survivors during his time with the rippers. He's Tess's enforcer when we pick up the story, a man who inspires more fear than respect in those around him. Most of all he's far from infallible, and basically only survives at the expense/favour of other characters throughout the story. Tess sacrifices herself at the Capitol, Bill rescues him from one of his traps in his town, Ellie saves him (thanklessly) in the Hotel, Henry pulls him from the river only for Joel to be ready to kill him until Ellie intervenes. After he gets impaled (an injury that if we're being "realistic" would be fatal or permanently debilitating) Ellie nurses him back to health. Hell, the Fireflies even take him in in Salt Lake after he nearly drowns, and well... Our hero in his quest to rescue Ellie murders everyone in his path climaxing in him shooting an unarmed woman "to be safe".
And yet, people act like his memory is somehow betrayed by him falling to a pack of enemies who like him show a complete absence of mercy and honour in service of their "mission".
No, the point is that Ellie having long-standing suspicions about Joel are/were entirely understandable for somebody who's had a front-row seat to see how ruthlessly he operates. The story he tells her, is clearly bullshit. Its totally incredible based on the world as depicted to us as gamers, and even worse when considered as viewed through the eyes of Ellie as a character.
That it would gnaw at her, especially at a time in her life when she's apt to be particularly rebellious and looking to define her own place in the world outside of his orbit is an obvious consequence. And given these are suspicions -until she revisits the Salt Lake hospital- the trajectory of their relationship is obvious.
This in turn leads her into mistakenly trying to honour his memory by doing what she thinks he'd do given the same circumstances.
Sorry, but I really cannot fault the internal logic of the characterization. Whether it works for most people is an entirely other matter because. as I said, the played experience of the first game was so impactful its confronting nature of the sequel's direction was going to be unpalatable.
In summary, I have some sympathy with those who were displeased by its deconstructing of the first game, BUT I cannot fault it because its not a case of revisionism. They weren't reimagining the characters and events of the original, they were simply following up from it as written.
Provocative, often uncomfortable and harshly confrontational, for sure. But that's not a bad thing in my opinion.
cartman414
Member
Only incomprehensible in that Abby just managed to identify Joel as her father's killer.
I only didn't find Abby sympathetic in relation to Ellie because she acted like a prick/hung with bloodthirsty killers for most of the game. I totally got why Ellie was pissed with her, even though she rushed towards the deep end. (At least she had that "Oh crap" moment when she realized she killed a pregnant woman.) And yet Abby was let off a bit easier by the ending.