I loved my father, but if my father was going to murder a young girl without her consent for an experiment that probably wouldn't work,, and that girl's father murdered him to prevent him from doing so... then yeah...I'd say "i hate you, but I understand..."
Easy to say.
All of this hinges on you being nigh-omniscient and knowing the wider context of what was happening. Which in reality you would not.
All you would see, is some guy breaks into a lab where your father was trying to make a cure to save the world, and then he murdered all the scientists and your father, along with them.
You have no idea about anything. So in those circumstances, would you not be feeling vengeful?
People who discuss this heaven forsaken game seem to think that all the characters in the story know everything that the player does. This is obviously false.
Joel was absolutely right because the world was never going to be saved. The basic premise of the first game is so flawed that I'm amazed that still many people can't see it.
- Let's start with the fact that Joel was to turn in Ellie to a terrorist group. A millitia group, at the very least. So, the chances that those people would be "saviors of the world" is literally none. They would be savior of themselves and that's about it. If anything, they would use the cure to gain more power.
That's great and all, but all of this is easily said as an external person observing the events of the game from the outside. The only thing that matters in any story is what the characters in the story believe. If Joel believes that the Fireflies might be able to save the world, then that is the moral dilemma. If it was so simple, then Joel simply wouldn't have bothered getting involved at all. But at the best of times - especially in trying circumstances, people do not act perfectly rationally.
- And let's follow with the real problem of this childish premise (because Neil SUCKS at worldbulding and writing): the world of TLOU is fucked up NOT BECAUSE OF THE INFECTED but because the society has collapsed and turned into fascists groups. There's no turning back from that. "The cure" is not a solution for the human problem.
I thought that was obvious? Its fairly widely understood that the zombie apocalypse was a backdrop for "humans are the real monsters" trope that is more or less tried and true. Most of the people you fight in the game aren't clickers, but other fucking people. The game knows this, the writer's know this its plain as day. That's why the sequel has Joel getting killed, because he killed people. People with their own lives and families, and had to face the consequences of his actions. He murdered dozens, if not hundreds of people.
The world of TLOU is not at all like World War Z , in which that premise would make sense.
- Bonus track to counter this idiotic dilemma: even if the cure worked and people stopped fighting each other, the cure wouldn't help because the monsters of TLOU WOULD STILL ATTACK YOU AND KILL YOU. The cure doesnt prevent you from that, as the game shows a thousand times with Ellie being attacked.
So "the cure" is just a cheap plot device to trigger a moral dilemma that doesnt make any sense in a world that would never be fixed with such cure.
Bullshit of the highest order, only not seen because it's a video game and most video game plots are nonsense.
If humans could no longer be infected, then the monsters will eventually no longer be able to propagate. Yes the problem won't be immediately solved by a cure, but its a significant step. Come on now, this is a laughable complaint. Nowhere does the story even claim that Ellie dying to become the cure would magically resolve all of humanity's problems. Just the problem of people getting infected and turning into zombies. If you no longer have to deal with the problem of becoming infected, then that is step 1 of many to changing the world. Would it successfully change the world? Who knows, that's not the fucking point though is it.
