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

How does that connect?

I haven't checked their previous posts but that seems pretty harsh. What's wrong with finding quality narrative in a game that supposed to be character and story driven?

It's not about a lack of quality narrative, it's about not being able to connect and therefore not liking a game if the main character isn't somebody who is similar to himself (ethnicity, gender, age, etc.)

It's very narrow minded.
 

Chao

Member
I just noticed that not only are ND releasing a game featuring a
lesbian
female protagonist, at the same time they're working on a standalone expansion for uncharted 4 starring not one, but two female protagonists , one of them being black.

ND showing how it's done.
 

SomTervo

Member
For new page:

source pls, i don't believe you

Sorry, can't atm. Will try tomorrow. It was up to a year after release i think and a brief comment in an interview.

I might be totally wrong but i have a very solid memory of this, like 90% certain.

I find that just lame they explained that, why feel the need to tell us that? Ambiguity is good.

Though uh, where did they say this anyway?

Even if this is true, a guaranteed cure doesn't mean shit. The fireflies would own the world's most valuable thing, do you really think they'd hand it out for free to everyone, even their enemies?

Read my follow up responses.

I think it may have been more of a "our thought process out loud thing" rather than a confirmation. Like they wrote all the content and Joel's actions with that outcome in mind.

Seriously this line of discussion is getting bigger than i intended and I'm on a mobile on bed, haha. UK side.
 
Read my follow up responses.

I think it may have been more of a "our thought process out loud thing" rather than a confirmation.

Seriously this line of discussion is getting bigger than i intended and I'm on a mobile on bed, haha. UK side.

lol no problem

---

I go back and forth on this, on one hand, I did feel their story was told and would of enjoyed a fresh set of characters in this world. But I think coming back and making Ellie the main character is the right way to do it.
 

Nya

Member
In all fairness, females would never be on any team of trained killers. They're physically inferior. But I agree.

Lmao ..

===========================

I honestly don't get this whole "I don't relate to a character because of gender or age". I am a female who played a lot of games with male protagonists from different backgrounds, ages, and designs like Nathan Drake, Zack Fair, Joel...etc and that didn't hurt my experience with the game. I felt for them, especially Joel for making the decisions he made in first game and it didn't stop me from liking him or enjoying the game. It just baffles me that someone would be turned off from a game completely because the main character is a female and making dumb excuses like how a female character wouldn't be as tough or strong as a male character.

I mean, isn't the point of video games is to play as someone different in a fantasy setting while connecting with them on an emotional level if they're well-written? I don't know, I thought with games like Tomb Raider, Horizon, and Nier Automata people would be more welcoming of female characters as strong and solid protagonists, guess I was wrong.

Also, didn't you get to play as Ellie in the previous game and DLC? I don't get why people are making this a huge deal like its a new thing.
 
Killing him for what?

Saving her life?

You guys are ridiculous.

Yeah he saved her life. Such a villain. She should kill him for that.

You really understood these characters and their relationship.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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?
 

Hubb

Member
It's in an optional audio tape IIRC. Surgeon described like "we're lucky to have the last brain surgeon on the planet".

Like it cant be physically known but the likelihood is pretty fucking high.

If the player was in charge we could have left immediately, let Ellie be taken, give ourselves in, not shoot a guy in the dick, etc. But we're playing Joel who does all these things including killing the lead surgeon in relatively cold blood.

Remember if the Fireflies were that antagonistic towards Joel they would have killed him before he woke up. They ko'd him but kept him alive and were honest about ellie.

The play through I watched went through all the recordings/diary. They don't say that.

Well The fireflies wanted to kill Joel before he woke up, Marlene didn't want them to and not exactly for an altruistic reason.

Also, a surgeon being able to reverse engineer a parasite and make a vaccine/cure? Not that easy. In fact, I'm going to quote Joel here "You keep telling yourself that bullshit". I'll say the same thing I said earlier in this thread or the other one. Joel's brother is doing more to save humanity than this doctor was. If they actually found a cure the next day it wouldn't suddenly make the world a better place.
 
Read my follow up responses.

I think it may have been more of a "our thought process out loud thing" rather than a confirmation. Like they wrote all the content and Joel's actions with that outcome in mind.

Seriously this line of discussion is getting bigger than i intended and I'm on a mobile on bed, haha. UK side.

Okay cool, also read my edit, I didn't realise til after I posted that it looked like I was piling on.
 
Joel's not dead

he's need for Ellie to kill em

I don't get the vibe Joel really approves of this scorched earth mission that Ellie is on. He sounds pretty sad when asking her if she is "Really going to go through with it."

Edit - maybe I read your post wrong. I guess you are saying you want Ellie to kill Joel?
 
For new page:



Sorry, can't atm. Will try tomorrow. It was up to a year after release i think and a brief comment in an interview.

I might be totally wrong but i have a very solid memory of this, like 90% certain.





Read my follow up responses.

I think it may have been more of a "our thought process out loud thing" rather than a confirmation. Like they wrote all the content and Joel's actions with that outcome in mind.

Seriously this line of discussion is getting bigger than i intended and I'm on a mobile on bed, haha. UK side.

If I'm not wrong I remember you saying this same thing in a discussion a while back and after many people questioning the claim I don't recall the conclusion being that they actually said that, at least not as a serious or canonical statement.
 
My interpretation of the ending of TLOU is that Ellie is fully aware of what Joel did and goes along with the lie. Whilst she likely feels a lot of guilt and possibly some anger towards him, I doubt she'll want to kill him. You could even argue that she would have made the same decision, based on their conversations about the greater good throughout the game.

Joel isn't a villain, he's not a hero. His decisions were morally grey, that's kind of the whole point.
 
I haven't checked their previous posts but that seems pretty harsh. What's wrong with finding quality narrative in a game that supposed to be character and story driven?

I suppose I could have been less harsh. He was saying that he chooses games mainly based on the character on the box and how much he connects with them.

Obviously, everyone wants to play a game with a main character that they identify with. The only point I was trying to make was that it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to not completely dismiss a game based on the main character. The majority of games feature straight white men as protagonists, which many people play anyway, regardless of their own identity, so why is it outlandish to ask that people do so for this game just because the character is female? Presumably this person enjoyed The Last Of Us for more reasons than playing as Joel.

It's not about a lack of quality narrative, it's about not being able to connect and therefore not liking a game if the main character isn't somebody who is similar to himself (ethnicity, gender, age, etc.)

It's very narrow minded.

Yep, this is all I was trying to say.
 
It's not about a lack of quality narrative, it's about not being able to connect and therefore not liking a game if the main character isn't somebody who is similar to himself (ethnicity, gender, age, etc.)

It's very narrow minded.
It is quality narrative and character design. Just because someone IS similar to themselves, it doesn't automatically make that character good either.

Now if someone dislikes a character just because of ethnicity/gender/age then yeah, that's pure ignorance.

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?

dhMeAzK.gif
 

Kindekuma

Banned
I love the idea of playing as Ellie in Pt II. We're given a small window of playing from her perspective during the Winter season in TLOU, and that was a blast. But a perspective shift from playing mostly as Joel in TLOU to Ellie in Pt II will be very interesting.
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
Awesome to know that TLOU PART II is in very early development but it also sucks to know that. Really wish Sony would stop announcing games so fucking early. Wait until the game is at least 70% done so you know, it can actually be released within a year so we all can play it.

With that said, the story is simple...Ellie was taken by the Fireflies and was going to be sacrificed in order to get a cure but im guessing that little tidbit wasn't known to her and being only 14, she was probably easy to manipulate and once she was rescued and told the truth, she probably became enraged but needed to wait until she's a little older before doing anything about it.

Only thing that I didn't like about Ellie in TLOU was that the enemies didn't detect her at all which was arguably the only major negative about the game but yet, it was a big one.

Hoping Joel is alive for the majority of the game as it would make no sense for the game to be called "The Last Of Us" if there's no "US".

Definitely hyped. All I have to do is go into a slumber for the next few years. LOL.
 

R00bot

Member
I think I must be the only person that found Joel to be more likeable than Ellie in the first game. I just empathised a lot more with him after that opening scene.
 

Hunter S.

Member
Ellie is clearly not educated in Biology and science as she should be. Joel clearly is. Since when have scientists been able to adapt a cure for any disease over night? As if these last remaining few are the smartest and most well aquipped people that can make a cure for disease on this earth. Let us examine the DNA only in the brain of Ellie to find out the cure. DNA is only in the brain, right?

Joel clearly is an educated man that took the route of logic over feeling by saving Ellie's life rather than wasting it on negligible amount of hope.

Science...
 

~Devil Trigger~

In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
I don't get the vibe Joel really approves of this scorched earth mission that Ellie is on. He sounds pretty sad when asking her if she is "Really going to go through with it."

Edit - maybe I read your post wrong. I guess you are saying you want Ellie to kill Joel?

well I think its "Frankenstein" situation

Joel essentially molded Ellie to what she is(become), He might not have the power he had over her anymore. Maybe she decided to go hardcore on the FFs and Joel....can do little to stop her(outside of maybe telling her the truth).
 
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?
A third-person shooter.
 

SomTervo

Member
The play through I watched went through all the recordings/diary. They don't say that.

Well The fireflies wanted to kill Joel before he woke up, Marlene didn't want them to and not exactly for an altruistic reason.

Also, a surgeon being able to reverse engineer a parasite and make a vaccine/cure? Not that easy. In fact, I'm going to quote Joel here "You keep telling yourself that bullshit". I'll say the same thing I said earlier in this thread or the other one. Joel's brother is doing more to save humanity than this doctor was. If they actually found a cure the next day it wouldn't suddenly make the world a better place.

Meagre mobile research - indeed, i can't find record of what i said. There are a couple of easy to miss ones though.

Again, i need to look more closely during day time, but iirc the whole thing was written with a "the cure would really happen" potential in mind. Obviously the story stands on its own and the Fireflies absolutely deserve this criticism. But it's not black and white either way.
 
It is quality narrative and character design. Just because someone IS similar to themselves, it doesn't automatically make that character good either.

Now if someone dislikes a character just because of ethnicity/gender/age then yeah, that's pure ignorance.



dhMeAzK.gif

But that is precisely what we are saying he is guilty of.
 

Lime

Member
I think I must be the only person that found Joel to be more likeable than Ellie in the first game. I just empathised a lot more with him after that opening scene.

Not sure what was likeable about a possessive selfish psychopath willing to murder innocent people due to his own personal trauma
 

Hubb

Member
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?

Well Ellie isn't an adult so...

The Fireflies do the same thing, Ellie didn't know she was going to die going in to this thing. Fireflies as a group aren't exactly innocent either.

Not sure what was likeable about a possessive selfish psychopath willing to murder innocent people due to his own personal trauma

Not sure how you can write that and love Marlene at the same time. She had the same issues, you just don't play as her.
 
Ellie is clearly not educated in Biology and science as she should be. Joel clearly is. Since when have scientists been able to adapt a cure for any disease over night? As if these last remaining few are the smartest and most well aquipped people that can make a cure for disease on this earth. Let us examine the DNA only in the brain of Ellie to find out the cure. DNA is only in the brain, right?

Joel clearly is an educated man that took the route of logic over feeling by saving Ellie's life rather than wasting it on negligible amount of hope.

Science...

Are you seriously trying to say you wouldn't let a bunch of surgeons that work for a group of dangerous militants cut your kid's brain open for a chance of finding a cure, and therefore giving said group control over it? God, you're so evil.
 

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
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?


I never saw and still don't see Joel as a villain in TLOU, he's not a nice man but I don't see him as being any worse or better than the Fireflies, though if I had to choose I'd consider the Fireflies/Marlene to be worse. I was with him all the way up to and including the end. You talk about respect but the Fireflies never respected Ellie either by never giving her the opportunity to say no to the fact she would actually die during the operation at the end. And I mean the Fireflies of all groups controlling and coming up with a cure ? lol, c'mon now.

You're making it sound that Joel is obviously the 'villain' I say that's bullshit. But then of course I guess that's why I love the ending too, the fact it can be interpreted in other ways even if I don't really agree with the other interpretation :p
 
In all fairness, females would never be on any team of trained killers. They're physically inferior. But I agree.

Boy today must have been a tough day for you.

The Fireflies do the same thing, Ellie didn't know she was going to die going in to this thing. Fireflies as a group aren't exactly innocent either.

Incoming: Fireflies were going to use her to create a super strain of the virus to wipe out more people. She finds out and is going to kill all of them.
Queue scenes of her finding all the dead kids that had been researched on.
 
Only thing that I didn't like about Ellie in TLOU was that the enemies didn't detect her at all which was arguably the only major negative about the game but yet, it was a big one.

Wouldn't that make sense? She's technically infected she's just immune to the efeects of the infection.
 

SomTervo

Member
If I'm not wrong I remember you saying this same thing in a discussion a while back and after many people questioning the claim I don't recall the conclusion being that they actually said that, at least not as a serious or canonical statement.

I don't remember ever being questioned on this before. Happy to face up to it though. Could all be a creation of my mind. I should try to find the source once i have a keyboard under my fingers and an hour to spare.
 
I think I must be the only person that found Joel to be more likeable than Ellie in the first game. I just empathised a lot more with him after that opening scene.

It was a conscious design choice to avoid the frustration of being detected by all enemies because of inadequate ally AI.

Edit: Er, no idea why I quoted that other post, I was talking about this:

Only thing that I didn't like about Ellie in TLOU was that the enemies didn't detect her at all which was arguably the only major negative about the game but yet, it was a big one.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
CyxlsprW8AAu0wP.jpg

720


I can't be the only one. :p
ND's characters are always discount versions of hollywood actors, like Ellie's appearance and personality in TLOU1 was discount Juno, Super, x-men, and Hard Candy Ellen Page, Nathan Drake is discount Nathan Fillion, etc. This is what Ellie looked like during TLOU's debut before they changed it after people pointed out the similarity to Ellen Page:
3.jpg

324837-alexfas01.jpg


she looks a lot like her actress now but the face structure definitely leans more toward Ellen Page.
 

Shredderi

Member
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?

Hah I didn't see even one innocent character in the whole game. One also could argue that Ellie, a 14 year old isn't an adult. I have nothing against the idea of Joel being the villain. I fucking love the idea, but I just don't think that's what happened. I think other people loves the idea too and wants to believe that is what happened but I can't get behind that no matter how hard I try. It's not black and white though, so some of it is definitely open for interpretation.
 
They say, verbatim, "
only surgeon left on earth who can do this"
. Then in the near final scene, even if
the player does not attack the surgeon, and just walks towards him, Joel slashes the guy 's throat.
It doesn't matter if the surgeon attacks first. Joel has
already attacked first during the whole stage
. People were livid about this.

There's no question here. It's what the character was written to do. It's what he does, no ambiguity.

On my second playthrough I shot him once in the foot. Sure he instantly fell down and acted dead, but both he and I knew he was faking.
 

DonMigs85

Member
Ellie is clearly not educated in Biology and science as she should be. Joel clearly is. Since when have scientists been able to adapt a cure for any disease over night? As if these last remaining few are the smartest and most well aquipped people that can make a cure for disease on this earth. Let us examine the DNA only in the brain of Ellie to find out the cure. DNA is only in the brain, right?

Joel clearly is an educated man that took the route of logic over feeling by saving Ellie's life rather than wasting it on negligible amount of hope.

Science...
Actually they were going to study the mutated strain of the cordyceps that was in her brain
 

Kinyou

Member
I never saw and still don't see Joel as a villain in TLOU, he's not a nice man but I don't see him as being any worse or better than the Fireflies, in fact I consider the Fireflies/Marlene to be worse. I was with him all the way up to and including the end. You talk about respect but the Fireflies never respected Ellie either by never giving her the opportunity to say no to the fact she would actually die during the operation at the end. And I mean the Fireflies of all groups controlling and coming up with a cure ? lol, c'mon now.

You're making it sound that Joel is obviously the 'villain' I say that's bullshit.
Exactly. The fireflies robbed Ellie just as much of the choice yet people keep calling them innocent. It doesn't have to be all black and white. The story is all about grey morality.
 

Hubb

Member
Incoming: Fireflies were going to use her to create a super strain of the virus to wipe out more people. She finds out and is going to kill all of them.
Queue scenes of her finding all the dead kids that had been researched on.

Well it had to come from somewhere right?
/s
 
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?

The game where Joel's daughter gets murdered in cold blood by the government for the greater good of humanity, only to have an exact parallel at the end of the game where Joel now has agency to save his daughter from the forces that tell him to give up his daughter for the greater good of humanity?
 
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