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[HotPocket69]

It was on Reddit. Who knows how accurate it was. I can't find the comment now.

I just listened to the spoilercast with Neil, Ashley and Troy and I think I have most of my answers now. Abby is a biological female that just works out. Neil even mentions how they go out of there way to show a gym to give you a reason why she is so buff. She's simply playing the protector role to Lev like Joel did to Ellie.

There's also this solid tweet by Neil basically shitting all over the "leaks" and false narratives. I just thought that maybe there was more to the story that they were hinting at but I guess not.

Why are you so obsessed with this?

 

[sobaka770]

Ugh. Apples and oranges

Comparing the building of structures to replicating a drug treatment or vaccine or cure is not the same thing

Once again, you're arguing semantics. You have to have some level of suspention of disbelief to accept the narrative. How come there is a cure for a fungus? How come Ellie after 20 years and billions infected/dead is the only one immune? How come Joel who kills infected sometimes with bare hands doesn't get a scratch? How come the drive from Firefly hospital back to Jackson is peachy in a car?

These things don't matter, as the story revolves around characters and moral dilemmas they have to resolve. All coincidences, characters, world-building and pseudo-science is serving the fantasy and character development in both games. As long as there are no EGREGIOUS jumps in logic and the world is cohesive enough, you should calm down and accept it because the story is a character-driven drama first and foremost. If you don't let it take you, work around character motivations, perspectives, themes, elicited emotions, you can nitpick anything down to oblivion like cinemasins which is missing the point and the reason why it's considered a lowest level of criticism.

 

[Eiknarf]

Once again, you're arguing semantics. You have to have some level of suspention of disbelief to accept the narrative. How come there is a cure for a fungus? How come Ellie after 20 years and billions infected/dead is the only one immune? How come Joel who kills infected sometimes with bare hands doesn't get a scratch? How come the drive from Firefly hospital back to Jackson is peachy in a car?

These things don't matter, as the story revolves around characters and moral dilemmas they have to resolve. All coincidences, characters, world-building and pseudo-science is serving the fantasy and character development in both games. As long as there are no EGREGIOUS jumps in logic and the world is cohesive enough, you should calm down and accept it because the story is a character-driven drama first and foremost. If you don't let it take you, work around character motivations, perspectives, themes, elicited emotions, you can nitpick anything down to oblivion like cinemasins which is missing the point and the reason why it's considered a lowest level of criticism.

True true
You’re not wrong

 

[Paracelsus]

Spoiler

I know some people have given thorough answers already, but I thought it'd be interesting to share my perspective as a medical student. It's possible my theory is wrong of course, but I try to base it as much on reality as possible (and as far as I know, hah!) as The Last of Us has always tried to be reasonably grounded in reality.

As others have pointed out, some tests were done including a blood sample and growing a culture of the fungus. The fungus itself is mutated so that it doesn't actually take over the host but just 'sits' there. We have all kinds of micro-organisms in our body that just 'sit' inside us and some that can even help protect us, like some bacteria in our intestines. The idea is that the non-dangerous Cordyceps (=Ellie's variant) hinders any dangerous strains of the Cordyceps from growing in the brain because the non-dangerous Cordyceps is already established there. Basically, it tells the dangerous Cordyceps to fuck off.

A problem I have with this theory, is that the surgeon's recorder says three things and decides a fourth thing based on these conditions:

1. There are antibodies against the Cordyceps present in both the blood and the CSF (=cerebrospinal fluid)
2. No abnormalities in white blood cell count or pro-inflammatory cytokines
3. A blood culture is able to grow Cordyceps.
4. Ellie's brain specimen has to be extracted in order to produce a vaccine or cure.

This would mean that Ellie actively has Cordyceps (dangerous or non-dangerous we don't know) in her bloodstream, that the bloodstream contains antibodies for that same Cordyceps and that the immune system does not react against that Cordyceps (which would normally give increase in WBC count and pro-inflammatory cytokines). Depending on whether the Cordyceps in Ellie's bloodstream is the non-dangerous or the dangerous variant, the argumentation differs.

Assuming that the variant in Ellie's bloodstream is the non-dangerous variant:

1. The non-dangerous variant can be grown from Ellie's blood and the operation is not necessary. A cure can be made from just the blood.

Assuming that the variant in Ellie's bloodstream is the dangerous variant:

1. Condition (2), namely no abnormalities in white blood cell count or pro-inflammatory cytokines, would mean that the body is not eliminating the Cordyceps and that it would continually try to invade the brain.
2. This would damage the body, even if the non-dangerous variant is protecting the brain itself.
   1. There's something called the 'Blood-Brain-Barrier' that acts as a seperation between the blood and the brain, except for certain molecules to sustain the brain itself (energy sources like sugar and ketones). If a bacteria tries to continually go through this Blood-Brain-Barrier, as the Cordyceps would want to do if they are dangerous, the Blood-Brain-Barrier would inevitably get destroyed. See it as the dangerous variant destroying the path towards the brain.
3. This would also mean that Ellie's blood (and possibly other bodily fluids) is infectious.
   1. Ellie bit David in the Winter-chapter, but not enough time passed to find out whether David actually got infected because of this bite. As such, we cannot prove this.
   2. An argument that debunks this part, is that Ellie has been shown to kiss someone in The Last of Us 2 trailers. Of course, it's possible that kissing does not spread the Cordyceps, as there are many diseases that do not spread in any other way than direct contact with blood.
   3. This brings me to the last debunking argument: it's likely that Joel accidentally got into contact with some of Ellie's blood during their journey to the fireflies. (this is speculation though!)

Based on those two possibilities, I think it's more likely that the Cordyceps in the bloodstream is the non-dangerous variant, which makes the whole operation not necessary. Of course, you can say that you cannot be sure if the blood contains the dangerous or non-dangerous variant and that it'd be safer to just take the Cordyceps from the brain. This seems reasonable at first, but again there are two problems:

1. If the operation fails in any way, you lost your only 'immune' patient and chance at a cure/vaccine.
2. There are actually ways to test whether the Cordyceps in the blood is non-dangerous.

The way you test this, is by taking blood from Ellie, growing the fungus in a lab and infecting a test subject (either animal or a 'volunteer') to see the results. This is basically how the first vaccine was made by Edward Jenner in 1796 for the smallpox. Aside from the ethics, if they're willing to sacrifice a young girl in an operation, then I'm sure they can get some volunteer or 'volunteer' one way or another. Hell, they've already tested on chimpanzees according to another recording...

So; all in all; without delving into the working conditions, the lack of technological support to make a vaccine and no way to safely and adequately distribute it, the doctors were pretty incompetent starting from the whole premise of taking the Cordyceps out...

The common conclusion people have made was that "Joel doomed humanity" by not allowing the fireflies to cut out and study Ellie's brain. But it made me think: Did it actually matter? Could the fireflies actually develop and produce a large scale vaccine by using just one brain sample? Or, like I suspect, would they just "study" it, document their findings extensively and then run into another dead end with their research? Now I'm not a scientist or Doctor but common sense tells me you need lots of samples before you can produce a drug on a large scale. Here's an analogy: you are walking through the Amazon and suddenly find the last cancer-curing plant in existence. Even if you safely transported the plant back to a major lab, what are the chances of that one plant being used to produce thousands, maybe millions of drug doses? Pretty low right? How about, what are the chances that the plant will get cut up and disected and the trial runs fail, leading to another dead end? Pretty high right? Thoughts?

The argument has been debated for years, in the end a vaccine wasn't guaranteed at all. Only complete tools think otherwise.
Also, let's say they wanted what's in her head, what kind of witch bulls*** doctor has to kill a person to get a sample from their head?
Joel probably did the right thing but he did it for himself. You make it look like the fireflies had the vaccine ready and he blew up the laboratory.

This isn't about "giving a chance" but falling for it.

“All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.”

They should've thought before making the fireflies look like idiots in TLOU1.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

Surprised to see people getting Platinums, remember how hard it was to get a respectable percentage of trophies done in TLOU 1?

Brain surgery is one of the most complex and dangerous surgeries, dude, why do you think the phrase "it's not brain surgery" exists? I mean, if you were the writer of a fictional story like this you could have the world NOT in ruins and STILL have the surgeons available in the world unable to perform this without killing the patient, because we have no idea how this works, what parts of the brain are irrevocably damaged by removing a portion/all of it, etc. Trust me, if you start imposing real world logic on FICTIONAL viruses to feel better about a character's decisions you've gone way too far. I'll ask guy above me same thing I proposed to someone else who never replied... do you think JOEL rationalized it this way? Do you think Joel saved Ellie because he rationalized it to "a vaccine wouldn't work on everyone, they don't need to kill her, etc." or do you think JOEL did what he did because even with a 100% guaran-FUCKING-tee they could cure the world he'd rather Ellie survive than the world? I mean you do admit he did it for himself, but I get the sense you don't just mean because of the rest of humanity, I'm sure you're also ignoring Ellie's wishes, the same wishes Joel ignored. It feels like people totally miss the point of Ellie's speech at the end about Riley.

BTW, this is also classic for the type of fiction it is. In the Crazies (original, directed by Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc.)

Spoiler

they find a way to cure it but the person with the cure is killed by an unruly mob and the cure is lost

getting into the realism of whether or not such a cure could be so all-encompassing in its effectiveness or whatever else is ignoring the tragic underpinnings of the text and what the text is attempting to say about humanity. It's engaging things at a level of pure logic, but not the FILM'S logic, real world logic which doesn't apply to that film/game. Among most good critics the feeling is you're meant to judge a world by IT'S rules, not by the real world's rules, especially when the events are beyond reality.

 

[Iced Arcade]

truth!


Legit lol'd

 

[ghairat]

While I really liked the game, Neil Druckmann should have written the game alone. Co-writing with a person who has no experience in the video game industry is a big mistake. Playing a game vs reading about the game, story-wise is as different as the ground and the sky. I bet that Halley Gross didn't even play through the first game to be honest.

 

[Raven117]

This. Naughty dog didn't want to let you feel simpathy for anyone. They just wanted to show you a different side of the story and let you decide what to feel. Everything Abby does is believable. Abby gets her end of the story by letting Ellie live, but Ellie does not. That's why she goes to finish the Job. In the moment she gets the Joel Flashback she realises, that Forgiving someone is far greater than taking revenge. Going through all of Seattle and killing nearly everybody involved in Joels death didn't do anything for her and she was sure, that killing Abby wasn't changing it either.
Remembering that her forgiving Joel is what made her live again is exactly why she let Abby live.
It's incredible writing, that you have to understand before you can really admire it.

That's why people who actually studied writing, are absolutely loving this game including Journos and Writers. ND forgot that, that's not really the majority of gamers. It's basically one of these Oscar Movies that many people simply don't get and get dozens of oscars but do shit at box office.

Eyeroll.

You can also go further to say the fight in the water symbolizes the baptism of both characters as a way to move forward.

The issue is that the game wasn’t really building to this moment. That’s the issue with the writing. There wasn’t an arc for Ellie. It just.... happened.

Anything with the Scars was a waste and wholly uninteresting.

Abby had an interesting arc (way more so than Ellie in this game) but we didn’t get enough of her as she was jacking around with Scars. And being a “Joel version 2”

They took on too much in the story rather than be laser focused on the theme of forgiveness (there was little introspection of any of the characters about what their revenge did to those they loved.).

And knock off this elitist bullshit, it’s not like ND’s writing was all that subtle that anyone thinking about this would reach this conclusion

 

[realcool]

That's why people who actually studied writing, are absolutely loving this game including Journos and Writers. ND forgot that, that's not really the majority of gamers. It's basically one of these Oscar Movies that many people simply don't get and get dozens of oscars but do shit at box office.

Wait a minute... so you're saying the majority of gamers feel differently about the game than you and others that share your opinion?

Well, majority rules!

Have fun on cult island, seraphite!

 

[GrayChild]

OOF!

 

[yewles1]

OOF!

There's also that God dude that killed his family...

 

[rofif]

There's also that God dude that killed his family...

There is Jackie from the darkness and Dom from gears

 

[Sub_Level]

 

[Mossybrew]

Once again, you're arguing semantics. You have to have some level of suspention of disbelief to accept the narrative. How come there is a cure for a fungus? How come Ellie after 20 years and billions infected/dead is the only one immune? How come Joel who kills infected sometimes with bare hands doesn't get a scratch? How come the drive from Firefly hospital back to Jackson is peachy in a car?

These things don't matter, as the story revolves around characters and moral dilemmas they have to resolve. All coincidences, characters, world-building and pseudo-science is serving the fantasy and character development in both games. As long as there are no EGREGIOUS jumps in logic and the world is cohesive enough, you should calm down and accept it because the story is a character-driven drama first and foremost. If you don't let it take you, work around character motivations, perspectives, themes, elicited emotions, you can nitpick anything down to oblivion like cinemasins which is missing the point and the reason why it's considered a lowest level of criticism.

Thanks for this common sense. All storytelling media are contrived creations that require a basic buy-in of suspension of disbelief that we, as storytelling creatures, are usually ready to give. You can bust up the greatest narratives with pointless nitpicks, congrats you just discovered that this story was a human invention and didn't really happen.

 

[saintjules]

 

[Raven117]

There's also that God dude that killed his family...

And probably 9S from Nioh 2. (And neir for that matter).

And probably the dude from silent hill 2.

 

[Raven117]

Once again, you're arguing semantics. You have to have some level of suspention of disbelief to accept the narrative. How come there is a cure for a fungus? How come Ellie after 20 years and billions infected/dead is the only one immune? How come Joel who kills infected sometimes with bare hands doesn't get a scratch? How come the drive from Firefly hospital back to Jackson is peachy in a car?

These things don't matter, as the story revolves around characters and moral dilemmas they have to resolve. All coincidences, characters, world-building and pseudo-science is serving the fantasy and character development in both games. As long as there are no EGREGIOUS jumps in logic and the world is cohesive enough, you should calm down and accept it because the story is a character-driven drama first and foremost. If you don't let it take you, work around character motivations, perspectives, themes, elicited emotions, you can nitpick anything down to oblivion like cinemasins which is missing the point and the reason why it's considered a lowest level of criticism.

Man, this is a hell of a quote. Thank you.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

There's also that God dude that killed his family...

Kratos went into the church of his own free will though and killed them in blind bloodlust rage. LMFAO. Then blames everyone but himself.

 

[Lunk]

AngryJoe is having a stupid hateboner for the way Joel died and never recovered. Keeps talking stupid things he read online like probability of vaccine is not 100% as if it has any relevance to the plot. Basically he's experiencing hatred which is by design and I bet he will justify his emotional hijack with every argument he can find to say story is stupid.

If people say they want to kill Abby or if the internet starts animating a reenactment of Joel's death scene but it's Abby getting beating in with a golf club, then Neil will have succeeded. I think his secret agenda with this game was to see if he could turn players into "Ellie" and make them hateful towards the game itself. And I don't condone it.

To me Neil Druckmann became this guy with this game:

(In case it's out of context: It's the creator of the show in The Truman Show)

 

[Collin]

lol wtf. i’m not a jason fan and i generally like troy (even if he’s a total hollywood cornball sometimes) but why is troy being so dramatic about this very minor criticism?

and for the record, a lotta video games are too long. I love TLOUII but i’d still say they coulda cut out like 4-5 hours in the middle somewhere.

 

[joe_zazen]

Thanks for this common sense. All storytelling media are contrived creations that require a basic buy-in of suspension of disbelief that we, as storytelling creatures, are usually ready to give. You can bust up the greatest narratives with pointless nitpicks, congrats you just discovered that this story was a human invention and didn't really happen.

Dude, it is an industrial corporate story made to justify hours and hours of pretend killing. It ain't shakespeare.

looking for real meaning in giant aaa video is a fool’s errand.

 

[joe_zazen]

lol wtf. i’m not a jason fan and i generally like troy (even if he’s a total hollywood cornball sometimes) but why is troy being so dramatic about this very minor criticism?

and for the record, a lotta video games are too long. I love TLOUII but i’d still say they coulda cut out like 4-5 hours in the middle somewhere.

that twitter shit is embarrassing for everyone except JS. The guy is the only adult in that room.

 

[Mossybrew]

Dude, it is an industrial corporate story made to justify hours and hours of pretend killing. It ain't shakespeare.

looking for real meaning in giant aaa video is a fool’s errand.

You could say this about all mainstream media being "industrial corporate" - are you saying nothing but indie and underground stories have any "real meaning?"

And your take is that the story's purpose is to justify hours of killing?

Try again man, this post was a swing and a miss.

 

[pLow7]

Eyeroll.

You can also go further to say the fight in the water symbolizes the baptism of both characters as a way to move forward.

The issue is that the game wasn’t really building to this moment. That’s the issue with the writing. There wasn’t an arc for Ellie. It just.... happened.

Anything with the Scars was a waste and wholly uninteresting.

Abby had an interesting arc (way more so than Ellie in this game) but we didn’t get enough of her as she was jacking around with Scars. And being a “Joel version 2”

They took on too much in the story rather than be laser focused on the theme of forgiveness (there was little introspection of any of the characters about what their revenge did to those they loved.).

And knock off this elitist bullshit, it’s not like ND’s writing was all that subtle that anyone thinking about this would reach this conclusion

You just have to look at Twitter. You are giving the average gamer too much credit.

The part with the Scars is your opninion and it's okay, but i completely disagree. I thought especially that part was extremely interesting. You'll encounter this new Fraction already with Ellie and you know shit about them. At the beginning of the second part you'll only see the WLF side and they automatically seem like some religious crazy people.
Only by knowing Lev and Yara you'll see, that they are basically "normal" people with different believes.

Also the whole World gets really to live by reading all the letters. There is so much informaton and world building in there, it's actually insane.

 

[Labolas]

Lol, Jotaro and Dio are way more beloved than these two.

 

[ZZZZ]

LOL

 

[Jon Neu]

In the game Abby definitely says to Owen, “Hey, I’m pushing 185”-

Absolutely dissapointing. That’s like 83 kgs of bench press. I could bench press that literally after my first 2 months into the gym.

Turns out Abby is a weak ass bitch with fake muscles.

 

[Jon Neu]

You could say this about all mainstream media being "industrial corporate" - are you saying nothing but indie and underground stories have any "real meaning?"

And your take is that the story's purpose is to justify hours of killing?

Try again man, this post was a swing and a miss.

Every fucking time.

-Badly written script with lot of inconsistencies

-Dude, it’s fiction, you’re supposed to go suspension of disbelief mode!!!

 

[Eiknarf]

Absolutely dissapointing. That’s like 83 kgs of bench press. I could bench press that literally after my first 2 months into the gym.

Turns out Abby is a weak ass bitch with fake muscles.

That’s why I’m guessing that Abby might have been referring to her weight

I’m playing through again now and will pay closer attention to her exact quote

 

[Jon Neu]

That’s why I’m guessing that Abby might have been referring to her weight

I’m playing through again now and will pay closer attention to her exact quote

When did she say that? When she entered the Aquarium for the first time with Owen?

I’m playing the game in spanish, maybe they just butchered that part in the translation, because I don’t remember her saying that.

 

[rofif]

lol wtf. i’m not a jason fan and i generally like troy (even if he’s a total hollywood cornball sometimes) but why is troy being so dramatic about this very minor criticism?

and for the record, a lotta video games are too long. I love TLOUII but i’d still say they coulda cut out like 4-5 hours in the middle somewhere.

Yeah video games are generally too long I think. Especially tlou2 could use some clipping. But it's a great game anyway

 

[tassletine]

Eyeroll.

You can also go further to say the fight in the water symbolizes the baptism of both characters as a way to move forward.

The issue is that the game wasn’t really building to this moment. That’s the issue with the writing. There wasn’t an arc for Ellie. It just.... happened.

Anything with the Scars was a waste and wholly uninteresting.

Abby had an interesting arc (way more so than Ellie in this game) but we didn’t get enough of her as she was jacking around with Scars. And being a “Joel version 2”

They took on too much in the story rather than be laser focused on the theme of forgiveness (there was little introspection of any of the characters about what their revenge did to those they loved.).

And knock off this elitist bullshit, it’s not like ND’s writing was all that subtle that anyone thinking about this would reach this conclusion

I agree. I actually think there's a third part to this tale but it proved too much for the game. There does seem to be something left out, possibly DLC?

I heard something before about the Seraphites being immune (which is why they have scars on their faces, done with an infected knife) and I was especially drawn to the female character that gets killed during the hanging scene with Abby -- as she seemed uncommonly well developed for such an incidental character. I genuinely thought that they were introducing the final villain there (before they killed her).

Also to allude to a matriarchal 'mother' character you never get to meet, seems like a massive dead end to me -- as you said the Scars are a big waste of time and none of that works.

There were rumours of Ellie's mother cropping up somewhere, something that Druckman never discounted (unlike the other rumours) so I'm guessing that could have been a potential plot?

Ellie's finds her real mother and a group of immune people (her tribe). She then has to make the choice between warring camps (Eventually letting Abby live when everyone has been massacred and she realises there are no sides to take).

 

[Eiknarf]

When did she say that? When she entered the Aquarium for the first time with Owen?

I’m playing the game in spanish, maybe they just butchered that part in the translation, because I don’t remember her saying that.

Its in one of the flashbacks with Owen- She was basically boasting about getting stronger with her record (at the time of the flashback) being 185 Ibs.

So I think it’s in reference to her weight, not how much she can bench

 

[tassletine]

You can also question why she doesn't use the machine gun she gets lore wise at the final fight, why even give Abby a fighting chance if she's serious about getting revenge.

Gotta have a catfight in the mud. Those are the rules.

 

[Inuteu]

Have 3 left but I'll come back for them.... coins, cards and journal entries left.

I hate collectables

 

[tassletine]

Absolutely not. I love Joel and Ellie and TLOU is my favourite PS3 game. But for me, this story is just as good as the first.

This game reinforces how much Joel does mean to Ellie. It reinforces that Joel's decision was the correct one for him because he would do it all over again. It's great to see a version of Joel that has settled down, a version that has finally let go of his anger and bitterness towards the world. Joel's story didn't really have anywhere to go, his character arc was complete. So I understand why he died, to furfil a higher narrative purpose. He died a hero. He died a matyr.

This game made me love Joel even more, because you never know what you had til it's gone. And this will make replaying TLOU1 even more special.

I agree.

I think they'll do DLC with Joel.
Druckman is good at manipulating people and it would easily be the best way to sell DLC. I'm not sure they have much of a chance if they don't.
There is no reason that this isn't just the END of the story. There are many more Joel and Ellie stories they can tell, and they even mention one in the game.

 

[joe_zazen]

You could say this about all mainstream media being "industrial corporate"

yes.

are you saying nothing but indie and underground stories have any "real meaning?"

complexity of this means answering in a post is not possible. None the less, I put some things here in the spirit of love and compassion. I will change the question to ‘where to find real meaning?’. Hope that is OK.

God is dead! Nietzche did not mean literally, rather he meant God is dead in the hearts of modern western people. We have killed spirituality. Imagine seeing the world as a divine gift: clouds, food, birth, death, everything; spending much of your time in silence close to nature; living in a tight loving community of people who need and rely each other and saw the world the same way you did. Imagine a life without money. That is how humans lived for our almost our entire history. That is where meaning is found.

Now imagine living in a world without any of that, where you look for connection and meaning from commercial social platforms, commercial search ‘engines’, corporate trans-media IPs, Skype; all the while letting let companies use our most private details to manipulate and sell us things and ideas. Spiritually, we are empty husks.

A few years ago, the authors of a study on happiness and life satisfaction were flummoxed at why Bangledesh was near the top and rich Northern Euros near the bottom. Afterall, Bangledesh is really really poor and 90% practising Muslim, you know that regressive gay-hating, woman-hating, Abrahamic religion, while rich Euros had thrown off the shackles of stupid religion and embraced diversity and had lots of cars and TVs and iphones and literacy and pills and hospitals and vacations.

So, you know, looking for meaning from corporations and their products (Google, Facebook, Netflix, New York Times, CNN, Amazon, Videogames, Disney, etc.) is a fool‘s errand. At best, they will provide you with enough distraction so you can pretend to be OK and do not have to kill yourself.

And a final note, this emptiness leaves us vulnerable to manipulation. Tapping into it provides power and profits, but it is dangerous as Jim Jones, Donald Trump, Antifa, self loathing white liberals burning buildings and cancelling police departments can attest to.

And your take is that the story's purpose is to justify hours of killing?

The game part of the product is what? killing and getting stuff to kill with. What provides the connective tissue between the gameplay parts? The story. But it is a bit more complex than that.

The guy who wrote Spec Ops The Line said (paraphrasing from memory from a gdc talk) “your protagonist can never be more righteous than the game’s core mechanic demands. So, if your player primarily interacts with the game through killing....The AAA videogame industry is filled with progressive people who condemn the blanket use of violence and yet they devote their lives to making products that require players to kill hundreds if not thousands of people in a single game. creatives struggle to come to terms with this tension. As you get older and have children, it gets harder and harder to look at this and think it is ok. So, that is where the motivation for Spec Ops came from. Is there something else we can do? Something else we can make?” The writer left AAA games and now works as a partner in an indie studio.

So the other part of the ‘meaning‘ of the story is that it is an attempt by progressive devs to make a product that justifies or at least lessens the guilt they have for using their talents to make immoral and destructive things for money. They do that by making the player feel bad. In spec ops it was ‘you monster, you used white phosphorous. You could have turned the game off you know’. In tlou2, they make you kill puppies and murder people with names and stories and families, and ends with the PC alone and destitute and music-less.

it is hollow, however. The last of us 2 is still a fun muder sim. If the game played like TLOU1 dlc, then we could have had something special and have looked for some real meaning. But that game would have sold 10% of what actual tlou2 is going to. As it is, it is just another AAA kill game from billion dollar corp.

so, yes, the story is there to move and justify the killing, but with the added twist that it also makes the creatives fell a bit less conflicted.

Try again man, this post was a swing and a miss.

maybe this one is better?

 

[Arthimura]

I agree.

I think they'll do DLC with Joel.
Druckman is good at manipulating people and it would easily be the best way to sell DLC. I'm not sure they have much of a chance if they don't.
There is no reason that this isn't just the END of the story. There are many more Joel and Ellie stories they can tell, and they even mention one in the game.

They said in an interview that there's no planned DLC, from what i remember reading.

I believe that maybe they will release a standalone multiplayer game. The gameplay and scenarios are so amazing, it feels like a waste to not get advantage of it.

 

[tassletine]

They said in an interview that there's no planned DLC, from what i remember reading.

I believe that maybe they will release a standalone multiplayer game. The gameplay and scenarios are so amazing, it feels like a waste to not get advantage of it.

Thanks for the info. I'm glad they're doing multiplayer. I love some of the mechanics in this.

 

[Lunk]

lol wtf. i’m not a jason fan and i generally like troy (even if he’s a total hollywood cornball sometimes) but why is troy being so dramatic about this very minor criticism?

I think Troy is just a theatrical guy that has an author's poem ready for any question.

 

[HellforLeather]

I finally beat the game. Quick thoughts:

Spoiler

-Overall its pretty good

-Lev being trans felt like the closest thing to interjecting SJW shit into the game.

-I wish Joel wasnt sidelined so badly. I get where the story is gonig but Jeremy Jahns does a good job of easily crafting something that follows the same idea but would have been better implemented IMO

-Abby and Lev are not nearly as likeable as Joel and Ellie. The whole time I was playing as Abby I was wondering when I would get to play as Ellie again.

-Ellie should have killed Abby when she was strung up in Santa Barbara in the most anti climatic way possible. The game would end on a message of revenge being unsatisfying and ultimately destroys the pursuer in the process.

-Tommy seems to get a weird regression in this game. In the first one, he was a idealist and left the fireflies to settle down with a family and is on the verge of resorting back to being an idealist when Joel tries to pawn Ellie off on him. To have him completely consumed by revenge for Joel even after all the horrors that he saw with his brother and after being handicapped from the events in Seattle seems to be a regression of his character.

 

[Rawdirt]

When did she say that? When she entered the Aquarium for the first time with Owen?

I’m playing the game in spanish, maybe they just butchered that part in the translation, because I don’t remember her saying that.

I believe it’s one of the first Abby flashbacks (3 year) at the aquarium. She said I pushed 185lbs and Owen says something like yea right. My only issue is in three years Abby goes from strong woman to absolute beast. I see that they were just trying to make an imposing lead character but it ends up being distracting and takes me out of it a bit.

 

[Mossybrew]

maybe this one is better?

Absolutely, thanks for the thoughtful post.

 

[TGO]

So I've got up to Joel's death
And I'm sorry, the whole sequence is stupid and made no sense
He saves a stranger then goes to her group? A group thats been living so close to their community for over a day undetected
And Joel? "Mr don't trust anybody"
Just walks in no questions asked and gets killed
What's worse is that I'm not angry, upset or anything I'm just scratching my head how stupid everything that unfolded in front of me is.

 

[Ulysses 31]

So I've got up to Joel's death
And I'm sorry, the whole sequence is stupid and made no sense
He saves a stranger then goes to her group? A group thats been living so close to their community for over a day undetected
And Joel? "Mr don't trust anybody"
Just walks in no questions asked and gets killed
What's worse is that I'm not angry, upset or anything I'm just scratching my head how stupid everything that unfolded in front of me is.

Tommy gets turned into a bit of a buffoon also as the game goes on.

 

[TGO]

Tommy gets turned into a bit of a buffoon also as the game goes on.

Yeah I noticed, I mean it's not stopping me from playing it
The core game is still TLOU but the story so far?
If I was a "put on ignore list" kinda guy a lot of members would be in it
There is nothing GOTY or Amazing about this so far
Reminds me of TLJ

 

[Hayabusabruh]

Was balling the whole time I made this

 

[vpance]

So I've got up to Joel's death
And I'm sorry, the whole sequence is stupid and made no sense
He saves a stranger then goes to her group? A group thats been living so close to their community for over a day undetected
And Joel? "Mr don't trust anybody"
Just walks in no questions asked and gets killed
What's worse is that I'm not angry, upset or anything I'm just scratching my head how stupid everything that unfolded in front of me is.

It’s also kinda dumb how Joel just straight up says, hi I’m Joel.

 

[iorek21]

The more I replay this game and reflect upon it, the more I am convinced that Abby's story was written first, and then they realized that Ellie should be included. Only that can explain the quality jump in writing between both parts (not that Abby's story is masterfully written, but it is much better than Ellie's).

Starting with characters: Jesse and Dina are nothing, literally nothing; they are bland, useless and add very little to the overall narrative and experience. You could remove them completely from the story and the results would be the same; no impact, no value. Banter between Ellie and those characters is also very bland, being composed basically of Tumblr/Twitter dialogues ("Look, how cool is that?? hahahahah"; "Wow, let's make a band xD"). Even Ellie herself is bland and develops very little; I get it that she's supposed to be emotionally unstable during Seattle 1-3 and Epilogue, but even during the Intro she's basically Tumblr Sadgirl, barely a shadow of Ellie in TLOU1.

In contrast, almost every character in Abby's story is essential or plays a key role in the events that occur. Remove Lev, Mel, Owen, Manny and even the fucking dog and you lose a great deal of the meaning and motivations for Abby's actions. Banter during exploration is also better in her story, the very first optional dialogue with Lev (the one Abby says that the dogs back in her camp learned how to play cards) is funnier and more clever than anything during Ellie's.

Set pieces and gameplay: If in the writting department Abby' story seems better, in gameplay/set pieces the contrast is even worse. Ellie's Seattle 1-3 feels like a bunch of optional God of War dungeons stitched together, very little revelance to the overall plot, one or two set pieces, and it drags for too long. However, Abby has 2 "boss" fights, has something like 5 set pieces, and most importantly, it feels shorter than Ellie's; it's just a much better overall experience.

TL;DR: Ellie's story feels like an afterthought and TLOU2 would've been greately improved if she was completely removed from the game (would also avoid most of the backlash surrounding the game).

 

[Collin]

The more I replay this game and reflect upon it, the more I am convinced that Abby's story was written first, and then they realized that Ellie should be included. Only that can explain the quality jump in writing between both parts (not that Abby's story is masterfully written, but it is much better than Ellie's).

Starting with characters: Jesse and Dina are nothing, literally nothing; they are bland, useless and add very little to the overall narrative and experience. You could remove them completely from the story and the results would be the same; no impact, no value. Banter between Ellie and those characters is also very bland, being composed basically of Tumblr/Twitter dialogues ("Look, how cool is that?? hahahahah"; "Wow, let's make a band xD"). Even Ellie herself is bland and develops very little; I get it that she's supposed to be emotionally unstable during Seattle 1-3 and Epilogue, but even during the Intro she's basically Tumblr Sadgirl, barely a shadow of Ellie in TLOU1.

In contrast, almost every character in Abby's story is essential or plays a key role in the events that occur. Remove Lev, Mel, Owen, Manny and even the fucking dog and you lose a great deal of the meaning and motivations for Abby's actions. Banter during exploration is also better in her story, the very first optional dialogue with Lev (the one Abby says that the dogs back in her camp learned how to play cards) is funnier and more clever than anything during Ellie's.

Set pieces and gameplay: If in the writting department Abby' story seems better, in gameplay/set pieces the contrast is even worse. Ellie's Seattle 1-3 feels like a bunch of optional God of War dungeons stitched together, very little revelance to the overall plot, one or two set pieces, and it drags for too long. However, Abby has 2 "boss" fights, has something like 5 set pieces, and most importantly, it feels shorter than Ellie's; it's just a much better overall experience.

TL;DR: Ellie's story feels like an afterthought and TLOU2 would've been greately improved if she was completely removed from the game (would also avoid most of the backlash surrounding the game).

I don’t fully agree that Ellie’s half is as bad as you claim but I do agree with the premise that Abby’s story was written first. (and I do agree that Abbys half is generally better) I remember when people brought up a possibility of a Last of Us 2 before it was announced, many people said they would want one but not if it included Joel and Ellie since their story had such a great and unique end to it and to spoil that would suck. I bet those comments got to Druckmann’s head and he thought of Abbys story independent of Ellie’s involvement. My theory is he thought of including Joel and Ellie much later as the game and story continued to develop over time. When you think about it, Abby’s narrative really only intersects with Ellie’s at the very beginning and very end. Her main quest with Lev and Yara is fully independent from Yara until she discovers Owen and Mel dead.

I wonder how Last of Us Part II would be received if it had been Abby only and the parts about Ellie were removed. Frankly. I don’t mind how they intersect in the final product but it’s hard to not to feel like they are somewhat disjointed from each other.