Holy shit, you gave me an amazing idea for a videogame! We create a cast of characters, make the player attached to them in the first part and then NUKE the place! Why? No one know what's around the corner. It has to be this way. Because of the setting they live in, you know?No one gets what they want in life and no one knows what's around the next corner. Especially in this world they live in. It's how it be.
So your point is "people can like everything and dislike everything." It cames down to taste and nothing was wrong with TLOU2. The internet is overreacting.
People are scrutinizing it because they care. The same way they did with Star Wars, the last season of Game of Thrones, the Joker, Captain Marvel and so many others. I bet everyone and their mothers saw Joel's death miles away, we just thought that it would bring something to the table. It was an empty revenge plot, badly written with an unlikeable cast.
What makes it such a bad revenge story that it stands below the million other revenge stories in games and movies? you have 2 protagonists who set out looking for revenge, cause a lot of harm and lose everything in the process, but in the end find a reason to keep on living. Seems pretty quintessential to me, nothing special, but nothing so bad it would make me want to tear at my hear. I've seen much better and much worse. Hell, the fact that the protagonists work against each other makes it kind of interesting actually.
We do get a ride on a theme park, and visit an aquarium, during the dates between Abby and her hunk. We got some nice dialogues straight out of twilight, it was so touching i cried.
I will say I kinda agree on this. And it hit me with the tape recorder being like “it wouldn’t matter if we found them he was the only surgeon who could manufacture a vaccine” to hammer home that it was really a one shot deal. Which first of all is just plain unrealistic. There is no way there is only one person who is immune, and only one person who could develop a vaccine and that there were no doubts a vaccine could be developed or even actually be produced and distributed and help the human race all that much.
I don't agree that it's about fatherhood. IMHO it's about how far would you go to protect someone you love. They developed the bound as a father/daughter but it shows on other characters as well.I was trying to be civil but this thread is another stealth "I'm mad cuz Joel got iced and they used that to launch pad this games story." thread. Just stay mad.
TLOU1: It's about fatherhood
TLOU2: Is revenge worth it? No it's not worth it.
I think it's just plebs being plebs and wanted another MCU tier theme park ride in a post apocalyptic world where people can get killed for a tin of beans but aight.
Also I don't think I've ever really praised this game for the "diversity" but death is the one true equality and a lot of these fuckers die.
See all of what you wrote is totally true and obvious. But I think that’s what got to me about the story, was that it was so obvious. Like you could see the puppeteer pulling the strings a bit too much. Of course they had Joel’s death as brutal as possible and early and in the most tragic way - they are hoping that you respond with a semblance of the anger Ellie has - that way you can excuse her for basically doing nothing redeeming except look for revenge the next 15 hours. Then you switch to Abby and give her plenty more to do, and essentially copy paste the first games formula onto her story - have it be a redemption arc again etc etc (albeit a bit more shakily done) - then you get her to show mercy to Ellie - then you’ve effectively accomplished the goal of getting people to switch sides as much as possible - go back to Ellie continue to show how much the revenge still consumes her have her hunt down abby set Abby free, beat Abby and then show mercy and cry. Reverting back to a Joel flashback to show she is capable of trying to forgive and that was the last sentiment she expressed to him before he was killed (just to stick the knife in a bit more). Arrives back home, Dina is gone and she no longer has her connection to Joel through the guitar as she can’t even play it anymore due to her two fingers missing (I mean she could actually learn to play well like that, or even switch to left handed but that’s not the goal - the goal is to show that the quest took everything from her and now she is severed completely from who she was in the past.) I didn’t hate the story. But it was just a bit obvious in its manipulations.
Yeah but it was deliberately front loaded (Structured) with good Ellie stuff and Bad Abby stuff, it’s all in the first 2-3 hours. You still play as Ellie till the 15 hour mark - then you switch to Abby and try to undo it. I enjoyed Abby’s sections much more honestly but it wasn’t exactly subtle the way they went about all of it.
The glaring issue that stood out to me in regards to the moral conundrum presented by Druckmann is that he didn't present a rational justification as to why Joel decided to save Ellie at the end of TLoU in addition to him having grown fond of Ellie. Instead of allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about what would be possible within a post-apocalyptic setting, he decided for the audience that a cure would've unequivocally resulted from the death of Ellie and thereby took upon himself a misinformed virtuous stance with his deliberation. But using a misguided preconceived notion of Joel being a horrible human being just for the fact that he spared Ellie instead of humanity as the driving force to push the narrative and story progression in TLoU 2 was frankly lazy writing. A cure would not have been guaranteed and Ellie being upset over the loss of her free will in making her own decision relative to self sacrifice was just ridiculous. "Oh, I'm so pissed that I didn't get to sacrifice my life for a lost cause in order to help out a terrorist organization and a monkey for a 'doctor' to maybe concoct a cure just so they can use it as leverage over FEDRA!". Jerry Anderson was ill-equipped and perhaps too inexperienced, and resources are extremely finite in a post-apocalyptic world where everything that constitutes a functioning society is in utter disrepair. Prior experiments and testing with similar subjects to Ellie in the past have failed as well.
This is why people are saying it retroactively changes how good they think the first ones writing was - it doesn’t make sense in any world that a cure would actually be guaranteed. I know that’s what they were going for, but if you just apply that logic to anything in the real world it doesn’t hold up. The trifecta of it being guaranteed, Ellie being the only immune person, the surgeon being the only doctor able to do it - just feels lazy. And I’d argue that it was clearer that Joel killed Marlene to keep her from coming after Ellie, since he straight up says that’s why (and he has no reason to lie to Marlene a moment before he shoots her). Add to that his characterization suggests he would certainly give his own life for the cure, and saved Ellie even knowing that it could result in the end of their relationship - that just doesn’t read as “selfish” to me. But yeah we could have debates about this before - now it’s a little harder with the direction they went.
Right, I knew that. I meant to word that differently. Prior experiments and testing conducted on patients that they wanted to perform on Ellie had failed. And despite Ellie's unique circumstance, it doesn't change the fact that it wouldn't be scientifically sound to be able to develop a cure with limited resources and the lack of an experienced and trained medical staff. I understand that Druckmann wanted to establish the guarantee of a cure by the end of TLoU but if he'd given the audience a reasonable and realistic perspective in lieu of forcing everyone to accept a rigid plot point, I think TLoU 2 could've had a much more intriguing and climactic story.
The thing is, no one can use this to make Joel's decision appear better.
