"Those were my friends you killed, asshole." "Guess what!? We're shitty people, Joel. It's been like that for a long time." You brought up a great point. Those 2 lines always stuck with me. Tess's line was the first time I thought about them killing Robert's men. For a moment, I stopped thinking of these 2 as badass survivors, and looked at them though the lenses of "shitty people." Made me think about the only people left in this apocalypse at this point, were shitty people. That random NPC's line about his friends, made me think about every single person killed up to this point. Made me remember that Joel has "been on both sides" during an ambush, and w those guys in the city who hunted tourists, were probably a tight knit group too. It's funny how those 2 lines made me think about the other communities and the other people who are just trying to survive while TLOU Part 2 just made me roll my eyes at the thought.
One word: subtlety. The game didn't preach to you. The lines were pretty obvious but sounded rather natural and they gave you the opportunity to make your own conclusions as to who might be right, who might be wrong or if there even are any sides to this conflict that could be described in such a one-sided way. TLOU II tried to do a similar message partly, but much of it was preachy and very obviously biased towards a certain side and message, leaving the player with barely any nuance. As history has shown time and time again, people don't like being preached to and forced to do something, even in cases where it was the right thing to do.
i always felt in part that the fact ellie is the only real optimist in part 1 shows that the only people who are still around are "shitty people", and people who haven't been around long enough to become shitty yet
A couple of lines is a good addition to any story, but it is not the same things as exploring something like that in detail, and all of the consequences that come with it.
what an awesome video this must have taken you ages! the story was an abomination to all the fans of the first game, just to think people waited patiently for 7 years for this! the very mediocre story came above everything even the characters we loved and neil druckman was and always will be a one hit wonder! ND got too confident and over ambitious and thought they could do nothing wrong and sadly they didn't have the talent on the writing and direction side to pull it off!
Dina willing to go to Seattle to avenge Joel for Ellie, when all we got to establish them as "soulmates" was a scene of them smoking pot and having sex while on the job.... seriously?? That's a night shift at Dennys.
I don't even see any actual chemistry with Dina and Ellie. What is special about her that attracts Ellie? The reason the chemistry between Joel and Ellie was so strong is because previously, Joel was a father and Ellie was a kid who lost everyone in her life. That bond was perfect which made them perfect for each other. Dina and Ellie has nothing really in common other than they're both women and they're both lesbians and maybe some other minor connection.
@@jasonalv7436 I mean, considering Dina isn't a lesbian they don't even have that in common lmfao. No but jokes aside I also really didn't like Dina. I was pretty neutral through most of the game though, bordering on thinking she was a really bland and her attempts at humour were in bad taste given the situation. Honestly, trying to cheer Ellie up is one thing, acting like the two of them were on a couple's weekend retreat is another. Then she refers to Ellie having a PTSD attack as "a bit of excitement" and is completely dismissive to the extent of Ellie's trauma and I'm just "...?" why is she with her if she sees the fact Ellie hasn't simply gotten over it as such a burden to her and their 'relationship'? Wild.
Dina is terrible. She's knocked up by their mutual friend like a month earlier and now her and ellie are totally soulmates while still hangin with the guy.. They wrote her as the grossest person in the apocalypse
@@hashvendetta7226 really you think Dina was worse then Owen 😂😂😂😂 I actually thought she was one of the more well written characters in comparison to the others
@@samt7676 everyone in that game is written as the most self centered, asshole. Owen just deciding to take off on his pregnant girlfriend and cheating with sheBeast abby is rough. I'd like to add, abby spends like 3 hours in climbing around a decrepit ship, strangling slimey fungus people with her bare hands and immediately strips down and gets plowed by that dude. No shower, just fungus mung and BO. Probably the grossest thing in existence.
The realisation that revenge isn't going to give Ellie peace is kinda nullified after the fact that she's slaughtered hundreds of people to get to Abby. By not killing Abby, that means everyone that she killed died for nothing 😅
And also, how does letting Abby live make her feel better about anything? Sure, it might not help her get over her grief over Joel's death and not reconciling with him, but whether Abby is dead or alive doesn't really change that. Might as well kill the person who killed Joel tbh, at least then he has his justice, and then Ellie can move on from Joel? Letting her live just means she can come back to kill her one day, it doesn't really end the cycle of violence. Abby didn't want to fight Ellie anyway, she forced her to, and Ellie only decided to spare Abby after thinking of Joel playing a guitar for 2 seconds?? It makes literally no sense. Why come all this way to give up when your goal is literally in your hands??
YESSSSSS!!!!!! I literally shouted out loud, “So it was all for nothing?” I told somebody I felt nothing at the end, that I had even stopped caring what happens to Ellie, and they tried to tell me that that is what I was supposed to feel. Druckmann was not on his own for Uncharted or TLOU1, but he was here, and it really showed.
@@Deeplycloseted435 i hadnt thought about that. If he was in charge of uncharted 2 no doubt he wouldve had us play as Lazarevic for half the game after he killed Sully 🤣
Their biggest fuck up was not having Abby wonder if she killed Joel in front of his daughter. This would cause internal conflict and have her realize she did to someone else what was done to her. It's also a better incentive for her wanting to save Lev and Yara as a way to atone and return to who she was before her dad was killed. There. Fixed the game.
That's a good point. Much better than just Abby having nightmares about her father's death. Which could be attributed to anything other than killing Joel.
Not that she did to someone else what was done to her, she did something worse. Since she didn't have to sit and watch as her dad was being beaten to death - specially since her dad wasn't brutally killed like that, not that Abby knew or watched that.
well I like that the game is subtle in that way because she lets her live...and seems to feel bad that she did in front of Ellie. She doesn't know who she is but its not far fetched to imagine that she did consider it.
Did you forget about how Abby's dad was willing to kill Ellie, without her consent, but hesitant when he was question if he would be so quick if it was his daughter and he has no answer. It kinda makes Joel's actions justified.
Sorry. Jerry is a quack in my eyes. Piece of 💩 didn't even mention Brain Biopsy, or even Hemispherectomy. Medically, there's no reason to kill Ellie for her Cordyceps.
I will never understand the "Joel robbed Ellie of her choice" comment because the Fireflies didn't give her a choice either. Literally no one gave her a say so it's a moot point.
Fun fact, not one single person told Ellie why Abby hunted down Joel. Ellie assumes it's because of the cure, but the narrative shows otherwise. Why? Because if Ellie knew that she might have stopped her plan for vengeance. This whole thing reeks of someone who thought they could put anything on the page and the audience would "ooooo and ahhhhh".
Exactly that's why they never talk to each other and ask questions , because then they and player would realize how stupid the situation and that plot is , that's why tommy never mention the fact that he gave joel name to abby No reason for revenge i think if you admit it's your fault
Actually Nora makes a comment to Ellie about her being the girl from the hospital when she sees Ellie breathing in spores. But in the sense of Ellie never knowing Abby’s dad was the doctor she never actually met because she was unconscious, that is true .
One of the biggest problems I had is that during abbys sequence, you can notice that there is a ridiculous amount of plot convenience, eg. Yara appearing out of literally thin air to save Abby from Tommy, who was getting her absolute shit rocked.
Red dead 2 had an interesting take on vengeance. After spending time building a normal life, John is given the opportunity to hunt down Mica. His wife begs him not to go but he decides to anyway. After killing Mica the epilogue shows the feds investigating the carnage which leads them back to John. It’s an extra depth of consequence in John’s story. It doesn’t take away from the original story, it helps drive home points made in the first game.
I've been saying this rdr2 is better game in showing how revenge can lead down a destructive path ans how the cycle of violence constantly repeats with jack eventually going after Edgar Ros
Besides the couple that ran away from Jackson in the second Ellie flashback, I’m baffled that not one side/major character gets bitten and we face a dilemma like with Tess and Sam, it makes the infected feel irrelevant in a world full of them.
That is sort of odd, I agree. Joel robbing humanity of a vaccine was built up as a major element of the first game but in the second game, since so little time has passed, we don't really feel the effects of his decision. I honestly wonder if the game jumped say 20 years ahead and we following Ellie as a grown woman, making her way through a world that has been dragged down by another 20 years of post apocalyptic life, and we can see the actual contrast of how Joel's decision affecting the world as a whole. Maybe Part III?
Macabre Storytelling Hmm let’s hope the team actually learns their lesson from this messy game, this isn’t a bad game tbh, There’s plenty of WORSE games out there, But this is nowhere near a masterpiece or the level of the first game like people claim it to be.
Kinda ironic too since the major conflict in the first game was the cure and yet the infected seem to be the last thing people need to think about in the second game. Abby can even take on a huge ass rat king by herself haha.
@@MacabreStorytelling That'd still be pretty flimsy premise for a game. There're countless arguments against a cure against a fungus being created under these circumstances by these people and the ways of distribution being imagined. It could possibly work but not in the way the two games have set it up.
@@MacabreStorytelling 3 months later, I feel like somehow I’m insulting you by assuming you don’t know but if you read some journals from TLOUS its shown pretty clearly that the firefly doctors where incompetent, this was a long shot at best Joel didn’t have that information but it still makes his choice seem a lot less ambiguous
Joel’s face when he stuck up for Ellie and she goes off on him always hurts my feelings because he looks so damn hurt and embarrassed for seeming so protective and almost ashamed for caring about her so much
They basically rob you of that decision which is something the writers should never do, the leader of the fireflies should've (I can't remember her name) been her mother or surrogate mother (considering Abby is rather white). To me that would've made a lot more sense
That was my first playthrough man, i avoided most voilent situations sneaked my way through including the hospital, and i shot the doctor in the foot and left him in a operation theater with two other surgeons and they still couldn't save him wtf, shouldve thrown a nail bomb at him
Tommy was done dirtier than anyone else. Once they turned him into an asshole, I just couldn’t even pretend to enjoy the game anymore. He didn’t want Ellie getting involved with Joels killers, than at the end he tries getting her to go and hunt down Abby again. Wtf is that?
@@BWMagus was it logical for him to survive a headshot? No hospital, no medication for a brainsurgery, Broken arm Ellie and Pregnant Dina who have to travel 400Miles back to jackson. How the fuck did they do that?
One of the things I would like to add is that the game that the PS Vita girl plays is Hotline Miami, a game which has almost the same themes of violence and the consequences that follow which for me feels less than an Easter egg and more like the writers try to flex at how much better they did their own story Spoiler: THEY DIDN'T!!!!!!
"He's not a hero, he's human" Your line about Joel carries so much weight. This is what I wanted for Abby, they didn't need to make her a hero but human.
The game would have been a thousand times better if at the beginning it pretended it wasn't about Joel or Ellie, we just get this character chasing someone for vengance. We could explore her in more detail and empathize with her early on, only to later realize what she actually wanted to do. Then we wouldn't need to waste time on a second half of the story making us "sympathise" with Joel and Ellie, because we already know them. I dunno', there's a million directions this story could have been told, that would have been much better than what we actually got.
Game should have started right where the first one ended, have Joel and Ellie set up at Tommy’s camp, then write the adventure from there, don’t have Joel brutally killed which was pointlessly stupid … Have the fire fly’s comes after Ellie for a potential cure, not this revenge plot …
having joel die made me so sad and beyond angry i wanted blood and then i resented the game for one making me play as abby and hurting ellie and then not letting me kill the bitch abby
@@funkyflights i don’t think his death was pointless, his arc was completed in the first game the most he could’ve been in the second was a glorified side character. i think it was smart of the creators to let ellie take the reigns as mc
@@shaysplanet …. Look if they were hell bent on killing Joel don’t make it at the start of the game and in such a stupid way, he saves Abby from certain death only to follow her back to a camp and get brutally tortured then murdered by her ? I can’t begin to express how effin lazy that story telling was, and then of course they let Ellie and Tommy live, I WONDER what’s gonna happen now ??? First Joel didn’t have to die, and he certainly didn’t have to die to make Ellie the focal point, hell Abby was just as much a focal point as Ellie and she brutally murdered Joel … Story was just a mess … The game has some good qualities, graphics are draw dropping, gameplay is fun, especially after you beat the game and unlock stuff… But the story just left me wondering WTF just happened …
As someone else said in the comments of another video, Joel’s remark about Ellie not knowing real loss isn’t solely directed at just losing loved ones...but an entire worldview. Joel lost everything: his society, his security, his moral sense of right and purpose, the world he grew up in, the things and settings and people he’d become accustomed to (things we currently take for granted, like movies and the internet, or simply passing strangers on the street in comfort, not having to look over our shoulders 24/7 or sleeping with one eye open for the rest of our lives). These are things Ellie has never known and can barely even understand, as referenced in the first game when she read a girl’s diary. Going to school, graduating college, getting your first job, going to prom, eating at a restaurant, etc. Joel lost all these experiences and more, to the point where Ellie doesn’t even know what an ice-cream truck is. So he’s right about her not knowing real loss.
But that's in relation to her. Joel also doesn't know what it's like to grow up in this world. He also doesn't know what it's like to have no parents or even foster parents. He doesn't know what it's like to grow up alone. So yeah I wouldn't read into Joels line more than it's supposed to say. He's in a argument and Ellie just pushed his biggest button, Sarah, so he wants to shut her down by hurting her. It doesn't work so he goes for the jugular a line after with Iam not your dad
@@6ixlxrd That's a false equivalence, and you know it. To elaborate on Pulp's point, you say Joel has lost all of the things you listed. This is true, but it's also true that Joel had the pleasure of even experiencing those things in the first place. Ellie has grown up in a world where flesh-eating monsters roam the streets and woods of the entire world, murderous and rapacious bandits lay in wait for hapless travellers, and most of the world' population is fucking dead. She grew up in a concrete hellhole, under an autocratic military dictatorship where dissent or even simple non-compliance led to your immediate demise, and where all children were forced into military schools to prepare them for a live of hellish struggle. Joel can't possibly have any idea what it's like to grow up in such a nightmare world. Also, Ellie had to execute her best friend after she is infected. She's lost enough.
(things we currently take for granted, like movies and the internet, or simply passing strangers on the street in comfort, not having to look over our shoulders 24/7 or sleeping with one eye open for the rest of our lives) And Coffee. Oh damn i would miss coffee.
@@MrTurok999 yeah Joel isn't any different his entire lifestyle change and he had to grow to accustomed to complete different more brutal harsher lifestyle Ellie only grew up in this world she didn't have to adopt like Joel did and didn't change her as a person
Yep , I feel the same way. I could see that they were trying to manipulate my feelings by having her play with dogs and save Yara and Lev. But when I saw how eager she was to slice Dina's throat after finding out she was pregnant. My reaction was " Are you effing kidding me? I'm supposed to like this piece of shit? Get the eff out of here, no way. " I couldn't wait for Ellie to finish her on the beach. What a B.S. ending.
@@gobbidimerda2496 I would strongly disagree. If that were the case, then it seems like simply revealing the reason why she killed Joel would do that in a sufficient enough manner... but instead we got a 7 hour long redemption arc.
I've always felt like the writers at Naughty Dog had a very patronizing attitude towards the audience in this game. Some of the plot devices they use to evoke reactions are so blatantly obvious, it seems like they think we have zero brain cells. In the opening sequence of Abby's subplot, they show her and her dad saving a goddamn Zebra to try to make the audience like them? Can they get any more condescending than "Guy saves animal, therefore guy is good"??? I've watched multiple interviews of the creators of the game, and it seems like they firmly believe that they have created a piece of art so profound that a mere gamer cannot grasp the complexity of the themes. I get the vibe that they saw the outburst of the gamers towards this game as an act of immaturity because we are ourselves victims of the "cycle of hatred"
tbh, the game in a way feels very condescending. With the whole switching to Abby, it feels like Neil Druckmann really thought he did something revolutionary and genius when in reality it is everything but. The active fans of this game also act incredibly condescending. I can't even count with my 2 hands how many times I've seen a fan call the people who didn't like the game immature or low intellect or failing to understand etc etc. Even the youtubers who defend this game act condescending at times. GF Reviews which made a video literally called "Understanding The Last of Us Part 2". That title alone feels so condescending and the whole video is also incredibly condescending and sort of insulting. Calling the people who thought the writing was lazy fools and also saying if you still wanted Abby to die then you practically have no soul.
This is the general attitude of the "anointed" class of person. It's the pure condescension of people who view themselves as so smart and righteous that any disagreement with them, whether it be their philosophy or methods, must be due to opponents being too dumb to understand their intent. People understand, they just disagree, but this reality baffles them. It's ultimately because they're themselves too unempathetic or too egotistical to consider the thoughts and feelings of others in any way beyond a projection of themselves.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Which is sadly becoming endemic. There are no debates anymore about how to solve a problem, there's just assertions that everyone on planet earth knows exactly how to solve a problem, agrees that it will work, and the only reason to oppose it is corruption/stupidity/mustache-twirling villainy. You can just imagine a housewife going "Honey, only a FASCIST would prefer sky blue to robin's egg blue for the living room. You're not a FASCIST, are you?"
Yep, it is also often the simple stories that are the most profound - like the first game. In part 2, we experience the arcs of two separate characters over a much longer game and all that is said in the end is: revenge is bad. Which honestly, as a theme, could be conveyed on an episode of sesame street. They also fail to do anything profound by not implementing the theme into the mechanics of the game. You cannot change the ending of the game in any way. Thus, when they try to point the finger at the player for wanting revenge, it fails. They did give the player any other option so it comes off as inept and haughty. So, if as a player, you didn’t want Ellie to seek revenge in the first place, you are in for a hell of a ride as the game tries to make you feel bad for doing something you didn’t even want to do. In this case, the game fails to do anything resembling important or profound.
Ellie in the first game: A young girl who grew up in the apocalypse, and only through Joel and her best friend found glimpses of what the world was once like before. Also she’s responsible for Joel’s character arc throughout. Ellie in the sequel: “You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death!”
You forgot how idealistic she became after her friend Riley died. How she looked forward to helping humanity, how she wished for her life to mean something more than everyday survival. Joel saved her life because he could not bear losing another daughter - it was his selfish decision. So, instead of "You ruined my death" it would be more accurate to say "You ruined my life's meaning"
@@robertmichalic4500 It wasn't necessarily a selfish decision in this case however. Because if you remember, the fireflies were going to operate on her without her consent, and worse without her knowing that she was gonna die while unconscious. They didn't give her a choice, and they were also gonna send Joel out the door without his gear, and without the weapons he was promised as part of the deal. So really, the fireflies were the true selfish ones here since they only wanted the cure, which wouldn't have even helped in this world considering how violent the infected are. AND ON TOP OF THAT, the lie that Joel told Ellie at the end was actually a truth of sorts, as there is an optional radio thing that tells you that the fireflies had more people like Ellie that were immune to the virus. I dunno about you, but the way I see it by saving her, Joel basically gave Ellie a choice that the fireflies never did. A chance to grow up in probably the closest to a normal life as she could get. That's what makes the first game's ending so incredible, and also why it didn't necessarily need a sequel.
For Ellie to say that she was supposed to die in that hospital is one thing. For her to actually allow it to go through is another.... Remember, in the first game she said “killing a few to save many, that’s shitty” when Joel told her about how the military killed off people outside the QZ. The same logic is applied to her death to generate a vaccine/cure.
Get point. They really didn’t think it through. It was almost like the writers hated the first game and wanted to kill it to make something knew entirely.
it's different when its happening to you. I'm willing to die if I could save humanity. but I would never sacrifice few to save many either. and she was just a kid when she said that she didnt see anything of the world few years later until she found out and saw the real world.
Fun little piece of trivia: The reason many of Abby's segments felt poorly paced or just out of place is because her character received hasty rewrites due to the fact that playtesters almost unanimously hated her. Let that sink in for a moment: even though Naughty Dog saw the writing on the wall well in advance, they still tried to do damage control on this complete abortion of a character any way they could -- even if it meant forcing players to play as her in order to make her come off as sympathetic after the fact she brutally murdered Joel and gave the worst possible impression she could. In the end, all they accomplished was the precise opposite of what they intended. That might as well be the game's tagline: "Everything went wrong because everyone made idiotic decisions."
@@ZyroShadowPony A Kotaku expose, which talked about the severe crunch culture behind the game's development, made mention of a character whose story segments had to undergo extensive rewrites due the fact that playtesters absolutely hated said character. Considering how utterly loathed Abby is and how many of her segments either felt padded or extremely ham-fisted in an attempt to make her appear sympathetic, it's a safe bet she was the one they were talking about.
The onus is on Neil druckmann. Gieselle sarkesian overwhelmingly influenced him. It’s as if she is anti male. Every male in this game got obliterated at the hands of women. Joel, Tommy, Jesse, Isaac, etc. while is good to be progressive with regard to diversity and inclusion in games, there is a balance and the devs got it wrong.
People’ who claim that Ellie is a more “evil” character than Abby always seem to say “look at how many people she killed just to get revenge.” To my knowledge, you can avoid most (if not all) enemy encounters by stealthing around them or running away. You can avoid killing most people in the game, which doesn’t really fit the narrative of Ellie’s murderous rage. Nearly all of Ellie’s kills in her cutscenes are in self defense, with the exception of Nora. Abby has killed in less than justified circumstances, and has no remorse for killing Joel despite it being in front of a young girl screaming for his life. That’s something monsters do.
@@denisucuuu You say it like he didn't deserve it? Being a Rattler Leader? Try also look at those people they are accumulated to... Jackson's people help folk, and try to save animals.. WLF uses dog to hunt and kill people on sight, and those who chooses to leave. They torture and kill infected people just like Fedra.. I can more relate to the Death Cult, where people mostly just been brainwash like Lev that wanted his mother acception, and the Sailers 2 kids... The Rattlers uses people, either you are these guard types and brutal, to protect they're familie, and people to do slavelabor so they could survive, but kill them underway. And if they leave.. again... It's just like saying the guys from Terminus in TWD wasn't evil... Or the Deschutes County Militia in Days Gone
@OP well, most people didnt stealth past and I doubt the cannon path for Ellie is all happy happy joy joy - see you might be able to do what you said, but you also can very easily be a totally horrific person.
Sparing Abby at the end is like when movie characters spare the life of the main villain after killing all of the henchmen. It is completely shallow way of making a character seem like a good person for no in Universe reason
Always hated this trope and its other variation: a villain kills innocent people and does not plan to stop ever. A hero 'defeats' the villain, and spares his life, saying something cheesy after, like: 'Nooaaah, I am NOT like YOU, i aM nOt a MURDERER'. Batman and Joker is a prime example. 'Joker, you have successfully escaped detention facilities I had put you into and continuously terrorize Gotham. Countless of innocent had died in your terrorist attacks. Well, jeee, I am not a murderer. Lucky you the state we are in does not have death penalty."
Ellie let her go because she relished she was about to do exactly what Abby did to her to lev and that killing Abby wasn’t going to make her feel better
@@caseynorthrop5739 ...she realized it after killing TONS of other, barely related, people. Did they die for nothing but the realization: 'boo-hoo, Big Meanie's death will mean nothing...' In a sense, Elli had already sacrificed many people for the cause of killing Ebby. Won't she care about killing those people? Maybe, story-wise Joel's death has more weight than some random NPCs. But on a deeper level analysis, those 'random NPSs' are no different from Joel. They are humans. Just like Ebby, Joel, and Elli. They had friends and family, possibly including potentially another Ebby. So, Elli, who was all about meaningful sacrifice of her life, sacrificed lives of countless others for nothing... Amazing.
I think it would be more interesting if he become damaged or delusional after the fight so that ellie feel the need to kill abby for what she done And maybe gave maria more screentime by visiting ellie too Its just a shame she has so little screentime
@@MacabreStorytelling dude just finished the video, sad really the pieces were all there but they make the character choose stupid action to make their plans or so called themes work Such a shame
What also pisses me off is that Ellie puts all the blame on Joel for "stealing her choice" in that hospital, without ever bringing up that the Fireflies did the same thing by keeping her asleep and performing the surgery on her with or without her consent. Not only that, but she acted like a vaccine was _guaranteed._ BULLSHIT. If anything, the Fireflies were idiots for trying to kill the one girl who happened to be immune. So if they fuck up, WHOOPS! No do-overs. It's also baffling that nobody brings up how Ellie's immunity could be passed down to her future children. Also hey, there's another good reason Abby's group could've kept Ellie alive maybe? She would be too important to kill? I dunno. Or maybe if they had another purpose for going into Jackson instead of just taking out Joel. That would be a secondary goal whereas their primary goal would be something different.
Don't forget that this vaccine was not being attempted by a professional virologist, chemist or medical professional educated in treating humans. It was left up to a vetrinarian, educated to treat animals. And a fungal vaccine at that, something that we today consider to be impossible to do. A massive medical or chemistry discovery is needed in 2020 in a fully functional world before it can even be attempted by medical professionals trained and experienced in the specific field of vaccines for humans. Joel chose not to risk Ellie's life on a 0.0001% chance the vetrinarian could produce a fungal vaccine for humans. And that chance is actually me being extremely generous. It was more likely 0.0% chance and the Foreflies were just desperate and willing to kill a little girl just to fool themselves with a semblance of hope where there was none. Kill a little girl to boost group morale and keep hope alive in them. If you ask me, there was never a real chance for a vaccine. Edit ; I had a virologist correct me recently on this. Fungal Vaccines for humans are impossible PERIOD. Your best shot is to create a poison that kills the specific fungus but not the body, or the body less than the fungus and hope the body survives and the infection dies. Vaccines imply building immunity and a human body immune to fungal viruses is alos by proxy immune to life. Aka. Dead. It is not our lack of knowledge or expertise but the nature of the human body that makes this impossible. The scientific discovery we would need is for all humans to mutate or evolve. Ever concider that this Vetrinarian might have just been pulling the same hoax as that smart fat guy from Walking dead who lied being on a government mission to save the world, all so he would get protection, rations and even respect. He might have been hoaxing them for the sake of his daughter Abby. But he could have been hoaxing them.
But but but Ellie's a LEZBEAN! How dare you expect her to do something like let a male part or fluids anywhere near her. You best respect that, you bigot sandwich!
@@Jetblast01 🤣 Yes yes! True. But I am not talking from my perspective. Fireflies, they wanna save the world supposedly. If they were willing to kill her for a chance and if it was the only chance they knew they had. It would make more sense to force her into a breeding program and experiment on her babies. Way dark. I know, but hey if you are already putting morals and human lives on the line for 'the greater good or survival of humanity' then yeah... 🤣
Since Ellie was so all in to sacrifice her life for the vaccine, it made sense why she’s mad at Joel. All she ever knew was the Fireflies could make use of her immunity, but Joel killed them and took her out. No one analyzed her conditions or the possibilities of the vaccine for her, plus, she already struggled with survivor’s guilt, seeing the people she loved cared for get bitten and turn while she’s the only one who’s fine.
Friendly reminder: the Fireflys' brain surgery would have wasted Ellie's life and their only chance to make a cure. Before the nuclear option of removing the brain, there are many things they should be doing first but didn't have time to by the time they were about to saw the skull; like take chemical/tissue samples with a tiny drill or do a psych evaluation. As long as Ellie lives, she can still share her gift; she just needs to find doctors more qualified than a Batman villain.
@@devon674 I think the fireflies being flawed is hinted at a lot in the first game, but then was retconed to fit the new game's story. They may as well be another band of raiders in the first game but in the second they're shown as moral crusaders
One thing that strikes me strange about Jerry (surgeon) the most and one that personally cemented my perception of how good he and fireflies as organization, is the utter lack of respect over human life. In real life, you would want to preserve life of an immune patient for as long as possible in order to find "the right ingredient" that cause their immunity. You would design numerous ways, non-intrusive or at least non life-threatening procedures in order to preserve the patient intact longer so you can perform further testing and improve your chance of finding out how the immunity ticks, if not keeping them alive altogether. He did mention replicating it in lab. Common sense would dictate that it would be whole lotta easier and with much more success rate if the source is preserved, instead of this seemingly one chance one opportunity situation. They could've started from the lowest death risk procedure and work their way up from there slowly as possible. Instead what you find is how quickly the surgeon and fireflies both goes to the operating table without coming up with anything else. It's almost like the surgeon is scalpel-happy. This, when combined with the mention of past cases makes me feel pretty horrified. If they are very much at ease with killing a child, then out of those cases, how many were sacrificed? How many of those are willing sacrifice? ? how many fell under the scalpel blade? How do we know they're not just magnifying the chance of cure as they're trapped in sunk cost fallacy?
So true! This makes no sense, not in our world and certainly not in their world. They have very little equipment and not even a steady power source to keep samples frozen. And there is no way to produce a vaccine either if they should be able to get that far. A slim hope is to use it to bargain with what ever is left of the government they hate as much as the infected. No such deal would be made with the Fireflys walking away from it.
And this is why I believe Joel made the right call in saving Ellie! It's that the Fireflies and the surgeon aren't abiding by the realistic way medicine ACTUALLY works and instead follows "Video Game choice of all or nothing". It's the kind of Thompson's Choice where there is only one logical decision to be had. Sure Joel is selfish and traumatized and desperate. Sure Ellie doesn't get to make a "grown-up" decision over her own life. But the Fireflys and Doctors and the Surgeon are not operating on any sort of logic when it comes to how medicine is actually conducted in order to be affective! And since the medical side of things is where the first game falls apart, that's what leads me to siding with Joel hard stop. They clearly don't know how to actually conduct science in order to save others and there's no way I trust them with Ellie.
Yep. Abby's dad was more mad scientist than medical researcher. Am I misremembering, or did the Fireflies use the word vaccine when talking about a fungus?
@@hideousruin Indeed, a vaccine developed after killing the only known immune person (probably) in a hospital ruin within hours after seeing her for the very first time. That for me is the most unrealistic thing in this games that otherwise does a good job with being realistic.
@@torivar yep. For me it's one of the only big blunders of the first game. And of course it is only amplified in the second. Apparently a lot of writers for video games and movies don't have even a grade school knowledge of science and can't be bothered to skim a Wikipedia article on the subject they're writing about. The writer for the A Quiet Place movies makes Druckman seem like a Scientific Nobel Prize Winner.
You know there’s a nostalgia critic quote that fits this game Perfectly “yeah but it’s symbolic and means stuff” “just because it’s symbolic and means stuff doesn’t make it good”
I feel that way about a lot of media that is wildly praised. Critics will harp on the themes of a story but sort of disregard how the game goes about execution its exploration of exploring those themes. It's a shame, considering we will eventually reach a point where almost every theme will have already been dissected and explored. And thus, the execution will be the only thing that sets it apart.
@@MacabreStorytelling Its funny thinking back to that discussion cuz I remember before that debate I was actually subscribed to Just Write (I know Im sorry) and had nvr heard of Mauler before and right after watching that debate I unsubbed from Just Write and subscribed to Mauler.
@@MacabreStorytelling Haven't we reached that point years ago? Where everything has been done and dissected and now it should be about execution? If not, then I think there is very few things left in that regard. There were no topics this game tackled that were not tackled in other media that came before it, no new angles explored that were not explored before. Not as far as I could notice.
ALSO, the characters act like Ellie is this horrible person seeking revenge over Joel who was her fatherly figure..but isn't that EXACTLY what Abby did? seek vengeance for someone who killed her father??? why is Abby the one that gets a free pass but ellie doesn't?
almost like they're setting up an arc or something. and don't say Abby doesn't suffer cos all her friends die because of her revenge path as opposed to Ellie who only has 2 friends die
@@omas1178 abby only appears to be aware of the deaths of Manny, Mel and Owen though Leah she doesnt know about and Leah was killed by scars so it wouldnt be punishment Danny is killed by Owen The guy Tommy killed she never knows about Nora dies in a hospital basement so Abby never finds out Furthermore the only reason Mel and Owen die is because the plot needs them too If either of them acted in character the plot would have ended right there The problem with the idea that Abby suffers is it only occurs through poor writing needing it to happen rather than a plot where it happens naturally
@@aidanaidan8662 the plot happening naturally is Ellie wanting to kill the people that killed Joel. It's as simple as. I'm not sure what established Mel and Owen to be bullet proof so they act differently when Ellie points a gun at them but Mel would absolutely give her up because of where their character conflict was at. And Owen would fight it because why wouldn't he? While it's technically true she never finds out about Nora, Leigha, ect, consider why, it's because she looses her entire faction. The reasoning can be traced back to killing Joel aswell. If she doesn't kill Joel she doesn't save Lev and Yara, who are the catalysts to her overall arc. She gets a slap on the wrists for seeing owen and stays with the wolves. Nothing is learned
@@omas1178 Firstly this plot cant happen naturally simply due to the amount of plot armour, characters acting out of character, coincidences, and contrivances that are required for the plot to happen Abby's arc with lev and yara is caused by Owen killing Danny If owen hadn't done this Abby wouldnt have met yara and lev This is not caused by Abby killing Joel Mel should have told Ellie about the scar island because mel one has disdain for Abby and two says abby is probably dead She would also value the life of their baby and Owen more than abby Also Mel is pregnant they could have mentioned this at any point to try and save their lives Ellie does have a few seconds of reprieve in the cutscenes where she kills Mel meaning she could have spared her Even then the problems still hold that none of these events shouldn't be happening as Isaac would never have allowed nine of his seemingly top soldiers to travel 3000 miles to get revenge on a guy he doesnt know
This video really made me appreciate the first TLOU even more. A beautiful tale of two people finding hope in an hopeless world, the game just had to build around that concept to make it believable. The art, music, gameplay, characters, plot, events all act in unison to create an art piece. Getting a clear emotion or concept across requires a certain genuine simplicity in its direction/creation process that TLOU 2 just lacks
"Ellie was the hope for the WORLD!" and "The Fireflies were the only hope for the WORLD!" but we don't see the rest of the world in the story! We only see the USA. I would have LOVED to see how the outside world is handling the Cordyceps infection, in fact that what I had originally hoped for the sequel instead of ruining the ending of TLOU. Have us explore other Characters and their stories going on around the World instead of just focusing on the US, because I find it kind of hilarious now that TLOU2 hints at that Jerry was the only person in the world that could make the vaccine and that the Fireflies are the only ones looking for cure and is the hope for all of humanity around the world.
I think this has to do with how crappy Abby's arc is, but she almost comes off as a narcissist. Think about it, she has no problem with brutality torturing a man who had just saved her life, yet when some of her friends alienate her because of it, or at least dislike her, she decides to save two kids. Even though earlier in the game she tries to justify killing seraphite kids. And when she's about to kill Dina, Lev calls her name. She's nearly going to destory her image in his eyes, so she lets them go because she doesn't want to alienate Lev. But thats just my thought process on it.
No offense- if this was a new game and we knew nothing about it, I would probably say that Abby's story is better than Ellie's. The reason she killed joel after he saved her was bc even though he saved her, he still killed her dad. And when the child and her are arguing about Abby killing seraphite it shows yet again that there always 2 sides to every story. And the part where she almost killed Dina in front of lev shows how much she's hurt after Ellie killed her friends. She could let the anger consume her but know shes got lev and they both overcome it. That's why her arc could be argued to being better than Ellie's
@@ericv.5552 I would entirely disagree. if it was a new IP, I'd still be more willing to forgive her, but not by much. If they kept everything the same, but changed names and the world, I'd still probably dislike her. She encouraged child murder. Her dad frankly got what he deserved in my opinion.
@@ericv.5552 "The reason she killed joel after he saved her was bc even though he saved her, he still killed her dad." Maybe, but why torture the guy who just saved her life? It's sadistic. Why not a quick bullet to the head with no suffering?
@@coyotewayfarer4380 exactly she let her anger consume her instead of forgiving. She learned that later on around the end of the game while Ellie learned that after it was too late (when Dina left with her baby)
Eric V. I think the problem is people need to feel justified in there dislike/like of something There’s plenty of shows movies games I didn’t like for no other real reason then I didn’t like them. It’s not enough that people don’t like last of us 2 they have to try to make ther dislike the “Right” way of looking at the game
My biggest complaint is how the game ironically makes Joel's morally grey decision at the end of the first game the objectively correct choice. Survival is a huge theme in the first game - we are shown time and time again how the world has basically failed to stabilize outside of Jackson. Quarantine zones are failing, entire cities have been abandoned to the virus, children have to be desensitized to ultra-violence if they are to have any hope of making it through puberty and there are more bandits than non-bandits. This is why Ellie's operation in the first game is such a big deal: it represents hope for change in the world order. It's ironic then that in the sequel after Joel 'dooms humanity' they decide to relegate the infected to jump scares and filler combat arenas, instead of having them be be a part ANY significant story beats. If you look at all the way of life that survivors have in the second game you can see civilization is not damned, it is THRIVING. Jackson can afford to send teenagers on zombie patrols in snowstorms without adult supervision, the WLF owns the streets of Seattle and the Seraphites have an entire island to themselves that isn't contaminated by a single spore - in the first game, that would be a luxury akin to El Dorado. The themes are so completely disparate from the first game that you could almost tell the exact same story without using any recurring characters if they didn't bring back a few plot elements
Well said. I mentioned to someone else that if the series had jumped say 20 years into the future, perhaps we could get a better grasp on how the world changed as a result of Joel's choice. And yet 5 years later and infected barely have any effect on the world as it is. Is it the infected's fault the WLF and Seraphites are going at it? And if so, how would have a vaccine being developed prevented them from squaring off? Also consider developing a vaccine and administering it on a scale that would do ANYTHING of substantial value would probably take years if not decades.
It also irked me that people kept referring to it as a “cure”. Bitch no lol a vaccine only stops the infection. That seems like literally the least dangerous aspect of everything in the game universe.
@@MacabreStorytelling yeah, it's incredibly odd that they dropped that entire plot about zombies in your zombie game. That sequence where Dina finds out Ellie is immune is rendered moot pretty much immediately because that revelation is used as a device purely to cause short term drama in their relationship instead of being an important plot beat for the overarching narrative. I have to wonder how the 8 year development affected aspects like this. Perhaps there were more plans for a storyline revolving around how significant it is that Ellie is immune but they got cut or changed into the game we got. Why would you have a zombie game where the main character is immune but have that immunity end up being a completely insignificant detail? Absolutely bizarre
TLOU2 is like a dish that was made with good ingredients and then was served on a fancy plate, but the Chef was terrible at his job and try to do more than he can handle. It has good ingredients and was presented nicely, but it tasted terrible in the end, effectively wasting all that preparation.
Neo Cranium did a recut which made the (majority of the) story make a lot more sense and flow and work together far better. I would have made a few additional changes (notably including Joel's last meaningful conversation with Ellie the night after the party in it's natural location), but I also note that the gameplay is better without the story, and the story better without the gameplay loop. I recommend giving it a look, it shows how badly the developers messed up their own material by not understanding how real people think. The game is a mess because especially as written and organised at release it makes no sense, has far too many coarse emotionally manipulative/deceptive "attempts" though most fail to land. (Exception of some of the flashbacks, but these are out of place and would have been better telling the background to the three days in Seattle at the start).
So Neil ACTUALLY HAD AN IDEA to build up Abby with Joel and the others before the killing? They just threw away all that chance to create Abby as a sympathetic character and said "fuck it, we need to make the plot happen." I swear, every time I look at something about this game, I find another disappointment.
A great lesson here: Don't rush, take the time you need. It's a 25 hour game Neil, a couple extra hours in Jackson wouldn't have been that big of a deal and would have helped ALOT.
@@MacabreStorytelling Abby bonding with Ellie and Joel before the death of Joel could have allowed for Neil Druckmann to tell the story of "Hey, maybe what I did was wrong, and revenge wasn't the answer" without Abby's face turn coming off as artificial due to some third party (Lev and Yara) coming out of nowhere to make Abby into Part 1 Joel 2.0. She'd be back with her friends in Jackson, or somewhere else, but feel empty inside. That whole Seraphite subplot could be removed entirely. Another possibility related to that: if the story wanted to use Abby instead of Dina as the love interest (since Dina was always going though an on-off thing with Jesse, Ellie would have been available while Dina was not), it would have given more of a present-day foundation for Abby and Ellie's relationship (as opposed to Dina and Ellie having an offscreen past forming their basis), creating an even MORE immediate and tragic twist. Of course, a romance wouldn't be necessary--just a friendship could have gotten a similar pain across--but knowing the girl you kissed a few days ago just killed your dad would send any girl off the deep end.
@@kanyeeastlolz There already is wasted time in the game as it is. That's why I'm suggesting that ditching the Lev and Yara subplot would have been fine. An Abby/Ellie relationship subplot (again, friendship OR romance) could have filled that new space.
@@Montesama314 agreed. The yara/lev subplot does absolutely nothing to add to the narrative. In fact it detracts and distorts from it. Essentially, we come to a meeting of the minds that this game was replete with poor writing. If part 3 wants to be a success, then some serious consideration about the direction of the story had better be considered.... each and everyone of the original characters were ruined in part 2 - including Ellie. If lev and Abby are the characters of focus in part 3, then this game won’t sell for jack. They’re better of going to new characters. Pushing a narrative in Europe.... look at the map on the wall in the seraphite shrine in day 1 when abby is confronted by the seraphites... this is foreshadowing of what is to come...
If the game is secretly Neil Druckman giving a massive "f*ck you" to the anyone who wanted a sequel and for the eventual selling out of the franchise, I could honestly forgive him lol
@@theinfernoburns It was a fuck you to people who liked Joel after the first one. He genuinely thought people would see him as an evil dickhead for lying.
Imagine if they game had started the same way LOU 1 did. But instead of experiencing the outbreak through the eyes of Joel's daughter only for her to die, we experience the hospital massacre through the eyes of Abby only to find her father dead. Hell imagine we didn't even know what we were experiencing and it played out like this: The game opens with young abby chilling about in a building when all the sudden, gunfire breaks out. We don't know who Abby is, where we are, or what's going on. After the fighting subsides, we control Abby as she makes her way through the bloodbath. Again at this point we still don't know what's going on. Abby sees the carnage as she searches through the hospital. At the end she opens the door to find her father dead. Now it all comes crashing down on us. We realize that this girl is the Doctor's daughter, the Doctor we killed at the end of Part 1. The segment ends with Abby sobbing and clutching her father's body just as Joel did Sarah in the prologue of the first game. Cut to title screen. Now we have much more reason to emphasize with Abby instead of instantly hating her when we jump to her perspective later on. Players would be less likely to resent the game for making us play as her, which was a common criticism among those who didn't like the switch. It also sets up a pit of dread in our stomach, because we know where this is leading. Abby is going to come for Joel. It's the equivalent of being told about the bomb under the table before it explodes. There is much more tension and payoff instead of shock and confusion.
I loved TLOU Pt 2 and disagree with a lot of stuff in this video and this comment section, but I completely agree with your comment. This would have been so much better
But I feel like that was almost the whole point of the story. We all understand things if you walk a mile in the other person's shoes. That's almost a given. That's the power of storytelling. Making us understand and sympathise with the other side and seeing things from a perspective we can't have ourselves. That would have been easy and unremarkable. I feel like the ENTIRE point is that the game wants to work that concept backwards and play with storytelling and ehat it can do. Give us no set up. No sympathy. No understanding. Just raw hatred, confusion and grief. Put us not in the shoes of the perpetrator who we understand (exactly what Part 1 did) but make us play the victim with no reason to care about the other person. Of course it's just a matter of perspective. The other side usually have their reasons for acting, thinking or believing what they do. This is how all conflict is. The solution is almost always compromise based on understanding each other's sides. That's what the game explores.
@@Mufflin at first. The question is whether they hate it when the credits. Roll. From what I've read many changed their minds. Many didn't. Many didn't even want to finish the game. It was bold and new and something only a video game could execute the way they did it. I get that it didn't work for some. For me it worked for the most part (the structure and pacing where unusual) but that aspect of the game is one of the most interesting to me. Just replayed it for the first time since release and knowing what was coming and I was much more ready to take in the story.
1:47:24 "... its almost as if, the writers for Part 2 had a lack of faith when it came to the capacity of empathy of the player." Holy shit, exactly! This game hammers over your head the messages and themes regarding empathy so many times, without any subtlety, that I started to tune out half way through the game. Its like when a comedian starts explaining a joke for the 100th time why its funny, the humor just gets lost.
I think they should've realised that nothing will ever be as impactful as watching a man lose his daughter as society collapses around him and then get a second chance at being a dad. There was no room for a sequel as good as the first game.
"Perhaps they were too married to their conceptual ideas" There's an interview out there with Druckmann where he says that he wanted to make a character that you loathed and then bring you around to liking them (as mentioned in the video). His actual storytelling goal was to set up Abby as being terrible and then do the perspective switch, presumably to gut-punch the player for having their preconceptions about her. Of course, there's a reason this story isn't done -- at least not in this way -- and it's because it doesn't really work. Druckmann even said that when they were focus testing the story, *everybody hated Abby*, and instead of realizing that it was a structural problem they just desperately added scenes with her to try and build more sympathy. This kinda-sorta makes sense, as these focus tests were done very late in development and restructuring the entire game was pretty much out of the question by then... but it was also a storytelling decision that anybody could have looked at and known wasn't working before they were too deep to change things. (Although I think the overall story underwent some significant changes before release-- early information focused on how Ellie and Dina would do missions in Jackson together to build up their relationship, and suggested that *Dina* was actually going to be killed by religious extremists and Ellie's revenge quest would be against the Seraphites. The problems that arose from this are that (1) nobody cared about Dina and nobody was sold that Ellie would turn into a mass murderer if she was killed, and (2) it's a zombie game and making the main enemies religious nutjobs seemed extremely weird. This was the storyline they implied shortly after the first release trailer, and I think it underwent *substantial* re-writes afterward when the response was not what Naughty Dog wanted, which in turn is why TLoU2's story decisions feel like rushed first-draft setups that really needed a second pass.) It doesn't helps that *he* openly admits that Abby is his favorite character and *he* already had all the sympathy he needed behind her and couldn't understand why focus testers didn't love her as much as he did. So this was actually Druckmann's conceptual thesis, and yes, I believe it's safe to say that he was so married to this *concept* that he failed to step back and realize that it simply wasn't working for the story he wanted to tell.
I knew it! Originally everyone thought Dina was going to get axed but yeah no one would buy that since we would have only had a couple hours to properly build their relationship.
In my view, a truly great writer could make anything work. When it comes to art, I believe nothing is off limits. Geniuses in the field can show you that rules can be broken in order to tell good stories. And tbh this story did work for a lot of people. No doubt it divided a fanbase, but that's the thing: it's divided, not disintegrated. Begun, the fan wars have. On a serious note, however, I'm glad they really tried to make this concept work - for better or worse. Letting a creative go wild can lead to some inspired work, or devolve into lunacy, but either way it is interesting. And I will praise one thing, this does not feel like a story by committee. In an age of milquetoast big budget fair, to have something so bold is kind of a breath of fresh air. Maybe I'm ubisofted out who knows...
@@eb2681 Wow that's pretty good take! I do applaud creators that take massive risks like these, but to do such experimentation on a beloved game like the last of us? Oooh, tough one. In this case, I don't care whether they did something bold, because the execution was terrible and the game landed flat on my face. I know this sounds basal and unsophisticated, but this is just my gut feeling.
Well said. This was a failed experiment for sure. It might have not been as bad if they hadn't had to build off of beloved characters from the extremely successful first game which for some reason Neil seems to hold in contempt. Attempt this kind of story in something like Days Gone and maybe (and that's a big maybe) ... nah it probably wouldn't work either lol. But at least the backlash would be somewhat tamer and people will forget about it after some time
I hate what they did to Tommy. He was one of my faves (and still is, except his last scene). I liked him even more than Joel. Tommy is such a great and brave and loving guy (and I love his voice actor!). And then the last scene.. just killed him more than Abby did. This was the scene where I decided that this game sucks for me.
I loved how tommy character was here even if it sad in the end tommy didn’t deserve what he got he did pretty bad shit like Joel but in the end he wanted a new life and to help others a normal one again and he gets so caught up in lost,grief,and revenge he loses his personality by becoming the opposite of what he ways when we met him by calling Ellie a coward for not wanting to go after abby for the exact reason tommy didn’t wanna go after her in the first place
you know why he's a great sniper? mr. Pierce also voiced Mother (SEAL and leader of AFO team Neptune) on Medal of Honor 2010. Great game. PS looks like he'll also be on the HBO show.
One thing I have to say that is extremely bothersome- after the first game, Ellie has an overarching "beef" with Joel despite all they got through together. OK, he lied to her, but guess what, her character is so self-absorbed and disappointed with not being a martyr that she spends more years at odds with Joel vs the bond they created through their survival journey, that it's just not believable in any reasonable sense. That's a very weak component of Ellie's part in the 2nd game as far as I'm concerned 🤮
I agree 100%. I also refuse to believe that she didn't couldn't see how much her life mattered to Joel. She tells him, "I was supposed to die in that hospital, my life you have fucking mattered," but it did matter, it mattered to Joel. How could she not see that? Sure, I could understand the whole "everyone died in vein" guilt she has, but was Joel caring about her really not enough for her to accept it and move on? 😕
@@SpookyBoba we know grudges can happen, but the lousy writing tries to get us to believe Joel's offense was way more than it was, if she weighed her experience with him.. instead, her character arc goes so low for cheap revenge and without insight, it leaves us disappointed. Crazy how many people thought this was good.. but it goes to show what people are willing to rationalize it.
@@genox3636 For real, those people seem the type to leave Ellie with the fireflies if they had the option to. I mean, How could they be against Joel on this? How could they think her hating him is the best thing for the story? It just seems normal (to me) to save their child or child figure from being disected for the so-called "greater good," but I guess I'm asking to much of people 😂
The message is: revenge is pointless and will never bring you satisfaction. It will only make thins worse for you. But only if you’re Ellie. If you’re Abby then revenge will always satisfy you and never cause you problems, and if it does it is because Ellie is a bad person.
My problem was that Abby’s story demonstrates that, yes, revenge won’t solve your problems BUT there is always a chance for redemption by helping others. And therefore, when Ellie was on the verge of killing Abby I was like “what difference does it make if Ellie kills Abby? She can just save some kid on her way home and redeem herself.”
@@MacabreStorytelling I mean isn’t that how it works in real life? If I beat and kill someone or whatever I can always adopt a child, then the cops can’t touch me!
No abby's whole life, her friends and her community were all consumed by revenge and vengeance. Abby paid a lot for getting her revenge and it didn't really make her feel any better. After she gets revenge on Joel she always considers herself a bad person and says it many times in the game. She even gets lambasted from Mel for being terrible. Her life previous to getting revenge was all about getting strong enough for revenge to the point where she would put friends and enjoyment to the wayside. Her friends get systematically killed because of her. Her community is consumed by a war that is inherently about getting revenge on the side who shot first each side believing the other was the aggressor. Then she gets enslaved and is forced to work on a plantation where she's mentality and physically tortured. Abby's quest for revenge didn't work out well for her at all. Yeah she eventually gets away on a boat with Lev but it's not like they have some stable home or food source or community or friends or loved ones. Abby loses everything from her former life. Abby barely limps away with her life on a dingy with only Lev.
Bro are you sure? All of Abby’s friends die as a direct result of her decision to get revenge by killing Joel. I’d argue she had a much worse time of it as Ellie had Dina, Tommy, JJ, and the entirety of Jackson to head back to.
Man, towards the end of the video I realized that the game would’ve been so much better if the writers would’ve stopped to think “what would Joel do after this...” “what would Ellie do...” “what would Tommy do...”, etc etc. That was one element from Vince Gilligan’s team when writing Breaking Bad. Imagine if Vince would’ve worked on this game! It would’ve been sooooo much better
Yup. Or “what would” the rest of the group of WLF’s apart from Abbie do? In Joel’s death scene they all act in such strange ways that it completely takes you out of the immersion. After the first game I would have thought that Joel’s death scene would be the most emotional scene in media history. But…nothing. No heavy heart, no slightly watery eye. Nothing. Because the scene just seemed so unrealistic in the way everyone was acting. The rest of that WLF group have this genuine hatred towards Joel even though it’s years since he killed a man that wasn’t even any of their fathers. Like…what? Why do they attack Tommy so violently? Why does Manny spit on Joel’s body? Why are the rest of them so full of hatred towards him? It makes no sense. And then all of them apart from Owen wanted to put a bullet in Ellie and Tommy’s head! Like…wtf. Why were they so worked up and full of hatred for Ellie. An innocent girl that just had to lie there and watch her newfound dad get brutally tortured and murdered. I wasn’t moved emotionally at all and I feel robbed that I wasn’t. And this is coming from someone that cried at Sarah’s death scene. And we only played as her for 3 minutes. We played as Joel for the entirety of the first game.
My scotch just got finished this way. The only worst thing left to happen was to break/crack the disc, explode my PlayStation and disrupt the energy on my apartment. But thinking a bit about it, self destructing would be better than facing that game again. So yea, I opened another bottle.
they’re really tryna tell me dina who was less than 2 weeks pregnant, fell through a high ass window got shot at and ran heavily everywhere and even after she was two weeks pregnant got nearly beaten to death by getting her face smashed in and a arrow in her shoulder didn’t die from simply stress alone???!! make it make sense omggg
@@jasonalv7436 here's something funny: her not recalling her baby when she was ambushed by ellie and owen does it when at parts of the narrative he tries his best to avoid her and cares more for abby than his baby is just too comical 4 me😤😤😤😤🤣🤣🤣🤣 and why i'm not surprized the fact that mOsTy LovE gOnE tO tHe gAmE as the trust worthy sources say in r/tlou saying that the game is not a revenge narrative even though some intepreted the story and highlighted it as one of the best revenge narrative in game just saying
@@3rdpositionauktion45 right?? why not have mel remind ellie at the beginning and try and bargain then you could have a choice of either taking both their lives or letting them go. even if it wasn’t a players choice at least she would have to face that and have it weigh on her bc she chose to kill her even after she found out, instead of having it at the last minute
The game is unbelievable on a technical level. The acting, animation , scope and wealth of detail are unrivaled. I think this is why the game got so much praise. Its lifted up so much by these aspects.But ofcourse its conceptual planning and writing are really quite tragically misdirected.
@Macabre Storytelling Thanks for liking my comment! Your video is easily the best on this game. I hope the folks at Naughty Dog see it. Most thorough critique (and balanced)of the game.
Graphically the game is jaw dropping, love the Last of US atmosphere, love the gameplay of both the 1st and 2nd one... BUT yeah, the story in the 2nd one is a mess, can’t stand it... So many different directions they could have went ...
@@gladman9634 .... Actually I can say the same to you, since the story seems like it was written by a 10 year old, maybe you can relate because of that...
One of the biggest wastes they did was not showing the surgeons and doctors at least Abby's dad having second thoughts or voicing their displeasure on having to dissect a teenage girl. it would not have saved the game but it would have at least made the doctors look more human. I mean how they look in the Ellie rescue scene these scientists might have well been moustache twirling Nazis scientists for all we care. A group of medical" experts" wanting to cut a child open without her consent first looks really villainous no matter how you spin it, no matter if it is for a cure or not.
@fleurma76 I hear ya and I agree with you. How both Elly and Abby spoke in them scenes sound so cliché and cartoon hero like. I was half expecting one of them to then save "I will save the world".
In your conclusion you said it yourself without noticing; the reason why the second one isn't as good as the first one is the fact that it wasn't, in fact, made by the same people. Neil had Bruce by his side on the first game and in part two, he was basically by himself. So yeah, I blame mostly Neil . Also, Neil doesn't accept criticism and even said in one interview that these people criticizing the game "don't matter at all". So I guess he doesn't care about my money either, which I'll be spending on games that he doesn't make.
Yeah after I wrote my script I actually read up on all the Neil, Bruce, Amy details and the massive Naughty Dog migration after Uncharted 4. I am cautious to believe any more detailed explanations as to what happened from the likes of Reddit and what not... but I can’t say this doesn’t seem like some shit didn’t go down.
Yeah I figured Neil can't take criticism. When the leaks came out he immediately turned off the comments on his Instagram page. Don't forget Troy Baker's cringey and nonsensical defense for this game. That made me lose respect for Troy Baker for not understanding why his fans are mad.
He acts like the game is so deep that the people who don’t like it don’t understand it. Yet the themes are so blatant and obvious that I felt smashed through the skull by them. Like yeah Neil you’re really smart way to go
You can't hide a poorly written story behind fancy graphics and near-perfect gameplay mechanics. And even if you hate the character, Laura Bailey did an incredible job at playing Abby in the game and deserves none of the hate associated with the actions of her character. Ashley Johnson (Voice of Ellie) got little to no backlash for her characters choices in the game, why should Laura get all the criticism?
Pffft. Welcome to humanity. You must be new. JK Simmons, before he played fan favorite characters like J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man, was probably best known before then in a stint he had on the show OZ where he played a Neo-Nazi leader. He got shit for him playing that role for years because people hated his character so much. Lots of people can't separate the hate they have for a character with the person who portrayed them.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe You think that's bad, check out the treatment received by the actor who played the crazy fuck antagonist in Silence of the Lambs. That said, I'm also tired of hearing complaints about "death threats" online; people get death threats all the fucking time, but it's only put into the news when it's convenient for someone's narrative. A death threat on Twitter is about as humdrum as can be. Like, what's it matter if you get a death threat? It's not like someone can't kill you without first issuing a threat, nor is it the case that, once a threat is issued, an attempted murder MUST take place, so it's meaningless.
No offense- this doesn't ruin previous characters. This puts them in a different situation than they were in the previously which is why they don't don't act much as last time. You might have finished the game but if u still this is a bad game then you didn't finish the real purpose of the game which is that there are always two sides to a story. It's definitely not better than the last of us 1 but definitely not bad
@@ericv.5552 Except as I said the entire point of Part 2, a 20 hour experience, was accomplished in Part 1 in about 15 seconds, and Part 1 did it in a far more coherent and subtle way.
I never really bought Ellie being so naive about what Joel did. She seemed so oblivious to the Firefly event, when she is obviously pretty bright. At the end of the first game it seemed like Ellie clearly understood that something happened but was content with letting it go.
Damn, your critique of Abby killing Joel so easily after he saved her life and your potential rewrite of using the Joel-saves-Abby twist to make Abby's scene better is so fucking spot on.
This might have nothing to do with anything, but I always go back to the first game and remember Joel telling Ellie after Tess, Henry, and Sam died that when people die you have to continue on, you can’t hold onto them. Life is for the living. Joel would have NEVER wanted Ellie to seek revenge for his death, but Ellie obviously deeply cares for people and she fears losing people she loves. So, it makes sense but i wish they would have addressed what Joel would say somewhere. He brought it up a couple times in the first game, that was how he survived.
I'm surprised so many people liked Dina. She was a shallow, moronic, token character placed in there purely to be a love interest. Her and Ellie kissed once then had a high bang and suddenly they're soulmates and raise a baby together?? There's no connection there, at all.
I think it was a consequence of the game being so overstuffed. Ellie and Joel were the main focus of Part 1 whereas Part 2 has ALOT going on. I think in order to make the game as impact as Part 1 it should have either been longer or probably a better option, should have drastically cut its cast of characters.
She didn't have any chemistry with Ellie. Their conversations fizzled with no impact and barely any emotion with a few exceptions. She seemed like a plot device, and not much more.
I think the lack of chemistry was more due to us not seeing the bulk of their relationship BEFORE the revenge quest. We only see them together for a short time before Ellie's revenge begins to tear them apart, whereas in Part 1, we basically had the whole game to build up Ellie and Joel's relationship.
@@MacabreStorytelling I partly agree, there's not enough development between them. But they're not IN a relationship before the game. They only get together in part 2. Sure, there's some clear tension between them in the first few hours so you can clearly tell they're both interested, but I just can't buy Dina going on the revenge quest with Ellie, there just doesn't seem to be that spark between them, that characters that care about each other have. It's just awkward and bland.
@@morfinny94 Yeah they seem to hint in the prologue their relationship up until now has been like an unspoken longing for each other. But to have them hook up and then two scenes later start to have their relationship put to the test feels incredibly rushed. Maybe if we spent some time with them on the road to Seattle before Ellie starts to go all John Wicky.
I like your idea about Ellie finding Abby already dead. Then she could have broken down in hysterics, "You can't be dead, no, no" etc. which was her finally coming to fully grieve Joel's death. They could have played a montague of moments they'd shared together and then rolled the credits. It would have been sad and left the player shocked but it would have given closure. That would also have shown that really it was (still) about Ellie and Joel the whole time. Besides, WGAS about any of the other characters, who were all dead weight to the whole thing anyway?
What about not releasing her and just sitting there and play a guitar she randomly found back in the building, until Abby simply passes away. And then walking around she finds Lev still alive, she releases her and take her with her to Jackson
But she does know??? Ellie literally said "I know why you killed Joel he did what he did to save me there is no cure because of me I am the one that you want" as Abby confronted Ellie in the theater.
This is a great video, and I commend you for your work here. But this has to be said: I find it hilarious that Jerry went from a nameless NPC to a savior of the world who is a neurosurgeon, virologist, and infectious disease expert all in one. Truly astounding.
and that all without any supply of high end lab equipment and other experts on their respective fields. damn if we just had a jerry in early 2020 and the sars cov2 pandemic would have been over in summer.
@@AzraelGFG he's such a fast learner too, probably worked 168 hours a week as a surgeon. But seriously though, he looks about 50 (at MOST) in 2033, meaning he was about 30 in 2013... You don't become a neurosurgeon until you're about 35, so uhm-
the best way I heard it put by a reviewer "I was told this game would ask me deep questions, but I never felt it asked me anything, it just told me 'violence' louder and more aggressively until I couldn't even hear what it was saying" My biggest problem with this game was the fact that it forces you to be a bad person, it makes an effort to make you feel terrible for every action you take, and never gives you the chance to stop. They make an effort to make the game less enjoyable and fun in order to push their message and push a large part of the audience away by doing so. And, in regards to the message, I assume it's meant to be that revenge is bad, but that's not what the game suggests. Ellie, who almost goes through with her revenge but inexplicably gives up at the last moment, loses everything. Her wife and son abandon her, her last link to Joel in her guitar playing is lost, most of Jackson likely will reject her because of her abandoning Dina, she has nothing left. Abby, who actually does go through with her revenge, in possibly the most brutal fashion possible, loses her friends. But, then finds a new friend, then finds the fireflies, which she's been talking about for her whole half of the game, she gets what she wants in the end and ultimately comes out better than Ellie. So, the person who does go through with revenge ends up better than the person who doesn't, so it says to me that, rather than 'revenge is bad', the message is 'if you're gonna go on a revenge mission, finish the job'
I did find that ironic. They leave Ellie and Tommy alive... and it led to a shit ton of carnage. I kept thinking to myself "Shit, maybe you should have just killed them". Felt the same way when we got to the end of Day 3. I was like "Abby, I know you are turning a new leaf and shit, but you gotta protect Lev. You already probably killed Jesse and Tommy, killing Ellie and Dina to secure your safety as well as Levs may be the way to go"
It's crazy because the ONLY time I felt bad was when I had to shoot dogs because I panicked and suck really at the game and I'm scared lol. I didn't feel bad for killing a single person. Everyone is an asshole. Also fighting ellie as abby would have been harder if I didn't know the outcome already, thinking I'm going to kill ellie would make me feel bad. And fighting abby at the end feels like shit. But I didn't feel like the game was trying to make me feel bad, maybe it's just me.
@@ErinJeanette Per your dog example, that was exactly my problem. I already felt really crappy when I killed Bear and Alice... so playing fetch with them later on... was it meant to make me feel more crappy? In any case, it just felt redundant as the game already accomplished its goal initially when I killed them. If someone didn't feel bad about stabbing Alice say, I don't see how playing fetch with her later would then make them NOW feel bad. That is my biggest issue with the switch from Ellie and Abby in general. I can't really see Abby's segment making the player feel fundamentally or significantly different than how they already felt in Ellie's segment. Because of this, I feel like one could remove Abby's segment entirely and the game would roughly deliver the same experience.
You ever found out something to be true you didn’t want to be? Whole world collapsed. She suspected it but was never confirmed. So when she found out the truth that her immunity was probably going to actually save humanity rather than being worthless like Joel said it was she was crushed
Can't wait for TLOU pt3 when the son/daughter of the the fat Rattler grows up and seeks revenge on Elie for killing his/her dad, who we come to fine out in flashbacks was only imprisoning and torturing those people because THEY were the actual bad guys at first. Because you know, there are 2 sides to each story 🙄
Terrific, terrific critique. The more time passes since I played Part 2, the sadder I get for the missed opportunities this game had to be a definitive sequel. He'd probably never admit it, but Neil Druckmann sorely missed Bruce Straley's (Staley?) voice in his ear with this one.
I think a lot of people agree with this. If you view the original script from Neil and she the changes, they’re pretty significant. The issue with the last of us part 2, we discuss the developers actions whereas in the original, we discuss the characters actions. This is what makes part 2 awful; this is what makes the original a masterpiece. For example, in part 2 we discuss why the devs would make us play as Abby, why so many coincidences, and why we were lied to in the marketing. In the original, we discuss the meaning of the giraffe scene, Joel’s decision to save Ellie, the fireflies competence or lack thereof, etc.
I actually love the idea of Ellie tracking down Abby and seeing her Already dead. Also what’s the song that played during the betrayal of Ellie? I’m obsessed
one thing that i want to comment is that Abby´s friends didnt die because the murder of Joel, they died because they stupidly decided to leave Ellie and Tommy alive, even when Ellie was screaming that she was going to murder them and one of the characters even said so "no loose ends", so they knew that leaving them alive will make them look for them with vengeance like they did with Joel, also they wear the logo of their group, which is what Ellie and Tommy use to know who they are and from where they are, the story happens just because they are idiots.
Exactly, it also kind of ruins the message of the game. Isn't the message violence will beget other violence? So I guess this shows that showing mercy instead of violence causes more violence
@@jasonalv7436 Indeed. And Ellie finally shows mercy instead of anger, and her reward is...losing everything, even the ability to play guitar. Absolutely nothing is gained by being nice, while it can actually bite you, and all your friends, right in the ass.
You know... for a game that tries to say violence is bad and changes you for the worse, it sure likes to show that a lot of the WLF's issues could've been solved by violence
Can we talk about how Abby should have been so weak at the end that Ellie should have killed her in one punch? Beaten half to death, then strung up and starved for God knows how long? Then she just carries Lev like it's nothing and has a competitive fight with the comparatively fresh Ellie? Meanwhile Joel got impaled once by rebar and he's in a damn coma.
@@ErinJeanette Adrenaline doesn't work like that. I also said Ellie was COMPARATIVELY fresh. As in, much better shape than Abby was, even with that stab. It wasn't believable at all. You don't get an adrenaline spike whenever you want. The only adrenaline spike Abby would have gotten is when Ellie was drowning her. Training does absolutely nothing when you've been strung up long enough to grow thin. That takes a LONG time. She should have been dead when Ellie found her, let alone fit enough to carry someone a long while AND have a fight AND survive being stabbed several times and nearly drowned only to casually leave about 20 seconds later. Not to mention she had already had the shit kicked out of her before she was strung up. Like the game all you want, you simply cannot defend this. The only reason Abby lived was because Neil loves her and hates all the other characters.
@@ErinJeanette That's a fancy way of admitting you can't defend your points. If you bothered to read more, I elaborated on how adrenaline doesn't just magically appear when someone wants it to, it is not an inexhaustible supply of power juice. It is a response to an emergency and wears off very quickly. Adrenaline would not just kick in so she could carry Lev and fight Ellie despite probable weeks of starvation and torture. It would kick in as she's being drowned because her brain recognises that it's actually in danger and it needs to get air. But by that point, it won't do much. Either way, she should have been long dead before Ellie even encountered Fat Geralt.
@@ErinJeanette Adrenaline is very temporary and if anyone would have adrenaline, it would only be Ellie. If you are going to bring in a real-world argument into this scenario then you gotta bring in ALL aspects: 1. Abby might not be in her right mind by this point after such torture. Adrenaline occurs during an overstimulation of senses. Fear, anger, joy, etc. Abby shows, at best, apathy to her presence and seems to have accepted fate by the time Ellie shows herself. 2. Ellie is in better physical condition than Abbie in the final fight. The writers literally did that on purpose to show Abbie's fall from grace, both physically and mentally. But that should also apply to the fight (it didn't, lessening the impact) Abbie being a pathetic fighter would have been FAR more effective, narratively speaking, to making the player wince at killing her. Although, by this time, Abbie made the playerbase hate her far too much to tug for empathy or even sympathy. 3. Narrative psychosis. You aren't going to read this comment. I inserted it in the middle here because you aren't one to read through arguments thoroughly. Let's even see if you read this. I actually have to write this to double check if you are arguably competent. Which is something the story struggles on to this day. 4. If everyone broke their back defending Abbie's bodytype being possible and attainable, then they need to forfeit the idea that Abbie could even stand after Ellie freed her. Let alone fight and walk. The amount of muscle atrophy would be incredible. Especially after we are introduced to how much mass she lost with showing her before and after comparison. Wound or not, Ellie actually would have fully functional legs and arms and would have eaten recently enough to make a case for the fight. TL;DR This story spends so much time trying to portray realism... when it suits them. It is very clear that there were too many Yes Men to the tune of one man's vision that was forbidden from being critiqued.
I don’t know, did you see those guns on her? The second half of the game was a gun show even when weapons were holstered. If we can suspend disbelief in action movies for dudes we can do it for this girl. And Ellie was also suffering from a knife to the kidney and weighs about 70 pounds soaking wet. So both girls had it rough going into this. Also, if we’re talking about realism, getting shot a bunch of times and bandaging your arm to heal up and keep fighting would have to go on that list above this one. It’s a game, so it doesn’t have to be real at every turn.
I'm late to the party, and outside of everything you said that I 100% agree with, I love that they try everything to manipulate into feeling guilty for killing people having their friends and lovers scream out their name. "ANTHONY!" but if I casually walk up to "ANTHONY!" he will casually murder me without a second thought. so yep I feel extremely guilty for killing him :)
I get really confused when I hear people say "Im cool with joel dying the way he did, his arc was complete!"... like did we play the same game??? Last of us 1 was a cliffhanger ending to me, I remember my mind spinning in all directions of where the story can go with that great ending.... only for all the possibilities to be beaten to death and to be replaced with a revenge plot and dropping the importance of Ellie's immunity or the zombie crisis at hand. I think people were not just angry at joel''s death, but more angry the death of Joel's plot for it to be replaced with basically nothing. Abby straight just has no plot and Ellie's plot is to kill her, its quite boring IMO.
For reals. The fact that some of them said it was never Joel's story it was Ellie's is so bullshit because it's also Joel's STORY AS WELL. That's why he's introduced to us in the first game. I felt like he needed more, make him fall in love again or something but nope, they wasted a good main character just for the sake of the story
Also one thing you kinda touched on but didn't fully commit to is Tommy's girlfriend. I noticed this the first time I played through and it pissed me off. In the beginning she was willing to risk Ellie Dina and the security of Jackson in it's entirety to get Tommy back (via possible retaliation from WLF). But at the end of the game they aren't together anymore and there's no story behind it. So she went from risking it all for the guy to their relationship being whatever. It's like they changed her character during the game and didn't even explain or show why. Crappy writing. The whole game is like this. No creativity at all just basic convenient random character decisions that give the excuse of more gameplay.
So before Joel got shot he turned around to see Abby point a gun at him but what about Tommy? He basically just stood there silently ignoring the fact someone's pointing a gun at his brother until shots got fired
wait, they literaly had a better idea, to have abby get the drop on joel, and went in and just rushed it 😂 this makes it soooo much worse. imagine if she hung around, and she even grew somewhat attached to him, and then have her backstab moment be painful for her aswell, maybe even have joel drop his guard because he felt like it's time to pay his dues, what would've made it even more painful. abby probably fantasized about what a monster joel had to be, to do what he did. and then it turning out that he's just a guy that regained his humanity when he saved ellie, that worked his ass off to give to other people. that way, abby could've told ellie at the end that joel wasn't fighting back when she got the drop on him, and have that be the moment when ellie said "just go", make more sense. the whole killing moment could've been way more personal, and ellie could've just dropped in, right after joel told abby "it's okay, i'm sorry". abby could've fled, they could've tailed her with multiple people from the village. that way giving abby and her friends a reason to immediatly flee, and in that way see all of her WLF buddies and ellie would've had her trail to follow, because they couldn't pack up all their stuff, and she'd know who her enemys are. the rest could then play out as it was, with us being confused as to whom to even side with, because joel himself decided to not fight back. dunno man, this was the moment that most people disconnected with the game, i watched and rewatched tonns of streams just to see their reaction, and from that point on, most of those i've seen, just went trough the motion, besides some minor moments where it almost got good again. you can't just kill a beloved character without the perfect set up, would be as if aerith was killed at gold saucer by a malfunctioning arcade cabinet, everybody would've just been pissed off. how you frame such a death can kill your whole story, and in this case, it just did, and they even told us that they didn't care enough, by saying, it just needed to happen fast. they were banking on pure shock value.
1:05:51 Let me just say I think the whole little sniper segment is dumb as. Tommy has literally more experience as a hunter and handling weapons (including sniper rifles) than Abby has experience just being alive let alone weapons and combat training. Tommy is on par with Joel we are told and shown this in the first game. Joel himself didn't just murder an entire building full of trained and experienced soldiers BY HIMSELF to get to Ellie, He fucking massacred them. They really wanted us to believe that Tommy, a man who is on par with his brother Joel in not only experience and training but also brutality, would be unable to kill the shit out of Abby? Tommy isn't like in his 60s in this game he's late 40s to early 50s at his very oldest what 50-year-old trained killer is going to lose to a 19-year-old girl? Even if she is buff how in the hell does this make sense? I know she's trained too but again Abby is 19 Tommy has at the very least 20 full years of experience. In almost every scenario especially combat experience trumps everything.
Yep I can speak from experience lol. My dad and I are both out of shape but when I was 19 I remember fighting him and he was in his 40s. Man was larger than me and easily stopped me in my tracks lol
Idk. I don't think it's so cut and dry. They don't have power levels like an anime. Anything can happen, and tommy is definitely given some good terminator vibes throughout the sequence. My only gripe is that manny's squad is killed off screen and not on screen. It's a fairly good sequence where Abby never has the upper hand on tommy. She's out aimed and outmaneuvered at every turn. It's ok for a new character to be badass enough to survive tommy, and that's all she really does, is survive him, and not without help, luck, and a bunch of bandages. I hated the game as a whole, but little sequences like this were actually pretty good.
Same reason Ellie can absolutely decimate dozens of soldiers in the hands of the player but becomes an easy boss fight later on. It’s a game and the player character is always superhumanly-strong. It’s not any deeper than that.
God, when you showed that first trailer screening, I got so sad, because I remember how excited I was seeing my favorite characters again in a new light. I was not expecting it to be this bad. There was so so so much potential, wasted for nothing.
@gabethyrubenstein7984 they're not just talking about the plot and how it ends with ellie not getting revenge, they're talking about how every character was wasted and thrown away for a half baked "theme"
@@gabethyrubenstein7984 It doesn't matter if that was their intention or not, most people hated it regardless because they didn't want to see their beloved characters after waiting 7 years to interact with them become either completely broken, alone, and butchered, or just straight up dead. We wanted to see them go through experiences, up and downs, have their relationships build more and more and move around in different and unique ways. The whole point in the video about Ellie dealing with the lie and all that is a beautiful example of that.
It's important to note that Abby doesnt even seem like she was put into the game until later in development. None of the advertising points to Abby being in the game. Either they wanted to rely purely on shock value to tell this story or they were worried about the pushback of her character and hid her out of fear. Either way, it was pretty manipulative and misleading.
The first game works because Joel’s final decision happened because it’s who he is. The second game doesn’t work because Ellie’s final decision happened because “the theme” forced her to, not who she is. And unlike the second game, the first one didn’t try to make Joel a good guy. He’s a broken, selfish and flawed person and Joel himself knows it and willing to live with it. The second game tried too hard to make us love Abby and trying to protect Ellie from becoming a scumbag in a way that it makes no sense for any of these characters.
The desecration of Tommy's character at the altar of "empathy" is one of the biggest video game tragedies of the last decade :( I'm so sad that this gets lost in so much "analysis" of this story and am so grateful you included it in your video! Bravo!
You know, before this review, I would've argued that it was Abby who got off easy in the grand scheme of things. She got to leave with Lev and be a superhero, while Ellie was the one left with missing fingers and an empty house, despite Abby being no better than her. But now, you've given me some perspective I guess. Abby did get tortured and starved, but that really had nothing to do with her actions; they weren't a direct result of her vengeance. Bad karma maybe, not but a direct consequence. She did lose all of her friends but as you said, she never reflects on that fact. Just snarls at Ellie and nearly kills a pregnant lady right in front of her, only for Lev to give her a _look_ and she stops for appearances sake (at least to me). But she still gets to walk out of the final fight alive. I don't know.
If anything the game teaches you "if you plan to get revenge, don't leave witnesses" lol but I agree. It seemed like of all people Ellie and Abby got off the easiest despite them being the most selfish people in the entire game and in the end they both got off with decent deals as opposed to all of their friends who are dead because they couldn't deal with their grief in a healthy way which is something I am sure every single person in this apocalyptic world who has lost someone has learned to do. Dina lost her sister and Jesse and she didn't go on an obscene revenge mission that resulted in half a dozen other people getting capped.
@@MacabreStorytelling My whole thing was, why would you boil down this rich, interesting, apocalyptic world and the way it's developed after all these years of no cure to... a watered down and cliche revenge story? There was literally so much you could've done with the world of the Last of Us and they decided to go with the most small-minded and narrow thing possible.
@@rhondahoward8025 Which is why I would have preferred they gone farther into the future. If we had gone 20 years say into the future, we would see the more pertinent and blatant effects of no vaccine on the world. 4 years later, even IF they made a vaccine, not much would be different. Honestly it just felt like the writers just wanted to do their revenge switch story and used TLOU IP to do it, which is why it feels so foreign.
You made some good points about Abby. Just because she has perspective doesn’t mean she’s a compelling character and she comes off as unlikable and terribly written. Such manipulative direction to make us like her after killing a character that we’ve known and loved, doesn’t matter what the context is neither means it’s good storytelling
@@gordontims1999 She didn't even have to be entirely sympathetic. She just had to be understandable. Joel wasn't always the most sympathetic character, but you always GOT his motivations. Why he did the things he did. He was RELATABLE.
I definitely think that if they wanted a "revenge bad" story, then they should have had the end sequence begin with everyone but Abby and Ellie dead. Their pursuits of revenge began an actual cycle, and the WLF wiped out Jackson in retaliation for Tommy's sniper spree, while he and Ellie was pursuing Abby. The remaining WLF is killed by the Seraphites, Abby, and Ellie. Perhaps Lev dies in the clash, or in the chaos against the Rattlers. No matter how he dies, it's still ultimately on Abby. Then you could have any combination of Abby and Ellie living or dying. That's what revenge-is-bad stories should be: sad, depressing, unsatisfying. 4 settlements, 1 completely evil, 1 almost completely evil, 1 gray, and 1 good, are completely destroyed, all because one girl couldn't let go of her grief. As a bonus, if Ellie dies, then we wouldn't have to sit through whatever shitshow a part three could be.
Abby telling Lev: "You're my family" after knowing her/him for 2 days pretty much sums up the horrible writing and that they where choosing that path nomatter what...
icing on the cake on the fact she left two kids(one clearly not well enough to travel) alone in what she says is a heavily patrolled area. and only comes back to them because of a nightmare. and learning Owen went AWOL for not killing a Scroll. So it feels like she only started caring for Lev because of Owen. and makes their bond feel disingenuous.
“Revenge is a fools game.” Arthur Morgan, 1899. (Seriously this is by far the best video I’ve ever seen discussing LOU2 in a unbiased way. You deserve an Oscar for this video.)
Great critique. I agree with all your points. It was a story that did not need a sequel. Should have made it an anthology franchise with different characters in the same universe. I felt at times the writing came across as trolling fan's of the first one, with some of the Easter eggs like the numerous PS3 consoles lying around and the parallels in game play, weird character development. It was almost like they were bitter about making the game for some reason and that bitterness spread into the story beats. The first game had a narrative that exceeded the format. This one felt more like a generic one to fit the game they wanted to make. I still enjoyed playing it for all the genuine good part's and for the craftmenship on show but it's tainted the fantastic characters the original made me care about.
@@idioz75 I really love the anthology aspect. If they wanted they could have made part 2 about Jesse and Dina in Jackson. Have Ellie and Joel be minor characters or just give cameos. Maybe have the Rattlers as the actual bad guys when they take Dina or Jesse during patrol and turn the wlf as a reluctant ally because they're actually losing members to the Rattlers as well. I don't know, just something else because revenge stories are a bit overdone at this poijt
@@ZyroShadowPony That sounds so much better. You could even incorporate the character Bob from the first game. Maybe in his desperate lonely grief he ended up going crazy and joining the rattler's and embraced his sadist side. He could then redeem himself by helping Dina and Jessie when he finds out they are friends of Ellie and Joel and he's reminded of everything he lost and could still have. You could even incorporate him having to hide his sexuality from them. Which keeps part of him at odds with them so his turning against them is realistic.
I agree. The story of the first game was perfectly written and self-contained, it didn't need any sort of continuation, because it fulfilled it's purpose with flying colours.
The biggest problem for me really was that Abby literally says nothing about Joel. There's nothing that connects Ellie and Abby because Abby is so unavailable. I think Ellie learning about why Abby killed Joel would have bonded them in a profound way. Bonded through hate but bonded nonetheless. Or even when Abby is about to slice Dina's throat, they could have had a moment similar to Breaking Bad's episode Ozymendias, where Walt fights Skyler with a butcher night and yells "What are you doing, we're a family!" and then has an epiphany about what he's done. There was so much potential to connect Abby and Ellie's parts but they just COMPLETELY opted out of it.
This is intentional. Because if Ellie learns why Joel died, it would challenge her motivation to keep going, but the devs need you to keep playing the game. The game ran on fumes and it showed by the halfway point.
@@SoftKernel How far into the game is that??? You saying this like it happens 20 mins into the game. By the time Ellie returns from that literal torture fest and they decide to go home cause Dina preggers, Abby comes and fucks Dinas boyfriend and Tommy, almost kills Dina and Ellie. Then back at home, they have Tommy give ellie a pathetic guilt trip speech to keep the nonsense going further. Again, the game was running on fumes by the halfway point. Motivations didnt add up anymore and things just happened so the game could continue.
@@SoftKernel Then why did Ellie emphasize the cure aspect of herself when she eventually does actually say words to the antagonist? Either Nora didn't tell her anything and Ellie never pieced it together OR Nora was hung up on the cure aspect of it, rather than going "Oh yeah Joel killed her dad btw" like an idiot lmao
Hit the nail on the head with so many things especially Tommy. His arc just shocked and confused me. Naughty dog did him dirty! The game just fell Completely apart for me from that point onwards in the epilogue
I honestly don't think that Tommy's change/ "development" can even be misinterpreted as anything else other than lazy writing. The people defending this change are always filling up the hole ND failed to properly fill. Some guy even said that he lost Jesse, his eye and had a divorce with Maria which caused him to go insane enough to be willing to persuade Ellie to risk her life just to fulfill his own want. But just like Macab said, they're using the well maybe argument that doesn't really hold much water
But he is still alive. I think they gloss over him because they want him to take over Joel role in The Last of US 3. Not because they want to ignore him.
2:46:10 I honestly never saw a single post about someone not liking or hating Joel in the years since TLOU1. If they did exist, they were rare. This whole bizarre mindset came exclusively after the release of TLOU2, as a way for fanboys to justify the game. That, and it being the perspective of newcomers who never even played the original game.. It makes me sick, tbh.
You can see a good amount of those views on forums that aren't specifically TLOU forums. Debate forums and such. People didn't outright *hate* Joel, but more than a few disliked him because he's an immoral man.
Probably would be a good idea considering SOME of the Fireflies must have know who Joel was. Goes to the point I mentioned about Joel being super wary of anyone who happens by the settlement.
Could be horribly wrong but doesn't the whole "You took away my choice to die for the cure/vacccine" plot narrative fall flat thanks to what Ellie says and what happens to her in the first game? At the water scene where she drowns, just a few minutes before that, she makes mention of how maybe Joel could teach her to swim after they're done. "When we're done", said directly near the hospital where the Fireflies are located. Wouldn't this imply that Ellie expected to be walking out ALIVE from the surgery? She fell unconscious due to drowning and most likely remained unconscious even up till the surgery itself, when was she ever informed that she was to choose whether she wanted to sacrifice her life due to her no doubt going to die during surgery? When was she given a choice? She says she's "still waiting for her turn" due to what happens in the DLC, and Marlene tries to say 'it's what she'd have wanted', but wouldn't that only work if Ellie KNEW she was going to die in this surgery, Joel figured out she knew and made the choice and STILL chose to save her? So how the FUCK can she use the "you took away my choice" narrative in TLOU2 if she never MADE a choice AND possibly thought she'd be leaving alive? That's my biggest question here. Please, someone give me a source that shows she was given a choice and knew :,) Just genuinely trying to make sense of this..
Why yes, it does undermine what was shown in the first game. Better yet: In order to make sure Ellie doesn't get the choice, FEDRA was removed from the sequel. FEDRA had done clearly the most research into the infection than anyone or anything else as they're shown having infection scanners, something that could not exist pre-pandemic. But, y'know, they can't have created a conflict any other way without retcons given the author's writing skill and mental capacity.
No, it doesn't. Of course Ellie expected to walk away alive, but that doesn't mean she wasn't willing to die for it. You still hope for the future. She was never informed. The Fireflies never even tried to get her consent. That was obviously wrong. No. The Fireflies robbed Ellie of her agency, but Joel did the same thing. There is no "you took away my choice" narrative. It's a "you took away the meaning of my life" narrative. Ellie needed to make a vaccine. Her immunity had to mean something. If it didn't, then Riley, Tess, and Sam died for nothing. That's how she sees it. She has survivor's guilt. That's why she values the vaccine more than her own life. Joel's primary motivator for his actions after the events at the hospital was to show Ellie that her life has meaning beyond her immunity. And that night on the porch before he died, I think he finally succeeded.
@@jameslanier2510 That makes sense, yeah. The only thing that muddles me a little is the fact she's so mad at Joel for doing it when he was informed by her directly that she's waiting for her turn AFTER he does what he does. He may have been told by others that it's what she'd want but he's definitely the kind of guy who won't believe it unless its from Ellie's mouth alone. Joel isn't a mind reader, unless she told him how she felt prior to the surgery then all he has is tiny tidbits to go on, adding small dialogues on what they'd do after it all just makes the narrative feel a little off since he's not under the impression she'd accept her death. Though that's just personal opinion, it probably could even be chalked up to projecting her anger of it all despite whether he knew she'd accept or not. Though could also just be cause it also needed a slight bit of work. Who knows at this rate. Thanks for sharing your explanation, was a nice read.
@@crazyinsane500Don't you just love how they gloss over the fact that the Atlanta QZ is still up & running? People seem to ignore that the CDC still exists in their world & that it's headquarters is in Atlanta, Georgia. Also, Jerry is a quack. "There's no way to remove the specimen without killing the host." No mother fucker! There's no way YOU can do that! You aren't trained to do so! It's like every TLOU fan can't use Google to find out Brain Biopsy is a possibility. For fuck sake, Hemispherectomy is a possibility. Jerry was willing to kill an unconscious girl who's the only known immune person in the world because he was too prideful to admit that he couldn't operate on her without botching it & killing her. In conclusion #JoelDidNothingWrong
I believe Ellie’s wristband from Dina was either a rendering/design mistake or we’d infer she wasn’t wearing it but had it on her person. I think it’s clear they meant for her to return to find Dina had left her, and she must now forge ahead alone. The fact she can no longer play Joel’s guitar due to injuries sustained from her fight with Abby I think is supposed to illustrate her sacrifice, and the futility of said sacrifice. However, still lots of excellent points in the video.
Amazing analysis. I love that you mentioned Ellie's selflessness in part 1. Everyone always talk about how badass she was, but in a post-apocaliptic world everyone is forced to become kind of a badass in order to survive, for me what really made Ellie different was how much she cared for other people and how she connected with their feelings.
Maybe in california, ellie could’ve been properly captured and enslaved by the rattlers for a prolonged period. Then she’d have no choice but to cooperate with abby or at least tolerate her existence, since any attempt she would make to kill her would be stopped by the rattlers. This could then lead to ellie learning why abby killed joel, them getting to know and maybe empathize with each other, and then have both characters be put to the ultimate test by having to work together to liberate themselves from the rattlers. A parallel could be drawn between their physical enslavement and how both characters are slaves to grief/rage.
I really wish your idea about Abby changing her mind about Joel’s killing was canon. It would literally solve most of her narrative issues. Very good video!
@@ChandlerMurray. But, it doesn't. The best you can do is try to argue that it happened because, well, it explains things, but that's working backwards; you're starting with seeming problems in the story, and then inventing a plausible solution headcanon. No, you have to start with actual evidence in the narrative and work from there, and if the result is contradictory clusterfuck, well, then that's what you have; it's not like real life where there MUST be an explanation for things happening--in fiction, it can actually just be incompetence.
Had she spared him, and Ellie spent most of the game to track her down and figure out why it happened in the first place, they both get closure, etc. this story could have been so much better. I can pull 10 storylines out of my ass that are all better than this
One of my problems is that this story has nothing to do with the world it’s happening in. Which is a red flag for any story set outside the “default” modern times. Take Harry Potter as a good example of this being done well. None of the books could have worked in any other world. Hogwarts is so important to the series that it might as well be a main character. If you tried to do this story in say the world of Pokémon or John Wick, it doesn’t work. Even the first Last of us did this well. Every single part of the world came to matter in its narrative. The entire basis of the story relies on the fact that this is the zombie post apocalypse. But in TLOU2 Zombies are never important neither is Ellie’s immunity. And you might as well have replaced the fireflies, the most recognizable faction of the game, with any other survivor group and it wouldn’t really change much. This is a story that happens outside its own world, which breaks immersion and i don’t like it.
@@lrsb1678 that’s not what I meant. What I meant is that nothing in the story is inherently tied to its world. You can replace two names of off screen factions and suddenly the story is set in a sci fi distopia and nothing about the narrative would change in a meaningful way. This is just bad world building, because you aren’t taking advantage of your setting. Heck, even if you changed out our main characters with any other survivor set in the same world, nothing of note would change. At most the reason for why Joel killed Abby’s father would be different, but not in a meaningful way. Just replace Joel with a guy named Richard, who shot a random bandit that tried to kill his daughter Jill and the story wouldn’t have to change anything, beyond the reason why Ellie was mad at Joel in the beginning, which is a minor detail. Again, this is not good because it makes it feel less like an continuation of Ellie‘s story and more of a completely different story that just so happen to use Ellie like an actress.
@@lrsb1678 Sure. Try to explain the story of TLOU 1, while hitting on all major story moments. You won't really be able to do so, without using terms and concepts, that only really make sense in the setting of the first game. Stuff like "child is immune to zombie" "most of the US are just small groups of survivors" or "the Fireflies" will inevitably come up. You couldn't really tell this story in any other setting, without massively changing story elements. Example, try to translate the story of TLOU into the Harry Potter universe. It wouldn't really work, because a lot of key concepts are gone and you'd have to change both the setting and the story to somehow make them mix and have sense, to a degree that it wouldn't be what we originally were trying to do. Now do the same for the second game. Describe it's major story beats, without using terms, specific to it's universe. "Girl kills man, because that man killed her father" "Daughter of man goes to have revenge" "Daughter tracks down friends of first girl" "both girls fight". "War between faction of one girl vs crazy cult". Nothing really big is lost. Now again, put it into the world of Harry Potter. It wouldn't be difficult. At most you'd have to change the name of the fireflies or why Joel killed Abby's father, but the story would overall stay the same, without minor and irrelevant adjustments at best. You can not tell the story of the first game in any other setting. This means it takes good advantage of it's setting. Which is good world building. But the second might as well take place in ancient Greece and little of note would be lost
I just absolutely despised the way they showed Abbys dad's death and tried to make us feel bad for her by shoving her whaling, crying face into the camera
Problem is though Her Dad still wanted to cut open a child for a maybe cure, no scenes of him having second thoughts it or even showing he hates he has to do it.
I haven't played the game myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but Even back as far as the PS1 days, Naughty Dog's strength has ALWAYS been character and personality. Crash Bandicoot was popular not because it had the best platforming, the greatest visuals, or the most interesting world, it was popular because Crash himself had *PERSONALITY* that was unmatched by most of the other 'funny animal mascot' characters that were all the rage in the late 90s. From the word 'go', Uncharted was a masterclass in how a paper thin narrative and bland, repetitive gameplay (that admittedly got better with each installment, but was never really anything to write home about) can be completely eclipsed by lovable, fun, and engaging personalities. Who gives a shit about the specifics of what Nathan Drake, Sully, and Elaina are going through, when they're such likable people that they make any situation fun and memorable? The Last of Us was that same principle of characters-above-all writing given a more dark/dramatic twist, as opposed to the lighthearted fun that characterizes the Uncharted Franchise, and it did gangbusters. Characters are the tread on a tire. Without characters we enjoy or care about, there's no grip, no traction, no reason to actually connect with the narrative or the themes in the first place. TLOU part II had an interesting road it wanted to take us down, one that might have been truly wonderful if we got a chance to explore it properly. Unfortunately, the wheels are bald and it's far, far too easy to go careening into a ditch.
It is amazing to me how some characters just come alive. I feel like BB-8 is more of an alive and realized character than half the human characters in the Star Wars Disney films.
You are wrong. Crash was popular because *at the time* it had amazing graphics and was a good 3D platformer. I have no idea how you think Crash himself has a personality, given the fact that he has no character development
@@frogglen6350 I think that is what he meant. Certain characters, even without substantial development, had a sense of a personality. Think of say R2D2.
I unintentionally made this game miles better by taking like a 2 month break from the game in-between the switch between abby and Ellie because I was so annoyed I had to relive that whole sequence. By doing that I forgot a lot about who I killed as Ellie making the reveal that Owen and Mel were dead much more powerful than it would have been if I had played it straight through. I had totally forgotten by that point that Ellie had already killed them so it was a total surprise to me.
"Those were my friends you killed, asshole."
"Guess what!? We're shitty people, Joel. It's been like that for a long time."
You brought up a great point. Those 2 lines always stuck with me. Tess's line was the first time I thought about them killing Robert's men. For a moment, I stopped thinking of these 2 as badass survivors, and looked at them though the lenses of "shitty people." Made me think about the only people left in this apocalypse at this point, were shitty people.
That random NPC's line about his friends, made me think about every single person killed up to this point. Made me remember that Joel has "been on both sides" during an ambush, and w those guys in the city who hunted tourists, were probably a tight knit group too.
It's funny how those 2 lines made me think about the other communities and the other people who are just trying to survive while TLOU Part 2 just made me roll my eyes at the thought.
One word: subtlety. The game didn't preach to you. The lines were pretty obvious but sounded rather natural and they gave you the opportunity to make your own conclusions as to who might be right, who might be wrong or if there even are any sides to this conflict that could be described in such a one-sided way.
TLOU II tried to do a similar message partly, but much of it was preachy and very obviously biased towards a certain side and message, leaving the player with barely any nuance.
As history has shown time and time again, people don't like being preached to and forced to do something, even in cases where it was the right thing to do.
i always felt in part that the fact ellie is the only real optimist in part 1 shows that the only people who are still around are "shitty people", and people who haven't been around long enough to become shitty yet
Exactly! I wouldn't have summarized it better. I also had this experience with the first and second games.
A couple of lines is a good addition to any story, but it is not the same things as exploring something like that in detail, and all of the consequences that come with it.
But if it’s done poorly in a preachy on the nose fashion, it can often shoot itself in the foot.
I like it when enemies call out the name of someone I've killed.
It tells me where they are so I can kill them too.
Its even better when they say how they are going to kill me and few seconds later get blown up lmao
what an awesome video this must have taken you ages! the story was an abomination to all the fans of the first game, just to think people waited patiently for 7 years for this!
the very mediocre story came above everything even the characters we loved and neil druckman was and always will be a one hit wonder!
ND got too confident and over ambitious and thought they could do nothing wrong and sadly they didn't have the talent on the writing and direction side to pull it off!
@@seanpitt27 So does that mean you are not excited for the Last of Us TV Show?
This game is too gay
Based
Dina willing to go to Seattle to avenge Joel for Ellie, when all we got to establish them as "soulmates" was a scene of them smoking pot and having sex while on the job.... seriously?? That's a night shift at Dennys.
I don't even see any actual chemistry with Dina and Ellie. What is special about her that attracts Ellie? The reason the chemistry between Joel and Ellie was so strong is because previously, Joel was a father and Ellie was a kid who lost everyone in her life. That bond was perfect which made them perfect for each other. Dina and Ellie has nothing really in common other than they're both women and they're both lesbians and maybe some other minor connection.
@@jasonalv7436 I mean, considering Dina isn't a lesbian they don't even have that in common lmfao.
No but jokes aside I also really didn't like Dina. I was pretty neutral through most of the game though, bordering on thinking she was a really bland and her attempts at humour were in bad taste given the situation.
Honestly, trying to cheer Ellie up is one thing, acting like the two of them were on a couple's weekend retreat is another.
Then she refers to Ellie having a PTSD attack as "a bit of excitement" and is completely dismissive to the extent of Ellie's trauma and I'm just "...?" why is she with her if she sees the fact Ellie hasn't simply gotten over it as such a burden to her and their 'relationship'? Wild.
Dina is terrible.
She's knocked up by their mutual friend like a month earlier and now her and ellie are totally soulmates while still hangin with the guy..
They wrote her as the grossest person in the apocalypse
@@hashvendetta7226 really you think Dina was worse then Owen 😂😂😂😂 I actually thought she was one of the more well written characters in comparison to the others
@@samt7676 everyone in that game is written as the most self centered, asshole. Owen just deciding to take off on his pregnant girlfriend and cheating with sheBeast abby is rough.
I'd like to add, abby spends like 3 hours in climbing around a decrepit ship, strangling slimey fungus people with her bare hands and immediately strips down and gets plowed by that dude.
No shower, just fungus mung and BO.
Probably the grossest thing in existence.
The realisation that revenge isn't going to give Ellie peace is kinda nullified after the fact that she's slaughtered hundreds of people to get to Abby. By not killing Abby, that means everyone that she killed died for nothing 😅
And also, how does letting Abby live make her feel better about anything? Sure, it might not help her get over her grief over Joel's death and not reconciling with him, but whether Abby is dead or alive doesn't really change that. Might as well kill the person who killed Joel tbh, at least then he has his justice, and then Ellie can move on from Joel? Letting her live just means she can come back to kill her one day, it doesn't really end the cycle of violence. Abby didn't want to fight Ellie anyway, she forced her to, and Ellie only decided to spare Abby after thinking of Joel playing a guitar for 2 seconds?? It makes literally no sense. Why come all this way to give up when your goal is literally in your hands??
B cuz theeeeeeemes
@@MacabreStorytelling why can people not write good stories anymore?
YESSSSSS!!!!!! I literally shouted out loud, “So it was all for nothing?” I told somebody I felt nothing at the end, that I had even stopped caring what happens to Ellie, and they tried to tell me that that is what I was supposed to feel.
Druckmann was not on his own for Uncharted or TLOU1, but he was here, and it really showed.
@@Deeplycloseted435 i hadnt thought about that. If he was in charge of uncharted 2 no doubt he wouldve had us play as Lazarevic for half the game after he killed Sully 🤣
*Neil Druckmann hits blunt*
"What if the people you kill are actually people, dude?"
Oh my god
well no other game really does that? So why criticize a positive?
"Except like...the bad guys,i.e. the murderous cult and the slavers?"
Haha like dudes who have to take drugs to feel empathy and they think they're the most awakened person alive.
@PeachesandCream225 cope harder, there are numerous other games that do that, like Spec Ops: The Line, Telltale's The Walking Dead, and more
Their biggest fuck up was not having Abby wonder if she killed Joel in front of his daughter. This would cause internal conflict and have her realize she did to someone else what was done to her.
It's also a better incentive for her wanting to save Lev and Yara as a way to atone and return to who she was before her dad was killed.
There. Fixed the game.
That's a good point. Much better than just Abby having nightmares about her father's death. Which could be attributed to anything other than killing Joel.
Damn, you’re so right. It would have been such a good way for them to cause internal conflict for Abby.
Not that she did to someone else what was done to her, she did something worse. Since she didn't have to sit and watch as her dad was being beaten to death - specially since her dad wasn't brutally killed like that, not that Abby knew or watched that.
well I like that the game is subtle in that way because she lets her live...and seems to feel bad that she did in front of Ellie. She doesn't know who she is but its not far fetched to imagine that she did consider it.
@@kurtywurty85 Nothing about how she acts suggests she feels bad, though.
Did you forget about how Abby's dad was willing to kill Ellie, without her consent, but hesitant when he was question if he would be so quick if it was his daughter and he has no answer. It kinda makes Joel's actions justified.
Marlene even asked him repeatedly.😂😂😂 In order to make Jerry a hero, Neil Druckmann accidentally made him more villainous than ever.
@@nont18411 noo he saved a zebra so he's a saint!
Sorry. Jerry is a quack in my eyes.
Piece of 💩 didn't even mention Brain Biopsy, or even Hemispherectomy.
Medically, there's no reason to kill Ellie for her Cordyceps.
I'm saying once Joel appeared he should've handed Ellie over
Exactly, there are so many more things just like this in the game. The entire premise of revenge is wrong, is proven to be okay as long as your Abby.
I will never understand the "Joel robbed Ellie of her choice" comment because the Fireflies didn't give her a choice either. Literally no one gave her a say so it's a moot point.
The Fireflies being wrong doesn't make Joel any less wrong.
@@krasmasov6852 Why not?
@@jon.... Because every conflict cant be reduced to good vs evil
@@krasmasov6852 Yeah obviously. That doesn't mean one side can't be more right than the other.
@@jon.... How do you measure that?
Fun fact, not one single person told Ellie why Abby hunted down Joel. Ellie assumes it's because of the cure, but the narrative shows otherwise. Why? Because if Ellie knew that she might have stopped her plan for vengeance. This whole thing reeks of someone who thought they could put anything on the page and the audience would "ooooo and ahhhhh".
Exactly that's why they never talk to each other and ask questions , because then they and player would realize how stupid the situation and that plot is , that's why tommy never mention the fact that he gave joel name to abby
No reason for revenge i think if you admit it's your fault
Writers thought they were smarter than they actually are
She does know. Norah told her in the hospital, she even tells Abby this when she gets attacked at the theater.
Actually Nora makes a comment to Ellie about her being the girl from the hospital when she sees Ellie breathing in spores.
But in the sense of Ellie never knowing Abby’s dad was the doctor she never actually met because she was unconscious, that is true .
Nora tells her. Sounds like you didn't pay much attention when you played.
One of the biggest problems I had is that during abbys sequence, you can notice that there is a ridiculous amount of plot convenience, eg. Yara appearing out of literally thin air to save Abby from Tommy, who was getting her absolute shit rocked.
Oh you mean you didn’t know that Yara had teleportation powers? Guess you didn’t understand what the writers were trying to say 🙄
That one is at least easy to look past due to her affecting literally nothing in the scene.
Red dead 2 had an interesting take on vengeance. After spending time building a normal life, John is given the opportunity to hunt down Mica. His wife begs him not to go but he decides to anyway. After killing Mica the epilogue shows the feds investigating the carnage which leads them back to John. It’s an extra depth of consequence in John’s story. It doesn’t take away from the original story, it helps drive home points made in the first game.
I've been saying this rdr2 is better game in showing how revenge can lead down a destructive path ans how the cycle of violence constantly repeats with jack eventually going after Edgar Ros
Besides the couple that ran away from Jackson in the second Ellie flashback, I’m baffled that not one side/major character gets bitten and we face a dilemma like with Tess and Sam, it makes the infected feel irrelevant in a world full of them.
That is sort of odd, I agree. Joel robbing humanity of a vaccine was built up as a major element of the first game but in the second game, since so little time has passed, we don't really feel the effects of his decision. I honestly wonder if the game jumped say 20 years ahead and we following Ellie as a grown woman, making her way through a world that has been dragged down by another 20 years of post apocalyptic life, and we can see the actual contrast of how Joel's decision affecting the world as a whole. Maybe Part III?
Macabre Storytelling Hmm let’s hope the team actually learns their lesson from this messy game, this isn’t a bad game tbh, There’s plenty of WORSE games out there, But this is nowhere near a masterpiece or the level of the first game like people claim it to be.
Kinda ironic too since the major conflict in the first game was the cure and yet the infected seem to be the last thing people need to think about in the second game. Abby can even take on a huge ass rat king by herself haha.
@@MacabreStorytelling
That'd still be pretty flimsy premise for a game. There're countless arguments against a cure against a fungus being created under these circumstances by these people and the ways of distribution being imagined. It could possibly work but not in the way the two games have set it up.
@@MacabreStorytelling 3 months later, I feel like somehow I’m insulting you by assuming you don’t know but if you read some journals from TLOUS its shown pretty clearly that the firefly doctors where incompetent, this was a long shot at best Joel didn’t have that information but it still makes his choice seem a lot less ambiguous
Joel’s face when he stuck up for Ellie and she goes off on him always hurts my feelings because he looks so damn hurt and embarrassed for seeming so protective and almost ashamed for caring about her so much
Also fun fact: You can shoot the surgeon in the leg at the end of the first game and it won't count as a kill.
nOt cAnNoN!)!$
@@MacabreStorytelling not anymore
They basically rob you of that decision which is something the writers should never do, the leader of the fireflies should've (I can't remember her name) been her mother or surrogate mother (considering Abby is rather white). To me that would've made a lot more sense
@your face reminds me when I stepped on a burrito 3 Yes but the games kill counter doesn't up tick one.
That was my first playthrough man, i avoided most voilent situations sneaked my way through including the hospital, and i shot the doctor in the foot and left him in a operation theater with two other surgeons and they still couldn't save him wtf, shouldve thrown a nail bomb at him
Tommy was done dirtier than anyone else. Once they turned him into an asshole, I just couldn’t even pretend to enjoy the game anymore. He didn’t want Ellie getting involved with Joels killers, than at the end he tries getting her to go and hunt down Abby again. Wtf is that?
Given the shot to his head, they could have easily explained it with some remark about his brain damage, a Phineas Gage scenario. Lame, but logical.
@@BWMagus was it logical for him to survive a headshot? No hospital, no medication for a brainsurgery, Broken arm Ellie and Pregnant Dina who have to travel 400Miles back to jackson. How the fuck did they do that?
@@blackwolf4653 The writers: Because..."
God this story was so fucking shit.
@@lrsb1678 and who survived a headshot in the first game?
@@lrsb1678 whitout any medical help or emergency surgery? 🤔
you must be the kind of guy that watches the Transformers movies because of their Story ^^
One of the things I would like to add is that the game that the PS Vita girl plays is Hotline Miami, a game which has almost the same themes of violence and the consequences that follow which for me feels less than an Easter egg and more like the writers try to flex at how much better they did their own story
Spoiler: THEY DIDN'T!!!!!!
You know, even the writers of Spec Ops: The Line made a better work with The history of their game that them, atleast in my opinion
hotline miami is fun and lets you play as a psychopath
the last of us 2 is not fun and force you to play as a psychopath
@@mateoreyes6921 Even is an undestatement. Spec Ops the Line did it so much better, it's not even funny. Criminally underrated game.
"He's not a hero, he's human"
Your line about Joel carries so much weight. This is what I wanted for Abby, they didn't need to make her a hero but human.
They did exactly that. Abby is no hero, she's just a person.
@@ThaKingJay Yeah, did anyone really get the impression she was a hero? Abby was worse than a piece of shit
@ThaKingJay yeah the comment was kinda wierd. However Abby is sadly not as well written as Joel.
The game would have been a thousand times better if at the beginning it pretended it wasn't about Joel or Ellie, we just get this character chasing someone for vengance. We could explore her in more detail and empathize with her early on, only to later realize what she actually wanted to do. Then we wouldn't need to waste time on a second half of the story making us "sympathise" with Joel and Ellie, because we already know them. I dunno', there's a million directions this story could have been told, that would have been much better than what we actually got.
Game should have started right where the first one ended, have Joel and Ellie set up at Tommy’s camp, then write the adventure from there, don’t have Joel brutally killed which was pointlessly stupid … Have the fire fly’s comes after Ellie for a potential cure, not this revenge plot …
having joel die made me so sad and beyond angry i wanted blood and then i resented the game for one making me play as abby and hurting ellie and then not letting me kill the bitch abby
@@funkyflights i don’t think his death was pointless, his arc was completed in the first game the most he could’ve been in the second was a glorified side character. i think it was smart of the creators to let ellie take the reigns as mc
There's a thousand ways it could have been better but they chose the one way that was not
@@shaysplanet …. Look if they were hell bent on killing Joel don’t make it at the start of the game and in such a stupid way, he saves Abby from certain death only to follow her back to a camp and get brutally tortured then murdered by her ? I can’t begin to express how effin lazy that story telling was, and then of course they let Ellie and Tommy live, I WONDER what’s gonna happen now ??? First Joel didn’t have to die, and he certainly didn’t have to die to make Ellie the focal point, hell Abby was just as much a focal point as Ellie and she brutally murdered Joel … Story was just a mess … The game has some good qualities, graphics are draw dropping, gameplay is fun, especially after you beat the game and unlock stuff… But the story just left me wondering WTF just happened …
As someone else said in the comments of another video, Joel’s remark about Ellie not knowing real loss isn’t solely directed at just losing loved ones...but an entire worldview. Joel lost everything: his society, his security, his moral sense of right and purpose, the world he grew up in, the things and settings and people he’d become accustomed to (things we currently take for granted, like movies and the internet, or simply passing strangers on the street in comfort, not having to look over our shoulders 24/7 or sleeping with one eye open for the rest of our lives). These are things Ellie has never known and can barely even understand, as referenced in the first game when she read a girl’s diary. Going to school, graduating college, getting your first job, going to prom, eating at a restaurant, etc. Joel lost all these experiences and more, to the point where Ellie doesn’t even know what an ice-cream truck is. So he’s right about her not knowing real loss.
But that's in relation to her. Joel also doesn't know what it's like to grow up in this world. He also doesn't know what it's like to have no parents or even foster parents. He doesn't know what it's like to grow up alone. So yeah I wouldn't read into Joels line more than it's supposed to say. He's in a argument and Ellie just pushed his biggest button, Sarah, so he wants to shut her down by hurting her. It doesn't work so he goes for the jugular a line after with Iam not your dad
@@6ixlxrd That's a false equivalence, and you know it. To elaborate on Pulp's point, you say Joel has lost all of the things you listed. This is true, but it's also true that Joel had the pleasure of even experiencing those things in the first place. Ellie has grown up in a world where flesh-eating monsters roam the streets and woods of the entire world, murderous and rapacious bandits lay in wait for hapless travellers, and most of the world' population is fucking dead. She grew up in a concrete hellhole, under an autocratic military dictatorship where dissent or even simple non-compliance led to your immediate demise, and where all children were forced into military schools to prepare them for a live of hellish struggle. Joel can't possibly have any idea what it's like to grow up in such a nightmare world. Also, Ellie had to execute her best friend after she is infected. She's lost enough.
@@6ixlxrd eh
(things we currently take for granted, like movies and the internet, or simply passing strangers on the street in comfort, not having to look over our shoulders 24/7 or sleeping with one eye open for the rest of our lives) And Coffee.
Oh damn i would miss coffee.
@@MrTurok999 yeah Joel isn't any different his entire lifestyle change and he had to grow to accustomed to complete different more brutal harsher lifestyle Ellie only grew up in this world she didn't have to adopt like Joel did and didn't change her as a person
Honestly, the fact that Abby's segment was very plainly intended to make you like her just made me spiteful, which made me hate her more
My sentiments exactly.
Yep , I feel the same way. I could see that they were trying to manipulate my feelings by having her play with dogs and save Yara and Lev. But when I saw how eager she was to slice Dina's throat after finding out she was pregnant. My reaction was " Are you effing kidding me? I'm supposed to like this piece of shit? Get the eff out of here, no way. " I couldn't wait for Ellie to finish her on the beach. What a B.S. ending.
It's not intended to make you like her, it's intended to make you see the story from her perspective
@@OO7angelo Judging the ending by what you would have liked to see it's the real B.S.
@@gobbidimerda2496 I would strongly disagree. If that were the case, then it seems like simply revealing the reason why she killed Joel would do that in a sufficient enough manner... but instead we got a 7 hour long redemption arc.
I've always felt like the writers at Naughty Dog had a very patronizing attitude towards the audience in this game. Some of the plot devices they use to evoke reactions are so blatantly obvious, it seems like they think we have zero brain cells. In the opening sequence of Abby's subplot, they show her and her dad saving a goddamn Zebra to try to make the audience like them? Can they get any more condescending than "Guy saves animal, therefore guy is good"??? I've watched multiple interviews of the creators of the game, and it seems like they firmly believe that they have created a piece of art so profound that a mere gamer cannot grasp the complexity of the themes. I get the vibe that they saw the outburst of the gamers towards this game as an act of immaturity because we are ourselves victims of the "cycle of hatred"
tbh, the game in a way feels very condescending. With the whole switching to Abby, it feels like Neil Druckmann really thought he did something revolutionary and genius when in reality it is everything but. The active fans of this game also act incredibly condescending. I can't even count with my 2 hands how many times I've seen a fan call the people who didn't like the game immature or low intellect or failing to understand etc etc. Even the youtubers who defend this game act condescending at times. GF Reviews which made a video literally called "Understanding The Last of Us Part 2". That title alone feels so condescending and the whole video is also incredibly condescending and sort of insulting. Calling the people who thought the writing was lazy fools and also saying if you still wanted Abby to die then you practically have no soul.
This is also the attitude I got of the analysis made by “girlfriend reviews.”
This is the general attitude of the "anointed" class of person. It's the pure condescension of people who view themselves as so smart and righteous that any disagreement with them, whether it be their philosophy or methods, must be due to opponents being too dumb to understand their intent. People understand, they just disagree, but this reality baffles them. It's ultimately because they're themselves too unempathetic or too egotistical to consider the thoughts and feelings of others in any way beyond a projection of themselves.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Which is sadly becoming endemic. There are no debates anymore about how to solve a problem, there's just assertions that everyone on planet earth knows exactly how to solve a problem, agrees that it will work, and the only reason to oppose it is corruption/stupidity/mustache-twirling villainy. You can just imagine a housewife going "Honey, only a FASCIST would prefer sky blue to robin's egg blue for the living room. You're not a FASCIST, are you?"
Yep, it is also often the simple stories that are the most profound - like the first game. In part 2, we experience the arcs of two separate characters over a much longer game and all that is said in the end is: revenge is bad. Which honestly, as a theme, could be conveyed on an episode of sesame street. They also fail to do anything profound by not implementing the theme into the mechanics of the game. You cannot change the ending of the game in any way. Thus, when they try to point the finger at the player for wanting revenge, it fails. They did give the player any other option so it comes off as inept and haughty. So, if as a player, you didn’t want Ellie to seek revenge in the first place, you are in for a hell of a ride as the game tries to make you feel bad for doing something you didn’t even want to do. In this case, the game fails to do anything resembling important or profound.
Ellie in the first game:
A young girl who grew up in the apocalypse, and only through Joel and her best friend found glimpses of what the world was once like before. Also she’s responsible for Joel’s character arc throughout.
Ellie in the sequel:
“You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death!”
Loool
Don’t forget, “bigot sandwich”
You risked your life to save me! I HATE YOU!!!!
You forgot how idealistic she became after her friend Riley died. How she looked forward to helping humanity, how she wished for her life to mean something more than everyday survival. Joel saved her life because he could not bear losing another daughter - it was his selfish decision.
So, instead of "You ruined my death" it would be more accurate to say "You ruined my life's meaning"
@@robertmichalic4500 It wasn't necessarily a selfish decision in this case however. Because if you remember, the fireflies were going to operate on her without her consent, and worse without her knowing that she was gonna die while unconscious. They didn't give her a choice, and they were also gonna send Joel out the door without his gear, and without the weapons he was promised as part of the deal. So really, the fireflies were the true selfish ones here since they only wanted the cure, which wouldn't have even helped in this world considering how violent the infected are. AND ON TOP OF THAT, the lie that Joel told Ellie at the end was actually a truth of sorts, as there is an optional radio thing that tells you that the fireflies had more people like Ellie that were immune to the virus.
I dunno about you, but the way I see it by saving her, Joel basically gave Ellie a choice that the fireflies never did. A chance to grow up in probably the closest to a normal life as she could get. That's what makes the first game's ending so incredible, and also why it didn't necessarily need a sequel.
For Ellie to say that she was supposed to die in that hospital is one thing. For her to actually allow it to go through is another.... Remember, in the first game she said “killing a few to save many, that’s shitty” when Joel told her about how the military killed off people outside the QZ. The same logic is applied to her death to generate a vaccine/cure.
Get point. They really didn’t think it through. It was almost like the writers hated the first game and wanted to kill it to make something knew entirely.
it's different when its happening to you. I'm willing to die if I could save humanity. but I would never sacrifice few to save many either. and she was just a kid when she said that she didnt see anything of the world few years later until she found out and saw the real world.
Fun little piece of trivia:
The reason many of Abby's segments felt poorly paced or just out of place is because her character received hasty rewrites due to the fact that playtesters almost unanimously hated her. Let that sink in for a moment: even though Naughty Dog saw the writing on the wall well in advance, they still tried to do damage control on this complete abortion of a character any way they could -- even if it meant forcing players to play as her in order to make her come off as sympathetic after the fact she brutally murdered Joel and gave the worst possible impression she could.
In the end, all they accomplished was the precise opposite of what they intended. That might as well be the game's tagline:
"Everything went wrong because everyone made idiotic decisions."
If true... that... explains a lot.
Oh God, how did you learn about this?
Wow. They marched forward even with play testers' reactions? Yikes.
@@ZyroShadowPony A Kotaku expose, which talked about the severe crunch culture behind the game's development, made mention of a character whose story segments had to undergo extensive rewrites due the fact that playtesters absolutely hated said character.
Considering how utterly loathed Abby is and how many of her segments either felt padded or extremely ham-fisted in an attempt to make her appear sympathetic, it's a safe bet she was the one they were talking about.
The onus is on Neil druckmann. Gieselle sarkesian overwhelmingly influenced him. It’s as if she is anti male. Every male in this game got obliterated at the hands of women. Joel, Tommy, Jesse, Isaac, etc. while is good to be progressive with regard to diversity and inclusion in games, there is a balance and the devs got it wrong.
People’ who claim that Ellie is a more “evil” character than Abby always seem to say “look at how many people she killed just to get revenge.” To my knowledge, you can avoid most (if not all) enemy encounters by stealthing around them or running away. You can avoid killing most people in the game, which doesn’t really fit the narrative of Ellie’s murderous rage. Nearly all of Ellie’s kills in her cutscenes are in self defense, with the exception of Nora. Abby has killed in less than justified circumstances, and has no remorse for killing Joel despite it being in front of a young girl screaming for his life. That’s something monsters do.
Ellie killed the injured, immobilized and unarmed Fat Geralt.
not to mention Abby potentially killing several Wolves all of whom respected and trusted her
There was a part 2?
@@denisucuuu You say it like he didn't deserve it? Being a Rattler Leader?
Try also look at those people they are accumulated to...
Jackson's people help folk, and try to save animals..
WLF uses dog to hunt and kill people on sight, and those who chooses to leave. They torture and kill infected people just like Fedra..
I can more relate to the Death Cult, where people mostly just been brainwash like Lev that wanted his mother acception, and the Sailers 2 kids...
The Rattlers uses people, either you are these guard types and brutal, to protect they're familie, and people to do slavelabor so they could survive, but kill them underway. And if they leave.. again...
It's just like saying the guys from Terminus in TWD wasn't evil...
Or the Deschutes County Militia in Days Gone
@OP well, most people didnt stealth past and I doubt the cannon path for Ellie is all happy happy joy joy - see you might be able to do what you said, but you also can very easily be a totally horrific person.
Sparing Abby at the end is like when movie characters spare the life of the main villain after killing all of the henchmen. It is completely shallow way of making a character seem like a good person for no in Universe reason
Abbot lmao
Always hated this trope and its other variation: a villain kills innocent people and does not plan to stop ever. A hero 'defeats' the villain, and spares his life, saying something cheesy after, like: 'Nooaaah, I am NOT like YOU, i aM nOt a MURDERER'.
Batman and Joker is a prime example.
'Joker, you have successfully escaped detention facilities I had put you into and continuously terrorize Gotham. Countless of innocent had died in your terrorist attacks. Well, jeee, I am not a murderer. Lucky you the state we are in does not have death penalty."
When Iron Man spared Thanos at the end of Endgame? Such a good moment. Thanos went on to kill the entire universe but who cared?
Ellie let her go because she relished she was about to do exactly what Abby did to her to lev and that killing Abby wasn’t going to make her feel better
@@caseynorthrop5739 ...she realized it after killing TONS of other, barely related, people. Did they die for nothing but the realization: 'boo-hoo, Big Meanie's death will mean nothing...'
In a sense, Elli had already sacrificed many people for the cause of killing Ebby. Won't she care about killing those people? Maybe, story-wise Joel's death has more weight than some random NPCs. But on a deeper level analysis, those 'random NPSs' are no different from Joel. They are humans. Just like Ebby, Joel, and Elli. They had friends and family, possibly including potentially another Ebby.
So, Elli, who was all about meaningful sacrifice of her life, sacrificed lives of countless others for nothing... Amazing.
Dude maybe tommy got brain damage from the bullet thats why his character turned 180
Holy fuck I thought this was a for real defense lmao
I think it would be more interesting if he become damaged or delusional after the fight so that ellie feel the need to kill abby for what she done
And maybe gave maria more screentime by visiting ellie too
Its just a shame she has so little screentime
I know. I was pumped to see Maria again and then to have her make such a contrived as hell decision was so sad.
@@MacabreStorytelling dude just finished the video, sad really
the pieces were all there but they make the character choose stupid action to make their plans or so called themes work
Such a shame
@jack thursby i dont know maybe the doctor is good enough to operate on ellie to develop a vaccine
What also pisses me off is that Ellie puts all the blame on Joel for "stealing her choice" in that hospital, without ever bringing up that the Fireflies did the same thing by keeping her asleep and performing the surgery on her with or without her consent. Not only that, but she acted like a vaccine was _guaranteed._ BULLSHIT. If anything, the Fireflies were idiots for trying to kill the one girl who happened to be immune. So if they fuck up, WHOOPS! No do-overs.
It's also baffling that nobody brings up how Ellie's immunity could be passed down to her future children. Also hey, there's another good reason Abby's group could've kept Ellie alive maybe? She would be too important to kill? I dunno. Or maybe if they had another purpose for going into Jackson instead of just taking out Joel. That would be a secondary goal whereas their primary goal would be something different.
Don't forget that this vaccine was not being attempted by a professional virologist, chemist or medical professional educated in treating humans.
It was left up to a vetrinarian, educated to treat animals.
And a fungal vaccine at that, something that we today consider to be impossible to do.
A massive medical or chemistry discovery is needed in 2020 in a fully functional world before it can even be attempted by medical professionals trained and experienced in the specific field of vaccines for humans.
Joel chose not to risk Ellie's life on a 0.0001% chance the vetrinarian could produce a fungal vaccine for humans.
And that chance is actually me being extremely generous. It was more likely 0.0% chance and the Foreflies were just desperate and willing to kill a little girl just to fool themselves with a semblance of hope where there was none. Kill a little girl to boost group morale and keep hope alive in them.
If you ask me, there was never a real chance for a vaccine.
Edit ; I had a virologist correct me recently on this. Fungal Vaccines for humans are impossible PERIOD.
Your best shot is to create a poison that kills the specific fungus but not the body, or the body less than the fungus and hope the body survives and the infection dies. Vaccines imply building immunity and a human body immune to fungal viruses is alos by proxy immune to life. Aka. Dead.
It is not our lack of knowledge or expertise but the nature of the human body that makes this impossible.
The scientific discovery we would need is for all humans to mutate or evolve.
Ever concider that this Vetrinarian might have just been pulling the same hoax as that smart fat guy from Walking dead who lied being on a government mission to save the world, all so he would get protection, rations and even respect.
He might have been hoaxing them for the sake of his daughter Abby.
But he could have been hoaxing them.
But but but Ellie's a LEZBEAN! How dare you expect her to do something like let a male part or fluids anywhere near her. You best respect that, you bigot sandwich!
@@Jetblast01 🤣 Yes yes! True.
But I am not talking from my perspective. Fireflies, they wanna save the world supposedly. If they were willing to kill her for a chance and if it was the only chance they knew they had. It would make more sense to force her into a breeding program and experiment on her babies. Way dark. I know, but hey if you are already putting morals and human lives on the line for 'the greater good or survival of humanity' then yeah... 🤣
Since Ellie was so all in to sacrifice her life for the vaccine, it made sense why she’s mad at Joel. All she ever knew was the Fireflies could make use of her immunity, but Joel killed them and took her out. No one analyzed her conditions or the possibilities of the vaccine for her, plus, she already struggled with survivor’s guilt, seeing the people she loved cared for get bitten and turn while she’s the only one who’s fine.
unfortunetly ellie is gay so there wont be anymore immunes either.
Friendly reminder: the Fireflys' brain surgery would have wasted Ellie's life and their only chance to make a cure. Before the nuclear option of removing the brain, there are many things they should be doing first but didn't have time to by the time they were about to saw the skull; like take chemical/tissue samples with a tiny drill or do a psych evaluation. As long as Ellie lives, she can still share her gift; she just needs to find doctors more qualified than a Batman villain.
Hey, that's pretty damn insulting to Mr. Freeze and numerous other Batman villains.
This is an instance of bad writing in the first game, the Fireflys going from zero to brain removal in zero seconds.
@@devon674 and it worked well enough as long as people don't try to justify that mistake. *Cough*
@@devon674 I think the fireflies being flawed is hinted at a lot in the first game, but then was retconed to fit the new game's story. They may as well be another band of raiders in the first game but in the second they're shown as moral crusaders
There were also recording in the last level that proved the attempt would have failed anyway. Which make Joel not telling ellie that more stupid
One thing that strikes me strange about Jerry (surgeon) the most and one that personally cemented my perception of how good he and fireflies as organization, is the utter lack of respect over human life. In real life, you would want to preserve life of an immune patient for as long as possible in order to find "the right ingredient" that cause their immunity. You would design numerous ways, non-intrusive or at least non life-threatening procedures in order to preserve the patient intact longer so you can perform further testing and improve your chance of finding out how the immunity ticks, if not keeping them alive altogether. He did mention replicating it in lab. Common sense would dictate that it would be whole lotta easier and with much more success rate if the source is preserved, instead of this seemingly one chance one opportunity situation. They could've started from the lowest death risk procedure and work their way up from there slowly as possible.
Instead what you find is how quickly the surgeon and fireflies both goes to the operating table without coming up with anything else. It's almost like the surgeon is scalpel-happy. This, when combined with the mention of past cases makes me feel pretty horrified. If they are very much at ease with killing a child, then out of those cases, how many were sacrificed? How many of those are willing sacrifice? ? how many fell under the scalpel blade? How do we know they're not just magnifying the chance of cure as they're trapped in sunk cost fallacy?
So true! This makes no sense, not in our world and certainly not in their world. They have very little equipment and not even a steady power source to keep samples frozen. And there is no way to produce a vaccine either if they should be able to get that far. A slim hope is to use it to bargain with what ever is left of the government they hate as much as the infected. No such deal would be made with the Fireflys walking away from it.
And this is why I believe Joel made the right call in saving Ellie! It's that the Fireflies and the surgeon aren't abiding by the realistic way medicine ACTUALLY works and instead follows "Video Game choice of all or nothing".
It's the kind of Thompson's Choice where there is only one logical decision to be had.
Sure Joel is selfish and traumatized and desperate. Sure Ellie doesn't get to make a "grown-up" decision over her own life.
But the Fireflys and Doctors and the Surgeon are not operating on any sort of logic when it comes to how medicine is actually conducted in order to be affective! And since the medical side of things is where the first game falls apart, that's what leads me to siding with Joel hard stop.
They clearly don't know how to actually conduct science in order to save others and there's no way I trust them with Ellie.
Yep. Abby's dad was more mad scientist than medical researcher.
Am I misremembering, or did the Fireflies use the word vaccine when talking about a fungus?
@@hideousruin Indeed, a vaccine developed after killing the only known immune person (probably) in a hospital ruin within hours after seeing her for the very first time. That for me is the most unrealistic thing in this games that otherwise does a good job with being realistic.
@@torivar yep. For me it's one of the only big blunders of the first game. And of course it is only amplified in the second. Apparently a lot of writers for video games and movies don't have even a grade school knowledge of science and can't be bothered to skim a Wikipedia article on the subject they're writing about.
The writer for the A Quiet Place movies makes Druckman seem like a Scientific Nobel Prize Winner.
You know there’s a nostalgia critic quote that fits this game Perfectly “yeah but it’s symbolic and means stuff” “just because it’s symbolic and means stuff doesn’t make it good”
I feel that way about a lot of media that is wildly praised. Critics will harp on the themes of a story but sort of disregard how the game goes about execution its exploration of exploring those themes. It's a shame, considering we will eventually reach a point where almost every theme will have already been dissected and explored. And thus, the execution will be the only thing that sets it apart.
I recently watched a discussion with Mauler and Wolf vs Just Write and... it was painful...
@@MacabreStorytelling Its funny thinking back to that discussion cuz I remember before that debate I was actually subscribed to Just Write (I know Im sorry) and had nvr heard of Mauler before and right after watching that debate I unsubbed from Just Write and subscribed to Mauler.
@@MacabreStorytelling Haven't we reached that point years ago? Where everything has been done and dissected and now it should be about execution?
If not, then I think there is very few things left in that regard.
There were no topics this game tackled that were not tackled in other media that came before it, no new angles explored that were not explored before. Not as far as I could notice.
@@cynicalleviathan3305 what's EFAP?
ALSO, the characters act like Ellie is this horrible person seeking revenge over Joel who was her fatherly figure..but isn't that EXACTLY what Abby did? seek vengeance for someone who killed her father??? why is Abby the one that gets a free pass but ellie doesn't?
Naughty Dog: AbBy GoOd, ElLiE bAd!!
almost like they're setting up an arc or something. and don't say Abby doesn't suffer cos all her friends die because of her revenge path as opposed to Ellie who only has 2 friends die
@@omas1178 abby only appears to be aware of the deaths of Manny, Mel and Owen though
Leah she doesnt know about and Leah was killed by scars so it wouldnt be punishment
Danny is killed by Owen
The guy Tommy killed she never knows about
Nora dies in a hospital basement so Abby never finds out
Furthermore the only reason Mel and Owen die is because the plot needs them too
If either of them acted in character the plot would have ended right there
The problem with the idea that Abby suffers is it only occurs through poor writing needing it to happen rather than a plot where it happens naturally
@@aidanaidan8662 the plot happening naturally is Ellie wanting to kill the people that killed Joel. It's as simple as. I'm not sure what established Mel and Owen to be bullet proof so they act differently when Ellie points a gun at them but Mel would absolutely give her up because of where their character conflict was at. And Owen would fight it because why wouldn't he?
While it's technically true she never finds out about Nora, Leigha, ect, consider why, it's because she looses her entire faction. The reasoning can be traced back to killing Joel aswell. If she doesn't kill Joel she doesn't save Lev and Yara, who are the catalysts to her overall arc. She gets a slap on the wrists for seeing owen and stays with the wolves. Nothing is learned
@@omas1178
Firstly this plot cant happen naturally simply due to the amount of plot armour, characters acting out of character, coincidences, and contrivances that are required for the plot to happen
Abby's arc with lev and yara is caused by Owen killing Danny
If owen hadn't done this Abby wouldnt have met yara and lev
This is not caused by Abby killing Joel
Mel should have told Ellie about the scar island because mel one has disdain for Abby and two says abby is probably dead
She would also value the life of their baby and Owen more than abby
Also Mel is pregnant they could have mentioned this at any point to try and save their lives
Ellie does have a few seconds of reprieve in the cutscenes where she kills Mel meaning she could have spared her
Even then the problems still hold that none of these events shouldn't be happening as Isaac would never have allowed nine of his seemingly top soldiers to travel 3000 miles to get revenge on a guy he doesnt know
This video really made me appreciate the first TLOU even more. A beautiful tale of two people finding hope in an hopeless world, the game just had to build around that concept to make it believable. The art, music, gameplay, characters, plot, events all act in unison to create an art piece.
Getting a clear emotion or concept across requires a certain genuine simplicity in its direction/creation process that TLOU 2 just lacks
"Ellie was the hope for the WORLD!" and "The Fireflies were the only hope for the WORLD!" but we don't see the rest of the world in the story! We only see the USA. I would have LOVED to see how the outside world is handling the Cordyceps infection, in fact that what I had originally hoped for the sequel instead of ruining the ending of TLOU. Have us explore other Characters and their stories going on around the World instead of just focusing on the US, because I find it kind of hilarious now that TLOU2 hints at that Jerry was the only person in the world that could make the vaccine and that the Fireflies are the only ones looking for cure and is the hope for all of humanity around the world.
lol it turns out it’s only the US and peeps in France are just getting along swimmingly
@@MacabreStorytelling please tell me you’re joking
I wouldn't be surprised if they ripped off Metro Exodus route where they believed that only Moscow survived the nuke but not the rest of the world.
i never thought about this omg this is so true
The game was made by Americans. They think the US IS the world :)
I think this has to do with how crappy Abby's arc is, but she almost comes off as a narcissist. Think about it, she has no problem with brutality torturing a man who had just saved her life, yet when some of her friends alienate her because of it, or at least dislike her, she decides to save two kids. Even though earlier in the game she tries to justify killing seraphite kids.
And when she's about to kill Dina, Lev calls her name. She's nearly going to destory her image in his eyes, so she lets them go because she doesn't want to alienate Lev.
But thats just my thought process on it.
No offense- if this was a new game and we knew nothing about it, I would probably say that Abby's story is better than Ellie's. The reason she killed joel after he saved her was bc even though he saved her, he still killed her dad. And when the child and her are arguing about Abby killing seraphite it shows yet again that there always 2 sides to every story.
And the part where she almost killed Dina in front of lev shows how much she's hurt after Ellie killed her friends. She could let the anger consume her but know shes got lev and they both overcome it. That's why her arc could be argued to being better than Ellie's
@@ericv.5552 I would entirely disagree. if it was a new IP, I'd still be more willing to forgive her, but not by much. If they kept everything the same, but changed names and the world, I'd still probably dislike her.
She encouraged child murder. Her dad frankly got what he deserved in my opinion.
@@ericv.5552 "The reason she killed joel after he saved her was bc even though he saved her, he still killed her dad."
Maybe, but why torture the guy who just saved her life? It's sadistic. Why not a quick bullet to the head with no suffering?
@@coyotewayfarer4380 exactly she let her anger consume her instead of forgiving. She learned that later on around the end of the game while Ellie learned that after it was too late (when Dina left with her baby)
Eric V. I think the problem is people need to feel justified in there dislike/like of something
There’s plenty of shows movies games I didn’t like for no other real reason then I didn’t like them. It’s not enough that people don’t like last of us 2 they have to try to make ther dislike the “Right” way of looking at the game
My biggest complaint is how the game ironically makes Joel's morally grey decision at the end of the first game the objectively correct choice.
Survival is a huge theme in the first game - we are shown time and time again how the world has basically failed to stabilize outside of Jackson. Quarantine zones are failing, entire cities have been abandoned to the virus, children have to be desensitized to ultra-violence if they are to have any hope of making it through puberty and there are more bandits than non-bandits. This is why Ellie's operation in the first game is such a big deal: it represents hope for change in the world order.
It's ironic then that in the sequel after Joel 'dooms humanity' they decide to relegate the infected to jump scares and filler combat arenas, instead of having them be be a part ANY significant story beats. If you look at all the way of life that survivors have in the second game you can see civilization is not damned, it is THRIVING. Jackson can afford to send teenagers on zombie patrols in snowstorms without adult supervision, the WLF owns the streets of Seattle and the Seraphites have an entire island to themselves that isn't contaminated by a single spore - in the first game, that would be a luxury akin to El Dorado.
The themes are so completely disparate from the first game that you could almost tell the exact same story without using any recurring characters if they didn't bring back a few plot elements
Well said. I mentioned to someone else that if the series had jumped say 20 years into the future, perhaps we could get a better grasp on how the world changed as a result of Joel's choice. And yet 5 years later and infected barely have any effect on the world as it is. Is it the infected's fault the WLF and Seraphites are going at it? And if so, how would have a vaccine being developed prevented them from squaring off? Also consider developing a vaccine and administering it on a scale that would do ANYTHING of substantial value would probably take years if not decades.
@@MacabreStorytelling As people have mentioned time and time again, a vaccine doesn't stop the rat king from tearing you in half.
It also irked me that people kept referring to it as a “cure”. Bitch no lol a vaccine only stops the infection. That seems like literally the least dangerous aspect of everything in the game universe.
@@MacabreStorytelling yeah, it's incredibly odd that they dropped that entire plot about zombies in your zombie game. That sequence where Dina finds out Ellie is immune is rendered moot pretty much immediately because that revelation is used as a device purely to cause short term drama in their relationship instead of being an important plot beat for the overarching narrative.
I have to wonder how the 8 year development affected aspects like this. Perhaps there were more plans for a storyline revolving around how significant it is that Ellie is immune but they got cut or changed into the game we got. Why would you have a zombie game where the main character is immune but have that immunity end up being a completely insignificant detail? Absolutely bizarre
EXACTLY. And that’s what I hate most of all about this sequel. That it didn’t even feel like a mf sequel in the first place.
TLOU2 is like a dish that was made with good ingredients and then was served on a fancy plate, but the Chef was terrible at his job and try to do more than he can handle. It has good ingredients and was presented nicely, but it tasted terrible in the end, effectively wasting all that preparation.
You’re correct.
Even Walter White couldn’t find any chemistry between these characters
where is the cocainer
Ha, good one
TIGHT! TIGHT!
Most of the characters are soo poorly written, I don't even want any chemistry between them.
Neo Cranium did a recut which made the (majority of the) story make a lot more sense and flow and work together far better. I would have made a few additional changes (notably including Joel's last meaningful conversation with Ellie the night after the party in it's natural location), but I also note that the gameplay is better without the story, and the story better without the gameplay loop. I recommend giving it a look, it shows how badly the developers messed up their own material by not understanding how real people think.
The game is a mess because especially as written and organised at release it makes no sense, has far too many coarse emotionally manipulative/deceptive "attempts" though most fail to land. (Exception of some of the flashbacks, but these are out of place and would have been better telling the background to the three days in Seattle at the start).
So Neil ACTUALLY HAD AN IDEA to build up Abby with Joel and the others before the killing? They just threw away all that chance to create Abby as a sympathetic character and said "fuck it, we need to make the plot happen." I swear, every time I look at something about this game, I find another disappointment.
A great lesson here: Don't rush, take the time you need. It's a 25 hour game Neil, a couple extra hours in Jackson wouldn't have been that big of a deal and would have helped ALOT.
@@MacabreStorytelling Abby bonding with Ellie and Joel before the death of Joel could have allowed for Neil Druckmann to tell the story of "Hey, maybe what I did was wrong, and revenge wasn't the answer" without Abby's face turn coming off as artificial due to some third party (Lev and Yara) coming out of nowhere to make Abby into Part 1 Joel 2.0. She'd be back with her friends in Jackson, or somewhere else, but feel empty inside. That whole Seraphite subplot could be removed entirely.
Another possibility related to that: if the story wanted to use Abby instead of Dina as the love interest (since Dina was always going though an on-off thing with Jesse, Ellie would have been available while Dina was not), it would have given more of a present-day foundation for Abby and Ellie's relationship (as opposed to Dina and Ellie having an offscreen past forming their basis), creating an even MORE immediate and tragic twist.
Of course, a romance wouldn't be necessary--just a friendship could have gotten a similar pain across--but knowing the girl you kissed a few days ago just killed your dad would send any girl off the deep end.
They threw that away for pacing issues
@@kanyeeastlolz There already is wasted time in the game as it is. That's why I'm suggesting that ditching the Lev and Yara subplot would have been fine. An Abby/Ellie relationship subplot (again, friendship OR romance) could have filled that new space.
@@Montesama314 agreed. The yara/lev subplot does absolutely nothing to add to the narrative. In fact it detracts and distorts from it. Essentially, we come to a meeting of the minds that this game was replete with poor writing. If part 3 wants to be a success, then some serious consideration about the direction of the story had better be considered.... each and everyone of the original characters were ruined in part 2 - including Ellie. If lev and Abby are the characters of focus in part 3, then this game won’t sell for jack. They’re better of going to new characters. Pushing a narrative in Europe.... look at the map on the wall in the seraphite shrine in day 1 when abby is confronted by the seraphites... this is foreshadowing of what is to come...
It’s insane how empty the game made me feel, it just felt so completely and utterly pointless. Such wasted potential.
If the game is secretly Neil Druckman giving a massive "f*ck you" to the anyone who wanted a sequel and for the eventual selling out of the franchise, I could honestly forgive him lol
@@theinfernoburns It was a fuck you to people who liked Joel after the first one. He genuinely thought people would see him as an evil dickhead for lying.
That's the point. Game is a masterpiece because it's meta. It makes you feel just like the characters.
@@EricMalette but it wasn't the point nor was it a masterpiece
@@I-need-2-win Yeah, it was. This went way over your head. You got tilted and it's hilarious. The game is truly a masterpiece.
Imagine if they game had started the same way LOU 1 did. But instead of experiencing the outbreak through the eyes of Joel's daughter only for her to die, we experience the hospital massacre through the eyes of Abby only to find her father dead. Hell imagine we didn't even know what we were experiencing and it played out like this:
The game opens with young abby chilling about in a building when all the sudden, gunfire breaks out. We don't know who Abby is, where we are, or what's going on. After the fighting subsides, we control Abby as she makes her way through the bloodbath. Again at this point we still don't know what's going on. Abby sees the carnage as she searches through the hospital. At the end she opens the door to find her father dead. Now it all comes crashing down on us. We realize that this girl is the Doctor's daughter, the Doctor we killed at the end of Part 1. The segment ends with Abby sobbing and clutching her father's body just as Joel did Sarah in the prologue of the first game. Cut to title screen.
Now we have much more reason to emphasize with Abby instead of instantly hating her when we jump to her perspective later on. Players would be less likely to resent the game for making us play as her, which was a common criticism among those who didn't like the switch. It also sets up a pit of dread in our stomach, because we know where this is leading. Abby is going to come for Joel. It's the equivalent of being told about the bomb under the table before it explodes. There is much more tension and payoff instead of shock and confusion.
Excellent. Idk why they didn’t start out with Abby.
I loved TLOU Pt 2 and disagree with a lot of stuff in this video and this comment section, but I completely agree with your comment. This would have been so much better
But I feel like that was almost the whole point of the story. We all understand things if you walk a mile in the other person's shoes. That's almost a given. That's the power of storytelling. Making us understand and sympathise with the other side and seeing things from a perspective we can't have ourselves. That would have been easy and unremarkable. I feel like the ENTIRE point is that the game wants to work that concept backwards and play with storytelling and ehat it can do. Give us no set up. No sympathy. No understanding. Just raw hatred, confusion and grief. Put us not in the shoes of the perpetrator who we understand (exactly what Part 1 did) but make us play the victim with no reason to care about the other person. Of course it's just a matter of perspective. The other side usually have their reasons for acting, thinking or believing what they do. This is how all conflict is. The solution is almost always compromise based on understanding each other's sides. That's what the game explores.
@@kevtb874 Sounds like something a lot of people would hate.
@@Mufflin at first. The question is whether they hate it when the credits. Roll. From what I've read many changed their minds. Many didn't. Many didn't even want to finish the game.
It was bold and new and something only a video game could execute the way they did it. I get that it didn't work for some. For me it worked for the most part (the structure and pacing where unusual) but that aspect of the game is one of the most interesting to me. Just replayed it for the first time since release and knowing what was coming and I was much more ready to take in the story.
1:47:24
"... its almost as if, the writers for Part 2 had a lack of faith when it came to the capacity of empathy of the player."
Holy shit, exactly! This game hammers over your head the messages and themes regarding empathy so many times, without any subtlety, that I started to tune out half way through the game. Its like when a comedian starts explaining a joke for the 100th time why its funny, the humor just gets lost.
Nice comparison!
They didn't even have any faith in their own story that's why , revenge plot for the last of us 2 is just not interesting
I think they should've realised that nothing will ever be as impactful as watching a man lose his daughter as society collapses around him and then get a second chance at being a dad. There was no room for a sequel as good as the first game.
@@yeatnumber1Dmunchereven thinking about the first game makes me feel emotions. What a wonderful game.
"Perhaps they were too married to their conceptual ideas"
There's an interview out there with Druckmann where he says that he wanted to make a character that you loathed and then bring you around to liking them (as mentioned in the video). His actual storytelling goal was to set up Abby as being terrible and then do the perspective switch, presumably to gut-punch the player for having their preconceptions about her.
Of course, there's a reason this story isn't done -- at least not in this way -- and it's because it doesn't really work. Druckmann even said that when they were focus testing the story, *everybody hated Abby*, and instead of realizing that it was a structural problem they just desperately added scenes with her to try and build more sympathy. This kinda-sorta makes sense, as these focus tests were done very late in development and restructuring the entire game was pretty much out of the question by then... but it was also a storytelling decision that anybody could have looked at and known wasn't working before they were too deep to change things.
(Although I think the overall story underwent some significant changes before release-- early information focused on how Ellie and Dina would do missions in Jackson together to build up their relationship, and suggested that *Dina* was actually going to be killed by religious extremists and Ellie's revenge quest would be against the Seraphites. The problems that arose from this are that (1) nobody cared about Dina and nobody was sold that Ellie would turn into a mass murderer if she was killed, and (2) it's a zombie game and making the main enemies religious nutjobs seemed extremely weird. This was the storyline they implied shortly after the first release trailer, and I think it underwent *substantial* re-writes afterward when the response was not what Naughty Dog wanted, which in turn is why TLoU2's story decisions feel like rushed first-draft setups that really needed a second pass.)
It doesn't helps that *he* openly admits that Abby is his favorite character and *he* already had all the sympathy he needed behind her and couldn't understand why focus testers didn't love her as much as he did.
So this was actually Druckmann's conceptual thesis, and yes, I believe it's safe to say that he was so married to this *concept* that he failed to step back and realize that it simply wasn't working for the story he wanted to tell.
I knew it! Originally everyone thought Dina was going to get axed but yeah no one would buy that since we would have only had a couple hours to properly build their relationship.
In my view, a truly great writer could make anything work. When it comes to art, I believe nothing is off limits. Geniuses in the field can show you that rules can be broken in order to tell good stories. And tbh this story did work for a lot of people. No doubt it divided a fanbase, but that's the thing: it's divided, not disintegrated. Begun, the fan wars have.
On a serious note, however, I'm glad they really tried to make this concept work - for better or worse. Letting a creative go wild can lead to some inspired work, or devolve into lunacy, but either way it is interesting. And I will praise one thing, this does not feel like a story by committee. In an age of milquetoast big budget fair, to have something so bold is kind of a breath of fresh air. Maybe I'm ubisofted out who knows...
@@eb2681 "Maybe I'm ubisofted out who knows..."
Preach
@@eb2681 Wow that's pretty good take! I do applaud creators that take massive risks like these, but to do such experimentation on a beloved game like the last of us? Oooh, tough one. In this case, I don't care whether they did something bold, because the execution was terrible and the game landed flat on my face. I know this sounds basal and unsophisticated, but this is just my gut feeling.
Well said. This was a failed experiment for sure. It might have not been as bad if they hadn't had to build off of beloved characters from the extremely successful first game which for some reason Neil seems to hold in contempt. Attempt this kind of story in something like Days Gone and maybe (and that's a big maybe) ... nah it probably wouldn't work either lol. But at least the backlash would be somewhat tamer and people will forget about it after some time
I hate what they did to Tommy. He was one of my faves (and still is, except his last scene). I liked him even more than Joel. Tommy is such a great and brave and loving guy (and I love his voice actor!). And then the last scene.. just killed him more than Abby did. This was the scene where I decided that this game sucks for me.
I loved how tommy character was here even if it sad in the end tommy didn’t deserve what he got he did pretty bad shit like Joel but in the end he wanted a new life and to help others a normal one again and he gets so caught up in lost,grief,and revenge he loses his personality by becoming the opposite of what he ways when we met him by calling Ellie a coward for not wanting to go after abby for the exact reason tommy didn’t wanna go after her in the first place
I legit thought he was dead- and I panicked
you know why he's a great sniper? mr. Pierce also voiced Mother (SEAL and leader of AFO team Neptune) on Medal of Honor 2010. Great game. PS looks like he'll also be on the HBO show.
Yeah f*** this game
@@blazodeolireta Medal of Honor 2010 might be one of the most underrated games I have ever played in my life. It’s PHENOMENAL.
One thing I have to say that is extremely bothersome- after the first game, Ellie has an overarching "beef" with Joel despite all they got through together. OK, he lied to her, but guess what, her character is so self-absorbed and disappointed with not being a martyr that she spends more years at odds with Joel vs the bond they created through their survival journey, that it's just not believable in any reasonable sense. That's a very weak component of Ellie's part in the 2nd game as far as I'm concerned 🤮
I agree 100%. I also refuse to believe that she didn't couldn't see how much her life mattered to Joel. She tells him, "I was supposed to die in that hospital, my life you have fucking mattered," but it did matter, it mattered to Joel. How could she not see that? Sure, I could understand the whole "everyone died in vein" guilt she has, but was Joel caring about her really not enough for her to accept it and move on? 😕
@@SpookyBoba we know grudges can happen, but the lousy writing tries to get us to believe Joel's offense was way more than it was, if she weighed her experience with him.. instead, her character arc goes so low for cheap revenge and without insight, it leaves us disappointed.
Crazy how many people thought this was good.. but it goes to show what people are willing to rationalize it.
@@genox3636 For real, those people seem the type to leave Ellie with the fireflies if they had the option to. I mean, How could they be against Joel on this? How could they think her hating him is the best thing for the story? It just seems normal (to me) to save their child or child figure from being disected for the so-called "greater good," but I guess I'm asking to much of people 😂
@@SpookyBoba it's clever because the question of Joel's character decision is around jabs 💉
The message is: revenge is pointless and will never bring you satisfaction. It will only make thins worse for you. But only if you’re Ellie.
If you’re Abby then revenge will always satisfy you and never cause you problems, and if it does it is because Ellie is a bad person.
My problem was that Abby’s story demonstrates that, yes, revenge won’t solve your problems BUT there is always a chance for redemption by helping others.
And therefore, when Ellie was on the verge of killing Abby I was like “what difference does it make if Ellie kills Abby? She can just save some kid on her way home and redeem herself.”
@@MacabreStorytelling I mean isn’t that how it works in real life? If I beat and kill someone or whatever I can always adopt a child, then the cops can’t touch me!
No abby's whole life, her friends and her community were all consumed by revenge and vengeance. Abby paid a lot for getting her revenge and it didn't really make her feel any better. After she gets revenge on Joel she always considers herself a bad person and says it many times in the game. She even gets lambasted from Mel for being terrible. Her life previous to getting revenge was all about getting strong enough for revenge to the point where she would put friends and enjoyment to the wayside. Her friends get systematically killed because of her. Her community is consumed by a war that is inherently about getting revenge on the side who shot first each side believing the other was the aggressor. Then she gets enslaved and is forced to work on a plantation where she's mentality and physically tortured. Abby's quest for revenge didn't work out well for her at all. Yeah she eventually gets away on a boat with Lev but it's not like they have some stable home or food source or community or friends or loved ones. Abby loses everything from her former life. Abby barely limps away with her life on a dingy with only Lev.
Bro are you sure? All of Abby’s friends die as a direct result of her decision to get revenge by killing Joel. I’d argue she had a much worse time of it as Ellie had Dina, Tommy, JJ, and the entirety of Jackson to head back to.
@@MacabreStorytelling because Ellie's chance of redemption is precisely saving Abby and Lev
Man, towards the end of the video I realized that the game would’ve been so much better if the writers would’ve stopped to think “what would Joel do after this...” “what would Ellie do...” “what would Tommy do...”, etc etc. That was one element from Vince Gilligan’s team when writing Breaking Bad. Imagine if Vince would’ve worked on this game! It would’ve been sooooo much better
Best writing hack: Write strong characters and they will write your story for you.
Yup. Or “what would” the rest of the group of WLF’s apart from Abbie do? In Joel’s death scene they all act in such strange ways that it completely takes you out of the immersion. After the
first game I would have thought that Joel’s death scene would be the most emotional scene in media history. But…nothing. No heavy heart, no slightly watery eye. Nothing. Because the scene just seemed so unrealistic in the way everyone was acting. The rest of that WLF group have this genuine hatred towards Joel even though it’s years since he killed a man that wasn’t even any of their fathers. Like…what? Why do they attack Tommy so violently? Why does Manny spit on Joel’s body? Why are the rest of them so full of hatred towards him? It makes no sense. And then all of them apart from Owen wanted to put a bullet in Ellie and Tommy’s head! Like…wtf. Why were they so worked up and full of hatred for Ellie. An innocent girl that just had to lie there and watch her newfound dad get brutally tortured and murdered. I wasn’t moved emotionally at all and I feel robbed that I wasn’t. And this is coming from someone that cried at Sarah’s death scene. And we only played as her for 3 minutes. We played as Joel for the entirety of the first game.
Take a shot every time he says
And yet it gets worse.
My scotch just got finished this way. The only worst thing left to happen was to break/crack the disc, explode my PlayStation and disrupt the energy on my apartment. But thinking a bit about it, self destructing would be better than facing that game again. So yea, I opened another bottle.
they’re really tryna tell me dina who was less than 2 weeks pregnant, fell through a high ass window got shot at and ran heavily everywhere and even after she was two weeks pregnant got nearly beaten to death by getting her face smashed in and a arrow in her shoulder didn’t die from simply stress alone???!! make it make sense omggg
Mel was 8 months pregnant. That's even worse lmao
@@jasonalv7436 here's something funny: her not recalling her baby when she was ambushed by ellie and owen does it when at parts of the narrative he tries his best to avoid her and cares more for abby than his baby is just too comical 4 me😤😤😤😤🤣🤣🤣🤣
and why i'm not surprized the fact that mOsTy LovE gOnE tO tHe gAmE as the trust worthy sources say in r/tlou saying that the game is not a revenge narrative even though some intepreted the story and highlighted it as one of the best revenge narrative in game just saying
@@3rdpositionauktion45 right?? why not have mel remind ellie at the beginning and try and bargain then you could have a choice of either taking both their lives or letting them go. even if it wasn’t a players choice at least she would have to face that and have it weigh on her bc she chose to kill her even after she found out, instead of having it at the last minute
Not everyone is weak like you
The game is unbelievable on a technical level. The acting, animation , scope and wealth of detail are unrivaled. I think this is why the game got so much praise. Its lifted up so much by these aspects.But ofcourse its conceptual planning and writing are really quite tragically misdirected.
@Macabre Storytelling Thanks for liking my comment! Your video is easily the best on this game. I hope the folks at Naughty Dog see it. Most thorough critique (and balanced)of the game.
Graphically the game is jaw dropping, love the Last of US atmosphere, love the gameplay of both the 1st and 2nd one... BUT yeah, the story in the 2nd one is a mess, can’t stand it... So many different directions they could have went ...
The story is great and you'll think so too when you become an adult
@@gladman9634 .... Actually I can say the same to you, since the story seems like it was written by a 10 year old, maybe you can relate because of that...
@@funkyflights but then you're not saying the same
the surgeon held a knife to Joel and said you arent taking her. Joel had no choice
One of the biggest wastes they did was not showing the surgeons and doctors at least Abby's dad having second thoughts or voicing their displeasure on having to dissect a teenage girl. it would not have saved the game but it would have at least made the doctors look more human. I mean how they look in the Ellie rescue scene these scientists might have well been moustache twirling Nazis scientists for all we care. A group of medical" experts" wanting to cut a child open without her consent first looks really villainous no matter how you spin it, no matter if it is for a cure or not.
@fleurma76 I hear ya and I agree with you. How both Elly and Abby spoke in them scenes sound so cliché and cartoon hero like. I was half expecting one of them to then save "I will save the world".
In your conclusion you said it yourself without noticing; the reason why the second one isn't as good as the first one is the fact that it wasn't, in fact, made by the same people.
Neil had Bruce by his side on the first game and in part two, he was basically by himself. So yeah, I blame mostly Neil .
Also, Neil doesn't accept criticism and even said in one interview that these people criticizing the game "don't matter at all". So I guess he doesn't care about my money either, which I'll be spending on games that he doesn't make.
Yeah after I wrote my script I actually read up on all the Neil, Bruce, Amy details and the massive Naughty Dog migration after Uncharted 4. I am cautious to believe any more detailed explanations as to what happened from the likes of Reddit and what not... but I can’t say this doesn’t seem like some shit didn’t go down.
Yeah I figured Neil can't take criticism. When the leaks came out he immediately turned off the comments on his Instagram page. Don't forget Troy Baker's cringey and nonsensical defense for this game. That made me lose respect for Troy Baker for not understanding why his fans are mad.
He acts like the game is so deep that the people who don’t like it don’t understand it. Yet the themes are so blatant and obvious that I felt smashed through the skull by them. Like yeah Neil you’re really smart way to go
@@MacabreStorytelling triple negative sentence gave me stroke
Spot on.
You can't hide a poorly written story behind fancy graphics and near-perfect gameplay mechanics. And even if you hate the character, Laura Bailey did an incredible job at playing Abby in the game and deserves none of the hate associated with the actions of her character. Ashley Johnson (Voice of Ellie) got little to no backlash for her characters choices in the game, why should Laura get all the criticism?
Yeah I agree. I feel bad for Laura. She’s a truly amazing voice actress. It’s just the terrible story and characters
Pffft. Welcome to humanity. You must be new. JK Simmons, before he played fan favorite characters like J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man, was probably best known before then in a stint he had on the show OZ where he played a Neo-Nazi leader. He got shit for him playing that role for years because people hated his character so much. Lots of people can't separate the hate they have for a character with the person who portrayed them.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe You think that's bad, check out the treatment received by the actor who played the crazy fuck antagonist in Silence of the Lambs. That said, I'm also tired of hearing complaints about "death threats" online; people get death threats all the fucking time, but it's only put into the news when it's convenient for someone's narrative. A death threat on Twitter is about as humdrum as can be. Like, what's it matter if you get a death threat? It's not like someone can't kill you without first issuing a threat, nor is it the case that, once a threat is issued, an attempted murder MUST take place, so it's meaningless.
"You can't hide poorly written scene behind a fancy graphics and near perfect gameplay"
This reminds me so much of Kingdom Hearts 😂😂😂
Definitely people should be angry at the developers
“Destroying pre established characters.” This pretty much sums up the game
Correction: sums up a lot of sequels/new chapters in beloved franchises nowadays 😕
No offense- this doesn't ruin previous characters. This puts them in a different situation than they were in the previously which is why they don't don't act much as last time. You might have finished the game but if u still this is a bad game then you didn't finish the real purpose of the game which is that there are always two sides to a story. It's definitely not better than the last of us 1 but definitely not bad
@@ericv.5552 Except as I said the entire point of Part 2, a 20 hour experience, was accomplished in Part 1 in about 15 seconds, and Part 1 did it in a far more coherent and subtle way.
Far from it. Joel and Ellie acted very much in character. The lie gradually ripped them apart.
@@MacabreStorytelling what were the main points?
*_ARE YOU WEARING MY BACKPACK?!_*
What's that music theme playing in that moment?
I'll be honest, those are one of the very few lines that made me like Abby a tiny bit. Only a little though.
@@rkarcade7417 It's the Kill Bill alarm sound lol
@@MacabreStorytelling thank you. I remember I heard it sometime many years ago.
I think ND actually did intend that line to have that effect. Either way, I personally thought it was funny in a good way.
I never really bought Ellie being so naive about what Joel did. She seemed so oblivious to the Firefly event, when she is obviously pretty bright. At the end of the first game it seemed like Ellie clearly understood that something happened but was content with letting it go.
Damn, your critique of Abby killing Joel so easily after he saved her life and your potential rewrite of using the Joel-saves-Abby twist to make Abby's scene better is so fucking spot on.
This might have nothing to do with anything, but I always go back to the first game and remember Joel telling Ellie after Tess, Henry, and Sam died that when people die you have to continue on, you can’t hold onto them. Life is for the living. Joel would have NEVER wanted Ellie to seek revenge for his death, but Ellie obviously deeply cares for people and she fears losing people she loves. So, it makes sense but i wish they would have addressed what Joel would say somewhere. He brought it up a couple times in the first game, that was how he survived.
I'm surprised so many people liked Dina. She was a shallow, moronic, token character placed in there purely to be a love interest.
Her and Ellie kissed once then had a high bang and suddenly they're soulmates and raise a baby together??
There's no connection there, at all.
I think it was a consequence of the game being so overstuffed. Ellie and Joel were the main focus of Part 1 whereas Part 2 has ALOT going on. I think in order to make the game as impact as Part 1 it should have either been longer or probably a better option, should have drastically cut its cast of characters.
She didn't have any chemistry with Ellie. Their conversations fizzled with no impact and barely any emotion with a few exceptions. She seemed like a plot device, and not much more.
I think the lack of chemistry was more due to us not seeing the bulk of their relationship BEFORE the revenge quest. We only see them together for a short time before Ellie's revenge begins to tear them apart, whereas in Part 1, we basically had the whole game to build up Ellie and Joel's relationship.
@@MacabreStorytelling I partly agree, there's not enough development between them. But they're not IN a relationship before the game. They only get together in part 2. Sure, there's some clear tension between them in the first few hours so you can clearly tell they're both interested, but I just can't buy Dina going on the revenge quest with Ellie, there just doesn't seem to be that spark between them, that characters that care about each other have. It's just awkward and bland.
@@morfinny94 Yeah they seem to hint in the prologue their relationship up until now has been like an unspoken longing for each other. But to have them hook up and then two scenes later start to have their relationship put to the test feels incredibly rushed. Maybe if we spent some time with them on the road to Seattle before Ellie starts to go all John Wicky.
I like your idea about Ellie finding Abby already dead. Then she could have broken down in hysterics, "You can't be dead, no, no" etc. which was her finally coming to fully grieve Joel's death. They could have played a montague of moments they'd shared together and then rolled the credits. It would have been sad and left the player shocked but it would have given closure. That would also have shown that really it was (still) about Ellie and Joel the whole time. Besides, WGAS about any of the other characters, who were all dead weight to the whole thing anyway?
What about not releasing her and just sitting there and play a guitar she randomly found back in the building, until Abby simply passes away. And then walking around she finds Lev still alive, she releases her and take her with her to Jackson
@@hectortorres8188 yea bro y’all shoulda wrote the story man
A montage of moments would have been cheesy. It could end with one last excellent and heartwarming flashback.
It was definitely weird to me that Ellie didn’t find out why Abby killed Joel
But she does know??? Ellie literally said "I know why you killed Joel he did what he did to save me there is no cure because of me I am the one that
you want" as Abby confronted Ellie in the theater.
@@jackreynolds9183 yeah these people criticizing the game literally didnt even play it
@@PeachesandCream225 I played it so I can criticize it
@@jackreynolds9183 Except the cure is not the reason Abby killed Joel, it's because Joel killed Abby's father, nothing more, nothing less.
@@PeachesandCream225Shut it, fanboy.
This is a great video, and I commend you for your work here. But this has to be said: I find it hilarious that Jerry went from a nameless NPC to a savior of the world who is a neurosurgeon, virologist, and infectious disease expert all in one. Truly astounding.
and that all without any supply of high end lab equipment and other experts on their respective fields. damn if we just had a jerry in early 2020 and the sars cov2 pandemic would have been over in summer.
@@AzraelGFG he's such a fast learner too, probably worked 168 hours a week as a surgeon.
But seriously though, he looks about 50 (at MOST) in 2033, meaning he was about 30 in 2013... You don't become a neurosurgeon until you're about 35, so uhm-
It's so silly I can't believe people go with that narrative.
@@yeatnumber1Dmuncher maybe someone who is 70 in 2033 and 50 in 2013 taught him neurosurgery. It's the Apocalypse you gotta do the best you can.
the best way I heard it put by a reviewer
"I was told this game would ask me deep questions, but I never felt it asked me anything, it just told me 'violence' louder and more aggressively until I couldn't even hear what it was saying"
My biggest problem with this game was the fact that it forces you to be a bad person, it makes an effort to make you feel terrible for every action you take, and never gives you the chance to stop. They make an effort to make the game less enjoyable and fun in order to push their message and push a large part of the audience away by doing so.
And, in regards to the message, I assume it's meant to be that revenge is bad, but that's not what the game suggests. Ellie, who almost goes through with her revenge but inexplicably gives up at the last moment, loses everything. Her wife and son abandon her, her last link to Joel in her guitar playing is lost, most of Jackson likely will reject her because of her abandoning Dina, she has nothing left. Abby, who actually does go through with her revenge, in possibly the most brutal fashion possible, loses her friends. But, then finds a new friend, then finds the fireflies, which she's been talking about for her whole half of the game, she gets what she wants in the end and ultimately comes out better than Ellie. So, the person who does go through with revenge ends up better than the person who doesn't, so it says to me that, rather than 'revenge is bad', the message is 'if you're gonna go on a revenge mission, finish the job'
I did find that ironic. They leave Ellie and Tommy alive... and it led to a shit ton of carnage. I kept thinking to myself "Shit, maybe you should have just killed them". Felt the same way when we got to the end of Day 3. I was like "Abby, I know you are turning a new leaf and shit, but you gotta protect Lev. You already probably killed Jesse and Tommy, killing Ellie and Dina to secure your safety as well as Levs may be the way to go"
It's crazy because the ONLY time I felt bad was when I had to shoot dogs because I panicked and suck really at the game and I'm scared lol. I didn't feel bad for killing a single person. Everyone is an asshole. Also fighting ellie as abby would have been harder if I didn't know the outcome already, thinking I'm going to kill ellie would make me feel bad. And fighting abby at the end feels like shit. But I didn't feel like the game was trying to make me feel bad, maybe it's just me.
@@ErinJeanette Per your dog example, that was exactly my problem. I already felt really crappy when I killed Bear and Alice... so playing fetch with them later on... was it meant to make me feel more crappy? In any case, it just felt redundant as the game already accomplished its goal initially when I killed them. If someone didn't feel bad about stabbing Alice say, I don't see how playing fetch with her later would then make them NOW feel bad. That is my biggest issue with the switch from Ellie and Abby in general. I can't really see Abby's segment making the player feel fundamentally or significantly different than how they already felt in Ellie's segment. Because of this, I feel like one could remove Abby's segment entirely and the game would roughly deliver the same experience.
@@MacabreStorytelling touché
For me, it said "Violence is bad, unless its in self defense. Revenge is bad."
To both those, I say "No shit, Neil. We know."
Ellie clearly suspects that Joel is lying but her reaction when she finds out the truth seems to indicate that she never really know.
it's not that she never know its she knew he was lying about something but she never what he actually did.
You ever found out something to be true you didn’t want to be? Whole world collapsed. She suspected it but was never confirmed. So when she found out the truth that her immunity was probably going to actually save humanity rather than being worthless like Joel said it was she was crushed
@@zay_tiggygaming But she isn’t worthless. Immunity or not, her life is precious
I think it’s more that all her guilt has built up and hearing the evidence cracks her. Her suspicions are confirmed and she can’t handle it.
Can't wait for TLOU pt3 when the son/daughter of the the fat Rattler grows up and seeks revenge on Elie for killing his/her dad, who we come to fine out in flashbacks was only imprisoning and torturing those people because THEY were the actual bad guys at first. Because you know, there are 2 sides to each story 🙄
bruh
LOL
Terrific, terrific critique. The more time passes since I played Part 2, the sadder I get for the missed opportunities this game had to be a definitive sequel. He'd probably never admit it, but Neil Druckmann sorely missed Bruce Straley's (Staley?) voice in his ear with this one.
As did I...
I think a lot of people agree with this. If you view the original script from Neil and she the changes, they’re pretty significant. The issue with the last of us part 2, we discuss the developers actions whereas in the original, we discuss the characters actions. This is what makes part 2 awful; this is what makes the original a masterpiece. For example, in part 2 we discuss why the devs would make us play as Abby, why so many coincidences, and why we were lied to in the marketing. In the original, we discuss the meaning of the giraffe scene, Joel’s decision to save Ellie, the fireflies competence or lack thereof, etc.
I preordered the collector’s edition and once I finished the game I was like, “at least I got some cool stuff.”
I actually love the idea of Ellie tracking down Abby and seeing her Already dead. Also what’s the song that played during the betrayal of Ellie? I’m obsessed
The tune that plays just as the section begins? Idk off the top of my head but when I get home tonight from work I'll double-check and hit you up.
Macabre Storytelling I found it. It’s funny how I said I was “Obsessed “ with it . It’s name is The Obsession
@@Bataowata Ba dum tis
But then they couldn't have Abby in part 3. Which they obviously want to.
one thing that i want to comment is that Abby´s friends didnt die because the murder of Joel, they died because they stupidly decided to leave Ellie and Tommy alive, even when Ellie was screaming that she was going to murder them and one of the characters even said so "no loose ends", so they knew that leaving them alive will make them look for them with vengeance like they did with Joel, also they wear the logo of their group, which is what Ellie and Tommy use to know who they are and from where they are, the story happens just because they are idiots.
Exactly, it also kind of ruins the message of the game. Isn't the message violence will beget other violence? So I guess this shows that showing mercy instead of violence causes more violence
@@jasonalv7436 Indeed. And Ellie finally shows mercy instead of anger, and her reward is...losing everything, even the ability to play guitar. Absolutely nothing is gained by being nice, while it can actually bite you, and all your friends, right in the ass.
You know... for a game that tries to say violence is bad and changes you for the worse, it sure likes to show that a lot of the WLF's issues could've been solved by violence
Can we talk about how Abby should have been so weak at the end that Ellie should have killed her in one punch? Beaten half to death, then strung up and starved for God knows how long? Then she just carries Lev like it's nothing and has a competitive fight with the comparatively fresh Ellie? Meanwhile Joel got impaled once by rebar and he's in a damn coma.
@@ErinJeanette Adrenaline doesn't work like that. I also said Ellie was COMPARATIVELY fresh. As in, much better shape than Abby was, even with that stab.
It wasn't believable at all. You don't get an adrenaline spike whenever you want. The only adrenaline spike Abby would have gotten is when Ellie was drowning her.
Training does absolutely nothing when you've been strung up long enough to grow thin. That takes a LONG time. She should have been dead when Ellie found her, let alone fit enough to carry someone a long while AND have a fight AND survive being stabbed several times and nearly drowned only to casually leave about 20 seconds later. Not to mention she had already had the shit kicked out of her before she was strung up.
Like the game all you want, you simply cannot defend this. The only reason Abby lived was because Neil loves her and hates all the other characters.
@@ErinJeanette That's a fancy way of admitting you can't defend your points.
If you bothered to read more, I elaborated on how adrenaline doesn't just magically appear when someone wants it to, it is not an inexhaustible supply of power juice. It is a response to an emergency and wears off very quickly. Adrenaline would not just kick in so she could carry Lev and fight Ellie despite probable weeks of starvation and torture. It would kick in as she's being drowned because her brain recognises that it's actually in danger and it needs to get air. But by that point, it won't do much.
Either way, she should have been long dead before Ellie even encountered Fat Geralt.
@@ShadicRothZz1998 exactly
@@ErinJeanette Adrenaline is very temporary and if anyone would have adrenaline, it would only be Ellie. If you are going to bring in a real-world argument into this scenario then you gotta bring in ALL aspects:
1. Abby might not be in her right mind by this point after such torture. Adrenaline occurs during an overstimulation of senses. Fear, anger, joy, etc. Abby shows, at best, apathy to her presence and seems to have accepted fate by the time Ellie shows herself.
2. Ellie is in better physical condition than Abbie in the final fight. The writers literally did that on purpose to show Abbie's fall from grace, both physically and mentally. But that should also apply to the fight (it didn't, lessening the impact) Abbie being a pathetic fighter would have been FAR more effective, narratively speaking, to making the player wince at killing her. Although, by this time, Abbie made the playerbase hate her far too much to tug for empathy or even sympathy.
3. Narrative psychosis. You aren't going to read this comment. I inserted it in the middle here because you aren't one to read through arguments thoroughly. Let's even see if you read this. I actually have to write this to double check if you are arguably competent. Which is something the story struggles on to this day.
4. If everyone broke their back defending Abbie's bodytype being possible and attainable, then they need to forfeit the idea that Abbie could even stand after Ellie freed her. Let alone fight and walk. The amount of muscle atrophy would be incredible. Especially after we are introduced to how much mass she lost with showing her before and after comparison. Wound or not, Ellie actually would have fully functional legs and arms and would have eaten recently enough to make a case for the fight.
TL;DR This story spends so much time trying to portray realism... when it suits them. It is very clear that there were too many Yes Men to the tune of one man's vision that was forbidden from being critiqued.
I don’t know, did you see those guns on her? The second half of the game was a gun show even when weapons were holstered. If we can suspend disbelief in action movies for dudes we can do it for this girl. And Ellie was also suffering from a knife to the kidney and weighs about 70 pounds soaking wet. So both girls had it rough going into this.
Also, if we’re talking about realism, getting shot a bunch of times and bandaging your arm to heal up and keep fighting would have to go on that list above this one. It’s a game, so it doesn’t have to be real at every turn.
I'm late to the party, and outside of everything you said that I 100% agree with, I love that they try everything to manipulate into feeling guilty for killing people having their friends and lovers scream out their name. "ANTHONY!" but if I casually walk up to "ANTHONY!" he will casually murder me without a second thought. so yep I feel extremely guilty for killing him :)
I get really confused when I hear people say "Im cool with joel dying the way he did, his arc was complete!"... like did we play the same game??? Last of us 1 was a cliffhanger ending to me, I remember my mind spinning in all directions of where the story can go with that great ending.... only for all the possibilities to be beaten to death and to be replaced with a revenge plot and dropping the importance of Ellie's immunity or the zombie crisis at hand. I think people were not just angry at joel''s death, but more angry the death of Joel's plot for it to be replaced with basically nothing. Abby straight just has no plot and Ellie's plot is to kill her, its quite boring IMO.
For reals. The fact that some of them said it was never Joel's story it was Ellie's is so bullshit because it's also Joel's STORY AS WELL. That's why he's introduced to us in the first game. I felt like he needed more, make him fall in love again or something but nope, they wasted a good main character just for the sake of the story
Also one thing you kinda touched on but didn't fully commit to is Tommy's girlfriend. I noticed this the first time I played through and it pissed me off. In the beginning she was willing to risk Ellie Dina and the security of Jackson in it's entirety to get Tommy back (via possible retaliation from WLF). But at the end of the game they aren't together anymore and there's no story behind it. So she went from risking it all for the guy to their relationship being whatever. It's like they changed her character during the game and didn't even explain or show why. Crappy writing. The whole game is like this. No creativity at all just basic convenient random character decisions that give the excuse of more gameplay.
She's his wife btw.
@@jasonalv7436 oh yeah I forgot they got hitched. Still everything I brought up even more relevant then
@@jasonalv7436 this whole game is just try hard misery porn
So before Joel got shot he turned around to see Abby point a gun at him but what about Tommy? He basically just stood there silently ignoring the fact someone's pointing a gun at his brother until shots got fired
Abby she just holding the gun it’s not like she was just aiming at Joel’s leg
@@jjonahjameson8934 lol she was thats the joke
@@v-8379 I... I don't get it
I swear I wrote better fanfics at 14
wait, they literaly had a better idea, to have abby get the drop on joel, and went in and just rushed it 😂
this makes it soooo much worse.
imagine if she hung around, and she even grew somewhat attached to him, and then have her backstab moment be painful for her aswell, maybe even have joel drop his guard because he felt like it's time to pay his dues, what would've made it even more painful.
abby probably fantasized about what a monster joel had to be, to do what he did. and then it turning out that he's just a guy that regained his humanity when he saved ellie, that worked his ass off to give to other people.
that way, abby could've told ellie at the end that joel wasn't fighting back when she got the drop on him, and have that be the moment when ellie said "just go", make more sense.
the whole killing moment could've been way more personal, and ellie could've just dropped in, right after joel told abby "it's okay, i'm sorry".
abby could've fled, they could've tailed her with multiple people from the village. that way giving abby and her friends a reason to immediatly flee, and in that way see all of her WLF buddies and ellie would've had her trail to follow, because they couldn't pack up all their stuff, and she'd know who her enemys are. the rest could then play out as it was, with us being confused as to whom to even side with, because joel himself decided to not fight back.
dunno man, this was the moment that most people disconnected with the game, i watched and rewatched tonns of streams just to see their reaction, and from that point on, most of those i've seen, just went trough the motion, besides some minor moments where it almost got good again.
you can't just kill a beloved character without the perfect set up, would be as if aerith was killed at gold saucer by a malfunctioning arcade cabinet, everybody would've just been pissed off. how you frame such a death can kill your whole story, and in this case, it just did, and they even told us that they didn't care enough, by saying, it just needed to happen fast.
they were banking on pure shock value.
The way you guys defend Joel, he’s like a cult leader. You’ll make excuses for him, the same way ppl made excuses for the guy in 1930’s-1945.
1:05:51 Let me just say I think the whole little sniper segment is dumb as. Tommy has literally more experience as a hunter and handling weapons (including sniper rifles) than Abby has experience just being alive let alone weapons and combat training. Tommy is on par with Joel we are told and shown this in the first game. Joel himself didn't just murder an entire building full of trained and experienced soldiers BY HIMSELF to get to Ellie, He fucking massacred them. They really wanted us to believe that Tommy, a man who is on par with his brother Joel in not only experience and training but also brutality, would be unable to kill the shit out of Abby?
Tommy isn't like in his 60s in this game he's late 40s to early 50s at his very oldest what 50-year-old trained killer is going to lose to a 19-year-old girl? Even if she is buff how in the hell does this make sense? I know she's trained too but again Abby is 19 Tommy has at the very least 20 full years of experience. In almost every scenario especially combat experience trumps everything.
Yep I can speak from experience lol. My dad and I are both out of shape but when I was 19 I remember fighting him and he was in his 40s. Man was larger than me and easily stopped me in my tracks lol
Tommy is no match for them steroids son Abby is on.
Idk. I don't think it's so cut and dry. They don't have power levels like an anime. Anything can happen, and tommy is definitely given some good terminator vibes throughout the sequence. My only gripe is that manny's squad is killed off screen and not on screen. It's a fairly good sequence where Abby never has the upper hand on tommy. She's out aimed and outmaneuvered at every turn. It's ok for a new character to be badass enough to survive tommy, and that's all she really does, is survive him, and not without help, luck, and a bunch of bandages. I hated the game as a whole, but little sequences like this were actually pretty good.
Same reason Ellie can absolutely decimate dozens of soldiers in the hands of the player but becomes an easy boss fight later on. It’s a game and the player character is always superhumanly-strong. It’s not any deeper than that.
Yeah it’s a load of bollocks mate
God, when you showed that first trailer screening, I got so sad, because I remember how excited I was seeing my favorite characters again in a new light. I was not expecting it to be this bad. There was so so so much potential, wasted for nothing.
i think that is word for word the point the game is trying to make
@gabethyrubenstein7984 they're not just talking about the plot and how it ends with ellie not getting revenge, they're talking about how every character was wasted and thrown away for a half baked "theme"
Wasted for ego
@@gabethyrubenstein7984 It doesn't matter if that was their intention or not, most people hated it regardless because they didn't want to see their beloved characters after waiting 7 years to interact with them become either completely broken, alone, and butchered, or just straight up dead. We wanted to see them go through experiences, up and downs, have their relationships build more and more and move around in different and unique ways. The whole point in the video about Ellie dealing with the lie and all that is a beautiful example of that.
It's important to note that Abby doesnt even seem like she was put into the game until later in development. None of the advertising points to Abby being in the game. Either they wanted to rely purely on shock value to tell this story or they were worried about the pushback of her character and hid her out of fear. Either way, it was pretty manipulative and misleading.
The first game works because Joel’s final decision happened because it’s who he is.
The second game doesn’t work because Ellie’s final decision happened because “the theme” forced her to, not who she is.
And unlike the second game, the first one didn’t try to make Joel a good guy. He’s a broken, selfish and flawed person and Joel himself knows it and willing to live with it. The second game tried too hard to make us love Abby and trying to protect Ellie from becoming a scumbag in a way that it makes no sense for any of these characters.
The desecration of Tommy's character at the altar of "empathy" is one of the biggest video game tragedies of the last decade :(
I'm so sad that this gets lost in so much "analysis" of this story and am so grateful you included it in your video! Bravo!
You know, before this review, I would've argued that it was Abby who got off easy in the grand scheme of things. She got to leave with Lev and be a superhero, while Ellie was the one left with missing fingers and an empty house, despite Abby being no better than her.
But now, you've given me some perspective I guess. Abby did get tortured and starved, but that really had nothing to do with her actions; they weren't a direct result of her vengeance. Bad karma maybe, not but a direct consequence. She did lose all of her friends but as you said, she never reflects on that fact. Just snarls at Ellie and nearly kills a pregnant lady right in front of her, only for Lev to give her a _look_ and she stops for appearances sake (at least to me).
But she still gets to walk out of the final fight alive. I don't know.
If anything the game teaches you "if you plan to get revenge, don't leave witnesses" lol but I agree. It seemed like of all people Ellie and Abby got off the easiest despite them being the most selfish people in the entire game and in the end they both got off with decent deals as opposed to all of their friends who are dead because they couldn't deal with their grief in a healthy way which is something I am sure every single person in this apocalyptic world who has lost someone has learned to do. Dina lost her sister and Jesse and she didn't go on an obscene revenge mission that resulted in half a dozen other people getting capped.
@@MacabreStorytelling My whole thing was, why would you boil down this rich, interesting, apocalyptic world and the way it's developed after all these years of no cure to... a watered down and cliche revenge story?
There was literally so much you could've done with the world of the Last of Us and they decided to go with the most small-minded and narrow thing possible.
@@rhondahoward8025 Which is why I would have preferred they gone farther into the future. If we had gone 20 years say into the future, we would see the more pertinent and blatant effects of no vaccine on the world. 4 years later, even IF they made a vaccine, not much would be different. Honestly it just felt like the writers just wanted to do their revenge switch story and used TLOU IP to do it, which is why it feels so foreign.
You made some good points about Abby. Just because she has perspective doesn’t mean she’s a compelling character and she comes off as unlikable and terribly written. Such manipulative direction to make us like her after killing a character that we’ve known and loved, doesn’t matter what the context is neither means it’s good storytelling
@@gordontims1999 She didn't even have to be entirely sympathetic. She just had to be understandable. Joel wasn't always the most sympathetic character, but you always GOT his motivations. Why he did the things he did. He was RELATABLE.
I definitely think that if they wanted a "revenge bad" story, then they should have had the end sequence begin with everyone but Abby and Ellie dead. Their pursuits of revenge began an actual cycle, and the WLF wiped out Jackson in retaliation for Tommy's sniper spree, while he and Ellie was pursuing Abby. The remaining WLF is killed by the Seraphites, Abby, and Ellie. Perhaps Lev dies in the clash, or in the chaos against the Rattlers. No matter how he dies, it's still ultimately on Abby. Then you could have any combination of Abby and Ellie living or dying. That's what revenge-is-bad stories should be: sad, depressing, unsatisfying. 4 settlements, 1 completely evil, 1 almost completely evil, 1 gray, and 1 good, are completely destroyed, all because one girl couldn't let go of her grief.
As a bonus, if Ellie dies, then we wouldn't have to sit through whatever shitshow a part three could be.
Abby telling Lev: "You're my family" after knowing her/him for 2 days pretty much sums up the horrible writing and that they where choosing that path nomatter what...
icing on the cake on the fact she left two kids(one clearly not well enough to travel) alone in what she says is a heavily patrolled area.
and only comes back to them because of a nightmare. and learning Owen went AWOL for not killing a Scroll.
So it feels like she only started caring for Lev because of Owen. and makes their bond feel disingenuous.
Yeah that line was so hard to believe it's laughable
Oh boy, a 3h video? Better get myself a drink and some bigot sandwiches
🤪
You my friend deserve a like
Nahh I cooked and ate a lasagne throughout watching this
there's a 5 hour one and it's also really good😳
@@gabi1765 Are you talking about the one by Luke stephens? Yeah that ones good too
TLOU 1: Story > Gameplay
TLOU 2: Gameplay > Story
Agree
For sure
Definitely
“Revenge is a fools game.” Arthur Morgan, 1899.
(Seriously this is by far the best video I’ve ever seen discussing LOU2 in a unbiased way. You deserve an Oscar for this video.)
if i remember correctly Dutch was the one who teach that to Arthur but i guess Arthur was the one who actually practiced that mentality
then i'll remain a fool for the rest of my life
Well she did murder hundreds of people until she got to the jacked lady with smol brain and minecraft head shape.
That game handles themes of revenge with so much more care than this dumpster fire
@@cocob0l0 yes the story was pretty bad in this game but I gotta admit, the gameplay was actually really fun. (Especially the combat)
Okay this was a nice side project. But really, when are we getting the definitive 4 hour essay on Wang size in GoT?
I got a bit confused because for some reason, I imagined the comedian Ken Jeong in medieval armor.
Great critique. I agree with all your points. It was a story that did not need a sequel. Should have made it an anthology franchise with different characters in the same universe. I felt at times the writing came across as trolling fan's of the first one, with some of the Easter eggs like the numerous PS3 consoles lying around and the parallels in game play, weird character development. It was almost like they were bitter about making the game for some reason and that bitterness spread into the story beats. The first game had a narrative that exceeded the format. This one felt more like a generic one to fit the game they wanted to make. I still enjoyed playing it for all the genuine good part's and for the craftmenship on show but it's tainted the fantastic characters the original made me care about.
I wonder what type of story it could have been if it was about Jesse and Dina
@@ZyroShadowPony Now that is something to think about. Those character's were wasted potential.
@@idioz75 I really love the anthology aspect. If they wanted they could have made part 2 about Jesse and Dina in Jackson. Have Ellie and Joel be minor characters or just give cameos.
Maybe have the Rattlers as the actual bad guys when they take Dina or Jesse during patrol and turn the wlf as a reluctant ally because they're actually losing members to the Rattlers as well.
I don't know, just something else because revenge stories are a bit overdone at this poijt
@@ZyroShadowPony That sounds so much better. You could even incorporate the character Bob from the first game. Maybe in his desperate lonely grief he ended up going crazy and joining the rattler's and embraced his sadist side. He could then redeem himself by helping Dina and Jessie when he finds out they are friends of Ellie and Joel and he's reminded of everything he lost and could still have. You could even incorporate him having to hide his sexuality from them. Which keeps part of him at odds with them so his turning against them is realistic.
I agree. The story of the first game was perfectly written and self-contained, it didn't need any sort of continuation, because it fulfilled it's purpose with flying colours.
The biggest problem for me really was that Abby literally says nothing about Joel. There's nothing that connects Ellie and Abby because Abby is so unavailable. I think Ellie learning about why Abby killed Joel would have bonded them in a profound way. Bonded through hate but bonded nonetheless. Or even when Abby is about to slice Dina's throat, they could have had a moment similar to Breaking Bad's episode Ozymendias, where Walt fights Skyler with a butcher night and yells "What are you doing, we're a family!" and then has an epiphany about what he's done. There was so much potential to connect Abby and Ellie's parts but they just COMPLETELY opted out of it.
This is intentional. Because if Ellie learns why Joel died, it would challenge her motivation to keep going, but the devs need you to keep playing the game. The game ran on fumes and it showed by the halfway point.
@@TheKillaShow She does know why Abby killed Joel. Norah told her
@@SoftKernel How far into the game is that??? You saying this like it happens 20 mins into the game. By the time Ellie returns from that literal torture fest and they decide to go home cause Dina preggers, Abby comes and fucks Dinas boyfriend and Tommy, almost kills Dina and Ellie. Then back at home, they have Tommy give ellie a pathetic guilt trip speech to keep the nonsense going further. Again, the game was running on fumes by the halfway point. Motivations didnt add up anymore and things just happened so the game could continue.
@@SoftKernel Then why did Ellie emphasize the cure aspect of herself when she eventually does actually say words to the antagonist? Either Nora didn't tell her anything and Ellie never pieced it together OR Nora was hung up on the cure aspect of it, rather than going "Oh yeah Joel killed her dad btw" like an idiot lmao
@@PixelHeroViish iirc abby never actually knew who ellie was. She only made the connection when ellie told her she was the immune person.
Hit the nail on the head with so many things especially Tommy. His arc just shocked and confused me. Naughty dog did him dirty! The game just fell Completely apart for me from that point onwards in the epilogue
I honestly don't think that Tommy's change/ "development" can even be misinterpreted as anything else other than lazy writing. The people defending this change are always filling up the hole ND failed to properly fill. Some guy even said that he lost Jesse, his eye and had a divorce with Maria which caused him to go insane enough to be willing to persuade Ellie to risk her life just to fulfill his own want. But just like Macab said, they're using the well maybe argument that doesn't really hold much water
But he is still alive. I think they gloss over him because they want him to take over Joel role in The Last of US 3. Not because they want to ignore him.
2:46:10 I honestly never saw a single post about someone not liking or hating Joel in the years since TLOU1. If they did exist, they were rare. This whole bizarre mindset came exclusively after the release of TLOU2, as a way for fanboys to justify the game. That, and it being the perspective of newcomers who never even played the original game.. It makes me sick, tbh.
Absolutely...All of a sudden, since TLOU" has come out Joel's a complete asshole for saving Ellie at the end of TLOU smh
Fanboys are autistic after all
I really don’t understand how anyone can like part 2. People who haven’t played the first game shouldn’t be allowed to have opinions tbh lol
Or just not real fans
You can see a good amount of those views on forums that aren't specifically TLOU forums. Debate forums and such. People didn't outright *hate* Joel, but more than a few disliked him because he's an immoral man.
WHY DIDN'T JOEL AND ELLIE CHANGE THERE NAMES AFTER THE FIRST ONE.
Probably would be a good idea considering SOME of the Fireflies must have know who Joel was. Goes to the point I mentioned about Joel being super wary of anyone who happens by the settlement.
"Hi I'm Joel the Betrayer of Mankind and this is my adopted daughter Ellie the Immune"
*their
@@gallarinas oh yeah your right I hate English lol
Lmao who's Elle?
Could be horribly wrong but doesn't the whole "You took away my choice to die for the cure/vacccine" plot narrative fall flat thanks to what Ellie says and what happens to her in the first game?
At the water scene where she drowns, just a few minutes before that, she makes mention of how maybe Joel could teach her to swim after they're done.
"When we're done", said directly near the hospital where the Fireflies are located. Wouldn't this imply that Ellie expected to be walking out ALIVE from the surgery?
She fell unconscious due to drowning and most likely remained unconscious even up till the surgery itself, when was she ever informed that she was to choose whether she wanted to sacrifice her life due to her no doubt going to die during surgery? When was she given a choice?
She says she's "still waiting for her turn" due to what happens in the DLC, and Marlene tries to say 'it's what she'd have wanted', but wouldn't that only work if Ellie KNEW she was going to die in this surgery, Joel figured out she knew and made the choice and STILL chose to save her?
So how the FUCK can she use the "you took away my choice" narrative in TLOU2 if she never MADE a choice AND possibly thought she'd be leaving alive? That's my biggest question here.
Please, someone give me a source that shows she was given a choice and knew :,) Just genuinely trying to make sense of this..
Why yes, it does undermine what was shown in the first game.
Better yet: In order to make sure Ellie doesn't get the choice, FEDRA was removed from the sequel. FEDRA had done clearly the most research into the infection than anyone or anything else as they're shown having infection scanners, something that could not exist pre-pandemic.
But, y'know, they can't have created a conflict any other way without retcons given the author's writing skill and mental capacity.
The game seems to retcon a lot of the character's decision. Which is why I can barely play the first game after playing the 2nd anymore
No, it doesn't.
Of course Ellie expected to walk away alive, but that doesn't mean she wasn't willing to die for it. You still hope for the future.
She was never informed. The Fireflies never even tried to get her consent. That was obviously wrong.
No. The Fireflies robbed Ellie of her agency, but Joel did the same thing.
There is no "you took away my choice" narrative. It's a "you took away the meaning of my life" narrative. Ellie needed to make a vaccine. Her immunity had to mean something. If it didn't, then Riley, Tess, and Sam died for nothing. That's how she sees it. She has survivor's guilt. That's why she values the vaccine more than her own life. Joel's primary motivator for his actions after the events at the hospital was to show Ellie that her life has meaning beyond her immunity. And that night on the porch before he died, I think he finally succeeded.
@@jameslanier2510 That makes sense, yeah. The only thing that muddles me a little is the fact she's so mad at Joel for doing it when he was informed by her directly that she's waiting for her turn AFTER he does what he does. He may have been told by others that it's what she'd want but he's definitely the kind of guy who won't believe it unless its from Ellie's mouth alone. Joel isn't a mind reader, unless she told him how she felt prior to the surgery then all he has is tiny tidbits to go on, adding small dialogues on what they'd do after it all just makes the narrative feel a little off since he's not under the impression she'd accept her death.
Though that's just personal opinion, it probably could even be chalked up to projecting her anger of it all despite whether he knew she'd accept or not. Though could also just be cause it also needed a slight bit of work. Who knows at this rate. Thanks for sharing your explanation, was a nice read.
@@crazyinsane500Don't you just love how they gloss over the fact that the Atlanta QZ is still up & running?
People seem to ignore that the CDC still exists in their world & that it's headquarters is in Atlanta, Georgia.
Also, Jerry is a quack.
"There's no way to remove the specimen without killing the host."
No mother fucker!
There's no way YOU can do that!
You aren't trained to do so!
It's like every TLOU fan can't use Google to find out Brain Biopsy is a possibility.
For fuck sake, Hemispherectomy is a possibility.
Jerry was willing to kill an unconscious girl who's the only known immune person in the world because he was too prideful to admit that he couldn't operate on her without botching it & killing her.
In conclusion #JoelDidNothingWrong
I believe Ellie’s wristband from Dina was either a rendering/design mistake or we’d infer she wasn’t wearing it but had it on her person. I think it’s clear they meant for her to return to find Dina had left her, and she must now forge ahead alone. The fact she can no longer play Joel’s guitar due to injuries sustained from her fight with Abby I think is supposed to illustrate her sacrifice, and the futility of said sacrifice. However, still lots of excellent points in the video.
Amazing analysis. I love that you mentioned Ellie's selflessness in part 1. Everyone always talk about how badass she was, but in a post-apocaliptic world everyone is forced to become kind of a badass in order to survive, for me what really made Ellie different was how much she cared for other people and how she connected with their feelings.
Maybe in california, ellie could’ve been properly captured and enslaved by the rattlers for a prolonged period.
Then she’d have no choice but to cooperate with abby or at least tolerate her existence, since any attempt she would make to kill her would be stopped by the rattlers. This could then lead to ellie learning why abby killed joel, them getting to know and maybe empathize with each other, and then have both characters be put to the ultimate test by having to work together to liberate themselves from the rattlers.
A parallel could be drawn between their physical enslavement and how both characters are slaves to grief/rage.
I really wish your idea about Abby changing her mind about Joel’s killing was canon. It would literally solve most of her narrative issues. Very good video!
I think you have to be obtuse to not conclude that is what happens in the storyline.
@@ChandlerMurray. But, it doesn't. The best you can do is try to argue that it happened because, well, it explains things, but that's working backwards; you're starting with seeming problems in the story, and then inventing a plausible solution headcanon. No, you have to start with actual evidence in the narrative and work from there, and if the result is contradictory clusterfuck, well, then that's what you have; it's not like real life where there MUST be an explanation for things happening--in fiction, it can actually just be incompetence.
Had she spared him, and Ellie spent most of the game to track her down and figure out why it happened in the first place, they both get closure, etc. this story could have been so much better. I can pull 10 storylines out of my ass that are all better than this
One of my problems is that this story has nothing to do with the world it’s happening in. Which is a red flag for any story set outside the “default” modern times.
Take Harry Potter as a good example of this being done well. None of the books could have worked in any other world. Hogwarts is so important to the series that it might as well be a main character. If you tried to do this story in say the world of Pokémon or John Wick, it doesn’t work.
Even the first Last of us did this well. Every single part of the world came to matter in its narrative. The entire basis of the story relies on the fact that this is the zombie post apocalypse.
But in TLOU2 Zombies are never important neither is Ellie’s immunity. And you might as well have replaced the fireflies, the most recognizable faction of the game, with any other survivor group and it wouldn’t really change much.
This is a story that happens outside its own world, which breaks immersion and i don’t like it.
@@lrsb1678 that’s not what I meant.
What I meant is that nothing in the story is inherently tied to its world.
You can replace two names of off screen factions and suddenly the story is set in a sci fi distopia and nothing about the narrative would change in a meaningful way.
This is just bad world building, because you aren’t taking advantage of your setting.
Heck, even if you changed out our main characters with any other survivor set in the same world, nothing of note would change. At most the reason for why Joel killed Abby’s father would be different, but not in a meaningful way.
Just replace Joel with a guy named Richard, who shot a random bandit that tried to kill his daughter Jill and the story wouldn’t have to change anything, beyond the reason why Ellie was mad at Joel in the beginning, which is a minor detail.
Again, this is not good because it makes it feel less like an continuation of Ellie‘s story and more of a completely different story that just so happen to use Ellie like an actress.
@@lrsb1678 Sure.
Try to explain the story of TLOU 1, while hitting on all major story moments.
You won't really be able to do so, without using terms and concepts, that only really make sense in the setting of the first game.
Stuff like "child is immune to zombie" "most of the US are just small groups of survivors" or "the Fireflies" will inevitably come up.
You couldn't really tell this story in any other setting, without massively changing story elements.
Example, try to translate the story of TLOU into the Harry Potter universe.
It wouldn't really work, because a lot of key concepts are gone and you'd have to change both the setting and the story to somehow make them mix and have sense, to a degree that it wouldn't be what we originally were trying to do.
Now do the same for the second game.
Describe it's major story beats, without using terms, specific to it's universe.
"Girl kills man, because that man killed her father" "Daughter of man goes to have revenge" "Daughter tracks down friends of first girl" "both girls fight". "War between faction of one girl vs crazy cult".
Nothing really big is lost.
Now again, put it into the world of Harry Potter.
It wouldn't be difficult. At most you'd have to change the name of the fireflies or why Joel killed Abby's father, but the story would overall stay the same, without minor and irrelevant adjustments at best.
You can not tell the story of the first game in any other setting. This means it takes good advantage of it's setting. Which is good world building.
But the second might as well take place in ancient Greece and little of note would be lost
I was questioning so much why Shamblers are now able to burn her alive while spores mean squat to her???
I just absolutely despised the way they showed Abbys dad's death and tried to make us feel bad for her by shoving her whaling, crying face into the camera
Problem is though Her Dad still wanted to cut open a child for a maybe cure, no scenes of him having second thoughts it or even showing he hates he has to do it.
Not to mention that her dad was black in 1 and yet white in 2. Retcons!!!
Yeah, it's so cringe when a child cries when they find their only parent brutally murdered...
@@hornet1065 We not about her crying about her dead dad, that is normal.
@@RomanHistoryFan476AD Yes, of course it's normal. That was my point. My comment was obviously sarcastic towards the OPs dumb comment.
I haven't played the game myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but Even back as far as the PS1 days, Naughty Dog's strength has ALWAYS been character and personality. Crash Bandicoot was popular not because it had the best platforming, the greatest visuals, or the most interesting world, it was popular because Crash himself had *PERSONALITY* that was unmatched by most of the other 'funny animal mascot' characters that were all the rage in the late 90s.
From the word 'go', Uncharted was a masterclass in how a paper thin narrative and bland, repetitive gameplay (that admittedly got better with each installment, but was never really anything to write home about) can be completely eclipsed by lovable, fun, and engaging personalities. Who gives a shit about the specifics of what Nathan Drake, Sully, and Elaina are going through, when they're such likable people that they make any situation fun and memorable?
The Last of Us was that same principle of characters-above-all writing given a more dark/dramatic twist, as opposed to the lighthearted fun that characterizes the Uncharted Franchise, and it did gangbusters.
Characters are the tread on a tire. Without characters we enjoy or care about, there's no grip, no traction, no reason to actually connect with the narrative or the themes in the first place. TLOU part II had an interesting road it wanted to take us down, one that might have been truly wonderful if we got a chance to explore it properly. Unfortunately, the wheels are bald and it's far, far too easy to go careening into a ditch.
It is amazing to me how some characters just come alive. I feel like BB-8 is more of an alive and realized character than half the human characters in the Star Wars Disney films.
4/10 game.
You are wrong. Crash was popular because *at the time* it had amazing graphics and was a good 3D platformer. I have no idea how you think Crash himself has a personality, given the fact that he has no character development
@@frogglen6350 I think that is what he meant. Certain characters, even without substantial development, had a sense of a personality. Think of say R2D2.
I unintentionally made this game miles better by taking like a 2 month break from the game in-between the switch between abby and Ellie because I was so annoyed I had to relive that whole sequence. By doing that I forgot a lot about who I killed as Ellie making the reveal that Owen and Mel were dead much more powerful than it would have been if I had played it straight through. I had totally forgotten by that point that Ellie had already killed them so it was a total surprise to me.
Nice, someone needs to like mod TLOU 2 when it comes to PC and just place the sequence in a better order.
The saying “you either love it or hate it” gets thrown around a lot, but this game couldn’t make it more true.
Who loved this?
@@Mant111 Mfs that love revenge bad stories.