I genuinely wished that the last of us was actually an anthology series. Part 1 being with joel and ellie, part 2 being maybe jessie and dina or abby and owen. Each anthology referencing one another like "i heard the fireflies disbanded after some guy one man armied them over a girl" Or "apparently there was a war between a military group and a cult. Somehow the ones with bows were putting up a fair fight" Each story from a different state of and how they survived. Imagine if jessie and dina werent in the settlement and were scavers doing the tricks joel once did to survive as he states. Or how owen and Abby were following the clues for any potential firefly survivors.
@@MertKayKay an anthology can work sometimes. Look at halo legends or the matrix. Making a character feel insignificant helps because everyone has a story especially when the games confirmed there were others with the mutation just like ellie. How many other joels were there? How many ellies? How many just knew but stayed surviving because they knew it would be a waste of time?
Honestly, this right here. While I did like TLOU2, TLOU as a whole, is a vast universe that I think could be expanded and told from different points of view. I honestly would have loved to see a Tommy centric game but I also would have loved to see the same universe with different characters.
I love how there's literally no mention of Riley or David despite the massive impact that they had on Ellie's development. Riley was Ellie's closest friend, first girlfriend, and partial inspiration for wanting to find a cure, while her experience with David deeply traumatized her and lead to her having a more weary outlook on the world.
Crazy that a teen who represses painful memories isn't blabbering about her traumatic experiences, lol. Just because you can't see the impact doesn't mean it's not there. Like, Ellie gained quite a bit of perspective from Riley that she has internalized. Plus, they used some of the same Halloween assets from the Left Behind in a store Ellie and Dina visit in part 2. While in the store, Ellie mentions that she is not a fan of the stuff, which is likely due to the painful memory of Riley. Ellie killing David showed that Ellie, with Joel's help, bottles up her emotions until they explode. Literally, that scene is a snapshot into the future of what Ellie will become in part 2. Also, Dina and Ellie discuss the "crazy cannibals" on their way to Seattle. This is good subtle stuff from the writers! A shame people can't appreciate it more.
@@genericwhiteguy2910 A character doesn’t have to explicitly talk about their personal experiences in order to have them be acknowledged in the story. Ellie literally has a journal that she uses to write about her feelings, and it easily could have been utilized as a means to explore the trauma that she’s internalized. But no, even in an outlet where Ellie can fully express herself in private, there’s zero mention of Riley. Which is especially weird considering that she moved on to not one, but two relationships during her time at Jackson and realistically would have been worried that her SO’s would encounter the same fate as her first girlfriend. Having a very brief, missable Easter Egg and some vague in-game dialogue isn’t the same thing as orienting a story around a character’s past traumatic experiences. People don’t appreciate the writer’s “good, subtle stuff” because in all actuality they’re just sloppily glossing over important character arcs and masquerading it as intelligent storytelling. The whole “show, don’t tell” rule doesn’t work when the writers barely attempt to show anything in the first place. Ellie’s experience with David was significant enough to cause a massive shift in her personality. It traumatized her and led to her becoming more withdrawn as opposed to the happy-go-lucky little girl she once was, because she had never met anyone who wanted to violate her like that before. It wasn’t a “snapshot” into the future nor did it have anything to do with her “bottling up her emotions.”
@@Alabalalululababa Ellie is a certified hot head. Game one established that she has a real temper. Joel told her explicitly in game one that when things happen, they move on. He told her this when she wanted to talk about the death of Sam. Also, she was told not to talk about Tess's death, too. When you have a hot tempered kid that is being forced to repress feelings, then eventually that kid is going to have some explosive emotions. She will not "explore" traumatic experiences that happened years ago thru journaling or other means, because she has been instructed not to. That is Ellie's crux and what brings her on a very dark path in part two. She doesn't try to understand or work thru her grief. She resorts to anger or silence instead. A scene can grow beyond the creator's original intent. To me, the David chapter primarily was used to have Ellie confront her biggest fear, being alone. However, the writer, Neil Druckmann, talks a lot about Ellie's relationship to violence and how she is less pragmatic with it than Joel. Ellie's violent acts in part two are so often wrapped up in her emotions. When she kills David, it is for survival but when she keeps bashing his face in then it is clear this is about something else entirely. Hence, why it is a snapshot of her character in part two. Neil talks about Ellie's arc in part one being about how she is constantly attaching herself to authority figures (Marlene, Joel, and David) and how by the end of the first game she realizes that she is in this alone and needs to rely less on others and more on herself. So, David is just a single piece to a much larger story for her character. Why would she need to discuss him 5 years after his death? I mean, the experience with David was used to, as I mentioned, have Ellie confront her greatest fear. She was alone. She was put in great danger. She saved herself. That's it. The character of David is a cartoonish villain. He isn't important. Her experience with Riley was used to show where Ellie gets so much of her rebellious spirit and resiliency. It shows you what and who Ellie has lost and what the cure could mean for her as result to that loss. Ellie doesn't need to discuss something that happened 6+ years ago. She carries what she learned from Riley and what Riley meant with her.
@@genericwhiteguy2910 Joel telling Ellie that they needed to “move on” and avoid talking about the deaths of people like Sam and Tess was more related to his character arc than hers. At the beginning of the game, he is a nihilistic man who refuses to confront his grief and losses, whereas Ellie is almost the exact opposite. She desperately wants to talk about the trauma that she has been through, but Joel shuts her down every time. At the very end, Ellie has become tired of being told to stay silent about her experiences and unloads her feelings of survivor's guilt onto Joel. She is naturally a very external kid, and the entire point is for her to be a contrast to people like Joel, who choose to repress their emotions instead of confronting them head-on. This dynamic allows Joel to progress as a character because, throughout the game, Ellie helps him come to terms with the fact that he can’t escape his past, no matter how hard he tries. He finally learns to accept that his trauma is a part of him and that embracing it is the only way to truly “move on.” It is Ellie’s external way of dealing with grief that rubs off on Joel, not the other way around. In part 1, Ellie's experience with David deeply traumatized her. Even though she saved herself from him, she was scared for her life in a way that she hadn’t been before and is left with scars as a result. She felt powerless and violated, and her repeatedly hacking away at David's body even after she killed him reflected how desperate she was to not feel as vulnerable as she did at that moment. After the Winter Sequence, there are implications that she suffers from PTSD because of the experience. She becomes noticeably reserved and despondent, which is a significant contrast to her usual spunky attitude. This massive shift in her personality reflects how her encounter with David changed her. She is not the same girl she was before that experience and possibly never will be. Her loss of Riley in the DLC is another experience that had a massive impact on her development, and it would make sense for that grief to resurface as she entered other romantic relationships at Jackson. In Part 2, her journal is the only space where we, as the player, can see her fully be vulnerable and honest with herself. She uses journaling to talk about her anxiety, grief, and love. There are numerous flashbacks to a younger Ellie, where she journals about her budding relationships with Cat and later Dina. It would make perfect sense for her to relate those relationships to Riley at some point. But instead, the writers of part 2 choose to, rather irresponsibly, ignore Riley just as they ignore David. Instead of reflecting on how Ellie’s experiences with those two characters would impact her arc, the writers opt to pretend that they never happened.
“She’s a planet”, “9 months poggers”, “shape of a lollipop” lmao I like your suggestion of if the game was just Abby’s story at first but then turns out to be connected to Ellie’s. I’ve had similar ruminations on the game’s story and it probably would’ve flowed better if we had significant investment in Abby and her friends before we find out that she murdered Joel - would’ve illicit some very conflicting emotions. The game has a ton of interesting concepts but it never really comes together the same way the first game did. Too much levity is lost and no character fills the void Joel left behind - it’s a shame cos’ I like his new haircut lol
Thanks for watching Zealot! I agree, I think the major issue with this game is that Abby starts the game in the worst light, like you said it would be better to get to know her first, not after - similar to how we got to know Joel before he acted in the first game
I do see a larger problem with this games story, I agree and I do believe the death scene/reveal should have been at some point in the finale or at least the last 2/3s of the game after we have grown on Abby. On top of this, generally stories in this sort of 2 adversarial party trope do something like this, you know the innevitable tragedy and that it *must* take place narratively, but you're allowed to slowly love and bond with the characters before this and so it becomes a point of anxiety. The fact you know something terrible is going to happen is a pretty important factor in tragedies as well. Sure they start the story off with a bang at joels death, but now they have to redeem abby which is a much harder task than if the player was along for her journey too. I also see the problem of the story being split into an ellie an abby and an end chapter as an issue. You work your way up to what feels like the finale, against this villain who they've built up through the entire game then pulls out the rug and tells you that you need to know her life story before the fight, so you spend 4-5 hours working through that just waiting to get back to the finale, and the game tries to redeem her but imo struggles to do so, but by the time youve made it back to the finale it turns out it actually has 0 narrative payoff because chapter 3 is just trying to get back to the finale but now in a different setting. Theres no narrative payoff, imo. Ideally the way they should have structured the story would have been cutting back and forth between Ellie and Abby's story, following a chronological path and both characters reach the theatre at the same point in the story. This would stop things from getting all too stale, allow for the switch up and make crossover moments payoff more, and would flow a lot better imo.
I didn't have the same issue. Maybe it's because I've always seen Joel as a morally ambiguous character. The hatred the game received for killing Joel was mostly by people who genuinely thought Joel was some kind of cowboy type of hero.
@@matheussantana2390 he’s definitely a cowboy, and a hero in the hearts of gamers lol. I loved Joel as a character but it was a ballsy decision to move the story away from him, and I think all of his scenes in the game compliment Ellie’s character in the greater context. In the end, I’m glad that Naughty Dog took some risks even if they didn’t completely pay off for a lot of people.
Regarding Joel "dooming the world" by saving Ellie in TLOU1, I've thought about that choice a lot. Now, obviously, killing a bunch of doctors in the post-apocalypse (Or ever, really): Generally a bad idea. Doctors are useful! But the whole vaccine thing, I wound up with a Lot of problems. (And not just that a vaccine wouldn't work for a fungal infection. Let's just say they're using layman's terms.) 1: Success. Why should we even believe these people can pull this off? Pre-apocalypse, no-one could. The CDC with all their funding and people failed. I don't think it's ever portrayed as a certainty. 1a: These people have some issues regarding competency. They're going to kill their Only host Immediately? That's insane! No biopsy, no scans, no attempt to create separate cultures first, just kill the only source of the variant they need on day 1. 2: Manufacture. How many vaccines can they make? They can't have a well stocked manufacturing plant, can they? And remember, they're killing the only known source of the variant. 3: Distribution. The game was built on the difficulty of traveling around post-apocalyptic America, and you're not carrying fragile, temperature controlled, known to be valuable items. 4: Willingness of distribution. The fireflies are another gang in the wastelands, who's to say they'd even Want to share the cure, and if they do, would they not leverage it for power? 4a: Even if the fireflies are altruistic, people will want to take their access to the cure, to use for their own power. And usually, "The ones with the most weapons and willingness to use them" aren't the good guys. 5: Actual value. Do you know how many people are turned in TLOU2? 0. Being turned is Not portrayed as common. 5a: if Ellie is caught by a zombie, she dies. Even though she's immune. They rip people's throats out. There isn't much of a cure for that. 5b: a human bite is, without medical attention, incredibly dangerous. The mouth is a breeding ground for all kinds of viruses at the best of times. Crossing off zombification is good, but a survivor of an attack could still very well die of any number of other issues, without access to a hospital. So you're left with inhaling spores. And to that 1: They're highly visible. 2: They're not that common. 3: Gas masks exist. Would you murder a child so people don't need SCUBA gear? I wouldn't. Again, murdering a hospital, not good. But I see it as saving an innocent child from being pointlessly slaughtered. It's just something I thought about back around the time the game released.
Yeah I think that's a really good point, like would you let a child die for a CHANCE to save the world? I think that really helps in muddying the water when you make the choice; like if it was 100% guaranteed, it would be an easier choice to make - not EASY, but easIER. But with that slim chance of success, it makes it a much harder decision.
There is the added fact that in the first game she hadn't been immune for very long. they have no idea how her particular "infection" would develop over time. I have made the point that, while Ellie may have been a late bloomer, she was so similar in height and build to a 12 year old that Joel associated her with his dead daughter. So it's possible the infection may have done something to her physical development. That was just a game 1 theory but it's just too soon to be giving everyone this variant as a way of saveing humanity.
It's really important to mention that in the first game, the audio logs actually mention that Ellie is NOT the first person to exhibit immunity and that the previous people who had come to the Fireflies had also been killed in the process of trying to cultivate a vaccine, and had failed multiple times. While there was obviously a *chance* of Ellie being the one to lead them down the right path (the implication being less that they could craft a 'vaccine' and more that something in Ellie's biology caused a mutation in the cordyceps and that replicating the chemical component might neutralize the cordyceps the way it was with Ellie), the audio logs were basically there to absolve Joel of responsibility and communicate to the player that the Fireflies were nuts and that their work on Ellie would be fruitless murder. Personally I found it kind of a cop-out to reassure the player that they were doing the right thing and preferred the ambiguity of it. But I way prefer having to actually find the audio diaries for reassurance than to have the game try to convince me that Joel was totally evil, doomed the world, and deserved what he got.
I feel like most criticism you made about Ellie's bitter characterization can also be applied to Abby, as someone has already pointed out in the comments Abby is an absolute hyprocrite and is stupid to assume she wouldn't face any consquences by leaving witnesses behind. To make it even worst Ellie was crying for Joel when he was getting brutally murdered and Abby was completely unphased by it, and she had the audacity to act as if she's on the moral high ground for letting Ellie live? I would've love that to have been Abby's "what have I done" moment, that she was so consumed by rage and revenge she only realized moments later that she had potentially taken away someone else's father figure, which would better justify her sparing Ellie's life than the "we are better than this" bullshit, but the game just doesn't like holding Abby accountable. The gameplay death vs cutscene death also bothers me as well, I noticed it in Uncharted 4 and the problems seem to be revealing themselves now
That's probably my biggest problem with the game - the whole thing about "the game AND THE TLOU2/ABBY STANS not liking to hold Abby accountable" even though the game shows alot of her hypocrisy, selfishness and narcissism. I also find it very weird that the developers (Neil Druckman in particular) implemented these trait in Abby's character but expected folks to give her a pass and just champion everything she does.
@@schibleh531 Where in my comment or the OPs comment did you see anything about "it being OK for Joe and not Abby"? This is the attitude me and op are talking about with you tlou2 Abby stans - y'all don't even listen to or read criticisms, you just pick one of many week critisms that goes against your narrative then you create a strawman argument out of it. We are talking about multiple instances where Abby shows narcissistic and self centered traits and how you Abby stans and ND somehow expects folks to overlook all that and just champion whatever she does. Even your strawman argument is irrelevant - y'all introduce morality and realism while ignoring the actual gaming experience for the sake of argument - folks bonded with Joel for a whole game, Abby comes of out nowhere and introduce herself by killing him, and you expect folks to judge them the same way in terms of the overall gaming experience of tlou1 and 2? Smh. I don't even have much issue with Joel dying or how it happened, but the outrage of it is justied and natural in my opinion.
"If pressing piano keys could kill people at a great distance." *Suddenly Warhammer 40K's Exorcist appears in my head, a giant church organ that SHOOTS MISSLES!!!*
@@MertKayKay Oh I wish there was a game centered around the Battle Sisters, but yeah Tabletop. And I'm the proud owner who uses that as their crown jewel ... really need to get more infantry though cause I'm too based on my artillery and war machines XD
One of my biggest criticisms with the game is something that's scarcely mentioned...for me, TLoU 2 really lost sight of its original narrative and fell into the same trope that TWD did...in that the human vs. human conflict took precedence over what interested me in the first place -- namely, surviving an apocalypse filled with monsters (it felt like all that became an afterthought). IDGAF about this faction of bad humans, and that faction of bad humans...give me more scary mushroom creatures.
I know what you mean! "The humans are the real evil" is a trope that has some validity, but it just gets so boring for me after the 100th time I see it played out.
This game had a big part in my interest and botany and microbiology, so seeing those aspects somewhat thrown away in part 2 made the experience less special. Sure, they introduced new types of zombies (which are awesome) but I really would’ve liked for them to expand on them more. Maybe come across some sort of revelation, like the zombies actually being alive inside. It brings back relevance to loving characters like Sam from part 1.
so true, took the exact thoughts out of my head. I want to see new and interesting zombies, not the same boring human vs human plot that has been done a billion times in every apocalyptic story ever in existence.
@@valletas it's not really only zombies though... any apocalyptic world just devolves into human v human conflicts... of all things, it was my main reason to stop reading attack on titan and completely stop caring post season 1 because politics and solely human conflicts... why can't games just be what we came for? more zombies, more mutations, more outside danger
Great review, I do think Ellie’s crazy desperation for revenge came from the guilt of pulling away from Joel for so long. Doesn’t make the game better, but would explain her actions a little better, almost as if she is trying to repent for the way she treated him when he was alive and avenge him. I think the ending is also supposed to parallel how she realises how pointless revenge truly is, how unsatisfying and dehumanising, how it doesn’t change what happened. Just so frustrating how unlikable Ellie is in this game…
Ya know I think that's the point, you as the player aren't meant to like Ellie. I know that might be counter productive but these stories are supposed to be about what the characters would decide to do, not whether you believe that decision is right or wrong. As much as I hated what Ellie was doing, the previous game tought me what Joel would be willing to do, Ellie learned that madness from Joel, and thus I believed that Ellie would do the things she did in this game. I don't like it, but I get it, and that's why I like it.
@@shiiche Exactly. We don't have to like the protagonist, although she certainly aligned with the role of antagonist a lot better. You also make a fantastic point, she learnt from Joel, who did one of the most selfish things a person can do. Most just/'good' characters understand the needs of the many overshadow the needs of the few, if he was her teacher her actions mirror Joel's, yes, in a very different way, but the similarities are there.
@@unluckyinlove7834 Yes! Yes! Yes! I totally agree, and I think that's the point. Without Ellie in the first game Joel would have hands down been an antagonist. Ellie has Dina but it's shown in game that she probably isn't enough of a force to ground her back to reality like Ellie was for Joel. And without that "planet to orbit from" she just drifted into the worst parts of herself. I think that (maybe even more than the first game) Joel is a constant presence in this story. He just expresses through Ellie, and through her we can see what kind of man he was, and what kind of person he could turn people into.
i really think that couldve been made a LOT clearer.. maybe playing as joel for a little bit, feeling how frustrating and upsetting it is that she pushes him away... only to seriously regret it later when she has no more time... but ellie in this game just doesn't give me that 'i blame myself so i lash out' vibe, nor does abby...
There should have been at least 2 endings. With the current ending locked behind a human/doggo kill threshold for Ellie. Can't imagine just gleefully murdering and your way to the end then just sparing your object of obsession because "revenge bad, mmkay?"
I never heard anyone suggest two endings before! That would have put a lot more weight on stealth/pacifist versus violence. That would have been really interesting
the anti-revenge message could've actually worked, if Ellie killed Abby but was still all miserable, despite everything she went through. as in SHOWING that it didn't bring Joel back from the dead.
"Revenge is bad" is a superficial, one-dimensional reading of this story. It's kind of assumed that you know it's bad. That's there, but it's not the point. It's about finding closure, learning how to end the destructive perpetuation of the cycle of violence due to tribalism and the refusal to forgive or to let go of past wrongs, facing the consequences of your destructive actions, learning to empathize with the pain of others and recognizing common humanity, how healing for yourself can come from caring for others. I absolutely missed stuff because this story and the characters are so layered. It's not a pleasant experience, so I get not liking it, and I agree that it could have been paced better and probably trimmed down in length, but this is a powerful experience, and one whose messages are incredibly relevant to "current year." You don't have to like or agree with everyone, but you should be able to come away from this saying "I don't agree, but I understand you. I see you and recognize our shared humanity, even with of all of your ugly hate, pain and suffering."
@@lilmupp875 Yeah that's great and all but the game didn't earn that. It should have had different endings. Must be nice for Ellie to suddenly reach an epiphany at the end of the story when she's a bout to do Abby in after she's murdered countless people who didn't have anything to do with Joel getting killed.
I just never bought Ellie's story here from the jump. This girl knew enough about Joel to 1. know he had a daughter, 2. know he used to run in those people-hunting circles, 3. know his moral/ethical codes are a bit sus, and most importantly, 4. knew that at the end, when she asked him what happened, and he lied to her... the game did everything but write a big sign that said SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE HIM!!!! because it was very clear from the acting that she didn't believe him. She knew he was lying, and she was okay with that, knowing the kinds of things he's done. I don't believe that hearing the recording would have made her turn on him like that. This man became her father, and she is SURPRISED and ANGRY that he killed everyone who had basically arranged to kill her on the very flimsy premise that she could somehow... fix all of this? Ellie in the first game was not that stupid. She would have understood that one of the ways Joel has always cared for people is protection at all costs. He's killed for others, of course he'd kill for her. And she's killed for him! To keep him alive! Ugh, this game's Ellie just. rips any shred of affection you have for the first one apart and then hands you back the pieces clumsily glued back together and tells you it's the same thing when it absolutely isn't.
Very good point Poker! Like at the end of the first game you can absolutely see on her face that she doesn't believe him for a second. Surely on discovery of this magic voice recording, she'd have been like "yep, this confirms it" probably disappointed and really gutted to know the truth, but to treat it like a huge twist makes her look like an idiot 😂 Thanks very much for watching!
So I can agree with a lot of this but you have to look at Ellie's character and motivations more to understand where she's coming from. Joel's past actions, hell even his personality, possibly even his bond with Ellie are completely or at least almost irrelevant. The thing to take into account is Ellie's primary motivation being getting to the Fireflies for the cure so she can alleviate the survivor's guilt she's carrying around, so I know I just implied Joel is almost irrelevant here so hear me out a sec when I state the obvious of Joel's primary motivation being protecting Ellie. This brings up a key factor. Joel needs Ellie to be able to fulfil his motivation, Ellie does not need him for hers. I've seen it pointed out before that Ellie doesn't technically need Joel, this becomes clear in her section of the game where it almost seems that if Joel died right there Ellie would have been able to continue on alone, she may have even made it. She doesn't need him, but she does love him and chooses to stick with him. So when Joel makes the decision to save Ellie, fulfilling his motivation of protecting her, he's also robbed her of her own. I know this is a point of contention so I'll lay it out for the record that I agree with his choice, but there are issues with it and more importantly, things Ellie wouldn't be aware of that the player is that she can't take into consideration. The probability of a cure being low? There's no sign Ellie knows this, and she's shown to be pretty optimistic and idealistic, even if it had crossed her mind she may have dismissed it and chosen to believe it was an almost sure thing. That she would have died? No one told her. The viability of even dispensing a vaccine to everyone? Literally no indication of her considering it. That Marlene and the Fireflies were also willing to take her choice from her? Marlene doesn't even speak to her so, no. Joel also considers none of these things when he saves her, he was motivated by the fact he couldn't lose her. There's more I could say but this is already long and word vomitty and I doubt anyone will get through it so I'll wrap this bit up by reiterating, yes Ellie loves Joel. That doesn't change the fact that he made her purpose for even going on the journey she did, apparently impossible, lied to her about it so he wouldn't lose her and then told her that her immunity meant nothing and all her loved ones died for nothing. As for Ellie not believing the lie, and then TLOU2 making it ridiculously convoluted on whether she knew he lied or not, I agree it was frustratingly handled and this is pretty much my opinion so... I always felt like Ellie knew he was lying to her, but she didn't know the extent of the lie. Ellie never gives any sort of indication she knows or even suspects the Fireflies got more or less wrecked at that exact moment. I think she convinced herself there was *some* truth in what Joel told her and chose to believe he talked to them, wasn't satisfied with what he heard and just....left. Yeah it's flimsy, but we're thinking from the perspective of a fourteen year old girl with a fear of being alone and who now feels like the only person she really has left in the world is lying to her, she's going to go through whatever mental gymnastics she has to, to justify putting the issue to bed so she doesn't lose him. So she tries to convince herself it probably wasn't that big of a lie. Then she finds out what really happened and finding out that no, it wasn't just Joel twisting the truth and combine that with all the little lies and doubts from the past few years that she kept trying to shove away...I think the blow up was a sad inevitability that could have been handled better if the writers respected the characters. Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
@@coffeekat5066 You yourself admitted she didnt know she would die. The fireflies never asked her. So it was the right thing to do for Joel. Now, as you correctly pointed it out, for Ellie, this might not matter. But to Joel? Yes it does, and somehow he tells Ellie the worst possible account of the events. Maybe if he explained it better, and didnt make him an idiot (a reoccurring thing in this game, considering his death scene), Ellie would have understood his position better.
You know what would have been more realistic? If she found out he killed Marlene. She looked after her after her mom died and was her only living connection to her. Yet there is no mention of Marlene from Ellie at all. If she assumed Marlene died earlier and then found out Joel killed her, this anger she has toward Joel in part 2 would feel more justified.
Even if Ellie was told she would have died, how could she have given consent to have her life taken away like that? She’s just a child in the first chapter and the fireflies could have easily manipulated her into thinking there’s much more hope of creating an effective vaccine than what there actually was. In no scenario would have this been fair to her.
Did not know about tLoU co-writer talking Druckmann out of the revenge plot. It goes a long way in explaining how, though the main writers name is on the box, a secondary writer can really iron out a story and how the removal of that element can show the faults in the big names writing.
@@MertKayKay it's most notable in shows and movies where a specific writing partnership creates a film or series, then when a sequel or a new series is created with only one of the partnership, usually the bigger name, there's a noticeable drop in writing quality. Everyone goes asks what happened, it's from the absence of that person who would call the writer on shit ideas, bad motivations or nonsensical plot threads. I never knew of this previous writer but clearly he had a huge effect on the first story. Druckmann fell for the oldest entertainment lie "you don't need them".
@@Needler13 yeah, I ironically had a whole conversation-well, rant-with my best friend the other day on how the prequels still had heart and a vision while the sequels…y’know.
the whole shit about Joel really gets me because how much the conversation is painted as "fans not liking that their fave died" when so clearly those fans were saying they didn't mind that he died but that he died like that while Vito did have a point when he said Joel likely got complacent and less cynical after spending so much time with Ellie, it's something that given his backstory from the first game he definitely should've picked up on upon seeing Abby's goons "thanks mister, what was your name again?" *oh shit these people look up to no good* "bob"
Completely agree Lucas; I've been called butthurt before for criticising the story - and, maybe I am - but I just didn't appreciate that Joel became an object that was used to get the plot going. He didn't need a hero's death but he was literally just an object in this game.
killing Joel is a Iron Man in Endgame kind of way takes away from the emotional impact of it, how both the player and Ellie feel robbed, they want you to be in her shoes, giving him a heroic goodbye is so NOT like what this franchise does and woulda been so lame
@@joycedates2059 she wanted revenge she didn't want him to get the easy way out, what do you not understand about that? do you think Abby played the first game? to her Joel is a psycho
My main gripe with this game is that Drukmann was so convinced to have written some masterpiece. He should have let us pick our ending and register the numbers like in Telltale's games. I would have laughed my ass off when I would eventually see a message saying "75% choose to kill Abby" prooving that most people disagreed with Neil.
@@MASHo1992I don't know if you have played the Infamous series (if you haven't you should). Sucker Punch Studios the makers of the Infamous game series took a look at how many people picked the good ending of Infamous 2 (where the main character dies) on their first playthough and then started making the next own based off that. They originally had made plans to follow up the bad ending (where the main charcter lives).
I know this comment is a million years old, but God, Neil Druckmann is insufferable. Someone needs to tell that man that his writing is not the pure gold he seems to think it is.
@@valiantshadow89 Would you believe me if I told you there was someone? Bruce Straley saw Neil's first drafts of the story (it was basically the second game's story) said it was shit rewrote most of it. Look him up, Neil is still so salty that he didn't got credited in the show.
What I hate most about Abby isn't that she killed Joel. I don't think I would've been able to restrain myself either if I had my father's killer at my mercy. It's this line that pisses me of to end. "We let you both live! And you wasted it!" That's what makes Abby such a despicable character. She's a hypocrite. Joel saved her life and she still tortured him to death. And on top of that, she's fully aware of the pain she caused both Ellie and Tommy, and yet act surprised that they would come after her just because she spared their lives. Was Joel act of heroism enough for Abby to make her let go of her vendetta? No, it wasn't. And yet she had the audacity to act all high and mighty and pretend like she's morally superior to Ellie and Tommy just because she and her friends spared their lives. Hate them for killing her friends. That I can accept. What I won't accept is her acting like she morally superior to everyone else when she knows fully well the pain she caused Joel's family for murdering them and that Joel saved her from a horrible painful death, and actually expects his family to not seek out revenge for the exact same reason she sought revenge upon him. "Don't ever let me see your face again." Oh, shut up! You have not earned the right to talk down to Ellie like that, you self righteous hypocrite. I wouldn't have minded it so much if it wasn't for the fact that no one calls her out for it. The game plays it of as if Abby is totally in the right here. I don't mind hypocrite characters as much just as long as they get called out for their crap. But nope. Not Abby. She doesn't have to take any responsibility for her actions. She didn't do anything wrong. This is the same reason why I hate Amber form Invincible. Both are self entitled, self righteous and hypocrites. And what really gets me are all the fans who defends her while at the same time condemns Ellie and Tommy! Doing so completely contradicts the message this story was trying to push. That revenge is a fools game. That showing mercy upon a hated enemy if the most noble thing to do. So then why on Earth doesn't Abby get the same heat from her fans as Ellie and Tommy? If you're gonna condemn the two for their actions, that's fine. They crossed a lot of lines they shouldn't have. But don't defend Abby at the same time when she made the same choice they did. She choose to go to Jackson and murder Joel instead of letting go of her grudge. Just like how Ellie and Tommy choose to go to Seattle. And that is why I cannot stand the character that is Abby Anderson.
I completely understand! What's more, is that when we play Abby, she's really down to earth, really chill, almost meek in a way. But when we need her to kill someone for the plot, she becomes a horrendous psychopath. Like, she just has this psychopathy that gets wheeled out whenever we need Ellie to be powerless. But when we're playing as Abby, the writers very desperately want us to start liking her, so she just becomes super normal. Her characterisation is so schizophrenic and so completely reliant on what the writers need at the time.
@@MertKayKay Damn straight. There's also the fact that she put Lev in needless danger when she set out to avenge Owen and Mel. Abby had no idea how many they were up against when they tracked Ellie and Tommy down, and she had just pulled Lev out of a freaking war zone. Lev had just lost his sister, and Abby selfishly dragged him on a dangerous revenge quest just hours after that trauma. Sure, they got the drop on Tommy and Ellie. But that was just pure luck. This could've gone either way. Bottom line, Abby dragged a recently traumatized child, who was pretty much all she had left in the world at that point, on a dangerous revenge quest that would've gained nothing. Something Abby should've known already by now, given her nightmares continued even after she got her revenge on Joel.
I get so much whiplash when she goes from being this nice, normal girl to being a psychopath. It genuinely feels like two personalities fighting eachother for control.
This was a really good review. Although my biggest problem with the game is the lack of any likable characters. In last of us 1 the characters were flawed but relatable and likable. After Joel died the only likable character was lev and lev was introduced much later in the game. Also Joel's death scene really ruined Abby's character in general for me. If you remember Joel and Tommy saved her life showing her nothing but kindness. A lot of people were angry that they gave their names but personally I think they could've softened by being part of a community for years. My biggest problem with Joel's death scene is Abby's lack of hesitation in killing him. You would think that all this time after her fathers death she would want some answers from the killer. Asking questions such as Why? or do you know what you have done? Doing this would've fleshed out Abby's character making her more relatable. Also if they had made Abby shoot Joel instead of using a golf club you wouldn't hate her as nearly as much as you do in the game. Another thing they didn't do is flesh out Abby's remorse if she had any. They never showed Abby regretting what she had done in a meaningful way. This ruined her character for me making her a completely unrelatable psycho. Also logically it makes no sense leaving Tommy and Ellie alive at that point (Abby being in the same place as Ellie at one point) this could've been a scene to show Abby's compassion by arguing with the group for their lives. Instead they had Owen defend Ellie in this scene which didn't really help his character in the long run. I could drone on and on about each character individually, Dina's selfishness, Jessie's lack of realism that you mentioned, Mel's/Owens lack of love for their unborn child but ill just leave it here. I'm neither team Abby nor Team Ellie btw. The story itself is horrible what's the point of this story? Kill thousands of people that have nothing to do with your revenge just to give up on your revenge at the last minute.... Both Ellie and Abby are irredeemable by the end of the story.
YES thank you for such an articulate comment, you put into words exactly how I feel about Abby! The way they had her behave was on the hard end of the psychopathic spectrum when in reality they really could have added a grey area. Even in TLOU1 when Joel shoots the Firefly woman (forgot her name lmao), he says "You'll just come after her", so you can hear his deliberation even after he's done some unspeakable stuff. For a person who was supposed to be our main character, they have Abby behave horribly. Her more genuine moments showed a really nice woman but whenever they want to push a plot moment forwards, they turn her into Hannibal Lecter :') Thank you for this, I'm glad you liked the video too!
@@MertKayKay Yep everything feels artificial. Everything had to happened the way it did for the plot to continue. For ex Abby had to slowly torture Joel so Ellie could stumble upon the act and know who to go after. There is some concept art in the bonuses for that scene that I much prefer. It was a innocent looking Abby who has a machete and she is couching in front of Joel. Joel is laying on the floor with his hand cut off with a gun in it. Now I could buy and forgive Abby for killing Joel in self defense like that. But Abby slowly killing a man who just save her life in front of his daughter is just unforgiveable and next level cruel. Compare that to Joel killing her father who is armed to save his daughter. I can't believe people actually try to compare the two acts as the same level of cruelty.
@@MertKayKay I don't see how you would expect abby to feel remorse for that when in her eyes it was the person who screwed over the best chance that the world had at getting a vaccine who also killed her dad. I get you when you say, why didn't abby ask Joel "do you know what you have done?" and stuff like that but at that point everybody in the room knew what Joel did. Tommy knew, Abby and her friends knew and especially Ellie and Joel knew. Now, when we first met Abby we see her wake up from a nightmare which was her thinking about her dads death. After she kills Joel she still gets those nightmares and they don't stop until after she takes in lev and his sis. Abby killing Joel is meant to look like unnecessarily brutal violence cause it is. She was blinded of revenge cus of her father that she didn't even weigh in the fact that she was killing the man who just saved her life. And after doing it still didn't even give her the closure she wanted cus she was still getting nightmares right after.
@@lilmupp875 Even though Abby and her friends knew what Joel did, I don't think any of them even wondered WHY he did it. Even when Ellie was begging them not to kill Joel, not one of them stopped to question the situation. If Abby and her friends had asked questions, the situation probably would have ended differently. When Joel asked who she was, Abby had the chance to clear things up by telling him who she was and why she was after him. But all she said to him was "Guess". The event happened 5 years ago and Joel had never seen Abby before. How is he supposed to guess? We as the players didn't know who Abby was and we played as Joel in the first game. We wouldn't have been able to guess who she was. I do understand being blinded by revenge, but I have trouble believing that Abby did not once in 5 years wonder about the reason Joel killed her dad.
My primary issue with TLOU2 is that it felt like the writers wanted us to side with Abby as Abby's story went on. But never really fixed any of her problems. They could have shown her having remorse and growing because of what she did. But Instead, they just had her do random, largely unrelated good things, and had random, largely unrelated bad things happen to her. "Yes, your honour, my client killed someone, but he also saved someone else in an entirely different circumstance." Doesn't work as a defence in court. Nor does "My client Did commit murder, but he was hit by a car afterwards." It also really doesn't help that the positives they showed were all Nothing to me. She plays with a cute animal and had friends she cares about. Great, so did Bin Laden. (He liked cats, was great at volleyball, and used to play Counterstrike and Animal Crossing. Doesn't make him a good person.) There was literally propaganda pictures of Hitler posing with dogs and deers. Evil people are people too? Yeah, I know that. It's WHY I have a problem with them. I wouldn't seek revenge against a tornado, it has no agency. It really doesn't help that she's a firefly turned wolf. The fireflies were calling quarantine zones fascism and bombing checkpoints according to the start of TLOU1 which A: is terrorism, B: helped spread the virus, and C: has some rather negative baggage given certain people's responses to the Corona virus around that time... And the WLF were straight up genocidal towards the Seraphites. Abby was even called "Number one scar slayer". Don't get me wrong, fuck the Seraphites, bunch of bigotted zealous luddite (Except when they wanted a set piece with Seraphite technology that one time so you can reach the invisible sky bridge) assholes, but wolves were targeting non-combatants, and that's not OK. Aaaand then she found an inebriated, emotionally compromised man and had sex with him while knowing he was pining for the mother of his child. He was not capable of informed consent. And that act is unforgivable in my book. She could have distanced herself from the bad parts of the Fireflies and WLF. But that? That was all her.
I agree very much Calemr - thanks for the comment! Loved reading it. Also, Bin Laden being a fan of Animal Crossing is a very interesting little factoid. I wonder which villager was his favourite.
@@MertKayKay A lot of his hard drive contents were released to the public by the CIA a few years ago. He pirated a bunch of DS games, and major movies. Very naughty. So it might have his old save data somewhere among the files. Could be possible to find out.
The reason why the writer thinks Abby's "redeemed" by unrelated good acts is because Neil Druckmann is gaming's own Weinstein. You see, Neil Druckmann, personally, fired and blacklisted someone for being sexually harassed by his best friend Robert Cogburn. He did this because Cogburn's unrelated good acts, being the main guy working on Naughty Dog's multiplayer, supposedly made up for him sexually harassing people.
@@calemr Everything you listed is exactly why i hate Abby. There's absolutely no buildup or conclusion to her redemption being deserved. The story just basically says "you're going to feel this way, and that's final".
@@bggsz4 Agreed. The fact that one of the first things you do as Abby is play with a dog Immediately set off alarm bells for me. From there, it all felt like manipulation, rather than a well crafted narrative. "Play with the dog! Care about how Ellie killed it!" "No. And that was self defence anyway." "Well you can't continue the game until you do!" And honestly that kind of applies to all Abby's friends. The only one I cared about was Lev, 'cause he seemed like an actually decent person, rather than "A piece of shit, but they had friends, so that makes it OK." No amount of "Look at how Abby used to hang out with Nora" will erase "Nora spitefully told Ellie to her face how she enjoys thinking about the time she murdered Ellie's father figure." No amount of "Manny saved a burrito for Abby 'cause they're friends" will make up for "Manny spat on Joel's dead body." I've experienced plenty of media with protagonists who aren't heroes (Lisa: The Painful RPG is my favourite game narrative of all time.) So playing as a character does almost Nothing towards making me side with them.
The difference between the 1st and the 2nd game is that it’s abundantly clear as to why Joel saves Ellie, it’s NOT as clear as to why Ellie spares Abby. The line of demarcation is clearly defined in the 1st and not in the 2nd. Why did these things happen, that is the most important question.
Because it wasn't worth it. None of it ever was. That was the message. The blood shed on both sides was pointless and just begat more. She realized too late, Abby was just a roided up revenge monster who in the end suffered more than anyone because of her choices, Ellie completely ended a bloody and vicious cycle that unintentionally began with her.
@@FiveFingerOutfit I still don’t understand how recalling a nice moment with a loved one would suddenly take you out of trying to kill the person who took away that loved one in the first place. She had absolutely no reason to spare Abby and it’s not some sort of dumb “EnD tHe CycLE” excuse people like to give the ending for whatever reason. Like if I had a flashback of a something like that happening, that would just motivate me to drown her even faster for taking that away from me
@@uhoh6706 Did you not listen to their conversation when they showed the full memory? This is what happens when things are spoon fed too often, people complain when things are remotely up to interpretation and they have to interpret any amount of motive or plot.
Ultimately, I understand why Ellie decided to spare Abby. Could it have been done in a different way? Yes. Ultimately, the flashback serves the purpose that Ellie may never be able to forgive Abby ( in the same way she may not have ever been able to forgive Joel ) but she would like to try. Ultimately, killing Abby wasn't going to solve anything for her. It wouldn't bring Joel back, it wouldn't cure her of her PTSD, etc. Killing Abby also meant killing Lev. I think there were a lot of good ideas with this game, some of it was executed poorly.
I agree with 25:50 onwards about the in-universe length. It’s my biggest problem with the “grief makes people act strangely” defence towards this game. It implies that Ellie wasted almost two years of her life hunting this Abby girl, and inadvertently murdering hundreds, for this father figure she hadn’t been on speaking terms with for a long time, yet when she finally as this girl where she wants her, Ellie has an epiphany about Joel probably not wanting her to avenge him. Are they trying to tell me that was the first time since Joel’s murder she thought about him other than his bloodied corpse?
When I found out that Druckmann wanted to make this story from the get go, it all made so much sense. TLoU2 is nothing more than one man's ego project, and this time Wells and Straley weren't there to reign him in. I know someone who worked for ND (he left after TLoU2), and apparently a lot of people, including the _actors,_ criticized the plot, but Druckmann ignored them. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not a good story. For the most part, it's boring. The characters aren't characters, they're props. When I first played the game, I found myself asking why Isaac would let a group of his best soldiers trek across three clicker-infested states, in the middle of heavy winter, to get revenge on an insignificant old man who _might_ be in Jackson, while they were at war with the Seraphites. It's nonsense. Lev and Jesse were the only likable characters, but that's because we were manipulated into liking them. Jesse just smiles and waves at everything and Lev is an innocent child, so we have no reason to dislike them. Owen is the only other side character with any flaws or personality, but he only served to make me hate Abby even more because she coerced him into having sx, when he was drunk and emotionally compromised, while he was torn between her and his very pregnant girlfriend. I think the devs wanted me to think that moment was romantic, but it made me sick, tbh. The whole game is just a contrived, silly nightmare.
@@kirikakirikakirika I was on board with your take until this. Don't act superior and like your take is a fact. Get over yourself. You tripped on your own, massively inflated ego.
@@obyone878 "This is the dumbest take I've seen so far." Sorry, _I_ was acting superior? The guy tried to insult my intelligence and you're acting like I didn't have a right to fire back?
I have a very, very, lukewarm defense of the homophobia theme with the bigot in the opening scene. I think they were trying to make one scene that encapsulates what happens during the course of the story, like Romeo and Juliet spoiling it in the first five minutes. Here's this guy who did something indefensible, and one of our well known characters is asking us to hear him and forgive him. His apology is clearly something he doesn't feel but was made to do, but then he pulls out an opportunity to accept a gift as a road to forgiveness. A steak sammich. Ellie takes it but immediately tosses it away. I think the theme supposed to be played out here is "it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured, than starve yourself on revenge" or something like that. Which, hey, I disagree with them completely, but at least thematically it does make a little bit of sense. Btw, if any bigots wanna make me a steak sandwich you can call me whatever you want. But you can't half-ass it. Gotta grill it medium rare, and drizzle some A-1 on top. And get that good bread, the kind so homemade it has holes in it. Gotta balance that hate with some love ya know? In the form of sammiches.
Oo I like what you said about "it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured, than starve yourself on revenge", like biting the bullet and just being the bigger person even if you don't respect them. In terms of defences I think that one's fairly solid. Thanks for watching Justine! And thanks for the comment
"it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured than starve yourself on revenge" that line goes too fuckin' hard. that is officially the unofficial tagline for this game for me.
The way Jesse was characterized was inhuman in a lot of ways. I agree with your arguments, seeing someone you were close you leave you for a close friend would definitely sting. Especially seeing she is preganat with his child which means they had coitus recently. A great plot thread would've been having Jesse blowup when him and Ellie went their separate ways. Telling her off about taking Dina on this mission, putting her needs above everyone else, and feeling betrayed by Ellie. They could've even go as far as Jesse accusing Ellie of sleeping with Dina while they were together or Ellie doing the same seeing the timing of the pregnancy is so weird. I get they tried to make him into "I want whats best for the people I love" but it came off as someone who is unnaturally out of touch of his own emotions. To the point that his death is played off as a footnote, literally. 1 note of Jesse parents telling Ellie not to blame herself for his death. Jesse just felt like the punching bag, the nice guy who died. It also didn't help that they never explained why Dina and Ellie like each other. Riley and even Cat, who we never see, highlight Ellie's attachment to them. But why Dina? The second we are introduced to her we are just hammered with the same thing "I love her" without a reason for that love.
Whenever I think of how bad society was before the outbreak, and how badly it devolved after the outbreak… I can’t help but side with Joel in the finale of TLOU. He did the right thing, the thing we all would have done in his predicament. Who’s to say it would have even 100% worked?? And even if it did, how many would they cure before running out? How many fedra soldiers, raiders, or fireflies would steal it and use it for power? Who’s to say the fungus wouldn’t evolve to combat it? Joel saved the only thing that mattered to him. He saved HIS world: Ellie… and in a world so far gone, it’s a very valid reason to do what he did. It reminds me of the Superman line from Man of Steel. Where Superman chose earth over krypton, he said “Krypton had it’s chance” before destroying the only possible way of “reviving” it. It’s very similar to how Joel chose to reject humanity, to protect what’s most important to him. It’s a bold decision that clearly weighed on him, but he never regretted it even for a second. That’s why I love Joel. That’s why I love Ellie… …and that’s why I hate Neil Druckmann, for throwing it all away in the sequel, to tell an “edgy” cliche violence = bad story. Wow, he really broke new ground with that one. He brutally killed Joel in a truly heartless way, and condemned Ellie to be alone with nothing… not even enough fingers to play the one thing she has left from her “father” Joel. It felt so needlessly personal, and nasty, how things ended up. Like Neil randomly wanted to give the audience a giant middle finger. Well I ain’t ever going to accept TLOU2 as canon.
THANK YOU for pointing out that Ellie never gave consent in the first game! The fact that there are many fans of TLOU2 who never acknowledge this drives me insane! I thought the kind of people who were down with the messages in this game, were also knowledgeable of how the issue of consent is supposed to work, but it seems not too be the case. It doesn't matter if Ellie expressed a desire to be humanities cure "whatever it takes" or "no matter the cost" (and she doesn't even directly say either of those things). It doesn't matter if you can infer from her facial expressions or her intonation that she'd be willing to pay any price, including her life. IF SHE DIDN'T DIRECTLY GIVE CONSENT, THEN CONSENT WAS NEVER GIVEN! Lovely, cherubic, zebra-saving Dr. Anderson strapped an unconscious 14-year old girl to an operating table, and, without ever getting her consent, was going to cut her open and kill her. Yes, from his perspective, he was going to possibly save the world, but to do it, he was going to murder a child; AND NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS! Even with all the massive problems this games story has, one little addition would have helped it tremendously: In the scene where little Abby overhears her dad unable to answer the what-if-it-was-your-daughter question, and tells him "If it was me, I'd want you to do it." Instead of just pleasantly smirking at her, he could've said something to the effect of- "You would have a choice. This girl doesn't; because I'm not giving her one. I truly believe this is for the good of the entire world. But it's still an evil thing I'm doing; and I'll have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life." On the nose? Sure. But what dialogue in this game isn't? 😛
YEEES! :D I know that story doesn't happen without contrivances but really, everything comes down to the fact that the Fireflies never got Ellie's consent, and she never explicitly consents or not, which I felt was a way to push Joel over the line into "bad guy doing good things". I'm happy for him to be a bad guy doing bad things at this rate - the whole consent issue would have nailed so much down. Thanks for watching Tube, and thanks for blessing my comment sections!
@@MertKayKay See, I wouldn't have wanted Joel to be full on evil; denying Ellies direct wishes along with killing everybody. The non-consent issue is one of the things that makes the first games ending hauntingly ambiguous. I just wish that aspect would have been acknowledged by SOMEONE in the second game.
@@Tubemansi I don't really think them not getting her consent was really contrived. Throughout the whole game the fireflies were shown to be a group on their last legs and frankly, not very good at what they wanted do. In Boston Marlene pretty much says the fireflies were, for lack of a better term, few and far between (What’s left of them). Hell Robert said that they were almost all dead IIRC. And nearly every time we see the fireflies bar the ending they were dead bodies or killed. In Pittsburgh the fireflies overthrew FEDRA..... and were then overthrown because the hunters didn't like them. And now, they have the possible cure to the infection right at their fingertips? Imagine the power having a vaccine would have. Imagine how much of a bargaining chip that would be. Especially for such a desperate group. Being able to negotiate, say "Hey if you join is we'll vaccinate you!" Would be such a powerboost for the fireflies and the key for them to reach there goal. And let's say, with everything on the table, that they took the road to ask Ellie for Consent. What happens if she says no? Do the fireflies let her head out with Joel, let the most important possible thing for them in there losing war that could turn the tide slip away? That wasn't an option for the fireflies. But that doesn't make it okay. The fireflies were absolute monsters for that decision. Joel made the right call. The murder of a 14 year old girl for a possible shot at a cure is an entierly morally black decision.
@@MertKayKay Well yeah this is another thing. I get that Ellie was mad at Joel for taking away her choice, but she never actually was given the chance to make it by the Fireflies anyway. Yes it is what she would have wanted but the Fireflies had no way of knowing that. I mean I don't know, I think you'd be angier at them (and especially Marlene who had a close personal connection with Ellie her whole life, maybe a sort of aunt figure?) than Joel since they were going to just kill you in your sleep without asking.
@@thinkingscottish It irritates the hell out of me too, but I'll just throw it out that Joel never actually tells Ellie. He tells her making a vaccine would have killed her, not that they were prepped, ready to go and didn't plan on asking her about it. You'd think she's smart enough to put that together herself, but with the way she's written in this game maybe not.
Calling Abby a character is a stretch, because she's so poorly written, but here's what we know about her: Is sadistic: * Enjoys torturing Joel. * Wishes she had more time for torture, while walking past people being tortured. * Owen sex scene (less said about that the better). Disloyal: * Assigned to lead important attack against her group's enemies. Ignores assignment. * Kills her own comrades. * Sleeps with friend's boyfriend. Thoughtless: * Decides to find Joel by herself, because the rest of her group thinks it's impossible. Leaves without gear, supplies, or a plan. * Takes one-armed girl to an island where everyone wants to kill her. * Is surprised when Ellie shows up, despite the fact Ellie was literally screaming, "I WILL KILL YOU" while she was killing Joel. Self-centered: * Takes advantage of drunk ex-boyfriend, whom she apparently doesn't give a shit about, then blames him. * Acts surprised about the attack on Scar Island, even though she had been assigned to lead it. * Is pissed Ellie came after her, because, "We let you live". Even though Joel literally saved her life, immediately before she killed him. Lucky: * Doesn't get shot by Ellie, even though Ellie has a clear shot, with a weapon in both hands, at a distance of about ten or fifteen feet. * Survives attack by horde, after random guy saves her. Random guy coincidentally turns out to be guy she's looking for. * Gets handed map to killer's location, when she finds friends' bodies. Inconsistent: * "#1 Scar Killer" on day 1. #1 WLF killer on day 3. * Day 2: "If there are Fireflies in Santa Barbara, I'd go the other way." Day 3: Sails off to find Fireflies in Santa Barbara. * Goes on suicidally dangerous mission to save Yara. Doesn't bother to tell Owen and Mel that someone's trying to kill them. There are a lot of things to dislike about the "Abby" character. That she's the only person in the game who has access to steroids is stupid and distracting. But it's pretty minor.
In my playthrough, I killed *literally* everyone I could as I was playing as Ellie. My version of Ellie was not a pacifist. She was a cold-hearted killer who slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of people, on her way to that final mission. So, for her to (metaphorically) then turn to the camera, smile, and say "revenge is bad bros, understand?" was just sort of weird. The only thing I can liken it to is, imagine if in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, as Sam, Frodo, and Gollum are on Mt. Doom, instead of trying to take the ring for himself, Gollum says: "Nah, guys. Greed is bad. Go ahead and destroy the ring." That would be weird, right? To me, the ending of TLOU 2 is a 1:1 recreation of that hypothetical.
Yes! A lot of people claim "Ellie makes those choices so we can role play as her" and then you just watch her swerve back and forth across the road for 10 hours
The whole game Ellie kills in self defense, because if she doesn't seraphites or wolves will kill her, the only people she kills for "desire" are the ones responsible por Joel's death and the game makes it clear how much it affects her to kill them when they represent no danger for her, when they are the "victims", even for the player can be hard to process (take the Nora or Owen and Mel murder scenes for example). At the end of the game Ellie knows that she should stay with Dina and her baby but it's the pain for Joel's death and her own guilt that she doesn't wanna face and therefore justifies it with "anger, hatred and justice". When she finally gets to Abby she's not in good shape at all, she has been tortured for months and Ellie was expecting to find that strong, unstoppable and cruel monster. Again, she represents no danger for her, anyways Ellie thinks that if she kills her, her pain and trauma will heal, so she tries one last time and defies her to a duel to death and ultimately wins. As she's drowning her you can see how her emotions turn from rage to pain and sadness and it's in this moment when she sees Joel because after vengueance and rage is gone, all that's going to be left is pain... Joel represents that for Ellie at this point. She had to get to this moment, to get to kill the person who inflicted the most painful and traumatic experience of her life on her to realize that it wasn't worth it and it would not help her as she thought it would so she let's her go finally letting go of her anger and accepting her grief, pain and guilt, not giving up but determined to face it and work on it so she could find some sort of forgiveness within herself (resilience) and we can see when she returns to the farm that she's achieving this, finally remembering Joel not as the man who was brutally murdered but as a loving and accepting father figure.
@@alejandroalvarado3409 Even so, the self-defense part is still questionable, sure the WLF tried to kill Ellie, but that's cuz she was trespassing in their territory. And most of the encounters is just her ambushing and killing them stealthly or guns blazing which only deepens the idea that she's a threat to them further. It's hard to claim self-defense when you intentionally break into someone's house and they point a gun at you for it.
That feeling you got from the game where it felt like it was taking something you loved and destroying it for fun is more than a feeling. It was intentional. The writer was the one who intended for you to feel that, and then he mocked people he hurt. That’s why people tend to have no mercy or sympathy for him. It’s a return of the same energy he put out. He kept egging people on, so they pointed out the real reasons they were upset because he was actively trying to character assassinate his own paying customers. He was a bit megalomaniacal about the whole thing and every creator should use him as a cautionary tale.
I think it breaks down to a huge amount of programmers doing an incredible amount of work in service of a horrible story that just drags you through the mud. If you gave this engine, assets, and mocap to anyone and told them to go wild with it, 9 times out of 10, I think you'd end up with something better. The actors aren't bad, but the material is. The game as a game functions great. They could have done sooo much with what they had. What we got was a waste of time.
I agree Hash! The game looks absolutely incredible and the mechanics are so unbelievably polished. Definitely one of the best looking experiences I've played
Agreed. Druckman and his shoehorned leftist political propaganda ruined what would have been a good game. He basically shit all over the hard work of everyone else on the game by forcing a story that is ham fisted and preachy and alienating to the audience.
Sadly this game was assassinated by the ego of a creative mind that couldnt let go of their original "grand idea" which was squashed by someone with a better grasp of story (or in this case an entire team). I like writing & creating worlds, often seeking the opinion of others, because my single view may be cloaded by personal bias or delusion. Sometimes I'm sad to hear that an idea is far worse then I thought. Other times I happily indulge in the horror, sadness, happiness or WTF reactions I get when I get it right. Druckmann may not have deserved to be bullied & media-lynched by angry players but he mutated the game & its characters to fit a story he wanted from day 1 that everyone else wasnt on board with. Best to delude ourselves that we never got a sequel. The ending of The Last Of Us is all we have. Nothing beyond that ever happened lol.
ABSOLUTELY!!! YOUR THE FIRST PERSON IV SEEN COMMENT THIS.... BINGO! exactly.... he took the idea that straily CHUCKED and said watch this... i can make this work
Thank OG TLOU Co-Writer Bruce Straley. He was one of main writers in the writing team that didn’t let Neil Druckmann do his cross country revenge story, apparently there’s an interview where Bruce says that eventually the original story was scrapped because it “wasn’t believable” lmao.
The other thing that definitely proves Neil botched the story is that it isn't even actually his story. Everyone always keeps giving him all the credit for creating TLOU but he pretty much didn't as he just had the job of creative writer, the person who is told to make a template for characters and a script but later has to make all changes given by the rest of the creative team and the director, and in TLOU's case, Bruce had talked about the input he had on the story, and that plenty of Neil's ideas were rejected, so in the end, the input on the story and how it turned out is more from Bruce than Neil, same as how TV shows have their writers and also have a showrunner that calls the shots and approves or disaproves the scripts presented and makes all changes they think are necessary. A little off-topic, the same thing happened with Halloween II, John Carpenter wrote it, but wrote what others told him to, and he was very much against it. With TLOU, Neil wanted to do that whole revenge plot from the start and pretty much everything that happened in Part II that didn't happen in the first game, but Bruce and the other creators rejected most of his ideas and led the story to another way that made it the one of the most beloved stories in history, the same went with Uncharted 4 which was another story Bruce worked on that he actually made it good. And later surprise surprise when Bruce left ND, Neil suddenly became president, greenlit a Part II almost immediately that ended up incorporating every single idea of his that was rejected, and most of the people who worked on TLOU, pretty much everyone who opposed him earlier were fired, and it most definitely wasn't a coincidence, no matter what he or others who defend him claim. He turned the studio from a company making great games that the players love to a political dictatorship that leans on his every whim. But in the end he still unfortunately gets all the credit everywhere as the second a person reads "Writer" they're all like "oh here's the person responsible, forget the director and everyone else".
I actually came here straight after your Rachel Foster video knowing I’ll actually get a review with some nuance and I wasn’t let down. It actually made me realize the extent of how emotionally manipulative it was in its gameplay - in @Joseph Anderson’s playthrough, where he talks about how unrealistic killing Ellie would be scientifically since Naughty Dog seemed to be aiming for realism, he shows how in the ending Joel HAS to kill all the doctors, you can’t leave the surgery room without killing not just Abby’s father who is the only person who threatens him, but the other two nurses who do nothing to him. The game just puts up this invisible wall and at the end of the day I think that’s what went wrong with the LoU, both 1 & 2. It’s putting up invisible walls to keep the player from actually seeing both sides of the story when it’s convenient to the plot. You don’t even know about what Ellie is feeling or thinking really and if the little extra mini game that reveals how Ellie got her bite has anything to say, there’s a lot about her personal identity that’s withheld from us. Also the fact that Lev, a transboy who probably has never seen depictions of women outside of his home’s ideal, meets and becomes close to Abby, a woman who looks like she would win the Hunger Games, is really important, and is somehow handled BETTER than depictions of queerness involving Ellie and literally any other woman ever seen in the series like God it makes me want to cry at how Ellie’s character was thrown so viciously under the bus. EDIT: It’s come to my attention that it’s most likely it is just the one surgeon we are forced to kill before leaving the area, but I think my point still stands that either way we are forced into a single decision.
Aww thanks Alexandra! I am glad you enjoyed the review! Writing this did make me retrospectively quite annoyed with the ending of 1 - as you've said, it's manipulative and was definitely a far shot from the rest of the game when things were more relaxed with how you could act and interpret the games direction Thanks for watching and I'm glad you liked it!
The Theater Fight is downright bizarre. You have to fight Ellie (something you already don't want to do), but what's more, Ellie instakills you and the loading screen just point blank tells you "For this fight, and this fight only, you HAVE to sneak up on Ellie from behind. Why? Because fuck you." I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of ludosymbiotic storytelling.
As far as I remember, you absolutely do NOT have to kill the other two doctors. I've played the game over 7 times, and never killed the two other doctors. He was lying if he said you HAVE to kill them.
My issue is that the intentions of the script became so obvious throughout the game to the point where I was hearing the script saying things like "See? Abby's actually a good person!" and "Don't like Ellie so much now do ya?" I just overall stopped caring about the script and the all the characters for practically the last 3rd of the game.
This definitelly felt like the shortest hour of my life!... No, seriously, it did xD I just really like how you talked about the game, how there wasn't any particular bias (or any) about it. Watching my friend play *The Last Of Us 1* on his PS3 when we were younger was such a tragic story, one that definitelly did have it's own uplifting moments and down right heartbreaking moments. This was something so important to me, heck they made me actually like Zombies for once. Everyone felt more human, everyone was (to a certain degree) fighting for survival. This game hurt me more than the other, cause i felt more rewarded watching the first one, but this sequel definitelly didn't deserve to be slandered to this point. Oh God, i *wish* this was all a fever dream, and i wake up, and they develop the true sequel... That's what i think to cope. This is a true example of this line: *"It's not the game's fault, it's the story writter's fault."*
Aww thank you Star! I'm glad you liked the video and I'm glad you loved the game too, I also watched it on an old PS3 and had much of the same experience
@@MertKayKay Glad to see you share the same sentiment ❤️ Loved the video, and if there's other reflective *hour specials* like this coming, then i am happy to see them! Idk, i really like long videos, definitelly apart of a minority of people *ಠ◡ಠ*
I hated that we were forced to play as Abby after everything that happened. Then they proceeded to force feed us scenes to make us feel bad for her or remind us, "she's human too." Trying to garner sympathy for a character who brutally murdered someone we played as previously.
@ALERNes I feel like there were plenty of other ways of going about it. Maybe going in more depth with the struggle of her attempting to get over the loss of her father. Rather than plugging in extra scenes of her helping a kid stay alive and deal with an insane cult.
@@sunsetcreations6622 I really want to point out how contrived and pathetic it was that they tried to make Abby "sympathetic" with how I think they came about that. Go to the TVTropes sympathy index and look down that list from top to bottom. I think they genuinely consulted that to introduce virtually every single point to make Abby sympathetic. Like you can even see times where they didn't even introduce the tropes later on, they went down that list in alphabetical order sometimes.
speaking of aim wobble, as an IRL shooter, it does exist but it's severely exaggerated in-game for obvious gameplay purposes. for context, at 25m with a handgun my aim drifts a couple of millimetres side-to-side and up-and-down, which can result in me hitting up to 10cm off from where I wanted to hit. at the ranges you were showing when you spoke about the mechanic you would have to be trying to miss to miss in real life.
I need to learn to show more relevant footage alongside my discussion - I just smacked a lot of b-roll footage in this video because I was more concerned about the writing, and I learned my lesson about showing specifics! But thanks for the explanation, as I said in the video, I am absolutely no expert :D
@@MertKayKay understandable. The relationship between shooting IRL and shooting in games is very complex. Most people fall in either the “irl shooter” or “game shooter” category, and they rarely mix. I wouldn’t say I’m a gamer, but I do play games, and I feel like I pay attention to and get hung up on minute and frankly unimportant elements in games that have to do with firearms. Like suppressors decreasing damage and/or range in Fallout infuriates me so much I mod it out immediately. The balance between respect for the real life mechanisms of firearms and the needs of gameplay pretty much always sways towards gameplay for obvious reasons, and I find that disappointing.
I think that people like you with an eye for detail are what's important in pushing games closer and closer to perfection; if we didn't really care, we'd still have PS2 shooting - not dreadful, but definitely not with the kind of delicate intricacies of today's shooters :D
I really felt bad about Thommy, he saw his brother being tortured and being killed by Abby. He had all the motivations to go after Her. I think more than ellie had?
Dude, this is the best critique I've heard of this game...and trust me, I went down the RABBIT HOLE. Plus, "lesser known side character, Joel Miller" made me crack up in public.
The entire plot for Part 2 is so hamfisted with so many contrivances it's amazing that this Triple A game got published with such bad writing in the first place. Druckmann regurgitating a story that was shot down a decade ago shows he either has not a lot of original ideas or he has a lot of spite to those who shot down the original idea. And honestly, after what was done to the the characters in part 2, I think it's spite.
57:011:10:05 I really like the blunt, honest nature of your opinions. What you said about the story felling like the writers broke my toys and watched as I helplessly tried to mend them togheter summarizes perfectly how I felt in the end. And I know that they completely destroyed Ellie's character but I still see that girl buried very deep...somewhere. It's like when you see a friend or family member destroying themselves, it's just...sad.
Aww thanks Space! I'm glad you like the bluntness especially - it's my favourite way to write :'D and poor Ellie, they did her so dirty in this game. My girl deserved a real character arc. Thanks for watching Space!
Best damn review ever. The way Ellie treated Joel was just crazy. Joel tried to put her off on his brother, but she cried that everyone she cares about leaves her. That man stayed and murdered for her, and she treated him like shit.
55:31 yes Ellie did that and she was being extra for that i agree but you don't seem to talk about the years Abby took to find Joel just to kill him for revenge either she wouldn't just let it go after almost a decade of her dad being dead. there isn't any doubt that she traveled 2 times as long as Ellie did just to kill some old man buy giving him a slow and brutal death. and even after he saved her in the horde when she was Finna go to the other side.
Damn I thought I talked about that! I thought it was dumb they made Abby do that too. It's the same as with Ellie: a stupid long time spent achieving something a normal human would never bother with. Good point! Sorry I missed it
So basically, the game says that Ellie had to let Abby kill Joel, it's Ellie's fault for wanting revenge, but Abby gets to have her revenge and pretty much got off Scott free and is 100% unapologetic. There's so much finger wagging at Ellie (and the player) but what about Abby? Sure it sucks her dad was killed but, where are the people telling Abby that she has to be the better person and let go of her obsession? They try to promote showing mercy as being the best option, that a bigger person would simply show mercy and not seek revenge, but... sorry, why didn't Abby show mercy to Joel? Maybe beat him up a little but then don't kill him and go separate ways? I'm not even against Joel dying, I expected that to happen in this game but, not like this. "Oh Ellie, you killed a pregnant woman, shame on you!" You didn't give me a choice, VIDEO GAME. It's hard to care about committing unforgivable acts when I wasn't given a choice. And speaking of Mel, I thought this was the zombie apocalypse, who lets a 9 month pregnant woman out into a world infested with Clickers and humans who want to raid any survivor they come across? "She could use some fresh air"? The same air filled with spores and create a new form of Infected? Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Some baby necromorphs while we're at it. And my god, hearing all Neil Druckmann's horrible ideas that were shot down for TLOU, it sounds like they basically got lucky that the first game was as well received as it was, and with those people gone, all that was left were the horrible ideas and no one with enough power to question them. I weep for what TLOU3 will bring, but honestly, I'll just stick with the first game and leave it at that.
Absolutely Jman, like the revenge sub-story just falls so flat when you compare the two parallel women. But the absolute cardinal sin of this was them putting a 9 month pregnant woman out there because WHO WOULD DO THAT? She's a medic! I know she's looking for Owen but she looks like she could go into labour any second. All forced so that we'd have to stab her in the heat of the moment. She could have just not been pregnant but then we wouldn't have the *~Dina Parallel~* Thanks for watching!
Yeah, best to just stick to the first game. Pretend this was all a fever dream. Also, pregnant lady just waltzing around in the zombie apocalypse with cannibals, slavers and other lunatics outside? Sure, why not. With parents like these, the kid wouldn't have made it to their first birthday anyways.
Got off Scott free? Are you actually mental? All her friends are dead, the WLF is canonically collapsing before they even leave Seattle, and she and Lev are kidnapped by bandits who probably did messed up things to them for an undisclosed amount of time. What are you talking about?
@@adk7165 Did you just expect good story comprehension from ga*ers? Nah, epic ga*ers only play apolitical gems like Modern Warfare(Remastered), Warhammer 40k, LoU1, and Bioshock (best part is in Infinite where you get to throw the ball).
@@MertKayKay I remember she said she had to get permission in order for her to be deployed in the field, and at this point the WLF/Isaac needed every person available to fight in the invasion of the Seraphites' island and that means medics are needed, and she is a pretty good one, so I see it as the growing desperation of the WLF to muster as much force as they could to get rid of the Seraphites. Also maybe she was only gonna go and stay at the FOB in order to handle the wounded _after_ the fight, but they probably weren't expecting to be ambushed on the way to the FOB.
I kinda disagree with people who prefer Abby. Abby gets her revenge, she killed Joel and moved on. Abby story has nothing to do with Ellie til she finds out she killed Owen and Mel. So why does Abby get her revenge but Ellie doesn't?
The biggest criticism I had playing this was the butcher to Ellie's character. I'm glad someone said something about it. And I liked that you explained Druckman's older plan for the game, that just made a lot of sense to me. Helped me understand what probably led to this sad, unlikable Ellie.
Video game writers need to accept that they're not writing movies. Even the first game had some wtf story decisions. Ellie killing the cannibal in the diner then breaking down wasn't only cliche as hell but happens after a year of these characters being attacked and killing people.
Many video game writers have accepted that. It's bad writers that haven't. David Cage and Neil Druckmann see video games as inherently incapable of the emotional writing that films and books have: But there's a damn good reason they don't make movies: If TLOU2 was a movie, it'd be a bad movie, because it was made by a bad person who's a bad writer. TLOU1, meanwhile, was written by an actual game writer who knew about the medium and wrote the story to capitalize off of it: You kill hundreds in that game but it's not highly criticized because every single kill is about survival. There's no story/gameplay segregation because the writer, Bruce Straley, was a good writer who knew he was writing for a video game.
I chalked it up to she thought she was about to be raped, the idea of being eaten, struggling to survive all on her own, not knowing if Joel is alive or not... Having Joel come out of nowhere instead of another damn cannibal must've broken her down
I’m pretty sure that Ellie breaking down after killing the cannibal wasn’t because she killed him. It was the build up of everything that happened all those months, and especially during the time she spent alone while Joel was unconscious. The stress of having to keep herself and Joel alive and safe, all on her own, must’ve been hard for a teen. Add on the fact the very people that almost killed Joel kidnap Ellie, and were fully intending to eat her until they saw she was bitten. Not to mention that, before she killed the cannibal, he was crawling on top of her and whispering the things he’d do to her in her ear. Anyone would break down after that.
@@TasteTheRainbow346 I don't think tlou 2 it's a bad story... it actually found a way to tell a story in a very innovative way for videogames and even movies and books.
19:29 not only did that man actually apologize he made them STEAK sandwiches in post apocalyptic times. That has to be a lot of trouble to go through and using high grade beef to do it. Steak is certainly something not easy to come by. The problem I have is that he was made to apologize. Why can’t we have one sympathetic character that has a genuine moment? Everything is forced in this game.
So I love my step father to the point that I never refer to him as my step father, he's just Dad. If someone killed him I would definitely want to hunt and kill his killer, but I too am a father and a husband and would never drag my family cross country for years to get that revenge, Im not that selfish. I would rather life the life I would think he would want me too. As for Joel killing a hospital for people trying to cure a disease that ruined the world. I can sympathize. If my daughter was taken from me and the people that took her told me straight up that she would die for the greater good, well fuck the greater good. My little girl that I see everyday and brings more joy and love than I deserve means more then a possible cure for strangers that mean nothing to me.
I don't know, I still feel like Ellie becoming estranged from Joel is a fantastic idea. I just think they did it really weird for this game and so unsatisfactorily. Joel lies to Ellie at the end of the first game. A massive one, one that if she learned the truth, would shake the foundations of her relationship with him to their core. Suddenly he's not the father who did necessary evils to protect her, now he's projecting his own self interest over her agency. She isn't her own person, she's a fill in for his dead daughter. Joel murdered a bunch of people just trying to fix the broken state of the world, and made Ellie live with the fact that she is indirectly responsible for the further collapse of society. I would have loved this theme of a familial fallout. Abbie could even still be involved, but the story that currently exists currently is so detached from any of the characters and is terribly contrived.
The creators who side with Jerry are the people who may never go to the doctor before in their life. The first rule of being a doctor is that the patient/relatives must give an “informed consent” before the operation. Jerry didn’t even care about Joel and Ellie’s consent. He didn’t even wait for Ellie to wake up to inform her about what he’s gonna do because as Marlene said, he treated Ellie not as a human but as a “petri dish” and since he had been doing this human experiment to so many children at this point, he is NOT the Messiah god doctor that Neil Druckmann likes to say he is. In fact, he’s an evil doctor, an angel of death like those of Joseph Mengele or Shiro Ishii.
You are right. And let me add something. Marlene. In tlou2 they made her this concerned about Ellie type of woman. When in the first game she sent us to the friggin' hospital. Even she orders to kill joel if he interferes. But here in tlou2 she wants ellie to know? In tlou 1 she agreed all of this stupi doctors were about to do.
Not counting professional reviews from IGN or Gamespot, I have never gotten to the end of a positive video review of The Last of Us part II. Instead of telling the audience why they loved the game they spend the whole video telling you why you are wrong and lobbing insults your way lol.
I think people see a negative review and assume it's because the person doesn't like Abby or Lev for *those* reasons - but then they use it to dismiss anything you say even if it's valid criticism. This game plays pretty well but man I just didn't think it was great
So true. Never seen a single person give an actual reason why the game is good and why they loved it, just either insult me or someone else, or desperately keep saying that I'm wrong.
My biggest two issues: For starters, maybe I really misread the last scene in The Last of Us, but I was positive that Ellie knew Joel was lying when she asked him to swear that everything he told her about the Fireflies is true so it always felt so strange to me that she took the confirmation of him lying THAT hard. Secondly, I feel like Game of Thrones has ruined media for the foreseeable future. I feel like writers have gotten it in their head that killing off a main character or making a story super bleak automatically makes a story better/deeper. The Last of Us 2 tried so hard to be bleak and gritty that they managed to retroactively ruin the first game, as cliche as that sounds. What's even worse, is that almost the entire story could remain the same if they just had Abby take Joel prisoner to have some sort of "Trial". You can then still have Ellie go on that rampage to get him back, while also having Joel alive to reflect on what he's done.
IMHO, the ending sequence of the Last of Us makes a degree of sense to me. The Fireflies aren't exactly the most rational crew of people and Marlene still has a sort of malformed idealism, which combined with feeling she owed Joel, convinced her that she could reason for the greater good with him. And . . . let's be honest . . . A year before when we meet Joel in the zone, if somebody told Joel 'yes we can make a cure for the cordaceps', he'd probably have helped hold Ellie down. That's the Joel that Marlene thought she was dealing with, and when she realized it wasn't the same Joel, or rather was and she had underestimated his attachment to Ellie, she fumbled the order of things trying to convince him to fuck off peacefully.
I think the ending could've worked if it was Ellie, living on the farm with Dina and her baby, credits roll a little bit, but while Ellie is herding sheep, she had a PTSD nightmare about Joel's death. Ellie screaming along with JJ, then Dina comes to calm her and JJ, then finally roll credits. Just a thought imo...kinda reminds me of the ending from the 1976 movie, Carrie
I feel like if we play joel alittle and than get a scene of ellie watching joel get torture to death by abby crew after getting scene of joel and ellie repairing relationship it would be so much understanding about going on a revenge street and maybe a scene of ellie and abby talking about hypocritical they are
woulda loved that... so much more poignant if yuore playing as him trying to reconnect with his found daughter but doesn't manage to do it before he dies. we could feel how hard he tried without him looking like a sad old dog... then we could be shown ellie mourning what 'could have been' if she had forgiven him sooner, and can't let go of the fact that she shot him down and blames herself, but can't deal with it so it shoots outwards in the form of violence... but instead it tastes like revenge for revenge's sake and that just doesn't flow as well
A sequel getting Ellie (as the main character) out of Jackson and back into third-person murder stealth would always have been contrived. Because nothing short of the Jackson compound burning to the ground would've been a practical reason for her to leave. It's the corner that Naughty Dog painted themselves in by pushing so hard for grounded realism, but still wanting the typical videogame adventure where you kill loads of enemies. Ellie is not Kratos, or Dante, or even Nathan Drake; after experiencing what she did in the first game just the safety of Jackson alone would be something she'd value far too much to give it up for vengeange. Add to that dragging her girlfriend along on what is very likely a suicide mission and Ellie just comes across as utterly warped almost beyond recognition before the game even truly begins. It really feels like the writers set out to have the theme of this game be hate and revenge, and then just crowbarred Ellie and Tommy into a character state that would facilitate this. The very theme of this game is ill fitting with the more realistic and practical nature of this world and its characters, and the rottenness of this narrative concept drags whatever good storytelling moments this game has down with it.
I completely agree Shinji; Ellie's actions just bewildered me. I know a lot of people say they understand and they'd have done the same, but I can't say I would have done the same myself. I personally felt - like you said - that the writers just wrote themselves right into a corner and had to move heaven and hell to get their new story on the road.
@@MertKayKay As horrifically wrong as a story concept I think it was, the game could've still found a way to make Ellie's turn to vengeange far more believable and gradual. As is there's no slow decent, she's just out for blood that very night. We could've had Ellie try to move on with her life in Jackson, but after a month or so ultimately not being able to let it go. Or have her go out not for vengeance, but to bring back another character who did want to get payback (like Jesse for example), and then through circumstances be pulled into a mindset of vengeance. But anyway, it is what it is. This game has been living rent-free in my brain since its release.
My biggest problem is that time jump from the journey from Jackson to Seattle after being warned of the dangers of it and it being hyped up as a grand journey and then you get a black screen and white text saying the time has jumped 6 months that could of been a massive opportunity to build up the relationship to Dena and build on Ellie's bitterness.
see i knew there had to be an explanation for the extreme ludonarrative dissonance EVERYONE was expressing when reviewing the game, and the bit about Druckman having no pushback from a writing perspective while making this game when he did for the first one makes PERFECT SENSE in retrospect
I hit a major bug when playing the game. The game gave me control over the person that killed Joel and so i had her get killed. It then considered this a game over and had me go back to the last savepoint. In all seriousness, this was very well done. I have never hated a peice of media more than this game and your points helped articulate why very well.
This review hits the nail on the head: TLOU2 is a great game, but as a sequel to a character-centric, narrative driven game it flounders in the opening act by deleting its best character, and then it drags itself along for a dozen hours, just so you can see the most tired repetitive "revenge bad" trope rehash ever made. It's really sad. I think TLOU1 is honestly a great game and resonated with a ton of people. TLOU2 does a complete 180 and bonks you over the head in a way that even Spec Ops The Line didn't. I wonder what led to this
Thanks Nicolash! I'm glad you liked the review and - I mean, I completely agree :D I also wonder what led to it. I've heard whispers of a TLOU3 and I wonder if that will reignite the series (not that it should have been a series, but it is now), or if it'll make things worse
@@MertKayKay For me, I'm just not invested anymore, same as how you mentioned everyone felt when reaching Seattle as Ellie. TLOU2 completely ruined what could've been a good future for TLOU that a Part III doesn't make me feel excited at all. I'll probably see what it is if it comes out, but I'm not holding out hope that it's going to be good.
Troy Baker keeps saying that Drukman said that he knew some people would love it and some would hate it, but he likes both responses because he wanted you to feel something regardless of which. That doesn't make it good? That sounds like an excuse to make something controversial and then say I did that on purpose.
Doesn't help when people *actually* hated it, to the degree it put Naughty Dog in dire straits, he's to this day ranting on Twitter about the haters. Guess the "Like it or hate it, I win" mindset doesn't work when his job is on the line and there's *thousands of angry employees with dirt on him who know he'll be the main person responsible for killing the company.*
Great video. Put a lot of my thoughts into words. I will say though that I personally think there is a difference between how the first game makes joel kill the fireflies vs the second making ellie kill a pregnant lady. Although it is subjective. I think the first game does a good job condemning Joels actions, where as the second game condemns both Ellie's and the player's actions. I don't quite know how to explain it, but when the first game says "Joel did an awful massacre" it's not also extending that to the player despite us controling him. The level design is open. We kill how we want, can avoid some enemies, brute force every last one, stealth kill or go full ham with millitary grade weapons. I guess there's no cannon way Joel killed everyone or most of everyone, only that he messed up some surgeons. For me, that makes a disconnect between what i did on my playthrough and what Joel cannonically did. But with Ellie the game puts you into a contrived, uncontrollable situation thats a glorified cutscene. There's no sandbox, player freedom with how to deal with the death. It's just *spam square and kill her*. And it doesn't leave you a moment to ponder on it like the first game does, when Ellie awakens in the car, it just plays gut wrenching music when you see the baby bump. I hope you see what I'm saying. Not saying your interpretation was wrong either, just how what I personally took away from the games. :)
Hey Box! Yeah I think what you're saying makes really good sense, definitely made me see the first in a different light (even if your intention was to discuss the second) :') Thanks for that, I appreciate it
Controversial opinion: any writer who adds a self-insert to an already existing franchise and expects everyone to like it should be banned from ever writing again.
Okay I gotta admit to myself that watching critical reviews of this game is one of my favorite things. I'm still watching and listening to discussions about this game that came out three years ago. This game's plot is *swimming* up to its *eyes* with paper thin, transparent contrivances that effectively allow any other ideas to be more sound, nuanced, and far more interesting than what Druckmann cooked up. Serioiusly every time I read, watch and listen to anyone else's ideas about what this game could've done differently, it's always so much better. Druckmann's goal was to create a really dark, twisted commentary on revenge but neglected the notion that the human condition isn't just comprised of emotion alone. Logic and reason is absent in this story from beginning to end.
I actually feel like Druckmann ONLY used logic and reason in this, and the characters feel like they're just going through the motions. Even if logically we know Ellie should spare Abby, the fact that she did makes no sense given where she was on her emotional journey. She hadn't even shown an ounce of compassion for Abby the whole game, but suddenly when the game's lesson needs to be delivered, Ellie collects herself emotionally and realizes she must stop. It's all logic and no heart. The first game was so good because, despite all logic pointing to the idea Joel should let Ellie die for a cure, he lets his emotions guide him and saves her. The second game has none of that emotional impact in the story, and it's sad to see.
I'll give this game kudos for letting you play as the main villain. Abby is an almost cartoonish depiction of a narcissist. Add in that her "positive" actions never outweigh how much of a scumbag she is (even to her "friends") and... Well, you can give Darth Vader a best friend but he's still Darth Vader.
@@krasmasov6852 She does have narcissistic qualities, but a true narcissist would never help someone else unless it was directly going to benefit them, and Abby does not do that with Lev.
the best Revenge plot I've ever heard is a subtle completely missable character moment in Red Dead 2 where Arthur talks to Rains Fall about his son who was killed by a gang of randos looking for money.
What I didn't even notice in the first game but the Critical Drinker pointed out perfectly: Ellie at the end of the first game knows she's being lied to and seems to be okay with it. That is perfect as an ending because it shows how she is okay with Joel bullshitting her because he's more important to her than that. It's ambiguous but gives you enough to go on. The second game turns it around as a complete 180, telling you Joel was a heartless, selfish bastard and nothing more (even if, like me, you only shot one doc in the knee that you had to and didn't bovver the rest) and that Ellie now hates him for it. Completely ruining the end. As for Abby, she lost me the moment she whined about not being allowed to torture Joel more because they have to go. Or rather the fact that we were then expected to sympathise with her. Excuse me, but after I've watched a complete rando that Joel saved the bloody life of slowly, torturously beat him to death and then whine that she isn't allowed to enjoy causing Joel more pain...I don't care if later I learn that Joel tortured her entire family to death right in front of her eyes, I'm completely disconnected from this complete psycho. I only backed Ellie because of familiarity but honestly, I was of the same opinion as you, just wondering why we are doing this, or at least why this aggressively. But Abby as a character is a complete swing and miss, not just because she kills Joel. That alone would have been manageable, but the way she did it and then had a hissyfit that she couldn't draw it out more, that type of behaviour can work for a villain, but never in the hamfisted way they tried it here. Also, as a final question, out of genuine curiosity, what was 'career suicide'? Bayonetta came out before TLOU. And so did Beyond Good and Evil. And a lot of Metroid games. Just don't understand the stuff about 'putting a woman on the boxart.'
As usual, the Critical Drinker is wrong. There is nothing to suggest that Ellie knows she's being lied to. She suspects, but she never knows. Also, the second game does NOT portray Joel as heartless and selfish. Ellie does hate Joel for what he did, yes, but we learn that she comes to regret how she treated him and even started to try and forgive him. Ellie hating Joel was portrayed as unjustified, and her guilt over it is literally her main motivation. Why couldn't you sympathize with her? From her perspective, Joel is the monster who took her family and damned the entire world. Plus, she had already sacrificed so much for her revenge that she was still trying to feel some kind of satisfaction from it. She never does though. Not saying what she did was right, of course, especially since she's trying to deal with her guilt over it for the rest of the game. I understand her thinking, though, even if it was wrong. But did you not understand her or Ellie's motivations? Why would you ever wonder why? It's guilt in both cases.
@@krasmasov6852 First, I wouldn't say as usual. I've seen the look Ellie gives Joel and I am of the opinion that when she asks him to tell her the honest truth at the end of TLOU1, it reflects on both of them. It showcases Joel lying to her but also Ellie accepting that lie she might suspect or know. As I already said, it's vague, but there are hints she is suspicious and yet she goes with him. As for her hate of him being shown as unjustified, then why make her hate him in the first place? Her hating him has no bearing on the story since it adds literally nothing to it other than her being sad he is gone and that could have been far stronger if their relationship was a happy one. Seriously, with how it is done in the game, they could have had an argument about Ellie's table manners the night before and that would have the same weight. She feels bad for how she treated him and can't take those words back anymore since he's dead and she wants to avenge him because she loves him deep down. The idea that she suddenly resents him for a lie she accepted years ago adds nothing because it is only showcased in one scene at the start, then once in a flashback and it's done. In order to portray the ramifications of her actually hating him for it, he should have been...you know, not dead so the two of them could have encounters that give this hatred and resentment shape. Simply showing us she hates him once and then basing the whole story about her loving him enough to go to the ends of the Earth to avenge him makes her resentment meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Also, the game clearly indicates Joel murdered ALL the scientists and quite brutally. What's funny is that at the end of the first game, you only have to shoot one and I (and many others) have chosen to shoot the guy in the leg before saving Ellie. So that's an immediate point of the sequel misrepresenting Joel's actions in a pretty major way, but he never even has a chance to say his own piece. It's just accepted by everyone around him that he was a selfish dickhead and that's where it ends. So again, stop trying to shine a turd until it sparkles, you're not going to convince me that this plot is smarter than it actually is. Speaking of not smart decisions. I don't know about you, but when a person is bitching about how and I emphasize because you seemingly do not comprehend it, SHE WANTS TO MAKE THE SLOWLY DYING, WOUNDED, BEATEN, BATTERED, SHOT, HELPLESS OLD MAN'S SUFFERING THAT MUCH LONGER BECAUSE SHE HAS SOME KIND OF PERVERSE REVENGE BONER FROM IT, that shows you that she is not a good person. And don't tell me she feels any kind of guilt from it for the rest of the game. That's bullcrap. She might feel guilt over the sacrifices she made, but never once does she mention ever feeling sorry for killing Joel or the way she did it. Or that she flat out threw a temper tantrum that she couldn't beat him sadistically for just a few minutes longer. Additionally, first impressions are important. If you see a man murder a child then set fire to its mother and finally piss on the burning corpse to put it out, you're not wondering "Oh gosh, I wonder what kind of sad, tragic backstory led this HERO to do these things." You condemn him as a crazy, sadistic lunatic and maybe wonder what kind of crazy bad day he had to get to the point he is now. Learning later that his sister got murdered by the woman and she fed her flesh to her child does not exonorate him from having shown openly what a horrifying psychopath he is in the beginning. It just makes you see the sweat glands of the writers working overtime as they try to make you sympathise with the clear psychopathic murderer. I advise you remove your rose tinted glasses because these details you claim to have been put into the game are plain and simply not there, so do not try to mislead. Thank you. I wish you a very pleasant day otherwise!
@@darklord884 I would. The Critical Drinker's entire career is just being professionally wrong. He's one of those critics where you can generally take the opposite position and feel pretty confident. On the rare occassions he actually does come to the correct conclusion, it's pure luck because when he shows his work, it makes zero sense whatsoever. She does ask him to tell the honest truth because she's suspicious. He lies. She accepts what he said as truth not knowing it's the lie, but the suspicion lingers. She never knows he's lying. She hates him in the first place so she grows as a character. See stories are about character development. Don't know if you knew that. No bearing on the story? WHAAAAT?! It's the core foundation of the story. It's the guilt Ellie feels about how she treated Joel that's driving her. All the flashback sequences in Ellie's story offer exactly what you claim to want. You see the resentment take shape, manifest, and then ultimately get resolved. Literally the opposite of what you said is what's actually true. Her resentment is given exponentially MORE meaning because of Joel's death because it creates enough guilt in Ellie to, you know, have the story happen. No, it absolutely does not. It only ever showed a singular dead scientist. In fact, the two other doctors that were in the room are absent entirely when Abby finds her dad. The other corpses shown in the hallway were Firefly soldiers. Only Abby's dad is killed, and the canon way to do so is to stab him with the scalpel. The sequel did not misrepresent Joel's actions at all. A lot of players killed every doctor in the room. The sequel only portrays Abby's dad as being killed. The sequel went out of its way to make Joel seem sympathetic. Also, he does have a chance to say his piece. That's literally the last scene of the game. "I'd do it all over again." Additionally, Tommy does accept what Joel did even saying, "Can't say I'd have done different." Again, literally the opposite of what you said is what's actually true. There are no good and bad people, just good and bad actions. What Abby did to Joel was bad obviously. Doesn't mean she's some mustache twirling evil villain. She absolutely feels guilt from it the rest of the game. That's literally the foundation for her entire story. I'm sorry she didn't say it out loud verbatim, but this isn't a kids story that will hold your hand. It expects basic levels of media literacy from you. Tall order when it comes to gamers, I know. I also don't think you know what a temper tantrum is. And you accuse me and the game of misrepresenting things? LMAO I wasn't wondering that about Abby either, though your comparison is already absurd. Abby didn't murder an innocent person like a child. You're misrepresenting it again to make her look as evil as possible because you know that your argument doesn't hold up if you're honest. You are desperately looking for any excuse you can to hate Abby guilt-free, and you hate this game because it doesn't let you. Oh they are, and you misrepresenting pretty much everything only reinforces that I'm right. I hope you stub your toe, step on a lego, and lose power, you doofus.
@@krasmasov6852 You basically ignored all of my actual points and just repeated your false claims, crying "Muh misrepresentation!" That tells me not to expect any intelligent discourse from you. As for the insult, yes, some gamers do prefer simpler stories where the morals are plain to see. I don't see why that invites condescending mockery from you, but if you want to be an asshole, that's your choice I guess. But what I prefer is an actually well written story where you know the morals are there and they don't require some desperate fan like you to fall on their sword, claiming to the very end that they are there. This is the end though, as I see you cannot be trusted to discuss opposing views without resorting to insults and blatant repetition, so here I bid you farewell. And in all honesty, I wish you the best. You love TLOU 2 madly and that's perfectly okay. I honestly wish you have the time of your life with it. I'll just be over here playing actually well written games but don't let that bother you. Have yourself a fun time!
I know I'm in the drastic minority here, but as someone who wasn't particularly fond of the first TLOU, I feel pretty safe in saying that TLOU2 is significantly worse in terms of the story it tells. I'm not a butthurt fan, I'm not looking at the first game with rose tinted glasses and wish we'd gotten the same, I was hoping for *better* from 2 after the ending of 1 severely let me down, and all I got was hours upon hours of pointless suffering instead. I think you hit the nail on the head that the moments of brightness and beauty were important in 1; it give so much more weight to BOTH the fact that this could be a world worth dying for for the possibility of a vaccine, but also the fact that the world carries on regardless, and that you can go on with life even without a manufactured cure. The world felt more alive and like something to actively consider in the first game, while the second treated it like simply set dressing, like it was nothing but stuff to look at between people suffering through their misery porn storylines. What I wish writers would get over already is this insistence that 'suffering is art' and that art needs to be taken seriously. Nothing about this story feels like it should be taken seriously because all it does over and over and over again is ask you 'these people are sad don't you feel sad too? How could you do this to make these people so sad?' without a shred of humanity to make any of it worth a shit.
Hey Cobalt! I absolutely resonate with your final section on the 'suffering is art' point. I don't know what it is, whether it was Outlast's 1st person gratuitous violence, or Spec Ops' message, or purposeful misreadings of Silent Hill, but games are absolutely desperate to put their characters through the ringer in every possible way and then just show us like "wow, how profound". Done right it's good but it's so oversaturated 'gritty' hyper realism. I completely agree with you. Thanks for the comment!
@@MertKayKay Hi! Thanks for the excellent video! I subscribed after watching this and the Rachel Foster video. This might be a shot in the dark, but I'd be willing to guess it's because a lot of professional writers will attest to the character writing technique of 'putting your characters through hell' without actually getting to the part where they explain how and why. The only reason to make a character go through trauma, physical or emotional, is to not only put them in a position for us to understand them better, but to make them meaningfully grow as well. So many of these writers (seemingly especially male writers writing female characters.... but that may be a topic for another day) will put their characters through some of the worst shit I've ever seen in media, let alone *interactive* media, and either flub the execution and they don't come out of it like the writer wanted them too, or neglect to develop them in any way. At some point it became okay to treat borderline torture porn as art and the sycophants who fawn over this stuff will tear you apart for daring to rightfully criticize it.
Aww thanks Jadee! That's really sweet of you to say! I've got more stuff to be made so hopefully eventually more people will find it >:) But also, the fewer people who find my stuff, the more opinions I can have without being disagreed with (hehe)
Finding this video a few months later and I'm honestly flabbergasted at how much of this game I just blocked out. When it released I tried my best to love it because I held the first game so near and dear to my heart. The characters felt so real. Joel being sad and distant in the first game made sense, as did how his character changed. And I would have loved to see some of his gruffness come through in this second one. He's still technically a first time father, confused as to why his daughter figure is pushing him away, so seeing that fleshed out and communicated would have been preferable in the fatwalk sections, maybe I would have felt Ellie's actions more justified. I think the most believable character (aside from Lev) was Abby, truly. That is, if you take out the whole 10 year revenge plot. I felt for her so much and felt much more at home playing her section. Seeing her beaten down and emaciated and just wanting out for her and Lev broke my heart, whereas I felt nothing for Ellie in similar moments, because she wasn't the Ellie I knew or would have wanted to see grown up. You can be hateful and have emotions and regret and remorse. I felt kind of like a disjointed puppeteer during her sections, just going through them to advance a play I'd seen a thousand times: Revenge and the ensuing fall. All that said, I really did appreciate this video. Love going back to games I couldn't see the faults in when I first played and seeing it through more critical eyes. Great job!
Space Birb! Thanks very much for such a thoughtful and considered comment! I had a lot of the same feelings as you when I played and I feel reassured to know we had that in common (disappointment twinnies). I also share your appreciation for Abby and heartbreak over Ellie's huge character retcon. I really appreciate you watching the video, I'm super glad you enjoyed it, and thanks so much for the comment
I loved the "press square to strangle a black woman with a pipe" prompt. Very progressive. or was it stab? or beat? idk. Honestly i didn't fucking play it, just watched videos.
than druckmann succeeded.... open your eyes.... he wants us to LOVE abby and view Ellie as the villian.... because it makes him feel so GODLY give me a break
I think this really nailed the reasons I didn't like the storytelling in this one. It has two main points it wants to make - "revenge is an ultimately unfulfilling vicious cycle" and "people who are your enemies are human beings too." The problem is that if you're an even slightly normal person, you already know both these things... but still have to sit through hours and hours of the game hammering both points over and over and OVER in the most clunky, hamfisted, basic ways possible because it considers them priceless pearls of knowledge that you would never have considered otherwise. The "don't you feel bad now???" story beats don't really work if there's no choice on the part of the player other than "do the bad thing" or "stop playing your fifty-buck game." Games like Vampyr at least make a token effort towards making you have to actually consider the morality of your actions by having the "bad" choices be quicker and easier than the "good" choices. Anyways, another certified banger MKK; thanks as always!
There are still a number of loose ends that this francise needs to tie up if it wants to feel complete. We have no clue how and why The Spoorebie (spoores +zombies) virus came into existence. We also have no clue who as to who Ellie's biological parents are (TLOU1 gave us some breadcrumps in regards to her mum, but we have no clue who her dad is) and finaly we have no clue how and why Ellie is immune to The Spoorebie virus. My current theory is that - before the outbreak - the US government were doing experiments on the cortiseps fungie in order to turn it into a bio-weapon, however it got out of controle which explains why the hole world ended up getting screwed. Then about 5 years later a male FEDRA General and a female FEDRA scientist infected several human embryos with the virus, with Ellie being the only 1 to have the immune system to withstand the infection. The scientist wanted to use Ellie to create a cure and the general wanted to turn her into a bio-weapon. The scientist - not wanting that to happen - snatched (let's go with that word for now ontill I find a better 1) Ellie from the lab and gave her to Marline - who she knew was the leader of The Fireflies - in order to make sure that FEDRA would never be able to get their hands on Ellie. The scientist was - shortly after giving Ellie to Marline - caught and, because she refused to tell them where she hid Ellie, was tried for treason and was given capital punishment. Ellie was to young to remember all of this and, because age results in your looks changing over time, was able to hide in plain sight without knowing that she is special (ontill she and Rilley got bitten). As for why she didn't have any wounds related to the virus before she got bitten, well that can be explained with her being injected and that would healing very fast, because it's so small.
Honestly when I was explaining to one of my irls why I didnt like this game, they kept on hitting me with so much praise or good stuff that I couldnt get my words out fast enough thanks to the hype this game brought. I think they were very much on the "tlou 2 finally came out hype". Luke Stephens said something similar about Death Stranding and how "Kojima Syndrome" became a phenomenon. Basically meaning that people liked it because Hideo Kojima made it. I think the same thing happened here to an extent. Suppose you could almost call it "Druckmann syndrome." When you said you emotionally checked out in so many moments I could not help but say "yep, same." Because I never had the words to truly express how I felt. It was a game that left me speechless and exhausted and not in a good way. The third act was where I truly checked out, I spent most of that section with the accessibility modes turned on just to screw around and have fun in what was an exhausting game. I said "fuck this" and just screwed around because I could not give any more damns about the story even if I wanted to. But that doesnt mean that there arent things I do not like about it as you even perfectly show in some of abby's sections and you show perfectly where there is good in the game. It's so nice to see a review that doesnt praise the game to the point of it being biased nor does it hate on it for being so disappointing and/or bad to the point of it being a bleak review. I know this comment was a bit of a ramble but to sum it up, this is one of the best reviews i have seen on this game because you get your points across bluntly but brilliantly and you've taken into account so many povs. You've respected those perspectives and added them to your own discussion. It's brilliant.
Aww, hey Marlowe! Thank you very much for the comment! I enjoyed a lot of this game gameplay-wise and I wanted to give it due diligence but, like you said, it's exhausting and not in a particularly enjoyable way. Glad you enjoyed the video
@@MertKayKay Ahh I see! I'm glad to see that you could find something real enjoyable in this game still, despite what we didnt like about it. It was an exhausting experience but still the gameplay was still solid. I'm looking forward to seeing more reviews!
The problem there is a bit more psychological but certainly a human issue. Neil Druckmann was not a household name in the gaming sphere like Hideo Kojima. Naughty Dog was praised for having Amy Hennig on staff, and it was only after she was ousted from Naughty Dog and with TLOU2 that Neil Druckmann's name started getting thrown around more: Never favorably by anyone worth respecting. He's an untalented POS who's only solo work, A Second Chance at Sarah, isn't even worth pirating (Yeah, try and find a copy of that. It'll take more searching than something good like IDW's Flintstones) so, naturally, nobody cared about him. Compare against Amy Hennig who is a talented head writer for many games and, as a woman in gaming, helps to fight back stereotypes of misogyny (Before unfortunately being the victim of misogynists like Neil Druckmann who got her kicked out) So when the hype of this ended up being unjustified people had two main courses: Accept they were wrong or go with the flow of the game and pretend they were right. When the game's telling them they're smart and accomplished because they're being told answers to questions and not encouraged to look into them, like "Joel doomed humanity," many people just go with the option that flatters their ego. It's hard to admit you were tricked by someone as small-minded as Neil Druckmann.
How come you didn’t talk about the one flashback with Ellie and Joel on the porch? I know you’ve had a lot of criticisms about the melodrama, which, fair; but I did find that particular scene touching. It made the drag of the entire game make sense; it isn’t hate that’s fueling this revenge quest. It’s genuine regret she spent the few remaining years she had mad at him. Totally get that probably doesn’t work for everyone. Thanks for this video.
tlou2 has this strange, dissonant combination of a story about how murder is bad + gameplay that makes murder very fun and rewarding. for most of these characters, the emotional reaction that i have to their dramatic moments is frankly less intense than the dopamine rush that i would get by just straight up killing them in game lol it sort of reminds me of hotline miami, where you're thrust into jacket's psychopathic enjoyment of violence by making the violent gameplay super enjoyable to you as a player and a real person, but i doubt that's the intention. it's probably just that it's a AAA game and it couldn't get away with a distressing, realistic gameplay loop
Definitely about trauma more than "murder is bad", which makes me kinda disappointed and sad whenever people miss this. It's tells about perspectives, regardless if we like those perspectives or not.
@@chronorust3359 the theme about how trauma changes you is just a worse version of a theme that was already in tlou1, and the theme of different perspectives doesn't end up giving them any meaning beyond "it's wrong to murder people because they have their own perspective on life that you may not have taken into account." it is very much a game about how murder is bad, even if it uses other corollary and largely inconsequential themes to present that message
I just Couldn't bring myself to like or care about Abby Because despite her anger at Joe for killing her father being justified the intensity Of it is way beyond what could be considered reasonable Wich ironically is Kind of Exacerbated by the fact that the 2nd game retcons it So you did kill all the doctors So you know that the doctors Had been taken out by At most 2 gunshot wounds each Which would tell anybody Observing the scene that it was Simply to kill them and get them out of the way But Abby acts like Joel brutally murdered her father and mutilated his corpse In particular If you don't believe she would want answers as to why he did it fine But why would she drag it out instead of just putting a bullet in his head? She acts like he did it to harm her or her father in particular Even telling him to guess who she is Which to him would just be the daughter of one of the of 1 of the random masked doctors He killed to save his daughter 5 years ago It's psychotic Even if you argue she did it that way because he potentially doomed humanity Which if you watch the scene clearly isn't the case I don't believe Any reasonable people Would not question the way she handles it they're not all violent lunatics But none of them question her or even wonders how they know they even got the right guy I know the reason for the brutality is so Ellie knows that somebody did it to hurt Joel in particular But it kind of taints how I see Abby I was always going to be apprehensive about her as a character because her purpose is to kill Joel and I like Joel as a character But the way his whole death scene was handled Just makes her seem unhinged to me And it's not even the only time that happens in the game She doesn't even notice That she did the exact same thing to Ellie that she did to herself but That's a parallel the game wants us to draw when I argue what she did was much worse cause she slowly beat Joel to death in front of Ellie While Abby just found her dad As one of several bodies with fatal gunshot wounds And it's frustrating cause she clearly doesn't understand the effects of her actions And I don't understand Why This sadism Is a part of her character Because it's never addressed in any way that matters
To anyone who finds this: if you knew what caused the changes of The Last Of Us 2, would you fight against what caused that change, even if it meant fighting against a entire political party, a entire country, or even a economic superpower like China?
My favorite part is that people that love tlou2 think that the hate is from people that didn’t like the stuff that happened in the beginning or xbox people that brigaded metacritic…no, the story was pretty bad.
I didn't mind they killed Joel so early and so unceremonously. I think his death was the only really big reason for a sequel, or at least... giving Ellie a reason to start her journey. But that message disolves very quickly on how long and how bad paced the game is. The third act, while fun, felt like stretching an already chewed gum.
Can't agree more Matias; Joel was definitely going to die as soon as this was announced, but the story afterwards just fizzles hard. Thank you for watching
Fair enough. Still wouldve liked the option to kill abby. I was "they fucking killed joel, who cares?" The abbey sections were a fucking CHORE for me. I still hated her by the end. Dont kill a beloved character then expect praise neil. Especially if you cant even fucking avenge them.
still hating Abby after spending 12 hours with her and Lev and watching her find new purpose in life just means you lost the game of empathy the game was playing with you also Neil Druckmann never expected any praise from anyone, that’s just something you’re projecting on him
@@mehdigeek coming back to this after playing prey. The game of empathy is done so much better in that game its not even funny. Also the last of us 2 is covered in like 8 million oh so this happened bs its insane
The fact that they let a very visibly pregnant Mel leave the fucking base confused the hell out of me. Neither Owen or Mel at least mentioning that she’s pregnant pissed me off.
The majority of the game has this issue if you are able to think about in the context of the world it exists in rather than the current politics we live in. Let’s whole character arc makes no sense. Having female soldiers makes no sense. Having Jesse ask Dina if she would was going to keep her baby makes no sense. It wouldn’t even come up as an option.
I got my non video game roomate into video games with the last of us and portal 2 on my ps3. We played the last of us by swapping every few minutes/ sections, it was actually a lot of fun to see how invested he was in the story. He was hyped and bought himself a ps4 slim in order to play the last of us 2 on launch. He couldn't even bother finishing it, and stopped around the open world level on day 1. Flash forward a few months and of course we enter a pandemic. We both decide since we're in lockdown we might as well try this game together since there wasn't anything for us to do in the meantime. It starts off alright. Joel dying was bold and I personally thought it was quite fitting. I figured she probably was related to one of the many, many people Joel and I killed or fucked over in part 1. "people like Joel don't die in their sleep". As the game went on we haaaated it. It was a. Lot of paint by numbers drama and Ellie was unlikable as fuck. Although we hated playing as Abby at first, as the game went on we started to warm up to her. She was way more interesting and nuanced than Ellie (who is just a Shakespeare character). Several times I was wondering "why?" why is Ellie trying to get revenge so hard? After all this shit, even after her and Dina are spared and get home, why is Ellie still craving more? However in that nightmare where she just closes her eyes and see's Joel the night before his death and then again on the floor dead, I got it. I finally understood her motivations, and I got why she had to leave Dina behind and go alone. She can't sleep, she can't even blink. Every time she closes her eyes she discovers him again and see's her regrets. Overall my roomate and I understood what the story was trying to do. But we Both agreed it dropped the ball hard. We also decided it would be too bold and unrealistic for all but fans to be excited for a more narrative focused first half. We both came up to similar conclusions as you. We should have started as Abby and expanded on her chapters for at least 2 hours more and slow down before we swap to Ellie, and once again. Slow down, drop the flashbacks in the middle of the game and have them near the front. Understand Ellies memories, dissect her complicated relationship with Joel first. The issue? No real combat for probably the first 4-6 hours of the game. However, we believed that by catching us up to understand Abby as a hero worth rooting for, and understanding Ellies regrets and issues with Joel. These changes would have made Joel's death more impactful and nuanced. Maybe even a chapter with Joel and his brother scouting the area, talking about how Joel doesn't know what to do/ how to handle his situation with Ellie. Tommy saying its hard and how he and his wife also tried for kids with no avail so he really can't help Joel on this. Have us be in Joel's shoes and hear/ see him reflect on him wanting to act as a father to Ellie, but knowing he isn't/ he can't. Especially now that he betrayed her trust. Maybe even confess that he doomed them all and Ellie now knows that. Add some nuance to Tommy and Joel too. Just slow down and show don't tell. Overall I think Joel and Ellies "retcon" could have worked if they just set it up better, Make us care. Show don't tell us about how revenge and hate make us into monsters and leave us with nothing.
Thanks so much for watching Tree! Like you said "we knew what it was trying to do, but it dropped the ball hard" I think the biggest problem I have with discussing this game is that people on the other side of things often say "you obviously just don't get it" or "of course it would happen like this!" (I mean, just skim the rest of the comments, plus a few I had to hide because they were horrible) - I think people often miss out on the fact that if a game doesn't grab you, it doesn't grab you. And since it dropped the ball hard, it ended up making something only half the playerbase ended up liking The first game does grab you - almost everyone I've ever met loved the game, regardless of how it went. Some people didn't like it. But with 2, it split the playerbase hard and not in a way that was effective or productive. Just people on both sides that can't empathise with the other. Definitely a weird phenomenon
I'm glad I'm not alone in hating the crap out of this game. I was pissed when it earned game of the year, just felt like either they paid to have the award or it was given just because "they had to get it" and not because they deserve it. The worst part? Everyone that hated this game still bought it to see "how bad it is" while Sony and Naughty Dog laugh their way into the bank with one of their biggest successes ever.
I think this game ended up being an annoying cog in a larger culture war - so the people who hated it REALLY hated it, and the people who loved it REALLY loved it, but both sides seemed to be in it for entirely the wrong reason. Thanks for watching Red!
Игры
I genuinely wished that the last of us was actually an anthology series. Part 1 being with joel and ellie, part 2 being maybe jessie and dina or abby and owen. Each anthology referencing one another like "i heard the fireflies disbanded after some guy one man armied them over a girl"
Or "apparently there was a war between a military group and a cult. Somehow the ones with bows were putting up a fair fight"
Each story from a different state of and how they survived. Imagine if jessie and dina werent in the settlement and were scavers doing the tricks joel once did to survive as he states. Or how owen and Abby were following the clues for any potential firefly survivors.
Kitten I'm going to need you to go back and time and put this into action because it sounds like a fantastic idea
@@MertKayKay an anthology can work sometimes. Look at halo legends or the matrix. Making a character feel insignificant helps because everyone has a story especially when the games confirmed there were others with the mutation just like ellie. How many other joels were there? How many ellies? How many just knew but stayed surviving because they knew it would be a waste of time?
I would play the heck out of this!
i need this
Honestly, this right here. While I did like TLOU2, TLOU as a whole, is a vast universe that I think could be expanded and told from different points of view. I honestly would have loved to see a Tommy centric game but I also would have loved to see the same universe with different characters.
I love how there's literally no mention of Riley or David despite the massive impact that they had on Ellie's development. Riley was Ellie's closest friend, first girlfriend, and partial inspiration for wanting to find a cure, while her experience with David deeply traumatized her and lead to her having a more weary outlook on the world.
Absolutely agree! For a moment I completely forgot about Riley. Stunned they never included mentions of either of them
Crazy that a teen who represses painful memories isn't blabbering about her traumatic experiences, lol.
Just because you can't see the impact doesn't mean it's not there. Like, Ellie gained quite a bit of perspective from Riley that she has internalized. Plus, they used some of the same Halloween assets from the Left Behind in a store Ellie and Dina visit in part 2. While in the store, Ellie mentions that she is not a fan of the stuff, which is likely due to the painful memory of Riley.
Ellie killing David showed that Ellie, with Joel's help, bottles up her emotions until they explode. Literally, that scene is a snapshot into the future of what Ellie will become in part 2. Also, Dina and Ellie discuss the "crazy cannibals" on their way to Seattle.
This is good subtle stuff from the writers! A shame people can't appreciate it more.
@@genericwhiteguy2910 A character doesn’t have to explicitly talk about their personal experiences in order to have them be acknowledged in the story. Ellie literally has a journal that she uses to write about her feelings, and it easily could have been utilized as a means to explore the trauma that she’s internalized.
But no, even in an outlet where Ellie can fully express herself in private, there’s zero mention of Riley. Which is especially weird considering that she moved on to not one, but two relationships during her time at Jackson and realistically would have been worried that her SO’s would encounter the same fate as her first girlfriend.
Having a very brief, missable Easter Egg and some vague in-game dialogue isn’t the same thing as orienting a story around a character’s past traumatic experiences. People don’t appreciate the writer’s “good, subtle stuff” because in all actuality they’re just sloppily glossing over important character arcs and masquerading it as intelligent storytelling. The whole “show, don’t tell” rule doesn’t work when the writers barely attempt to show anything in the first place.
Ellie’s experience with David was significant enough to cause a massive shift in her personality. It traumatized her and led to her becoming more withdrawn as opposed to the happy-go-lucky little girl she once was, because she had never met anyone who wanted to violate her like that before. It wasn’t a “snapshot” into the future nor did it have anything to do with her “bottling up her emotions.”
@@Alabalalululababa Ellie is a certified hot head. Game one established that she has a real temper. Joel told her explicitly in game one that when things happen, they move on. He told her this when she wanted to talk about the death of Sam. Also, she was told not to talk about Tess's death, too. When you have a hot tempered kid that is being forced to repress feelings, then eventually that kid is going to have some explosive emotions. She will not "explore" traumatic experiences that happened years ago thru journaling or other means, because she has been instructed not to. That is Ellie's crux and what brings her on a very dark path in part two. She doesn't try to understand or work thru her grief. She resorts to anger or silence instead.
A scene can grow beyond the creator's original intent. To me, the David chapter primarily was used to have Ellie confront her biggest fear, being alone. However, the writer, Neil Druckmann, talks a lot about Ellie's relationship to violence and how she is less pragmatic with it than Joel. Ellie's violent acts in part two are so often wrapped up in her emotions. When she kills David, it is for survival but when she keeps bashing his face in then it is clear this is about something else entirely. Hence, why it is a snapshot of her character in part two.
Neil talks about Ellie's arc in part one being about how she is constantly attaching herself to authority figures (Marlene, Joel, and David) and how by the end of the first game she realizes that she is in this alone and needs to rely less on others and more on herself. So, David is just a single piece to a much larger story for her character. Why would she need to discuss him 5 years after his death? I mean, the experience with David was used to, as I mentioned, have Ellie confront her greatest fear. She was alone. She was put in great danger. She saved herself. That's it. The character of David is a cartoonish villain. He isn't important.
Her experience with Riley was used to show where Ellie gets so much of her rebellious spirit and resiliency. It shows you what and who Ellie has lost and what the cure could mean for her as result to that loss. Ellie doesn't need to discuss something that happened 6+ years ago. She carries what she learned from Riley and what Riley meant with her.
@@genericwhiteguy2910
Joel telling Ellie that they needed to “move on” and avoid talking about the deaths of people like Sam and Tess was more related to his character arc than hers. At the beginning of the game, he is a nihilistic man who refuses to confront his grief and losses, whereas Ellie is almost the exact opposite. She desperately wants to talk about the trauma that she has been through, but Joel shuts her down every time. At the very end, Ellie has become tired of being told to stay silent about her experiences and unloads her feelings of survivor's guilt onto Joel. She is naturally a very external kid, and the entire point is for her to be a contrast to people like Joel, who choose to repress their emotions instead of confronting them head-on. This dynamic allows Joel to progress as a character because, throughout the game, Ellie helps him come to terms with the fact that he can’t escape his past, no matter how hard he tries. He finally learns to accept that his trauma is a part of him and that embracing it is the only way to truly “move on.” It is Ellie’s external way of dealing with grief that rubs off on Joel, not the other way around.
In part 1, Ellie's experience with David deeply traumatized her. Even though she saved herself from him, she was scared for her life in a way that she hadn’t been before and is left with scars as a result. She felt powerless and violated, and her repeatedly hacking away at David's body even after she killed him reflected how desperate she was to not feel as vulnerable as she did at that moment. After the Winter Sequence, there are implications that she suffers from PTSD because of the experience. She becomes noticeably reserved and despondent, which is a significant contrast to her usual spunky attitude. This massive shift in her personality reflects how her encounter with David changed her. She is not the same girl she was before that experience and possibly never will be.
Her loss of Riley in the DLC is another experience that had a massive impact on her development, and it would make sense for that grief to resurface as she entered other romantic relationships at Jackson. In Part 2, her journal is the only space where we, as the player, can see her fully be vulnerable and honest with herself. She uses journaling to talk about her anxiety, grief, and love. There are numerous flashbacks to a younger Ellie, where she journals about her budding relationships with Cat and later Dina. It would make perfect sense for her to relate those relationships to Riley at some point. But instead, the writers of part 2 choose to, rather irresponsibly, ignore Riley just as they ignore David. Instead of reflecting on how Ellie’s experiences with those two characters would impact her arc, the writers opt to pretend that they never happened.
Abby: “What’s your name?”
Tommy: “Hi, I’m Ryan and this is my brother, Mark.”
Abby: “Have a nice day. We’re going back.”
“She’s a planet”, “9 months poggers”, “shape of a lollipop” lmao
I like your suggestion of if the game was just Abby’s story at first but then turns out to be connected to Ellie’s. I’ve had similar ruminations on the game’s story and it probably would’ve flowed better if we had significant investment in Abby and her friends before we find out that she murdered Joel - would’ve illicit some very conflicting emotions.
The game has a ton of interesting concepts but it never really comes together the same way the first game did. Too much levity is lost and no character fills the void Joel left behind - it’s a shame cos’ I like his new haircut lol
Thanks for watching Zealot! I agree, I think the major issue with this game is that Abby starts the game in the worst light, like you said it would be better to get to know her first, not after - similar to how we got to know Joel before he acted in the first game
I do see a larger problem with this games story, I agree and I do believe the death scene/reveal should have been at some point in the finale or at least the last 2/3s of the game after we have grown on Abby. On top of this, generally stories in this sort of 2 adversarial party trope do something like this, you know the innevitable tragedy and that it *must* take place narratively, but you're allowed to slowly love and bond with the characters before this and so it becomes a point of anxiety. The fact you know something terrible is going to happen is a pretty important factor in tragedies as well.
Sure they start the story off with a bang at joels death, but now they have to redeem abby which is a much harder task than if the player was along for her journey too. I also see the problem of the story being split into an ellie an abby and an end chapter as an issue. You work your way up to what feels like the finale, against this villain who they've built up through the entire game then pulls out the rug and tells you that you need to know her life story before the fight, so you spend 4-5 hours working through that just waiting to get back to the finale, and the game tries to redeem her but imo struggles to do so, but by the time youve made it back to the finale it turns out it actually has 0 narrative payoff because chapter 3 is just trying to get back to the finale but now in a different setting. Theres no narrative payoff, imo.
Ideally the way they should have structured the story would have been cutting back and forth between Ellie and Abby's story, following a chronological path and both characters reach the theatre at the same point in the story. This would stop things from getting all too stale, allow for the switch up and make crossover moments payoff more, and would flow a lot better imo.
I didn't have the same issue. Maybe it's because I've always seen Joel as a morally ambiguous character. The hatred the game received for killing Joel was mostly by people who genuinely thought Joel was some kind of cowboy type of hero.
@@matheussantana2390 haha yeah it's weird when people see him as the absolute good guy. Like he REALLY wasn't
@@matheussantana2390 he’s definitely a cowboy, and a hero in the hearts of gamers lol. I loved Joel as a character but it was a ballsy decision to move the story away from him, and I think all of his scenes in the game compliment Ellie’s character in the greater context. In the end, I’m glad that Naughty Dog took some risks even if they didn’t completely pay off for a lot of people.
Regarding Joel "dooming the world" by saving Ellie in TLOU1, I've thought about that choice a lot.
Now, obviously, killing a bunch of doctors in the post-apocalypse (Or ever, really): Generally a bad idea. Doctors are useful!
But the whole vaccine thing, I wound up with a Lot of problems. (And not just that a vaccine wouldn't work for a fungal infection. Let's just say they're using layman's terms.)
1: Success. Why should we even believe these people can pull this off? Pre-apocalypse, no-one could. The CDC with all their funding and people failed. I don't think it's ever portrayed as a certainty.
1a: These people have some issues regarding competency. They're going to kill their Only host Immediately? That's insane! No biopsy, no scans, no attempt to create separate cultures first, just kill the only source of the variant they need on day 1.
2: Manufacture. How many vaccines can they make? They can't have a well stocked manufacturing plant, can they? And remember, they're killing the only known source of the variant.
3: Distribution. The game was built on the difficulty of traveling around post-apocalyptic America, and you're not carrying fragile, temperature controlled, known to be valuable items.
4: Willingness of distribution. The fireflies are another gang in the wastelands, who's to say they'd even Want to share the cure, and if they do, would they not leverage it for power?
4a: Even if the fireflies are altruistic, people will want to take their access to the cure, to use for their own power. And usually, "The ones with the most weapons and willingness to use them" aren't the good guys.
5: Actual value. Do you know how many people are turned in TLOU2? 0. Being turned is Not portrayed as common.
5a: if Ellie is caught by a zombie, she dies. Even though she's immune. They rip people's throats out. There isn't much of a cure for that.
5b: a human bite is, without medical attention, incredibly dangerous. The mouth is a breeding ground for all kinds of viruses at the best of times. Crossing off zombification is good, but a survivor of an attack could still very well die of any number of other issues, without access to a hospital.
So you're left with inhaling spores. And to that
1: They're highly visible.
2: They're not that common.
3: Gas masks exist.
Would you murder a child so people don't need SCUBA gear? I wouldn't.
Again, murdering a hospital, not good. But I see it as saving an innocent child from being pointlessly slaughtered.
It's just something I thought about back around the time the game released.
Yeah I think that's a really good point, like would you let a child die for a CHANCE to save the world? I think that really helps in muddying the water when you make the choice; like if it was 100% guaranteed, it would be an easier choice to make - not EASY, but easIER. But with that slim chance of success, it makes it a much harder decision.
There is the added fact that in the first game she hadn't been immune for very long. they have no idea how her particular "infection" would develop over time. I have made the point that, while Ellie may have been a late bloomer, she was so similar in height and build to a 12 year old that Joel associated her with his dead daughter. So it's possible the infection may have done something to her physical development. That was just a game 1 theory but it's just too soon to be giving everyone this variant as a way of saveing humanity.
Plus vaccines don't even work on fungus
It's really important to mention that in the first game, the audio logs actually mention that Ellie is NOT the first person to exhibit immunity and that the previous people who had come to the Fireflies had also been killed in the process of trying to cultivate a vaccine, and had failed multiple times. While there was obviously a *chance* of Ellie being the one to lead them down the right path (the implication being less that they could craft a 'vaccine' and more that something in Ellie's biology caused a mutation in the cordyceps and that replicating the chemical component might neutralize the cordyceps the way it was with Ellie), the audio logs were basically there to absolve Joel of responsibility and communicate to the player that the Fireflies were nuts and that their work on Ellie would be fruitless murder.
Personally I found it kind of a cop-out to reassure the player that they were doing the right thing and preferred the ambiguity of it. But I way prefer having to actually find the audio diaries for reassurance than to have the game try to convince me that Joel was totally evil, doomed the world, and deserved what he got.
@@MertKayKay Also, is it even a world _worth_ saving anymore?
I feel like most criticism you made about Ellie's bitter characterization can also be applied to Abby, as someone has already pointed out in the comments Abby is an absolute hyprocrite and is stupid to assume she wouldn't face any consquences by leaving witnesses behind. To make it even worst Ellie was crying for Joel when he was getting brutally murdered and Abby was completely unphased by it, and she had the audacity to act as if she's on the moral high ground for letting Ellie live? I would've love that to have been Abby's "what have I done" moment, that she was so consumed by rage and revenge she only realized moments later that she had potentially taken away someone else's father figure, which would better justify her sparing Ellie's life than the "we are better than this" bullshit, but the game just doesn't like holding Abby accountable. The gameplay death vs cutscene death also bothers me as well, I noticed it in Uncharted 4 and the problems seem to be revealing themselves now
That's probably my biggest problem with the game - the whole thing about "the game AND THE TLOU2/ABBY STANS not liking to hold Abby accountable" even though the game shows alot of her hypocrisy, selfishness and narcissism. I also find it very weird that the developers (Neil Druckman in particular) implemented these trait in Abby's character but expected folks to give her a pass and just champion everything she does.
Why is it ok for joel to kill her father, and every firefly, regardless if they were bad people or not, but it's not ok for Abby to seek justice?
@@schibleh531
Where in my comment or the OPs comment did you see anything about "it being OK for Joe and not Abby"? This is the attitude me and op are talking about with you tlou2 Abby stans - y'all don't even listen to or read criticisms, you just pick one of many week critisms that goes against your narrative then you create a strawman argument out of it. We are talking about multiple instances where Abby shows narcissistic and self centered traits and how you Abby stans and ND somehow expects folks to overlook all that and just champion whatever she does. Even your strawman argument is irrelevant - y'all introduce morality and realism while ignoring the actual gaming experience for the sake of argument - folks bonded with Joel for a whole game, Abby comes of out nowhere and introduce herself by killing him, and you expect folks to judge them the same way in terms of the overall gaming experience of tlou1 and 2? Smh. I don't even have much issue with Joel dying or how it happened, but the outrage of it is justied and natural in my opinion.
I mean its true but we dont spend half a game with abby trying to get joel
"If pressing piano keys could kill people at a great distance."
*Suddenly Warhammer 40K's Exorcist appears in my head, a giant church organ that SHOOTS MISSLES!!!*
WHAAAT 😍😍😍 is this the tabletop game or was it in a licenced videogame?
@@MertKayKay Oh I wish there was a game centered around the Battle Sisters, but yeah Tabletop. And I'm the proud owner who uses that as their crown jewel ... really need to get more infantry though cause I'm too based on my artillery and war machines XD
You reminded me that I have been avoiding painting that model…
@@katsmith-riply9862 It is a big model and I haven’t even gotten to it yet either 😝
@@MertKayKay Both. Soulstorm.
One of my biggest criticisms with the game is something that's scarcely mentioned...for me, TLoU 2 really lost sight of its original narrative and fell into the same trope that TWD did...in that the human vs. human conflict took precedence over what interested me in the first place -- namely, surviving an apocalypse filled with monsters (it felt like all that became an afterthought). IDGAF about this faction of bad humans, and that faction of bad humans...give me more scary mushroom creatures.
I know what you mean! "The humans are the real evil" is a trope that has some validity, but it just gets so boring for me after the 100th time I see it played out.
This game had a big part in my interest and botany and microbiology, so seeing those aspects somewhat thrown away in part 2 made the experience less special. Sure, they introduced new types of zombies (which are awesome) but I really would’ve liked for them to expand on them more. Maybe come across some sort of revelation, like the zombies actually being alive inside. It brings back relevance to loving characters like Sam from part 1.
so true, took the exact thoughts out of my head. I want to see new and interesting zombies, not the same boring human vs human plot that has been done a billion times in every apocalyptic story ever in existence.
I hate how all zombie media eventually falls down this path
@@valletas it's not really only zombies though... any apocalyptic world just devolves into human v human conflicts... of all things, it was my main reason to stop reading attack on titan and completely stop caring post season 1 because politics and solely human conflicts... why can't games just be what we came for? more zombies, more mutations, more outside danger
Great review, I do think Ellie’s crazy desperation for revenge came from the guilt of pulling away from Joel for so long. Doesn’t make the game better, but would explain her actions a little better, almost as if she is trying to repent for the way she treated him when he was alive and avenge him. I think the ending is also supposed to parallel how she realises how pointless revenge truly is, how unsatisfying and dehumanising, how it doesn’t change what happened. Just so frustrating how unlikable Ellie is in this game…
Ya know I think that's the point, you as the player aren't meant to like Ellie. I know that might be counter productive but these stories are supposed to be about what the characters would decide to do, not whether you believe that decision is right or wrong.
As much as I hated what Ellie was doing, the previous game tought me what Joel would be willing to do, Ellie learned that madness from Joel, and thus I believed that Ellie would do the things she did in this game.
I don't like it, but I get it, and that's why I like it.
@@shiiche Exactly. We don't have to like the protagonist, although she certainly aligned with the role of antagonist a lot better.
You also make a fantastic point, she learnt from Joel, who did one of the most selfish things a person can do. Most just/'good' characters understand the needs of the many overshadow the needs of the few, if he was her teacher her actions mirror Joel's, yes, in a very different way, but the similarities are there.
@@unluckyinlove7834 Yes! Yes! Yes! I totally agree, and I think that's the point. Without Ellie in the first game Joel would have hands down been an antagonist. Ellie has Dina but it's shown in game that she probably isn't enough of a force to ground her back to reality like Ellie was for Joel. And without that "planet to orbit from" she just drifted into the worst parts of herself.
I think that (maybe even more than the first game) Joel is a constant presence in this story. He just expresses through Ellie, and through her we can see what kind of man he was, and what kind of person he could turn people into.
@@shiiche Couldn't have put it better myself! 'Sins of the father' has never been more appropriate!
i really think that couldve been made a LOT clearer.. maybe playing as joel for a little bit, feeling how frustrating and upsetting it is that she pushes him away... only to seriously regret it later when she has no more time... but ellie in this game just doesn't give me that 'i blame myself so i lash out' vibe, nor does abby...
There should have been at least 2 endings. With the current ending locked behind a human/doggo kill threshold for Ellie. Can't imagine just gleefully murdering and your way to the end then just sparing your object of obsession because "revenge bad, mmkay?"
I never heard anyone suggest two endings before! That would have put a lot more weight on stealth/pacifist versus violence. That would have been really interesting
the anti-revenge message could've actually worked, if Ellie killed Abby but was still all miserable, despite everything she went through. as in SHOWING that it didn't bring Joel back from the dead.
@@Legomicroman Exactly! She turns down revenge, and Still suffers for it. She gets nothing out of taking that choice. It's bad messaging.
"Revenge is bad" is a superficial, one-dimensional reading of this story. It's kind of assumed that you know it's bad. That's there, but it's not the point. It's about finding closure, learning how to end the destructive perpetuation of the cycle of violence due to tribalism and the refusal to forgive or to let go of past wrongs, facing the consequences of your destructive actions, learning to empathize with the pain of others and recognizing common humanity, how healing for yourself can come from caring for others. I absolutely missed stuff because this story and the characters are so layered. It's not a pleasant experience, so I get not liking it, and I agree that it could have been paced better and probably trimmed down in length, but this is a powerful experience, and one whose messages are incredibly relevant to "current year." You don't have to like or agree with everyone, but you should be able to come away from this saying "I don't agree, but I understand you. I see you and recognize our shared humanity, even with of all of your ugly hate, pain and suffering."
@@lilmupp875 Yeah that's great and all but the game didn't earn that. It should have had different endings. Must be nice for Ellie to suddenly reach an epiphany at the end of the story when she's a bout to do Abby in after she's murdered countless people who didn't have anything to do with Joel getting killed.
I just never bought Ellie's story here from the jump. This girl knew enough about Joel to 1. know he had a daughter, 2. know he used to run in those people-hunting circles, 3. know his moral/ethical codes are a bit sus, and most importantly, 4. knew that at the end, when she asked him what happened, and he lied to her... the game did everything but write a big sign that said SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE HIM!!!! because it was very clear from the acting that she didn't believe him. She knew he was lying, and she was okay with that, knowing the kinds of things he's done. I don't believe that hearing the recording would have made her turn on him like that. This man became her father, and she is SURPRISED and ANGRY that he killed everyone who had basically arranged to kill her on the very flimsy premise that she could somehow... fix all of this?
Ellie in the first game was not that stupid. She would have understood that one of the ways Joel has always cared for people is protection at all costs. He's killed for others, of course he'd kill for her. And she's killed for him! To keep him alive!
Ugh, this game's Ellie just. rips any shred of affection you have for the first one apart and then hands you back the pieces clumsily glued back together and tells you it's the same thing when it absolutely isn't.
Very good point Poker! Like at the end of the first game you can absolutely see on her face that she doesn't believe him for a second.
Surely on discovery of this magic voice recording, she'd have been like "yep, this confirms it" probably disappointed and really gutted to know the truth, but to treat it like a huge twist makes her look like an idiot 😂
Thanks very much for watching!
So I can agree with a lot of this but you have to look at Ellie's character and motivations more to understand where she's coming from.
Joel's past actions, hell even his personality, possibly even his bond with Ellie are completely or at least almost irrelevant.
The thing to take into account is Ellie's primary motivation being getting to the Fireflies for the cure so she can alleviate the survivor's guilt she's carrying around, so I know I just implied Joel is almost irrelevant here so hear me out a sec when I state the obvious of Joel's primary motivation being protecting Ellie.
This brings up a key factor. Joel needs Ellie to be able to fulfil his motivation, Ellie does not need him for hers.
I've seen it pointed out before that Ellie doesn't technically need Joel, this becomes clear in her section of the game where it almost seems that if Joel died right there Ellie would have been able to continue on alone, she may have even made it. She doesn't need him, but she does love him and chooses to stick with him.
So when Joel makes the decision to save Ellie, fulfilling his motivation of protecting her, he's also robbed her of her own. I know this is a point of contention so I'll lay it out for the record that I agree with his choice, but there are issues with it and more importantly, things Ellie wouldn't be aware of that the player is that she can't take into consideration. The probability of a cure being low? There's no sign Ellie knows this, and she's shown to be pretty optimistic and idealistic, even if it had crossed her mind she may have dismissed it and chosen to believe it was an almost sure thing. That she would have died? No one told her. The viability of even dispensing a vaccine to everyone? Literally no indication of her considering it. That Marlene and the Fireflies were also willing to take her choice from her? Marlene doesn't even speak to her so, no. Joel also considers none of these things when he saves her, he was motivated by the fact he couldn't lose her.
There's more I could say but this is already long and word vomitty and I doubt anyone will get through it so I'll wrap this bit up by reiterating, yes Ellie loves Joel. That doesn't change the fact that he made her purpose for even going on the journey she did, apparently impossible, lied to her about it so he wouldn't lose her and then told her that her immunity meant nothing and all her loved ones died for nothing.
As for Ellie not believing the lie, and then TLOU2 making it ridiculously convoluted on whether she knew he lied or not, I agree it was frustratingly handled and this is pretty much my opinion so...
I always felt like Ellie knew he was lying to her, but she didn't know the extent of the lie.
Ellie never gives any sort of indication she knows or even suspects the Fireflies got more or less wrecked at that exact moment. I think she convinced herself there was *some* truth in what Joel told her and chose to believe he talked to them, wasn't satisfied with what he heard and just....left. Yeah it's flimsy, but we're thinking from the perspective of a fourteen year old girl with a fear of being alone and who now feels like the only person she really has left in the world is lying to her, she's going to go through whatever mental gymnastics she has to, to justify putting the issue to bed so she doesn't lose him. So she tries to convince herself it probably wasn't that big of a lie.
Then she finds out what really happened and finding out that no, it wasn't just Joel twisting the truth and combine that with all the little lies and doubts from the past few years that she kept trying to shove away...I think the blow up was a sad inevitability that could have been handled better if the writers respected the characters.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
@@coffeekat5066 You yourself admitted she didnt know she would die. The fireflies never asked her. So it was the right thing to do for Joel. Now, as you correctly pointed it out, for Ellie, this might not matter. But to Joel? Yes it does, and somehow he tells Ellie the worst possible account of the events. Maybe if he explained it better, and didnt make him an idiot (a reoccurring thing in this game, considering his death scene), Ellie would have understood his position better.
You know what would have been more realistic? If she found out he killed Marlene. She looked after her after her mom died and was her only living connection to her. Yet there is no mention of Marlene from Ellie at all. If she assumed Marlene died earlier and then found out Joel killed her, this anger she has toward Joel in part 2 would feel more justified.
Even if Ellie was told she would have died, how could she have given consent to have her life taken away like that? She’s just a child in the first chapter and the fireflies could have easily manipulated her into thinking there’s much more hope of creating an effective vaccine than what there actually was. In no scenario would have this been fair to her.
Did not know about tLoU co-writer talking Druckmann out of the revenge plot. It goes a long way in explaining how, though the main writers name is on the box, a secondary writer can really iron out a story and how the removal of that element can show the faults in the big names writing.
I think so! It always helps to have a second pair of eyes on something, especially a plot that asks for characters to be so extreme in their actions
@@MertKayKay it's most notable in shows and movies where a specific writing partnership creates a film or series, then when a sequel or a new series is created with only one of the partnership, usually the bigger name, there's a noticeable drop in writing quality. Everyone goes asks what happened, it's from the absence of that person who would call the writer on shit ideas, bad motivations or nonsensical plot threads. I never knew of this previous writer but clearly he had a huge effect on the first story. Druckmann fell for the oldest entertainment lie "you don't need them".
Great example that instantly comes to mind are the Star Wars prequels
@@ElizaKurosawa even more with the sequels. At least the prequels had a vision
@@Needler13 yeah, I ironically had a whole conversation-well, rant-with my best friend the other day on how the prequels still had heart and a vision while the sequels…y’know.
the whole shit about Joel really gets me because how much the conversation is painted as "fans not liking that their fave died" when so clearly those fans were saying they didn't mind that he died but that he died like that
while Vito did have a point when he said Joel likely got complacent and less cynical after spending so much time with Ellie, it's something that given his backstory from the first game he definitely should've picked up on upon seeing Abby's goons
"thanks mister, what was your name again?"
*oh shit these people look up to no good* "bob"
Completely agree Lucas; I've been called butthurt before for criticising the story - and, maybe I am - but I just didn't appreciate that Joel became an object that was used to get the plot going. He didn't need a hero's death but he was literally just an object in this game.
killing Joel is a Iron Man in Endgame kind of way takes away from the emotional impact of it, how both the player and Ellie feel robbed, they want you to be in her shoes, giving him a heroic goodbye is so NOT like what this franchise does and woulda been so lame
@@mehdigeek didn’t have be heroic but instead of tortured, they could have just shot him.
@@joycedates2059 she wanted revenge she didn't want him to get the easy way out, what do you not understand about that? do you think Abby played the first game? to her Joel is a psycho
@@mehdigeek why is joel a psycho to her? its much less believable that joel did it for fun than the fact that he had a reason. is she dumb?
My main gripe with this game is that Drukmann was so convinced to have written some masterpiece. He should have let us pick our ending and register the numbers like in Telltale's games. I would have laughed my ass off when I would eventually see a message saying "75% choose to kill Abby" prooving that most people disagreed with Neil.
Thats actually how Infamous Seconds Sons got made.
@@isaacalexander5286 Please, elaborate.
@@MASHo1992I don't know if you have played the Infamous series (if you haven't you should).
Sucker Punch Studios the makers of the Infamous game series took a look at how many people picked the good ending of Infamous 2 (where the main character dies) on their first playthough and then started making the next own based off that.
They originally had made plans to follow up the bad ending (where the main charcter lives).
I know this comment is a million years old, but God, Neil Druckmann is insufferable.
Someone needs to tell that man that his writing is not the pure gold he seems to think it is.
@@valiantshadow89 Would you believe me if I told you there was someone?
Bruce Straley saw Neil's first drafts of the story (it was basically the second game's story) said it was shit rewrote most of it. Look him up, Neil is still so salty that he didn't got credited in the show.
What I hate most about Abby isn't that she killed Joel. I don't think I would've been able to restrain myself either if I had my father's killer at my mercy. It's this line that pisses me of to end.
"We let you both live! And you wasted it!"
That's what makes Abby such a despicable character. She's a hypocrite. Joel saved her life and she still tortured him to death. And on top of that, she's fully aware of the pain she caused both Ellie and Tommy, and yet act surprised that they would come after her just because she spared their lives. Was Joel act of heroism enough for Abby to make her let go of her vendetta? No, it wasn't. And yet she had the audacity to act all high and mighty and pretend like she's morally superior to Ellie and Tommy just because she and her friends spared their lives. Hate them for killing her friends. That I can accept. What I won't accept is her acting like she morally superior to everyone else when she knows fully well the pain she caused Joel's family for murdering them and that Joel saved her from a horrible painful death, and actually expects his family to not seek out revenge for the exact same reason she sought revenge upon him.
"Don't ever let me see your face again."
Oh, shut up! You have not earned the right to talk down to Ellie like that, you self righteous hypocrite.
I wouldn't have minded it so much if it wasn't for the fact that no one calls her out for it. The game plays it of as if Abby is totally in the right here. I don't mind hypocrite characters as much just as long as they get called out for their crap. But nope. Not Abby. She doesn't have to take any responsibility for her actions. She didn't do anything wrong. This is the same reason why I hate Amber form Invincible. Both are self entitled, self righteous and hypocrites.
And what really gets me are all the fans who defends her while at the same time condemns Ellie and Tommy! Doing so completely contradicts the message this story was trying to push. That revenge is a fools game. That showing mercy upon a hated enemy if the most noble thing to do. So then why on Earth doesn't Abby get the same heat from her fans as Ellie and Tommy? If you're gonna condemn the two for their actions, that's fine. They crossed a lot of lines they shouldn't have. But don't defend Abby at the same time when she made the same choice they did. She choose to go to Jackson and murder Joel instead of letting go of her grudge. Just like how Ellie and Tommy choose to go to Seattle.
And that is why I cannot stand the character that is Abby Anderson.
I completely understand! What's more, is that when we play Abby, she's really down to earth, really chill, almost meek in a way. But when we need her to kill someone for the plot, she becomes a horrendous psychopath.
Like, she just has this psychopathy that gets wheeled out whenever we need Ellie to be powerless. But when we're playing as Abby, the writers very desperately want us to start liking her, so she just becomes super normal. Her characterisation is so schizophrenic and so completely reliant on what the writers need at the time.
@@MertKayKay Damn straight.
There's also the fact that she put Lev in needless danger when she set out to avenge Owen and Mel. Abby had no idea how many they were up against when they tracked Ellie and Tommy down, and she had just pulled Lev out of a freaking war zone. Lev had just lost his sister, and Abby selfishly dragged him on a dangerous revenge quest just hours after that trauma. Sure, they got the drop on Tommy and Ellie. But that was just pure luck. This could've gone either way. Bottom line, Abby dragged a recently traumatized child, who was pretty much all she had left in the world at that point, on a dangerous revenge quest that would've gained nothing. Something Abby should've known already by now, given her nightmares continued even after she got her revenge on Joel.
@@youtubecreators384 Oh yeah! I never even noticed that detail. You make a very good point
@@MertKayKay Thank you.
I get so much whiplash when she goes from being this nice, normal girl to being a psychopath. It genuinely feels like two personalities fighting eachother for control.
This was a really good review. Although my biggest problem with the game is the lack of any likable characters. In last of us 1 the characters were flawed but relatable and likable. After Joel died the only likable character was lev and lev was introduced much later in the game. Also Joel's death scene really ruined Abby's character in general for me. If you remember Joel and Tommy saved her life showing her nothing but kindness. A lot of people were angry that they gave their names but personally I think they could've softened by being part of a community for years. My biggest problem with Joel's death scene is Abby's lack of hesitation in killing him. You would think that all this time after her fathers death she would want some answers from the killer. Asking questions such as Why? or do you know what you have done? Doing this would've fleshed out Abby's character making her more relatable. Also if they had made Abby shoot Joel instead of using a golf club you wouldn't hate her as nearly as much as you do in the game. Another thing they didn't do is flesh out Abby's remorse if she had any. They never showed Abby regretting what she had done in a meaningful way. This ruined her character for me making her a completely unrelatable psycho. Also logically it makes no sense leaving Tommy and Ellie alive at that point (Abby being in the same place as Ellie at one point) this could've been a scene to show Abby's compassion by arguing with the group for their lives. Instead they had Owen defend Ellie in this scene which didn't really help his character in the long run. I could drone on and on about each character individually, Dina's selfishness, Jessie's lack of realism that you mentioned, Mel's/Owens lack of love for their unborn child but ill just leave it here. I'm neither team Abby nor Team Ellie btw. The story itself is horrible what's the point of this story? Kill thousands of people that have nothing to do with your revenge just to give up on your revenge at the last minute.... Both Ellie and Abby are irredeemable by the end of the story.
YES thank you for such an articulate comment, you put into words exactly how I feel about Abby! The way they had her behave was on the hard end of the psychopathic spectrum when in reality they really could have added a grey area. Even in TLOU1 when Joel shoots the Firefly woman (forgot her name lmao), he says "You'll just come after her", so you can hear his deliberation even after he's done some unspeakable stuff.
For a person who was supposed to be our main character, they have Abby behave horribly. Her more genuine moments showed a really nice woman but whenever they want to push a plot moment forwards, they turn her into Hannibal Lecter :') Thank you for this, I'm glad you liked the video too!
@@MertKayKay Yep everything feels artificial. Everything had to happened the way it did for the plot to continue. For ex Abby had to slowly torture Joel so Ellie could stumble upon the act and know who to go after. There is some concept art in the bonuses for that scene that I much prefer. It was a innocent looking Abby who has a machete and she is couching in front of Joel. Joel is laying on the floor with his hand cut off with a gun in it. Now I could buy and forgive Abby for killing Joel in self defense like that. But Abby slowly killing a man who just save her life in front of his daughter is just unforgiveable and next level cruel. Compare that to Joel killing her father who is armed to save his daughter. I can't believe people actually try to compare the two acts as the same level of cruelty.
@@MertKayKay I don't see how you would expect abby to feel remorse for that when in her eyes it was the person who screwed over the best chance that the world had at getting a vaccine who also killed her dad. I get you when you say, why didn't abby ask Joel "do you know what you have done?" and stuff like that but at that point everybody in the room knew what Joel did. Tommy knew, Abby and her friends knew and especially Ellie and Joel knew. Now, when we first met Abby we see her wake up from a nightmare which was her thinking about her dads death. After she kills Joel she still gets those nightmares and they don't stop until after she takes in lev and his sis. Abby killing Joel is meant to look like unnecessarily brutal violence cause it is. She was blinded of revenge cus of her father that she didn't even weigh in the fact that she was killing the man who just saved her life. And after doing it still didn't even give her the closure she wanted cus she was still getting nightmares right after.
@@lilmupp875 Even though Abby and her friends knew what Joel did, I don't think any of them even wondered WHY he did it. Even when Ellie was begging them not to kill Joel, not one of them stopped to question the situation. If Abby and her friends had asked questions, the situation probably would have ended differently. When Joel asked who she was, Abby had the chance to clear things up by telling him who she was and why she was after him. But all she said to him was "Guess". The event happened 5 years ago and Joel had never seen Abby before. How is he supposed to guess? We as the players didn't know who Abby was and we played as Joel in the first game. We wouldn't have been able to guess who she was. I do understand being blinded by revenge, but I have trouble believing that Abby did not once in 5 years wonder about the reason Joel killed her dad.
Feels like I'm the only one thinking Lev was annoying :( I'm horrible I know.
My primary issue with TLOU2 is that it felt like the writers wanted us to side with Abby as Abby's story went on.
But never really fixed any of her problems.
They could have shown her having remorse and growing because of what she did. But Instead, they just had her do random, largely unrelated good things, and had random, largely unrelated bad things happen to her. "Yes, your honour, my client killed someone, but he also saved someone else in an entirely different circumstance." Doesn't work as a defence in court. Nor does "My client Did commit murder, but he was hit by a car afterwards."
It also really doesn't help that the positives they showed were all Nothing to me. She plays with a cute animal and had friends she cares about. Great, so did Bin Laden. (He liked cats, was great at volleyball, and used to play Counterstrike and Animal Crossing. Doesn't make him a good person.) There was literally propaganda pictures of Hitler posing with dogs and deers.
Evil people are people too? Yeah, I know that. It's WHY I have a problem with them. I wouldn't seek revenge against a tornado, it has no agency.
It really doesn't help that she's a firefly turned wolf.
The fireflies were calling quarantine zones fascism and bombing checkpoints according to the start of TLOU1 which A: is terrorism, B: helped spread the virus, and C: has some rather negative baggage given certain people's responses to the Corona virus around that time...
And the WLF were straight up genocidal towards the Seraphites. Abby was even called "Number one scar slayer".
Don't get me wrong, fuck the Seraphites, bunch of bigotted zealous luddite (Except when they wanted a set piece with Seraphite technology that one time so you can reach the invisible sky bridge) assholes, but wolves were targeting non-combatants, and that's not OK.
Aaaand then she found an inebriated, emotionally compromised man and had sex with him while knowing he was pining for the mother of his child. He was not capable of informed consent. And that act is unforgivable in my book.
She could have distanced herself from the bad parts of the Fireflies and WLF. But that? That was all her.
I agree very much Calemr - thanks for the comment! Loved reading it. Also, Bin Laden being a fan of Animal Crossing is a very interesting little factoid. I wonder which villager was his favourite.
@@MertKayKay A lot of his hard drive contents were released to the public by the CIA a few years ago.
He pirated a bunch of DS games, and major movies. Very naughty.
So it might have his old save data somewhere among the files. Could be possible to find out.
The reason why the writer thinks Abby's "redeemed" by unrelated good acts is because Neil Druckmann is gaming's own Weinstein.
You see, Neil Druckmann, personally, fired and blacklisted someone for being sexually harassed by his best friend Robert Cogburn. He did this because Cogburn's unrelated good acts, being the main guy working on Naughty Dog's multiplayer, supposedly made up for him sexually harassing people.
@@calemr Everything you listed is exactly why i hate Abby. There's absolutely no buildup or conclusion to her redemption being deserved. The story just basically says "you're going to feel this way, and that's final".
@@bggsz4 Agreed. The fact that one of the first things you do as Abby is play with a dog Immediately set off alarm bells for me.
From there, it all felt like manipulation, rather than a well crafted narrative.
"Play with the dog! Care about how Ellie killed it!" "No. And that was self defence anyway." "Well you can't continue the game until you do!"
And honestly that kind of applies to all Abby's friends. The only one I cared about was Lev, 'cause he seemed like an actually decent person, rather than "A piece of shit, but they had friends, so that makes it OK."
No amount of "Look at how Abby used to hang out with Nora" will erase "Nora spitefully told Ellie to her face how she enjoys thinking about the time she murdered Ellie's father figure."
No amount of "Manny saved a burrito for Abby 'cause they're friends" will make up for "Manny spat on Joel's dead body."
I've experienced plenty of media with protagonists who aren't heroes (Lisa: The Painful RPG is my favourite game narrative of all time.) So playing as a character does almost Nothing towards making me side with them.
The difference between the 1st and the 2nd game is that it’s abundantly clear as to why Joel saves Ellie, it’s NOT as clear as to why Ellie spares Abby. The line of demarcation is clearly defined in the 1st and not in the 2nd. Why did these things happen, that is the most important question.
Because it wasn't worth it. None of it ever was. That was the message. The blood shed on both sides was pointless and just begat more. She realized too late, Abby was just a roided up revenge monster who in the end suffered more than anyone because of her choices, Ellie completely ended a bloody and vicious cycle that unintentionally began with her.
Does it have to be AS clear? She flashes back to Joel in the final moments before Abby drowns, then we see that full memory later. Was clear enough.
@@FiveFingerOutfit I still don’t understand how recalling a nice moment with a loved one would suddenly take you out of trying to kill the person who took away that loved one in the first place. She had absolutely no reason to spare Abby and it’s not some sort of dumb “EnD tHe CycLE” excuse people like to give the ending for whatever reason. Like if I had a flashback of a something like that happening, that would just motivate me to drown her even faster for taking that away from me
@@uhoh6706 Did you not listen to their conversation when they showed the full memory? This is what happens when things are spoon fed too often, people complain when things are remotely up to interpretation and they have to interpret any amount of motive or plot.
Ultimately, I understand why Ellie decided to spare Abby. Could it have been done in a different way? Yes. Ultimately, the flashback serves the purpose that Ellie may never be able to forgive Abby ( in the same way she may not have ever been able to forgive Joel ) but she would like to try. Ultimately, killing Abby wasn't going to solve anything for her. It wouldn't bring Joel back, it wouldn't cure her of her PTSD, etc. Killing Abby also meant killing Lev. I think there were a lot of good ideas with this game, some of it was executed poorly.
I agree with 25:50 onwards about the in-universe length. It’s my biggest problem with the “grief makes people act strangely” defence towards this game. It implies that Ellie wasted almost two years of her life hunting this Abby girl, and inadvertently murdering hundreds, for this father figure she hadn’t been on speaking terms with for a long time, yet when she finally as this girl where she wants her, Ellie has an epiphany about Joel probably not wanting her to avenge him. Are they trying to tell me that was the first time since Joel’s murder she thought about him other than his bloodied corpse?
When I found out that Druckmann wanted to make this story from the get go, it all made so much sense. TLoU2 is nothing more than one man's ego project, and this time Wells and Straley weren't there to reign him in. I know someone who worked for ND (he left after TLoU2), and apparently a lot of people, including the _actors,_ criticized the plot, but Druckmann ignored them. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not a good story. For the most part, it's boring. The characters aren't characters, they're props. When I first played the game, I found myself asking why Isaac would let a group of his best soldiers trek across three clicker-infested states, in the middle of heavy winter, to get revenge on an insignificant old man who _might_ be in Jackson, while they were at war with the Seraphites. It's nonsense. Lev and Jesse were the only likable characters, but that's because we were manipulated into liking them. Jesse just smiles and waves at everything and Lev is an innocent child, so we have no reason to dislike them. Owen is the only other side character with any flaws or personality, but he only served to make me hate Abby even more because she coerced him into having sx, when he was drunk and emotionally compromised, while he was torn between her and his very pregnant girlfriend. I think the devs wanted me to think that moment was romantic, but it made me sick, tbh. The whole game is just a contrived, silly nightmare.
This is the dumbest take I've seen so far
@@mattattack75
Do facts upset you?
@@kirikakirikakirika I was on board with your take until this. Don't act superior and like your take is a fact. Get over yourself. You tripped on your own, massively inflated ego.
Y'all tripping. OP's take is the general consensus and rightly so.
@@obyone878
"This is the dumbest take I've seen so far."
Sorry, _I_ was acting superior? The guy tried to insult my intelligence and you're acting like I didn't have a right to fire back?
I have a very, very, lukewarm defense of the homophobia theme with the bigot in the opening scene. I think they were trying to make one scene that encapsulates what happens during the course of the story, like Romeo and Juliet spoiling it in the first five minutes. Here's this guy who did something indefensible, and one of our well known characters is asking us to hear him and forgive him. His apology is clearly something he doesn't feel but was made to do, but then he pulls out an opportunity to accept a gift as a road to forgiveness. A steak sammich. Ellie takes it but immediately tosses it away. I think the theme supposed to be played out here is "it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured, than starve yourself on revenge" or something like that. Which, hey, I disagree with them completely, but at least thematically it does make a little bit of sense.
Btw, if any bigots wanna make me a steak sandwich you can call me whatever you want. But you can't half-ass it. Gotta grill it medium rare, and drizzle some A-1 on top. And get that good bread, the kind so homemade it has holes in it. Gotta balance that hate with some love ya know? In the form of sammiches.
Oo I like what you said about "it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured, than starve yourself on revenge", like biting the bullet and just being the bigger person even if you don't respect them. In terms of defences I think that one's fairly solid.
Thanks for watching Justine! And thanks for the comment
@@MertKayKay Awww, thanks for making it, dang good deep dive
"it's better to take and eat the bigot sandwich and be nurtured than starve yourself on revenge"
that line goes too fuckin' hard. that is officially the unofficial tagline for this game for me.
Oh stfu, people like you playing these violent bloody zombie games make no sense
Honestly they wouldn’t exist in the apocalypse america would Go back to the 50s in an Instant
The way Jesse was characterized was inhuman in a lot of ways. I agree with your arguments, seeing someone you were close you leave you for a close friend would definitely sting. Especially seeing she is preganat with his child which means they had coitus recently. A great plot thread would've been having Jesse blowup when him and Ellie went their separate ways. Telling her off about taking Dina on this mission, putting her needs above everyone else, and feeling betrayed by Ellie. They could've even go as far as Jesse accusing Ellie of sleeping with Dina while they were together or Ellie doing the same seeing the timing of the pregnancy is so weird. I get they tried to make him into "I want whats best for the people I love" but it came off as someone who is unnaturally out of touch of his own emotions. To the point that his death is played off as a footnote, literally. 1 note of Jesse parents telling Ellie not to blame herself for his death. Jesse just felt like the punching bag, the nice guy who died.
It also didn't help that they never explained why Dina and Ellie like each other. Riley and even Cat, who we never see, highlight Ellie's attachment to them. But why Dina? The second we are introduced to her we are just hammered with the same thing "I love her" without a reason for that love.
Whenever I think of how bad society was before the outbreak, and how badly it devolved after the outbreak… I can’t help but side with Joel in the finale of TLOU.
He did the right thing, the thing we all would have done in his predicament. Who’s to say it would have even 100% worked?? And even if it did, how many would they cure before running out? How many fedra soldiers, raiders, or fireflies would steal it and use it for power? Who’s to say the fungus wouldn’t evolve to combat it?
Joel saved the only thing that mattered to him. He saved HIS world: Ellie… and in a world so far gone, it’s a very valid reason to do what he did. It reminds me of the Superman line from Man of Steel. Where Superman chose earth over krypton, he said “Krypton had it’s chance” before destroying the only possible way of “reviving” it. It’s very similar to how Joel chose to reject humanity, to protect what’s most important to him. It’s a bold decision that clearly weighed on him, but he never regretted it even for a second. That’s why I love Joel. That’s why I love Ellie…
…and that’s why I hate Neil Druckmann, for throwing it all away in the sequel, to tell an “edgy” cliche violence = bad story. Wow, he really broke new ground with that one. He brutally killed Joel in a truly heartless way, and condemned Ellie to be alone with nothing… not even enough fingers to play the one thing she has left from her “father” Joel. It felt so needlessly personal, and nasty, how things ended up. Like Neil randomly wanted to give the audience a giant middle finger. Well I ain’t ever going to accept TLOU2 as canon.
THANK YOU for pointing out that Ellie never gave consent in the first game! The fact that there are many fans of TLOU2 who never acknowledge this drives me insane! I thought the kind of people who were down with the messages in this game, were also knowledgeable of how the issue of consent is supposed to work, but it seems not too be the case. It doesn't matter if Ellie expressed a desire to be humanities cure "whatever it takes" or "no matter the cost" (and she doesn't even directly say either of those things). It doesn't matter if you can infer from her facial expressions or her intonation that she'd be willing to pay any price, including her life. IF SHE DIDN'T DIRECTLY GIVE CONSENT, THEN CONSENT WAS NEVER GIVEN! Lovely, cherubic, zebra-saving Dr. Anderson strapped an unconscious 14-year old girl to an operating table, and, without ever getting her consent, was going to cut her open and kill her. Yes, from his perspective, he was going to possibly save the world, but to do it, he was going to murder a child; AND NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS!
Even with all the massive problems this games story has, one little addition would have helped it tremendously: In the scene where little Abby overhears her dad unable to answer the what-if-it-was-your-daughter question, and tells him "If it was me, I'd want you to do it." Instead of just pleasantly smirking at her, he could've said something to the effect of- "You would have a choice. This girl doesn't; because I'm not giving her one. I truly believe this is for the good of the entire world. But it's still an evil thing I'm doing; and I'll have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life." On the nose? Sure. But what dialogue in this game isn't? 😛
YEEES! :D
I know that story doesn't happen without contrivances but really, everything comes down to the fact that the Fireflies never got Ellie's consent, and she never explicitly consents or not, which I felt was a way to push Joel over the line into "bad guy doing good things". I'm happy for him to be a bad guy doing bad things at this rate - the whole consent issue would have nailed so much down.
Thanks for watching Tube, and thanks for blessing my comment sections!
@@MertKayKay See, I wouldn't have wanted Joel to be full on evil; denying Ellies direct wishes along with killing everybody. The non-consent issue is one of the things that makes the first games ending hauntingly ambiguous. I just wish that aspect would have been acknowledged by SOMEONE in the second game.
@@Tubemansi I don't really think them not getting her consent was really contrived.
Throughout the whole game the fireflies were shown to be a group on their last legs and frankly, not very good at what they wanted do. In Boston Marlene pretty much says the fireflies were, for lack of a better term, few and far between (What’s left of them). Hell Robert said that they were almost all dead IIRC. And nearly every time we see the fireflies bar the ending they were dead bodies or killed. In Pittsburgh the fireflies overthrew FEDRA..... and were then overthrown because the hunters didn't like them.
And now, they have the possible cure to the infection right at their fingertips? Imagine the power having a vaccine would have. Imagine how much of a bargaining chip that would be. Especially for such a desperate group. Being able to negotiate, say "Hey if you join is we'll vaccinate you!" Would be such a powerboost for the fireflies and the key for them to reach there goal.
And let's say, with everything on the table, that they took the road to ask Ellie for Consent. What happens if she says no? Do the fireflies let her head out with Joel, let the most important possible thing for them in there losing war that could turn the tide slip away? That wasn't an option for the fireflies.
But that doesn't make it okay. The fireflies were absolute monsters for that decision. Joel made the right call. The murder of a 14 year old girl for a possible shot at a cure is an entierly morally black decision.
@@MertKayKay Well yeah this is another thing. I get that Ellie was mad at Joel for taking away her choice, but she never actually was given the chance to make it by the Fireflies anyway. Yes it is what she would have wanted but the Fireflies had no way of knowing that. I mean I don't know, I think you'd be angier at them (and especially Marlene who had a close personal connection with Ellie her whole life, maybe a sort of aunt figure?) than Joel since they were going to just kill you in your sleep without asking.
@@thinkingscottish It irritates the hell out of me too, but I'll just throw it out that Joel never actually tells Ellie. He tells her making a vaccine would have killed her, not that they were prepped, ready to go and didn't plan on asking her about it.
You'd think she's smart enough to put that together herself, but with the way she's written in this game maybe not.
Calling Abby a character is a stretch, because she's so poorly written, but here's what we know about her:
Is sadistic:
* Enjoys torturing Joel.
* Wishes she had more time for torture, while walking past people being tortured.
* Owen sex scene (less said about that the better).
Disloyal:
* Assigned to lead important attack against her group's enemies. Ignores assignment.
* Kills her own comrades.
* Sleeps with friend's boyfriend.
Thoughtless:
* Decides to find Joel by herself, because the rest of her group thinks it's impossible. Leaves without gear, supplies, or a plan.
* Takes one-armed girl to an island where everyone wants to kill her.
* Is surprised when Ellie shows up, despite the fact Ellie was literally screaming, "I WILL KILL YOU" while she was killing Joel.
Self-centered:
* Takes advantage of drunk ex-boyfriend, whom she apparently doesn't give a shit about, then blames him.
* Acts surprised about the attack on Scar Island, even though she had been assigned to lead it.
* Is pissed Ellie came after her, because, "We let you live". Even though Joel literally saved her life, immediately before she killed him.
Lucky:
* Doesn't get shot by Ellie, even though Ellie has a clear shot, with a weapon in both hands, at a distance of about ten or fifteen feet.
* Survives attack by horde, after random guy saves her. Random guy coincidentally turns out to be guy she's looking for.
* Gets handed map to killer's location, when she finds friends' bodies.
Inconsistent:
* "#1 Scar Killer" on day 1. #1 WLF killer on day 3.
* Day 2: "If there are Fireflies in Santa Barbara, I'd go the other way." Day 3: Sails off to find Fireflies in Santa Barbara.
* Goes on suicidally dangerous mission to save Yara. Doesn't bother to tell Owen and Mel that someone's trying to kill them.
There are a lot of things to dislike about the "Abby" character.
That she's the only person in the game who has access to steroids is stupid and distracting. But it's pretty minor.
In my playthrough, I killed *literally* everyone I could as I was playing as Ellie. My version of Ellie was not a pacifist. She was a cold-hearted killer who slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of people, on her way to that final mission.
So, for her to (metaphorically) then turn to the camera, smile, and say "revenge is bad bros, understand?" was just sort of weird.
The only thing I can liken it to is, imagine if in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, as Sam, Frodo, and Gollum are on Mt. Doom, instead of trying to take the ring for himself, Gollum says:
"Nah, guys. Greed is bad. Go ahead and destroy the ring."
That would be weird, right? To me, the ending of TLOU 2 is a 1:1 recreation of that hypothetical.
Yes! A lot of people claim "Ellie makes those choices so we can role play as her" and then you just watch her swerve back and forth across the road for 10 hours
The whole game Ellie kills in self defense, because if she doesn't seraphites or wolves will kill her, the only people she kills for "desire" are the ones responsible por Joel's death and the game makes it clear how much it affects her to kill them when they represent no danger for her, when they are the "victims", even for the player can be hard to process (take the Nora or Owen and Mel murder scenes for example).
At the end of the game Ellie knows that she should stay with Dina and her baby but it's the pain for Joel's death and her own guilt that she doesn't wanna face and therefore justifies it with "anger, hatred and justice".
When she finally gets to Abby she's not in good shape at all, she has been tortured for months and Ellie was expecting to find that strong, unstoppable and cruel monster. Again, she represents no danger for her, anyways Ellie thinks that if she kills her, her pain and trauma will heal, so she tries one last time and defies her to a duel to death and ultimately wins. As she's drowning her you can see how her emotions turn from rage to pain and sadness and it's in this moment when she sees Joel because after vengueance and rage is gone, all that's going to be left is pain... Joel represents that for Ellie at this point.
She had to get to this moment, to get to kill the person who inflicted the most painful and traumatic experience of her life on her to realize that it wasn't worth it and it would not help her as she thought it would so she let's her go finally letting go of her anger and accepting her grief, pain and guilt, not giving up but determined to face it and work on it so she could find some sort of forgiveness within herself (resilience) and we can see when she returns to the farm that she's achieving this, finally remembering Joel not as the man who was brutally murdered but as a loving and accepting father figure.
@@alejandroalvarado3409
Even so, the self-defense part is still questionable, sure the WLF tried to kill Ellie, but that's cuz she was trespassing in their territory. And most of the encounters is just her ambushing and killing them stealthly or guns blazing which only deepens the idea that she's a threat to them further. It's hard to claim self-defense when you intentionally break into someone's house and they point a gun at you for it.
That feeling you got from the game where it felt like it was taking something you loved and destroying it for fun is more than a feeling. It was intentional. The writer was the one who intended for you to feel that, and then he mocked people he hurt. That’s why people tend to have no mercy or sympathy for him. It’s a return of the same energy he put out. He kept egging people on, so they pointed out the real reasons they were upset because he was actively trying to character assassinate his own paying customers. He was a bit megalomaniacal about the whole thing and every creator should use him as a cautionary tale.
I think it breaks down to a huge amount of programmers doing an incredible amount of work in service of a horrible story that just drags you through the mud.
If you gave this engine, assets, and mocap to anyone and told them to go wild with it, 9 times out of 10, I think you'd end up with something better.
The actors aren't bad, but the material is. The game as a game functions great. They could have done sooo much with what they had. What we got was a waste of time.
I agree Hash! The game looks absolutely incredible and the mechanics are so unbelievably polished. Definitely one of the best looking experiences I've played
Agreed. Druckman and his shoehorned leftist political propaganda ruined what would have been a good game.
He basically shit all over the hard work of everyone else on the game by forcing a story that is ham fisted and preachy and alienating to the audience.
Sadly this game was assassinated by the ego of a creative mind that couldnt let go of their original "grand idea" which was squashed by someone with a better grasp of story (or in this case an entire team). I like writing & creating worlds, often seeking the opinion of others, because my single view may be cloaded by personal bias or delusion. Sometimes I'm sad to hear that an idea is far worse then I thought. Other times I happily indulge in the horror, sadness, happiness or WTF reactions I get when I get it right.
Druckmann may not have deserved to be bullied & media-lynched by angry players but he mutated the game & its characters to fit a story he wanted from day 1 that everyone else wasnt on board with.
Best to delude ourselves that we never got a sequel. The ending of The Last Of Us is all we have. Nothing beyond that ever happened lol.
I agree on all counts Luke! Let's consider it a fanfiction
ABSOLUTELY!!! YOUR THE FIRST PERSON IV SEEN COMMENT THIS.... BINGO! exactly.... he took the idea that straily CHUCKED and said watch this... i can make this work
Thank OG TLOU Co-Writer Bruce Straley. He was one of main writers in the writing team that didn’t let Neil Druckmann do his cross country revenge story, apparently there’s an interview where Bruce says that eventually the original story was scrapped because it “wasn’t believable” lmao.
The other thing that definitely proves Neil botched the story is that it isn't even actually his story. Everyone always keeps giving him all the credit for creating TLOU but he pretty much didn't as he just had the job of creative writer, the person who is told to make a template for characters and a script but later has to make all changes given by the rest of the creative team and the director, and in TLOU's case, Bruce had talked about the input he had on the story, and that plenty of Neil's ideas were rejected, so in the end, the input on the story and how it turned out is more from Bruce than Neil, same as how TV shows have their writers and also have a showrunner that calls the shots and approves or disaproves the scripts presented and makes all changes they think are necessary. A little off-topic, the same thing happened with Halloween II, John Carpenter wrote it, but wrote what others told him to, and he was very much against it. With TLOU, Neil wanted to do that whole revenge plot from the start and pretty much everything that happened in Part II that didn't happen in the first game, but Bruce and the other creators rejected most of his ideas and led the story to another way that made it the one of the most beloved stories in history, the same went with Uncharted 4 which was another story Bruce worked on that he actually made it good. And later surprise surprise when Bruce left ND, Neil suddenly became president, greenlit a Part II almost immediately that ended up incorporating every single idea of his that was rejected, and most of the people who worked on TLOU, pretty much everyone who opposed him earlier were fired, and it most definitely wasn't a coincidence, no matter what he or others who defend him claim. He turned the studio from a company making great games that the players love to a political dictatorship that leans on his every whim.
But in the end he still unfortunately gets all the credit everywhere as the second a person reads "Writer" they're all like "oh here's the person responsible, forget the director and everyone else".
Cope
I actually came here straight after your Rachel Foster video knowing I’ll actually get a review with some nuance and I wasn’t let down. It actually made me realize the extent of how emotionally manipulative it was in its gameplay - in @Joseph Anderson’s playthrough, where he talks about how unrealistic killing Ellie would be scientifically since Naughty Dog seemed to be aiming for realism, he shows how in the ending Joel HAS to kill all the doctors, you can’t leave the surgery room without killing not just Abby’s father who is the only person who threatens him, but the other two nurses who do nothing to him.
The game just puts up this invisible wall and at the end of the day I think that’s what went wrong with the LoU, both 1 & 2. It’s putting up invisible walls to keep the player from actually seeing both sides of the story when it’s convenient to the plot. You don’t even know about what Ellie is feeling or thinking really and if the little extra mini game that reveals how Ellie got her bite has anything to say, there’s a lot about her personal identity that’s withheld from us.
Also the fact that Lev, a transboy who probably has never seen depictions of women outside of his home’s ideal, meets and becomes close to Abby, a woman who looks like she would win the Hunger Games, is really important, and is somehow handled BETTER than depictions of queerness involving Ellie and literally any other woman ever seen in the series like God it makes me want to cry at how Ellie’s character was thrown so viciously under the bus.
EDIT: It’s come to my attention that it’s most likely it is just the one surgeon we are forced to kill before leaving the area, but I think my point still stands that either way we are forced into a single decision.
Aww thanks Alexandra! I am glad you enjoyed the review!
Writing this did make me retrospectively quite annoyed with the ending of 1 - as you've said, it's manipulative and was definitely a far shot from the rest of the game when things were more relaxed with how you could act and interpret the games direction
Thanks for watching and I'm glad you liked it!
The shoehorned leftist political propaganda ruined it.
@@makeitthrough_ 🤣🤣🤣 I try to not use it so much but unfortunately….
The Theater Fight is downright bizarre. You have to fight Ellie (something you already don't want to do), but what's more, Ellie instakills you and the loading screen just point blank tells you "For this fight, and this fight only, you HAVE to sneak up on Ellie from behind. Why? Because fuck you."
I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of ludosymbiotic storytelling.
As far as I remember, you absolutely do NOT have to kill the other two doctors. I've played the game over 7 times, and never killed the two other doctors.
He was lying if he said you HAVE to kill them.
My issue is that the intentions of the script became so obvious throughout the game to the point where I was hearing the script saying things like "See? Abby's actually a good person!" and "Don't like Ellie so much now do ya?" I just overall stopped caring about the script and the all the characters for practically the last 3rd of the game.
This definitelly felt like the shortest hour of my life!... No, seriously, it did xD I just really like how you talked about the game, how there wasn't any particular bias (or any) about it. Watching my friend play *The Last Of Us 1* on his PS3 when we were younger was such a tragic story, one that definitelly did have it's own uplifting moments and down right heartbreaking moments. This was something so important to me, heck they made me actually like Zombies for once. Everyone felt more human, everyone was (to a certain degree) fighting for survival. This game hurt me more than the other, cause i felt more rewarded watching the first one, but this sequel definitelly didn't deserve to be slandered to this point. Oh God, i *wish* this was all a fever dream, and i wake up, and they develop the true sequel... That's what i think to cope. This is a true example of this line: *"It's not the game's fault, it's the story writter's fault."*
Aww thank you Star! I'm glad you liked the video and I'm glad you loved the game too, I also watched it on an old PS3 and had much of the same experience
@@MertKayKay Glad to see you share the same sentiment ❤️ Loved the video, and if there's other reflective *hour specials* like this coming, then i am happy to see them! Idk, i really like long videos, definitelly apart of a minority of people *ಠ◡ಠ*
I hated that we were forced to play as Abby after everything that happened. Then they proceeded to force feed us scenes to make us feel bad for her or remind us, "she's human too." Trying to garner sympathy for a character who brutally murdered someone we played as previously.
@ALERNes I feel like there were plenty of other ways of going about it. Maybe going in more depth with the struggle of her attempting to get over the loss of her father. Rather than plugging in extra scenes of her helping a kid stay alive and deal with an insane cult.
@@sunsetcreations6622 I really want to point out how contrived and pathetic it was that they tried to make Abby "sympathetic" with how I think they came about that.
Go to the TVTropes sympathy index and look down that list from top to bottom. I think they genuinely consulted that to introduce virtually every single point to make Abby sympathetic. Like you can even see times where they didn't even introduce the tropes later on, they went down that list in alphabetical order sometimes.
speaking of aim wobble, as an IRL shooter, it does exist but it's severely exaggerated in-game for obvious gameplay purposes. for context, at 25m with a handgun my aim drifts a couple of millimetres side-to-side and up-and-down, which can result in me hitting up to 10cm off from where I wanted to hit. at the ranges you were showing when you spoke about the mechanic you would have to be trying to miss to miss in real life.
I need to learn to show more relevant footage alongside my discussion - I just smacked a lot of b-roll footage in this video because I was more concerned about the writing, and I learned my lesson about showing specifics! But thanks for the explanation, as I said in the video, I am absolutely no expert :D
@@MertKayKay understandable. The relationship between shooting IRL and shooting in games is very complex. Most people fall in either the “irl shooter” or “game shooter” category, and they rarely mix. I wouldn’t say I’m a gamer, but I do play games, and I feel like I pay attention to and get hung up on minute and frankly unimportant elements in games that have to do with firearms. Like suppressors decreasing damage and/or range in Fallout infuriates me so much I mod it out immediately. The balance between respect for the real life mechanisms of firearms and the needs of gameplay pretty much always sways towards gameplay for obvious reasons, and I find that disappointing.
I think that people like you with an eye for detail are what's important in pushing games closer and closer to perfection; if we didn't really care, we'd still have PS2 shooting - not dreadful, but definitely not with the kind of delicate intricacies of today's shooters :D
I really felt bad about Thommy, he saw his brother being tortured and being killed by Abby. He had all the motivations to go after Her. I think more than ellie had?
Dude, this is the best critique I've heard of this game...and trust me, I went down the RABBIT HOLE. Plus, "lesser known side character, Joel Miller" made me crack up in public.
Haha thanks Jordon! Really glad you liked it :D
Agreed. I’ve listened to like a hundred hours of critique.this vid hit the nail on the head
The entire plot for Part 2 is so hamfisted with so many contrivances it's amazing that this Triple A game got published with such bad writing in the first place. Druckmann regurgitating a story that was shot down a decade ago shows he either has not a lot of original ideas or he has a lot of spite to those who shot down the original idea. And honestly, after what was done to the the characters in part 2, I think it's spite.
I actually agree, I also think it's spite. Amy Hennig was shunted off Uncharted (her baby project) and it seemed a similar situation
She really should of waited for her balls to drop before making this video. Just IMO as a man whose balls dropped long ago.
Ellie in tlou2 is Arya Stark, but unlike Ellie, Arya never at any point gets to kill the people on her list.
57:01 1:10:05 I really like the blunt, honest nature of your opinions. What you said about the story felling like the writers broke my toys and watched as I helplessly tried to mend them togheter summarizes perfectly how I felt in the end.
And I know that they completely destroyed Ellie's character but I still see that girl buried very deep...somewhere. It's like when you see a friend or family member destroying themselves, it's just...sad.
Aww thanks Space! I'm glad you like the bluntness especially - it's my favourite way to write :'D and poor Ellie, they did her so dirty in this game. My girl deserved a real character arc.
Thanks for watching Space!
Best damn review ever. The way Ellie treated Joel was just crazy.
Joel tried to put her off on his brother, but she cried that everyone she cares about leaves her. That man stayed and murdered for her, and she treated him like shit.
Have you never been angry/upset with someone you love and care about before?
55:31 yes Ellie did that and she was being extra for that i agree but you don't seem to talk about the years Abby took to find Joel just to kill him for revenge either she wouldn't just let it go after almost a decade of her dad being dead. there isn't any doubt that she traveled 2 times as long as Ellie did just to kill some old man buy giving him a slow and brutal death. and even after he saved her in the horde when she was Finna go to the other side.
Damn I thought I talked about that! I thought it was dumb they made Abby do that too. It's the same as with Ellie: a stupid long time spent achieving something a normal human would never bother with. Good point! Sorry I missed it
She went on about it for a bit early in the video, and while the early part was mostly about Ellie, she did bring up that Abby did the same thing.
@@MertKayKay Can't say a person wouldn't go through hell to avenge a dead parent without going through it.
@@willfanofmanyii3751 this game did...
@@eugenideddis oh ok sorry
So basically, the game says that Ellie had to let Abby kill Joel, it's Ellie's fault for wanting revenge, but Abby gets to have her revenge and pretty much got off Scott free and is 100% unapologetic. There's so much finger wagging at Ellie (and the player) but what about Abby? Sure it sucks her dad was killed but, where are the people telling Abby that she has to be the better person and let go of her obsession? They try to promote showing mercy as being the best option, that a bigger person would simply show mercy and not seek revenge, but... sorry, why didn't Abby show mercy to Joel? Maybe beat him up a little but then don't kill him and go separate ways? I'm not even against Joel dying, I expected that to happen in this game but, not like this.
"Oh Ellie, you killed a pregnant woman, shame on you!" You didn't give me a choice, VIDEO GAME. It's hard to care about committing unforgivable acts when I wasn't given a choice. And speaking of Mel, I thought this was the zombie apocalypse, who lets a 9 month pregnant woman out into a world infested with Clickers and humans who want to raid any survivor they come across? "She could use some fresh air"? The same air filled with spores and create a new form of Infected? Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Some baby necromorphs while we're at it.
And my god, hearing all Neil Druckmann's horrible ideas that were shot down for TLOU, it sounds like they basically got lucky that the first game was as well received as it was, and with those people gone, all that was left were the horrible ideas and no one with enough power to question them. I weep for what TLOU3 will bring, but honestly, I'll just stick with the first game and leave it at that.
Absolutely Jman, like the revenge sub-story just falls so flat when you compare the two parallel women.
But the absolute cardinal sin of this was them putting a 9 month pregnant woman out there because WHO WOULD DO THAT? She's a medic! I know she's looking for Owen but she looks like she could go into labour any second. All forced so that we'd have to stab her in the heat of the moment. She could have just not been pregnant but then we wouldn't have the *~Dina Parallel~*
Thanks for watching!
Yeah, best to just stick to the first game. Pretend this was all a fever dream.
Also, pregnant lady just waltzing around in the zombie apocalypse with cannibals, slavers and other lunatics outside?
Sure, why not. With parents like these, the kid wouldn't have made it to their first birthday anyways.
Got off Scott free? Are you actually mental? All her friends are dead, the WLF is canonically collapsing before they even leave Seattle, and she and Lev are kidnapped by bandits who probably did messed up things to them for an undisclosed amount of time. What are you talking about?
@@adk7165 Did you just expect good story comprehension from ga*ers? Nah, epic ga*ers only play apolitical gems like Modern Warfare(Remastered), Warhammer 40k, LoU1, and Bioshock (best part is in Infinite where you get to throw the ball).
@@MertKayKay I remember she said she had to get permission in order for her to be deployed in the field, and at this point the WLF/Isaac needed every person available to fight in the invasion of the Seraphites' island and that means medics are needed, and she is a pretty good one, so I see it as the growing desperation of the WLF to muster as much force as they could to get rid of the Seraphites.
Also maybe she was only gonna go and stay at the FOB in order to handle the wounded _after_ the fight, but they probably weren't expecting to be ambushed on the way to the FOB.
I kinda disagree with people who prefer Abby. Abby gets her revenge, she killed Joel and moved on. Abby story has nothing to do with Ellie til she finds out she killed Owen and Mel. So why does Abby get her revenge but Ellie doesn't?
Yeah Abby's whole revenge thing felt so separate from her character. I like her as a person but her introduction to the game was stupid
The biggest criticism I had playing this was the butcher to Ellie's character. I'm glad someone said something about it. And I liked that you explained Druckman's older plan for the game, that just made a lot of sense to me. Helped me understand what probably led to this sad, unlikable Ellie.
Video game writers need to accept that they're not writing movies. Even the first game had some wtf story decisions. Ellie killing the cannibal in the diner then breaking down wasn't only cliche as hell but happens after a year of these characters being attacked and killing people.
Many video game writers have accepted that. It's bad writers that haven't.
David Cage and Neil Druckmann see video games as inherently incapable of the emotional writing that films and books have: But there's a damn good reason they don't make movies:
If TLOU2 was a movie, it'd be a bad movie, because it was made by a bad person who's a bad writer.
TLOU1, meanwhile, was written by an actual game writer who knew about the medium and wrote the story to capitalize off of it: You kill hundreds in that game but it's not highly criticized because every single kill is about survival. There's no story/gameplay segregation because the writer, Bruce Straley, was a good writer who knew he was writing for a video game.
I chalked it up to she thought she was about to be raped, the idea of being eaten, struggling to survive all on her own, not knowing if Joel is alive or not...
Having Joel come out of nowhere instead of another damn cannibal must've broken her down
@@crazyinsane500 Bruce wasn't the main writer on the last of us 1. It was Neil. Writers can have good stories and bad stories.
I’m pretty sure that Ellie breaking down after killing the cannibal wasn’t because she killed him. It was the build up of everything that happened all those months, and especially during the time she spent alone while Joel was unconscious.
The stress of having to keep herself and Joel alive and safe, all on her own, must’ve been hard for a teen. Add on the fact the very people that almost killed Joel kidnap Ellie, and were fully intending to eat her until they saw she was bitten. Not to mention that, before she killed the cannibal, he was crawling on top of her and whispering the things he’d do to her in her ear. Anyone would break down after that.
@@TasteTheRainbow346 I don't think tlou 2 it's a bad story... it actually found a way to tell a story in a very innovative way for videogames and even movies and books.
19:29 not only did that man actually apologize he made them STEAK sandwiches in post apocalyptic times. That has to be a lot of trouble to go through and using high grade beef to do it. Steak is certainly something not easy to come by. The problem I have is that he was made to apologize. Why can’t we have one sympathetic character that has a genuine moment? Everything is forced in this game.
So I love my step father to the point that I never refer to him as my step father, he's just Dad. If someone killed him I would definitely want to hunt and kill his killer, but I too am a father and a husband and would never drag my family cross country for years to get that revenge, Im not that selfish. I would rather life the life I would think he would want me too.
As for Joel killing a hospital for people trying to cure a disease that ruined the world. I can sympathize. If my daughter was taken from me and the people that took her told me straight up that she would die for the greater good, well fuck the greater good. My little girl that I see everyday and brings more joy and love than I deserve means more then a possible cure for strangers that mean nothing to me.
I don't know, I still feel like Ellie becoming estranged from Joel is a fantastic idea. I just think they did it really weird for this game and so unsatisfactorily.
Joel lies to Ellie at the end of the first game. A massive one, one that if she learned the truth, would shake the foundations of her relationship with him to their core. Suddenly he's not the father who did necessary evils to protect her, now he's projecting his own self interest over her agency. She isn't her own person, she's a fill in for his dead daughter.
Joel murdered a bunch of people just trying to fix the broken state of the world, and made Ellie live with the fact that she is indirectly responsible for the further collapse of society.
I would have loved this theme of a familial fallout. Abbie could even still be involved, but the story that currently exists currently is so detached from any of the characters and is terribly contrived.
The creators who side with Jerry are the people who may never go to the doctor before in their life.
The first rule of being a doctor is that the patient/relatives must give an “informed consent” before the operation. Jerry didn’t even care about Joel and Ellie’s consent. He didn’t even wait for Ellie to wake up to inform her about what he’s gonna do because as Marlene said, he treated Ellie not as a human but as a “petri dish” and since he had been doing this human experiment to so many children at this point, he is NOT the Messiah god doctor that Neil Druckmann likes to say he is.
In fact, he’s an evil doctor, an angel of death like those of Joseph Mengele or Shiro Ishii.
You are right. And let me add something. Marlene. In tlou2 they made her this concerned about Ellie type of woman. When in the first game she sent us to the friggin' hospital. Even she orders to kill joel if he interferes. But here in tlou2 she wants ellie to know? In tlou 1 she agreed all of this stupi doctors were about to do.
Not counting professional reviews from IGN or Gamespot, I have never gotten to the end of a positive video review of The Last of Us part II. Instead of telling the audience why they loved the game they spend the whole video telling you why you are wrong and lobbing insults your way lol.
I think people see a negative review and assume it's because the person doesn't like Abby or Lev for *those* reasons - but then they use it to dismiss anything you say even if it's valid criticism. This game plays pretty well but man I just didn't think it was great
So true. Never seen a single person give an actual reason why the game is good and why they loved it, just either insult me or someone else, or desperately keep saying that I'm wrong.
I've not seen positive reviews at all, just lot of people who tell that it sucks everyone who like it suck too, so I guess you've been lucky.
Dunkey did a pretty decent job on his description and review
in what fantasy world do you live in where this is real
My biggest two issues:
For starters, maybe I really misread the last scene in The Last of Us, but I was positive that Ellie knew Joel was lying when she asked him to swear that everything he told her about the Fireflies is true so it always felt so strange to me that she took the confirmation of him lying THAT hard.
Secondly, I feel like Game of Thrones has ruined media for the foreseeable future. I feel like writers have gotten it in their head that killing off a main character or making a story super bleak automatically makes a story better/deeper. The Last of Us 2 tried so hard to be bleak and gritty that they managed to retroactively ruin the first game, as cliche as that sounds. What's even worse, is that almost the entire story could remain the same if they just had Abby take Joel prisoner to have some sort of "Trial". You can then still have Ellie go on that rampage to get him back, while also having Joel alive to reflect on what he's done.
IMHO, the ending sequence of the Last of Us makes a degree of sense to me. The Fireflies aren't exactly the most rational crew of people and Marlene still has a sort of malformed idealism, which combined with feeling she owed Joel, convinced her that she could reason for the greater good with him.
And . . . let's be honest . . . A year before when we meet Joel in the zone, if somebody told Joel 'yes we can make a cure for the cordaceps', he'd probably have helped hold Ellie down.
That's the Joel that Marlene thought she was dealing with, and when she realized it wasn't the same Joel, or rather was and she had underestimated his attachment to Ellie, she fumbled the order of things trying to convince him to fuck off peacefully.
I wish there was a way to save comments on RUclips, couldn't have said it better myself
I think the ending could've worked if it was Ellie, living on the farm with Dina and her baby, credits roll a little bit, but while Ellie is herding sheep, she had a PTSD nightmare about Joel's death. Ellie screaming along with JJ, then Dina comes to calm her and JJ, then finally roll credits.
Just a thought imo...kinda reminds me of the ending from the 1976 movie, Carrie
I feel like if we play joel alittle and than get a scene of ellie watching joel get torture to death by abby crew after getting scene of joel and ellie repairing relationship it would be so much understanding about going on a revenge street and maybe a scene of ellie and abby talking about hypocritical they are
woulda loved that... so much more poignant if yuore playing as him trying to reconnect with his found daughter but doesn't manage to do it before he dies. we could feel how hard he tried without him looking like a sad old dog... then we could be shown ellie mourning what 'could have been' if she had forgiven him sooner, and can't let go of the fact that she shot him down and blames herself, but can't deal with it so it shoots outwards in the form of violence... but instead it tastes like revenge for revenge's sake and that just doesn't flow as well
A sequel getting Ellie (as the main character) out of Jackson and back into third-person murder stealth would always have been contrived. Because nothing short of the Jackson compound burning to the ground would've been a practical reason for her to leave. It's the corner that Naughty Dog painted themselves in by pushing so hard for grounded realism, but still wanting the typical videogame adventure where you kill loads of enemies. Ellie is not Kratos, or Dante, or even Nathan Drake; after experiencing what she did in the first game just the safety of Jackson alone would be something she'd value far too much to give it up for vengeange. Add to that dragging her girlfriend along on what is very likely a suicide mission and Ellie just comes across as utterly warped almost beyond recognition before the game even truly begins.
It really feels like the writers set out to have the theme of this game be hate and revenge, and then just crowbarred Ellie and Tommy into a character state that would facilitate this. The very theme of this game is ill fitting with the more realistic and practical nature of this world and its characters, and the rottenness of this narrative concept drags whatever good storytelling moments this game has down with it.
I completely agree Shinji; Ellie's actions just bewildered me. I know a lot of people say they understand and they'd have done the same, but I can't say I would have done the same myself. I personally felt - like you said - that the writers just wrote themselves right into a corner and had to move heaven and hell to get their new story on the road.
@@MertKayKay As horrifically wrong as a story concept I think it was, the game could've still found a way to make Ellie's turn to vengeange far more believable and gradual. As is there's no slow decent, she's just out for blood that very night. We could've had Ellie try to move on with her life in Jackson, but after a month or so ultimately not being able to let it go. Or have her go out not for vengeance, but to bring back another character who did want to get payback (like Jesse for example), and then through circumstances be pulled into a mindset of vengeance. But anyway, it is what it is. This game has been living rent-free in my brain since its release.
My biggest problem is that time jump from the journey from Jackson to Seattle after being warned of the dangers of it and it being hyped up as a grand journey and then you get a black screen and white text saying the time has jumped 6 months that could of been a massive opportunity to build up the relationship to Dena and build on Ellie's bitterness.
see i knew there had to be an explanation for the extreme ludonarrative dissonance EVERYONE was expressing when reviewing the game, and the bit about Druckman having no pushback from a writing perspective while making this game when he did for the first one makes PERFECT SENSE in retrospect
I hit a major bug when playing the game. The game gave me control over the person that killed Joel and so i had her get killed. It then considered this a game over and had me go back to the last savepoint.
In all seriousness, this was very well done. I have never hated a peice of media more than this game and your points helped articulate why very well.
Lmao!! Thanks Gray! Really glad you enjoyed the review and thanks so much for watching!
This review hits the nail on the head: TLOU2 is a great game, but as a sequel to a character-centric, narrative driven game it flounders in the opening act by deleting its best character, and then it drags itself along for a dozen hours, just so you can see the most tired repetitive "revenge bad" trope rehash ever made.
It's really sad. I think TLOU1 is honestly a great game and resonated with a ton of people. TLOU2 does a complete 180 and bonks you over the head in a way that even Spec Ops The Line didn't. I wonder what led to this
Thanks Nicolash! I'm glad you liked the review and - I mean, I completely agree :D I also wonder what led to it. I've heard whispers of a TLOU3 and I wonder if that will reignite the series (not that it should have been a series, but it is now), or if it'll make things worse
@@MertKayKay For me, I'm just not invested anymore, same as how you mentioned everyone felt when reaching Seattle as Ellie. TLOU2 completely ruined what could've been a good future for TLOU that a Part III doesn't make me feel excited at all. I'll probably see what it is if it comes out, but I'm not holding out hope that it's going to be good.
Troy Baker keeps saying that Drukman said that he knew some people would love it and some would hate it, but he likes both responses because he wanted you to feel something regardless of which.
That doesn't make it good? That sounds like an excuse to make something controversial and then say I did that on purpose.
Doesn't help when people *actually* hated it, to the degree it put Naughty Dog in dire straits, he's to this day ranting on Twitter about the haters.
Guess the "Like it or hate it, I win" mindset doesn't work when his job is on the line and there's *thousands of angry employees with dirt on him who know he'll be the main person responsible for killing the company.*
You can't nag a player about choices in a game without choices.
Great video. Put a lot of my thoughts into words.
I will say though that I personally think there is a difference between how the first game makes joel kill the fireflies vs the second making ellie kill a pregnant lady. Although it is subjective. I think the first game does a good job condemning Joels actions, where as the second game condemns both Ellie's and the player's actions. I don't quite know how to explain it, but when the first game says "Joel did an awful massacre" it's not also extending that to the player despite us controling him. The level design is open. We kill how we want, can avoid some enemies, brute force every last one, stealth kill or go full ham with millitary grade weapons. I guess there's no cannon way Joel killed everyone or most of everyone, only that he messed up some surgeons. For me, that makes a disconnect between what i did on my playthrough and what Joel cannonically did. But with Ellie the game puts you into a contrived, uncontrollable situation thats a glorified cutscene. There's no sandbox, player freedom with how to deal with the death. It's just *spam square and kill her*. And it doesn't leave you a moment to ponder on it like the first game does, when Ellie awakens in the car, it just plays gut wrenching music when you see the baby bump.
I hope you see what I'm saying. Not saying your interpretation was wrong either, just how what I personally took away from the games. :)
Hey Box! Yeah I think what you're saying makes really good sense, definitely made me see the first in a different light (even if your intention was to discuss the second) :') Thanks for that, I appreciate it
That sad emoji over joel's face killed me lmao
Also If preganant women were this helpless we'd have died as hunter gatherers long before civilization started lmao
"You have the finale to finally set things straight, or in Ellie's case, lesbian"
Djessus, highly underrated joke lmao
Made a dude chortle heartily
Controversial opinion: any writer who adds a self-insert to an already existing franchise and expects everyone to like it should be banned from ever writing again.
"disparate meteors without a sun to orbit" is poetry!
Okay I gotta admit to myself that watching critical reviews of this game is one of my favorite things. I'm still watching and listening to discussions about this game that came out three years ago. This game's plot is *swimming* up to its *eyes* with paper thin, transparent contrivances that effectively allow any other ideas to be more sound, nuanced, and far more interesting than what Druckmann cooked up. Serioiusly every time I read, watch and listen to anyone else's ideas about what this game could've done differently, it's always so much better. Druckmann's goal was to create a really dark, twisted commentary on revenge but neglected the notion that the human condition isn't just comprised of emotion alone. Logic and reason is absent in this story from beginning to end.
Probably won't shock you to hear how it was just a rough draft presented as a final product.
@@crazyinsane500 Oh I believe it.
I actually feel like Druckmann ONLY used logic and reason in this, and the characters feel like they're just going through the motions. Even if logically we know Ellie should spare Abby, the fact that she did makes no sense given where she was on her emotional journey. She hadn't even shown an ounce of compassion for Abby the whole game, but suddenly when the game's lesson needs to be delivered, Ellie collects herself emotionally and realizes she must stop. It's all logic and no heart. The first game was so good because, despite all logic pointing to the idea Joel should let Ellie die for a cure, he lets his emotions guide him and saves her. The second game has none of that emotional impact in the story, and it's sad to see.
You actually precised shot the weaknesses in the writing that I couldn't put into word so thank you a lot for that video
Abby telling lev to pull her up made me bust out laughing lmao. Yeah sure let me just haul your big ass up with my teen boy noodle arms lol
The crying kittens on Joel got a giggle and a like out of me.
I'll give this game kudos for letting you play as the main villain. Abby is an almost cartoonish depiction of a narcissist. Add in that her "positive" actions never outweigh how much of a scumbag she is (even to her "friends") and...
Well, you can give Darth Vader a best friend but he's still Darth Vader.
Abby is not a narcissist.
@@krasmasov6852 She does have narcissistic qualities, but a true narcissist would never help someone else unless it was directly going to benefit them, and Abby does not do that with Lev.
the best Revenge plot I've ever heard is a subtle completely missable character moment in Red Dead 2 where Arthur talks to Rains Fall about his son who was killed by a gang of randos looking for money.
Oo I plan to play that one day! I heard it's an amazing game so I'll look out for this :D
What I didn't even notice in the first game but the Critical Drinker pointed out perfectly: Ellie at the end of the first game knows she's being lied to and seems to be okay with it. That is perfect as an ending because it shows how she is okay with Joel bullshitting her because he's more important to her than that. It's ambiguous but gives you enough to go on. The second game turns it around as a complete 180, telling you Joel was a heartless, selfish bastard and nothing more (even if, like me, you only shot one doc in the knee that you had to and didn't bovver the rest) and that Ellie now hates him for it. Completely ruining the end.
As for Abby, she lost me the moment she whined about not being allowed to torture Joel more because they have to go. Or rather the fact that we were then expected to sympathise with her. Excuse me, but after I've watched a complete rando that Joel saved the bloody life of slowly, torturously beat him to death and then whine that she isn't allowed to enjoy causing Joel more pain...I don't care if later I learn that Joel tortured her entire family to death right in front of her eyes, I'm completely disconnected from this complete psycho. I only backed Ellie because of familiarity but honestly, I was of the same opinion as you, just wondering why we are doing this, or at least why this aggressively. But Abby as a character is a complete swing and miss, not just because she kills Joel. That alone would have been manageable, but the way she did it and then had a hissyfit that she couldn't draw it out more, that type of behaviour can work for a villain, but never in the hamfisted way they tried it here.
Also, as a final question, out of genuine curiosity, what was 'career suicide'? Bayonetta came out before TLOU. And so did Beyond Good and Evil. And a lot of Metroid games. Just don't understand the stuff about 'putting a woman on the boxart.'
As usual, the Critical Drinker is wrong. There is nothing to suggest that Ellie knows she's being lied to. She suspects, but she never knows. Also, the second game does NOT portray Joel as heartless and selfish. Ellie does hate Joel for what he did, yes, but we learn that she comes to regret how she treated him and even started to try and forgive him. Ellie hating Joel was portrayed as unjustified, and her guilt over it is literally her main motivation.
Why couldn't you sympathize with her? From her perspective, Joel is the monster who took her family and damned the entire world. Plus, she had already sacrificed so much for her revenge that she was still trying to feel some kind of satisfaction from it. She never does though. Not saying what she did was right, of course, especially since she's trying to deal with her guilt over it for the rest of the game. I understand her thinking, though, even if it was wrong. But did you not understand her or Ellie's motivations? Why would you ever wonder why? It's guilt in both cases.
@@krasmasov6852 First, I wouldn't say as usual. I've seen the look Ellie gives Joel and I am of the opinion that when she asks him to tell her the honest truth at the end of TLOU1, it reflects on both of them. It showcases Joel lying to her but also Ellie accepting that lie she might suspect or know. As I already said, it's vague, but there are hints she is suspicious and yet she goes with him. As for her hate of him being shown as unjustified, then why make her hate him in the first place? Her hating him has no bearing on the story since it adds literally nothing to it other than her being sad he is gone and that could have been far stronger if their relationship was a happy one. Seriously, with how it is done in the game, they could have had an argument about Ellie's table manners the night before and that would have the same weight. She feels bad for how she treated him and can't take those words back anymore since he's dead and she wants to avenge him because she loves him deep down. The idea that she suddenly resents him for a lie she accepted years ago adds nothing because it is only showcased in one scene at the start, then once in a flashback and it's done. In order to portray the ramifications of her actually hating him for it, he should have been...you know, not dead so the two of them could have encounters that give this hatred and resentment shape. Simply showing us she hates him once and then basing the whole story about her loving him enough to go to the ends of the Earth to avenge him makes her resentment meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Also, the game clearly indicates Joel murdered ALL the scientists and quite brutally. What's funny is that at the end of the first game, you only have to shoot one and I (and many others) have chosen to shoot the guy in the leg before saving Ellie. So that's an immediate point of the sequel misrepresenting Joel's actions in a pretty major way, but he never even has a chance to say his own piece. It's just accepted by everyone around him that he was a selfish dickhead and that's where it ends. So again, stop trying to shine a turd until it sparkles, you're not going to convince me that this plot is smarter than it actually is.
Speaking of not smart decisions. I don't know about you, but when a person is bitching about how and I emphasize because you seemingly do not comprehend it, SHE WANTS TO MAKE THE SLOWLY DYING, WOUNDED, BEATEN, BATTERED, SHOT, HELPLESS OLD MAN'S SUFFERING THAT MUCH LONGER BECAUSE SHE HAS SOME KIND OF PERVERSE REVENGE BONER FROM IT, that shows you that she is not a good person. And don't tell me she feels any kind of guilt from it for the rest of the game. That's bullcrap. She might feel guilt over the sacrifices she made, but never once does she mention ever feeling sorry for killing Joel or the way she did it. Or that she flat out threw a temper tantrum that she couldn't beat him sadistically for just a few minutes longer.
Additionally, first impressions are important. If you see a man murder a child then set fire to its mother and finally piss on the burning corpse to put it out, you're not wondering "Oh gosh, I wonder what kind of sad, tragic backstory led this HERO to do these things." You condemn him as a crazy, sadistic lunatic and maybe wonder what kind of crazy bad day he had to get to the point he is now. Learning later that his sister got murdered by the woman and she fed her flesh to her child does not exonorate him from having shown openly what a horrifying psychopath he is in the beginning. It just makes you see the sweat glands of the writers working overtime as they try to make you sympathise with the clear psychopathic murderer.
I advise you remove your rose tinted glasses because these details you claim to have been put into the game are plain and simply not there, so do not try to mislead. Thank you. I wish you a very pleasant day otherwise!
@@darklord884 I would. The Critical Drinker's entire career is just being professionally wrong. He's one of those critics where you can generally take the opposite position and feel pretty confident. On the rare occassions he actually does come to the correct conclusion, it's pure luck because when he shows his work, it makes zero sense whatsoever. She does ask him to tell the honest truth because she's suspicious. He lies. She accepts what he said as truth not knowing it's the lie, but the suspicion lingers. She never knows he's lying. She hates him in the first place so she grows as a character. See stories are about character development. Don't know if you knew that. No bearing on the story? WHAAAAT?! It's the core foundation of the story. It's the guilt Ellie feels about how she treated Joel that's driving her. All the flashback sequences in Ellie's story offer exactly what you claim to want. You see the resentment take shape, manifest, and then ultimately get resolved. Literally the opposite of what you said is what's actually true. Her resentment is given exponentially MORE meaning because of Joel's death because it creates enough guilt in Ellie to, you know, have the story happen.
No, it absolutely does not. It only ever showed a singular dead scientist. In fact, the two other doctors that were in the room are absent entirely when Abby finds her dad. The other corpses shown in the hallway were Firefly soldiers. Only Abby's dad is killed, and the canon way to do so is to stab him with the scalpel. The sequel did not misrepresent Joel's actions at all. A lot of players killed every doctor in the room. The sequel only portrays Abby's dad as being killed. The sequel went out of its way to make Joel seem sympathetic. Also, he does have a chance to say his piece. That's literally the last scene of the game. "I'd do it all over again." Additionally, Tommy does accept what Joel did even saying, "Can't say I'd have done different." Again, literally the opposite of what you said is what's actually true.
There are no good and bad people, just good and bad actions. What Abby did to Joel was bad obviously. Doesn't mean she's some mustache twirling evil villain. She absolutely feels guilt from it the rest of the game. That's literally the foundation for her entire story. I'm sorry she didn't say it out loud verbatim, but this isn't a kids story that will hold your hand. It expects basic levels of media literacy from you. Tall order when it comes to gamers, I know. I also don't think you know what a temper tantrum is. And you accuse me and the game of misrepresenting things? LMAO
I wasn't wondering that about Abby either, though your comparison is already absurd. Abby didn't murder an innocent person like a child. You're misrepresenting it again to make her look as evil as possible because you know that your argument doesn't hold up if you're honest. You are desperately looking for any excuse you can to hate Abby guilt-free, and you hate this game because it doesn't let you.
Oh they are, and you misrepresenting pretty much everything only reinforces that I'm right. I hope you stub your toe, step on a lego, and lose power, you doofus.
@@krasmasov6852 You basically ignored all of my actual points and just repeated your false claims, crying "Muh misrepresentation!" That tells me not to expect any intelligent discourse from you. As for the insult, yes, some gamers do prefer simpler stories where the morals are plain to see. I don't see why that invites condescending mockery from you, but if you want to be an asshole, that's your choice I guess.
But what I prefer is an actually well written story where you know the morals are there and they don't require some desperate fan like you to fall on their sword, claiming to the very end that they are there.
This is the end though, as I see you cannot be trusted to discuss opposing views without resorting to insults and blatant repetition, so here I bid you farewell. And in all honesty, I wish you the best. You love TLOU 2 madly and that's perfectly okay. I honestly wish you have the time of your life with it. I'll just be over here playing actually well written games but don't let that bother you. Have yourself a fun time!
@@krasmasov6852 Im sure you can give me an example where Critical Drinker was wrong.
I know I'm in the drastic minority here, but as someone who wasn't particularly fond of the first TLOU, I feel pretty safe in saying that TLOU2 is significantly worse in terms of the story it tells.
I'm not a butthurt fan, I'm not looking at the first game with rose tinted glasses and wish we'd gotten the same, I was hoping for *better* from 2 after the ending of 1 severely let me down, and all I got was hours upon hours of pointless suffering instead.
I think you hit the nail on the head that the moments of brightness and beauty were important in 1; it give so much more weight to BOTH the fact that this could be a world worth dying for for the possibility of a vaccine, but also the fact that the world carries on regardless, and that you can go on with life even without a manufactured cure.
The world felt more alive and like something to actively consider in the first game, while the second treated it like simply set dressing, like it was nothing but stuff to look at between people suffering through their misery porn storylines.
What I wish writers would get over already is this insistence that 'suffering is art' and that art needs to be taken seriously. Nothing about this story feels like it should be taken seriously because all it does over and over and over again is ask you 'these people are sad don't you feel sad too? How could you do this to make these people so sad?' without a shred of humanity to make any of it worth a shit.
Hey Cobalt! I absolutely resonate with your final section on the 'suffering is art' point.
I don't know what it is, whether it was Outlast's 1st person gratuitous violence, or Spec Ops' message, or purposeful misreadings of Silent Hill, but games are absolutely desperate to put their characters through the ringer in every possible way and then just show us like "wow, how profound".
Done right it's good but it's so oversaturated 'gritty' hyper realism. I completely agree with you. Thanks for the comment!
@@MertKayKay Hi! Thanks for the excellent video! I subscribed after watching this and the Rachel Foster video.
This might be a shot in the dark, but I'd be willing to guess it's because a lot of professional writers will attest to the character writing technique of 'putting your characters through hell' without actually getting to the part where they explain how and why.
The only reason to make a character go through trauma, physical or emotional, is to not only put them in a position for us to understand them better, but to make them meaningfully grow as well. So many of these writers (seemingly especially male writers writing female characters.... but that may be a topic for another day) will put their characters through some of the worst shit I've ever seen in media, let alone *interactive* media, and either flub the execution and they don't come out of it like the writer wanted them too, or neglect to develop them in any way.
At some point it became okay to treat borderline torture porn as art and the sycophants who fawn over this stuff will tear you apart for daring to rightfully criticize it.
I instantly appreciate Shadow Man reference in the videos title.
I'm really surprised at how few subscribers you have :o Your content is very well made, up there with a lot of other deep-divers.
Aww thanks Jadee! That's really sweet of you to say! I've got more stuff to be made so hopefully eventually more people will find it >:) But also, the fewer people who find my stuff, the more opinions I can have without being disagreed with (hehe)
Finding this video a few months later and I'm honestly flabbergasted at how much of this game I just blocked out. When it released I tried my best to love it because I held the first game so near and dear to my heart. The characters felt so real. Joel being sad and distant in the first game made sense, as did how his character changed. And I would have loved to see some of his gruffness come through in this second one. He's still technically a first time father, confused as to why his daughter figure is pushing him away, so seeing that fleshed out and communicated would have been preferable in the fatwalk sections, maybe I would have felt Ellie's actions more justified.
I think the most believable character (aside from Lev) was Abby, truly. That is, if you take out the whole 10 year revenge plot. I felt for her so much and felt much more at home playing her section. Seeing her beaten down and emaciated and just wanting out for her and Lev broke my heart, whereas I felt nothing for Ellie in similar moments, because she wasn't the Ellie I knew or would have wanted to see grown up. You can be hateful and have emotions and regret and remorse. I felt kind of like a disjointed puppeteer during her sections, just going through them to advance a play I'd seen a thousand times: Revenge and the ensuing fall.
All that said, I really did appreciate this video. Love going back to games I couldn't see the faults in when I first played and seeing it through more critical eyes. Great job!
Space Birb! Thanks very much for such a thoughtful and considered comment! I had a lot of the same feelings as you when I played and I feel reassured to know we had that in common (disappointment twinnies). I also share your appreciation for Abby and heartbreak over Ellie's huge character retcon.
I really appreciate you watching the video, I'm super glad you enjoyed it, and thanks so much for the comment
I loved the "press square to strangle a black woman with a pipe" prompt. Very progressive. or was it stab? or beat? idk. Honestly i didn't fucking play it, just watched videos.
than druckmann succeeded.... open your eyes.... he wants us to LOVE abby and view Ellie as the villian.... because it makes him feel so GODLY give me a break
I think this really nailed the reasons I didn't like the storytelling in this one. It has two main points it wants to make - "revenge is an ultimately unfulfilling vicious cycle" and "people who are your enemies are human beings too." The problem is that if you're an even slightly normal person, you already know both these things... but still have to sit through hours and hours of the game hammering both points over and over and OVER in the most clunky, hamfisted, basic ways possible because it considers them priceless pearls of knowledge that you would never have considered otherwise.
The "don't you feel bad now???" story beats don't really work if there's no choice on the part of the player other than "do the bad thing" or "stop playing your fifty-buck game." Games like Vampyr at least make a token effort towards making you have to actually consider the morality of your actions by having the "bad" choices be quicker and easier than the "good" choices. Anyways, another certified banger MKK; thanks as always!
Couldn't agree more you beautiful Phoenix, thank you for watching my videos
The British Humour makes these videos so much better, Keep up the good work!
Thanks Tom! :D
@@MertKayKay the video is a few months old, wasn't expecting a reply!
There are still a number of loose ends that this francise needs to tie up if it wants to feel complete. We have no clue how and why The Spoorebie (spoores +zombies) virus came into existence. We also have no clue who as to who Ellie's biological parents are (TLOU1 gave us some breadcrumps in regards to her mum, but we have no clue who her dad is) and finaly we have no clue how and why Ellie is immune to The Spoorebie virus.
My current theory is that - before the outbreak - the US government were doing experiments on the cortiseps fungie in order to turn it into a bio-weapon, however it got out of controle which explains why the hole world ended up getting screwed. Then about 5 years later a male FEDRA General and a female FEDRA scientist infected several human embryos with the virus, with Ellie being the only 1 to have the immune system to withstand the infection. The scientist wanted to use Ellie to create a cure and the general wanted to turn her into a bio-weapon. The scientist - not wanting that to happen - snatched (let's go with that word for now ontill I find a better 1) Ellie from the lab and gave her to Marline - who she knew was the leader of The Fireflies - in order to make sure that FEDRA would never be able to get their hands on Ellie. The scientist was - shortly after giving Ellie to Marline - caught and, because she refused to tell them where she hid Ellie, was tried for treason and was given capital punishment. Ellie was to young to remember all of this and, because age results in your looks changing over time, was able to hide in plain sight without knowing that she is special (ontill she and Rilley got bitten). As for why she didn't have any wounds related to the virus before she got bitten, well that can be explained with her being injected and that would healing very fast, because it's so small.
Honestly when I was explaining to one of my irls why I didnt like this game, they kept on hitting me with so much praise or good stuff that I couldnt get my words out fast enough thanks to the hype this game brought. I think they were very much on the "tlou 2 finally came out hype".
Luke Stephens said something similar about Death Stranding and how "Kojima Syndrome" became a phenomenon. Basically meaning that people liked it because Hideo Kojima made it. I think the same thing happened here to an extent. Suppose you could almost call it "Druckmann syndrome."
When you said you emotionally checked out in so many moments I could not help but say "yep, same." Because I never had the words to truly express how I felt. It was a game that left me speechless and exhausted and not in a good way.
The third act was where I truly checked out, I spent most of that section with the accessibility modes turned on just to screw around and have fun in what was an exhausting game. I said "fuck this" and just screwed around because I could not give any more damns about the story even if I wanted to.
But that doesnt mean that there arent things I do not like about it as you even perfectly show in some of abby's sections and you show perfectly where there is good in the game.
It's so nice to see a review that doesnt praise the game to the point of it being biased nor does it hate on it for being so disappointing and/or bad to the point of it being a bleak review.
I know this comment was a bit of a ramble but to sum it up, this is one of the best reviews i have seen on this game because you get your points across bluntly but brilliantly and you've taken into account so many povs. You've respected those perspectives and added them to your own discussion. It's brilliant.
Aww, hey Marlowe! Thank you very much for the comment! I enjoyed a lot of this game gameplay-wise and I wanted to give it due diligence but, like you said, it's exhausting and not in a particularly enjoyable way. Glad you enjoyed the video
@@MertKayKay Ahh I see! I'm glad to see that you could find something real enjoyable in this game still, despite what we didnt like about it.
It was an exhausting experience but still the gameplay was still solid.
I'm looking forward to seeing more reviews!
@@m.marlowe56 Thank you Marlowe! :D
@@MertKayKay No problem :D, hope you enjoy making your next review.
The problem there is a bit more psychological but certainly a human issue.
Neil Druckmann was not a household name in the gaming sphere like Hideo Kojima. Naughty Dog was praised for having Amy Hennig on staff, and it was only after she was ousted from Naughty Dog and with TLOU2 that Neil Druckmann's name started getting thrown around more: Never favorably by anyone worth respecting.
He's an untalented POS who's only solo work, A Second Chance at Sarah, isn't even worth pirating (Yeah, try and find a copy of that. It'll take more searching than something good like IDW's Flintstones) so, naturally, nobody cared about him. Compare against Amy Hennig who is a talented head writer for many games and, as a woman in gaming, helps to fight back stereotypes of misogyny (Before unfortunately being the victim of misogynists like Neil Druckmann who got her kicked out)
So when the hype of this ended up being unjustified people had two main courses: Accept they were wrong or go with the flow of the game and pretend they were right. When the game's telling them they're smart and accomplished because they're being told answers to questions and not encouraged to look into them, like "Joel doomed humanity," many people just go with the option that flatters their ego. It's hard to admit you were tricked by someone as small-minded as Neil Druckmann.
"Naughty flickshot" made me irrationally happy
How come you didn’t talk about the one flashback with Ellie and Joel on the porch? I know you’ve had a lot of criticisms about the melodrama, which, fair; but I did find that particular scene touching. It made the drag of the entire game make sense; it isn’t hate that’s fueling this revenge quest. It’s genuine regret she spent the few remaining years she had mad at him. Totally get that probably doesn’t work for everyone. Thanks for this video.
Oh I actually really loved that scene, I must have gotten caught up in all the other stuff and forgotten to talk about it :'D
tlou2 has this strange, dissonant combination of a story about how murder is bad + gameplay that makes murder very fun and rewarding. for most of these characters, the emotional reaction that i have to their dramatic moments is frankly less intense than the dopamine rush that i would get by just straight up killing them in game lol
it sort of reminds me of hotline miami, where you're thrust into jacket's psychopathic enjoyment of violence by making the violent gameplay super enjoyable to you as a player and a real person, but i doubt that's the intention. it's probably just that it's a AAA game and it couldn't get away with a distressing, realistic gameplay loop
yeah, its weir. The mechanics and story are not part of each other.
Definitely about trauma more than "murder is bad", which makes me kinda disappointed and sad whenever people miss this. It's tells about perspectives, regardless if we like those perspectives or not.
@@chronorust3359 the theme about how trauma changes you is just a worse version of a theme that was already in tlou1, and the theme of different perspectives doesn't end up giving them any meaning beyond "it's wrong to murder people because they have their own perspective on life that you may not have taken into account." it is very much a game about how murder is bad, even if it uses other corollary and largely inconsequential themes to present that message
Another great and fair review again Mert!, 8/10 fingers 🏌🏻♀️
Thanks Jon 😂
I just Couldn't bring myself to like or care about Abby Because despite her anger at Joe for killing her father being justified the intensity Of it is way beyond what could be considered reasonable
Wich ironically is Kind of Exacerbated by the fact that the 2nd game retcons it So you did kill all the doctors So you know that the doctors Had been taken out by At most 2 gunshot wounds each Which would tell anybody Observing the scene that it was Simply to kill them and get them out of the way But Abby acts like Joel brutally murdered her father and mutilated his corpse In particular
If you don't believe she would want answers as to why he did it fine But why would she drag it out instead of just putting a bullet in his head? She acts like he did it to harm her or her father in particular Even telling him to guess who she is
Which to him would just be the daughter of one of the of 1 of the random masked doctors He killed to save his daughter 5 years ago It's psychotic
Even if you argue she did it that way because he potentially doomed humanity Which if you watch the scene clearly isn't the case I don't believe Any reasonable people Would not question the way she handles it they're not all violent lunatics But none of them question her or even wonders how they know they even got the right guy
I know the reason for the brutality is so Ellie knows that somebody did it to hurt Joel in particular But it kind of taints how I see Abby
I was always going to be apprehensive about her as a character because her purpose is to kill Joel and I like Joel as a character But the way his whole death scene was handled Just makes her seem unhinged to me And it's not even the only time that happens in the game She doesn't even notice That she did the exact same thing to Ellie that she did to herself but That's a parallel the game wants us to draw when I argue what she did was much worse cause she slowly beat Joel to death in front of Ellie While Abby just found her dad As one of several bodies with fatal gunshot wounds
And it's frustrating cause she clearly doesn't understand the effects of her actions And I don't understand Why This sadism Is a part of her character Because it's never addressed in any way that matters
Ok, I laughed out loud when you hypothesized Lev being written by David Cage. You earned my like
Thank you Lulu, Mr Cage loves a short-haired person having a loud piss scene
To anyone who finds this: if you knew what caused the changes of The Last Of Us 2, would you fight against what caused that change, even if it meant fighting against a entire political party, a entire country, or even a economic superpower like China?
My favorite part is that people that love tlou2 think that the hate is from people that didn’t like the stuff that happened in the beginning or xbox people that brigaded metacritic…no, the story was pretty bad.
I didn't mind they killed Joel so early and so unceremonously. I think his death was the only really big reason for a sequel, or at least... giving Ellie a reason to start her journey. But that message disolves very quickly on how long and how bad paced the game is. The third act, while fun, felt like stretching an already chewed gum.
Can't agree more Matias; Joel was definitely going to die as soon as this was announced, but the story afterwards just fizzles hard. Thank you for watching
@@MertKayKay amazing video girl. I subscribe!
Fair enough. Still wouldve liked the option to kill abby. I was "they fucking killed joel, who cares?"
The abbey sections were a fucking CHORE for me. I still hated her by the end.
Dont kill a beloved character then expect praise neil. Especially if you cant even fucking avenge them.
still hating Abby after spending 12 hours with her and Lev and watching her find new purpose in life just means you lost the game of empathy the game was playing with you
also Neil Druckmann never expected any praise from anyone, that’s just something you’re projecting on him
@@mehdigeek maybe i just wanted to avenge joel. Dont hate me for hating abby king. And neils tantrum on twitter was wacked.
@@noahsains6227 I don't hate you, I just think it's a bummer that it didn't work for you
@@mehdigeek coming back to this after playing prey.
The game of empathy is done so much better in that game its not even funny. Also the last of us 2 is covered in like 8 million oh so this happened bs its insane
The fact that they let a very visibly pregnant Mel leave the fucking base confused the hell out of me. Neither Owen or Mel at least mentioning that she’s pregnant pissed me off.
The majority of the game has this issue if you are able to think about in the context of the world it exists in rather than the current politics we live in. Let’s whole character arc makes no sense. Having female soldiers makes no sense. Having Jesse ask Dina if she would was going to keep her baby makes no sense. It wouldn’t even come up as an option.
This was such an amazing video m8 keep up the great work 💙
Aww thanks so much 💖
I just found your channel and you're so underrated!!! Love your videos :D
Thank you Pimple!!
I got my non video game roomate into video games with the last of us and portal 2 on my ps3. We played the last of us by swapping every few minutes/ sections, it was actually a lot of fun to see how invested he was in the story.
He was hyped and bought himself a ps4 slim in order to play the last of us 2 on launch. He couldn't even bother finishing it, and stopped around the open world level on day 1. Flash forward a few months and of course we enter a pandemic. We both decide since we're in lockdown we might as well try this game together since there wasn't anything for us to do in the meantime.
It starts off alright. Joel dying was bold and I personally thought it was quite fitting. I figured she probably was related to one of the many, many people Joel and I killed or fucked over in part 1. "people like Joel don't die in their sleep". As the game went on we haaaated it. It was a. Lot of paint by numbers drama and Ellie was unlikable as fuck.
Although we hated playing as Abby at first, as the game went on we started to warm up to her. She was way more interesting and nuanced than Ellie (who is just a Shakespeare character). Several times I was wondering "why?" why is Ellie trying to get revenge so hard? After all this shit, even after her and Dina are spared and get home, why is Ellie still craving more?
However in that nightmare where she just closes her eyes and see's Joel the night before his death and then again on the floor dead, I got it. I finally understood her motivations, and I got why she had to leave Dina behind and go alone. She can't sleep, she can't even blink. Every time she closes her eyes she discovers him again and see's her regrets.
Overall my roomate and I understood what the story was trying to do. But we Both agreed it dropped the ball hard. We also decided it would be too bold and unrealistic for all but fans to be excited for a more narrative focused first half.
We both came up to similar conclusions as you. We should have started as Abby and expanded on her chapters for at least 2 hours more and slow down before we swap to Ellie, and once again. Slow down, drop the flashbacks in the middle of the game and have them near the front. Understand Ellies memories, dissect her complicated relationship with Joel first. The issue? No real combat for probably the first 4-6 hours of the game. However, we believed that by catching us up to understand Abby as a hero worth rooting for, and understanding Ellies regrets and issues with Joel. These changes would have made Joel's death more impactful and nuanced.
Maybe even a chapter with Joel and his brother scouting the area, talking about how Joel doesn't know what to do/ how to handle his situation with Ellie. Tommy saying its hard and how he and his wife also tried for kids with no avail so he really can't help Joel on this. Have us be in Joel's shoes and hear/ see him reflect on him wanting to act as a father to Ellie, but knowing he isn't/ he can't. Especially now that he betrayed her trust. Maybe even confess that he doomed them all and Ellie now knows that. Add some nuance to Tommy and Joel too. Just slow down and show don't tell.
Overall I think Joel and Ellies "retcon" could have worked if they just set it up better, Make us care. Show don't tell us about how revenge and hate make us into monsters and leave us with nothing.
Thanks so much for watching Tree! Like you said "we knew what it was trying to do, but it dropped the ball hard"
I think the biggest problem I have with discussing this game is that people on the other side of things often say "you obviously just don't get it" or "of course it would happen like this!" (I mean, just skim the rest of the comments, plus a few I had to hide because they were horrible) - I think people often miss out on the fact that if a game doesn't grab you, it doesn't grab you. And since it dropped the ball hard, it ended up making something only half the playerbase ended up liking
The first game does grab you - almost everyone I've ever met loved the game, regardless of how it went. Some people didn't like it. But with 2, it split the playerbase hard and not in a way that was effective or productive. Just people on both sides that can't empathise with the other. Definitely a weird phenomenon
The last of us is getting a remake. This is their second chance to make a new time line where and a new tlou2
remember the impact from characters like Bill, Tess, Henry, Sam,... ?
the sequel cant barely reach the sufface of thay with its new characters
I'm glad I'm not alone in hating the crap out of this game. I was pissed when it earned game of the year, just felt like either they paid to have the award or it was given just because "they had to get it" and not because they deserve it.
The worst part? Everyone that hated this game still bought it to see "how bad it is" while Sony and Naughty Dog laugh their way into the bank with one of their biggest successes ever.
I think this game ended up being an annoying cog in a larger culture war - so the people who hated it REALLY hated it, and the people who loved it REALLY loved it, but both sides seemed to be in it for entirely the wrong reason. Thanks for watching Red!
This is seriously one of the best channels on RUclips, so glad I found this one....funny and so insightful
Thanks so much Joey! Really happy you like my videos!