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Originally Posted by Cole436
I feel it was communicated that Ellie and Tommy being spared wasn't Abby, but Owen. It was him trying to pull Abby back from going further and further down a path that he had tried for years to help her off of. It may have not been the right decision, but I thought it was clear that it was Owen attempting to save the last pieces of her soul. If he allowed Tommy and Ellie to be killed, they would have been just as bad as Joel.
I've never heard of that interpretation of why Ellie spared Abby, but I'm not sure I agree with it. A lot of people seem to believe that Ellie sparing Abby is her forgiving her, but I've always felt it's about Ellie forgiving Ellie. Abby is the vehicle that took away Ellie’s ability to repair her broken relationship with Joel, after she finally choose to try and forgive him.
The pain, the guilt, and the grief of wasting all that time and then having that moment of redemption snatched away is Ellie’s driving force. She hates Abby because deep down she hates herself for wasting the only time she had left with the person she loved the most. At the last second where she nearly lost the last piece of herself, Joel saves her again.
I think it was a really challenging look at the idea that our inability to forgive others often comes from our inability to forgive ourselves. It's a choice we have to keep making, every single second.
Ellie letting Abby go wasn’t Ellie forgiving Abby, it was Ellie trying to begin to finally forgive herself.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cole436
I think from an audiences perspective, you're not wrong. But from a character perspective, this maybe isn't right.
While us as the audience can agree or disagree with Joel or feel justified with what he did, Abby does not have to.
1) She has no idea the journey or relationship that Joel and Ellie had
2) From her perspective, her dad was a hero. Dr. Jerry Anderson was great man who was going to save the world by doing the right thing. Suddenly (from her perspective) this monster murders her father in cold blood, kills dozens of her friends, destroyed The Fireflies (an altruistic group whose sole purpose was to help people and save the world), and stole the only cure for the pandemic. All with no explanation.
If I put myself in Abby's shoes, I'd say her actions and journey were almost righteous. This man took everything from her. Her future. Her purpose. Her family. While Joel's death was awful, nothing about it was unjustified. I don't think she was a hypocrite at all. She was a broken young woman who was doing the best she could.
The irony in her journey, (which she will never know) is that the consequence of her quest to kill Joel is that by the end of the game she eventually becomes him.
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I appreciate your comments; definitely reinvigorating my interest in picking the game back up.
Your remark, "
She hates Abby because deep down she hates herself for wasting the only time she had left with the person she loved the most," is something I also thought. Joel died with Ellie left desperately regretting not conclusively patching things up with him.
I can see how yes, in retrospect, it was more Owen walking Abby back from killing Ellie and Tommy than Abby making the decision herself. When Abby ambushes Ellie et al at the theatre, Abby herself says "
We let you both live... and you wasted it!"
I also know what you mean about the audience's POV vs. the character's, and how that would impact the character's motivations, and that's... pretty much entirely what I meant, just maybe not as clearly as I could have been. It's not that I don't see how Abby would have no background on why Joel did what he did, it's that
I know why he did it, and
I as audience member thus don't sympathize with her.