Last of Us - Game discussion with spoilers

[soreshins]

[QUOTE=timun;8660848] Of course they're not going to be okay with it; if Abby wasn't 'okay' with Joel killing her father, why would she expect Tommy and Ellie to just let it go?

To me this was the whole point of the storyline, violence begets violence and seeking revenge just perpetuates the suffering with everyone ending up reduced to animals. Abby initially wanted to draw the line at killing Joel as she had fulfilled her own act of revenge - so she “spared” Ellie - but that just opened the door for Ellie to go after her and so the cycle continued.

I quite liked Abby by end of the game

[Minnie]

Originally Posted by Buff

I suck at it. I'm stuck trying to kill the bloater in Chapter 5... I'm on easy level. I used to be good at gaming now I'm just too old to figure out these new fangled darned gadgets.

Explosive arrows & molotovs

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I do feel like I owe the second game another shot given how many people enjoyed it while I found it absolutely miserable.

My problem is that there are so many other games I could play, or replay... I'm doing a quick run of Planescape Torment right now for the first time in about 5-6 years and it remains fantastic, after that I have five other games on my steam deck I would get to if I had free time to do it, so it's hard to convince myself to replay something that wasn't that great.

[OutOfTheCube]

I just found the second game to be too disturbingly and realistically violent, I wouldn't feel right after playing it, which was usually at night when the kids were sleeping, and I would have trouble getting to sleep. I figured no game was worth having actual bad psychological effects from so I dropped it.

I really lost my taste for violent games since then, especially gun violence.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by Buff

I suck at it. I'm stuck trying to kill the bloater in Chapter 5... I'm on easy level. I used to be good at gaming now I'm just too old to figure out these new fangled darned gadgets.

If it's the hotel basement, just run. You don't have to kill it to clear the section. That area is a nightmare.

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

TLOU2's gameplay is fine, the story and themes of the cost of revenge are fine, and anyone complaining about Ellie's sexual orientation are simply losers. The problem I had with the game is that it's absolutely joyless. I realize TLOU is a really dark universe, but at least the first game broke up the depression with some light moments. Playing as the hardass Joel with a young and naive Ellie who's seeing the world for the first time was a great balance. But in the second game Ellie is stripped of any happiness she had and is more hate filled than Joel ever was and there's nothing to balance that out. In the first game the really dark moments (Sam & Henry, cannibal camp) hit hard because of that balance, but in the 2nd game it's just execution after execution and they lose any emotional weight

I've played the first game twice through and will make it 3 whenever the remake goes on a good sale, but one time through TLOU2 is more than enough

When you have the time, you should play the second game again. I revisited it around a year and a half after beating it, and I was surprised how much more I enjoyed the story the second time through.

Originally Posted by timun

Abby "sparing" Ellie and Tommy was no big favour, and made her out to be a complete idiot to me. She goes on this vendetta trip to Jackson to assassinate Joel because he killed her father... and she expects that Joel's brother and 'daughter' would be thankful that she deigned to spare their lives after she brutally murdered Joel? Of course they're not going to be okay with it; if Abby wasn't 'okay' with Joel killing her father, why would she expect Tommy and Ellie to just let it go?



I felt like it was as much Ellie relenting only after the satisfaction of knowing she was capable of beating Abby. Of course we know this was an entirely pyrrhic victory that cost her physical scars she'll never recover from, and she ruined the relationship with Dina. She has nothing left to live for.

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 that last second, when she had Abby underwater and was at risk of losing the final piece of her soul, Joel saves her one last time. She knows he wouldn't have wanted this for her, and killing Abby would change nothing.

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.

[timun]

Originally Posted by soreshins

To me this was the whole point of the storyline, violence begets violence and seeking revenge just perpetuates the suffering with everyone ending up reduced to animals. Abby initially wanted to draw the line at killing Joel as she had fulfilled her own act of revenge - so she “spared” Ellie - but that just opened the door for Ellie to go after her and so the cycle continued.

I quite liked Abby by end of the game

Oh, of course. Like I wrote before, someone else had described the plot as "what two women would do for hate (or vengeance)". They brought it upon each other.

Abby though I just never really sympathized with. Yes, she suffered a devastating loss, and yes it was Joel who did it, but Joel wasn't without an underlying reason for doing what he did and did it out of a perceived necessity. Abby did what she did out of spite and hatred, and was sadistic and cruel. She was naïve for thinking she was doing Ellie and Tommy favours by sparing their lives, and a selfish hypocrite throughout the story.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by timun

Oh, of course. Like I wrote before, someone else had described the plot as "what two women would do for hate (or vengeance)". They brought it upon each other.

Abby though I just never really sympathized with. Yes, she suffered a devastating loss, and yes it was Joel who did it, but Joel wasn't without an underlying reason for doing what he did and did it out of a perceived necessity. Abby did what she did out of spite and hatred, and was sadistic and cruel. She was naïve for thinking she was doing Ellie and Tommy favours by sparing their lives, and a selfish hypocrite throughout the story.

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 by the end of the game, the consequence of her quest to kill Joel eventually leads her to becoming him.

[soreshins]

@timun - I kind of saw it differently. Abby just saw Joel as someone who had killed her father, who was trying to find a cure for everyone’s benefit, for no good reason - (even though Joel may have had his own somewhat selfish reason). I didn’t think Abby was particularly spiteful or sadistic - if anything I’d say it was Ellie that was sadistic as she deliberately targeted Abby’s friends, also led to the death of a pregnant woman, and was prepared to walk out on her family to pursue a last chance at vengeance.

I can see both sides of it though - which I guess is the sign of a well designed plot!

[devo22]

Originally Posted by Cole436

1) She has no idea the journey or relationship that Joel and Ellie had

this is a point that's often overlooked. I've read the "how could she take away Ellie's father figure after losing her own dad?" argument, but she has absolutely no idea about them and doesn't know what Joel's motives were either. There's a moment in the theatre when Ellie goes "there's no cure because of me" and Abby's face just says "the #### are you talking about?!"

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by devo22

this is a point that's often overlooked. I've read the "how could she take away Ellie's father figure after losing her own dad?" argument, but she has absolutely no idea about them and doesn't know what Joel's motives were either. There's a moment in the theatre when Ellie goes "there's no cure because of me" and Abby's face just says "the #### are you talking about?!"

I love that moment when you get to it from Abby's perspective. A line that felt very poignant as Ellie's turns out to be absolute nonsense.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Except she does know what's going on. She had a whole conversation with her dad before he died after overhearing Marlene and him talking where she said "hey, if it was me, you should still go through with it" or something like that, didn't she? Hard to imagine that she'd forget that since it was probably the last time she talked to him.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Except she does know what's going on. She had a whole conversation with her dad before he died after overhearing Marlene and him talking where she said "hey, if it was me, you should still go through with it" or something like that, didn't she? Hard to imagine that she'd forget that since it was probably the last time she talked to him.

I mean, first, Abby had no idea that Ellie is the girl

Also, Abby had very limited information about why things happened the way they did in Salt Lake. All she knew really knew about Joel and Ellie's relationship is that Joel escorted her across the country. However, she doesn't know that Joel sees her as the replacement for his daughter that was murdered in his arms 20 years prior. She doesn't know how much they sacrificed for each other of the course of the 8 or so months it took for them to travel from Boston to Utah.

All she knows is that the smuggler killed her dad, killed her friends, and stole the girl. Even in that conversation with her dad, she believes in sacrificing yourself for the greater good. The only two people who probably understood the story the most were Marlene and Jerry, and even then they only had snippets of the full story.

[devo22]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Except she does know what's going on. She had a whole conversation with her dad before he died after overhearing Marlene and him talking where she said "hey, if it was me, you should still go through with it" or something like that, didn't she? Hard to imagine that she'd forget that since it was probably the last time she talked to him.

but she doesn't even know Ellie was the girl that Joel saved from the Fireflies. How would she?

[timun]

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.

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.

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.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by timun

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.

This part confuses me. Abby doesn't have any of the information that the audience does around Joel's motivation. Even if we (as the audience) do agree with Joel's decision, I feel it odd to not sympathize with Abby when all she knows is that some random man came and took everything away from her, including her dad. If I was in her position, I think I can't say I'd be on a different path.

I think you can understand, and even agree with Joel's choice, but still sympathize for a child who had their life ripped away from them in a way that was profoundly damaging.

[timun]

Originally Posted by soreshins

@timun - I kind of saw it differently. Abby just saw Joel as someone who had killed her father, who was trying to find a cure for everyone’s benefit, for no good reason - (even though Joel may have had his own somewhat selfish reason). I didn’t think Abby was particularly spiteful or sadistic - if anything I’d say it was Ellie that was sadistic as she deliberately targeted Abby’s friends, also led to the death of a pregnant woman, and was prepared to walk out on her family to pursue a last chance at vengeance.

Abby didn't just kill Joel: she tortured him. She purposely extended his suffering. "You stupid old man. You don't get to rush this." And she made Ellie watch! She's waaaaaaay more sadistic.

Ellie targetted Abby's friends only insofar as she wanted to know Abby's location. She kills Jordan while he's strangling Dina. She kills Owen after he lunges at her trying to wrestle her gun away. She kills Mel after she lunges at her with a knife. The only one that was significantly more questionable was Nora, whom Ellie tortured for Abby's whereabouts, and which leaves Ellie traumatized. Ellie was also profoundly disturbed that Mel was pregnant; by contrast, when Ellie tells Abby that Dina is pregnant, Abby says "Good," and it's Lev who has to walk her back from killing Dina.

Nick was tortured for info by Tommy. Manny was killed by Tommy (defending himself). Leah was killed by Seraphites.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by timun

Abby didn't just kill Joel: she tortured him. She purposely extended his suffering. "You stupid old man. You don't get to rush this." And she made Ellie watch! She's waaaaaaay more sadistic.

Ellie targetted Abby's friends only insofar as she wanted to know Abby's location. She kills Jordan while he's strangling Dina. She kills Owen after he lunges at her trying to wrestle her gun away. She kills Mel after she lunges at her with a knife. The only one that was significantly more questionable was Nora, whom Ellie tortured for Abby's whereabouts, and which leaves Ellie traumatized. Ellie was also profoundly disturbed that Mel was pregnant; by contrast, when Ellie tells Abby that Dina is pregnant, Abby says "Good," and it's Lev who has to walk her back from killing Dina.

Nick was tortured for info by Tommy. Manny was killed by Tommy (defending himself). Leah was killed by Seraphites.

Ah I don't agree with this notion that Abby was sadistic. She had just found the person who ruined her entire life. From her perspective, she saw Joel how we the audience saw Abby during Ellie's story: completely dehumanized. I don't think anyone playing Ellie's story would have hesitated with Abby experiencing a long and painful death.

Joel's death was brutal and horrific, but I can understand why she did it without labelling her as sadistic. You also clearly see how little peace or relief she has immediately after he's killed. Most of her story is her dealing with this guilt.

I would also argue that Ellie's actions are equally or more sadistic. Nora's death is nearly a mirror of Joel's death, and even if it traumatized her, she still did it. She also put a knife to an unconscious Lev's throat to force Abby to fight her.

When Abby put that knife to Dina's throat, she had just experienced (in order):

1) Her best friend murdered in front of her

2) Yara, a person she risked everything to save, had just been gunned down in front of her by her own people

3) Killing numerous members of the WLF, many who she probably had a relationship with

4) Finding the man she loved and her pregnant friend murdered.

5) Learning that potentially all her childhood friends named on the map were murdered.


I don't think her action in that moment made her sadistic, I think it makes her a human who was pushed to the very limit of what she could handle.

The game is not forgiving either of these characters, but it isn't passing judgement on them either.

[Hack&Lube]

As I've mentioned before, I get why it is structured this way. It's clever in narrative design and perhaps interesting to discuss in terms of themes and drama and storytelling.

It's just also extremely dark and depressing and puts you through the paces of nothing but death and destruction where the player is forced to commit these things from both sides perpetuating the cycle. For me, that was awful to play through. I'd rather play almost anything else than The Last of Us Part II. It doesn't mean I'm only going play Super Mario Sunshine or something rated G but I don't go home to play hateful people doing hateful things to each other, with pregnant women being murdered, all while being reminded that characters I had grown to be attached to had been killed brutally and disturbingly before my eyes.

I get the path they are on and if this was any other game, you could have had Abby as the main hero while the game intro movie had a faceless villain kill her father and the story was basically her Lion King arc. But its not that. This is like playing Tomb Raider 2 but you start out as a character who murders Lara Croft in cold blood by bashing her head in with a golf club.

[timun]

Originally Posted by Cole436

Joel's death was brutal and horrific, but I can understand why she did it without labelling her as sadistic.

How is it not sadistic? From the OED:

sadistic adj. deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others

She was textbook, 'definition', sadistic. She enjoyed killing Joel. That she ultimately found little relief or peace afterward is irrelevant.

I would also argue that Ellie's actions are equally or more sadistic. Nora's death is nearly a mirror of Joel's death, and even if it traumatized her, she still did it. She also put a knife to an unconscious Lev's throat to force Abby to fight her.

She did these things as means to an end, but didn't seem to get any pleasure out of it, whereas Abby did. Ergo, Abby is sadistic, and Ellie is not.

I get the other arguments you've been making, but this I categorically disagree on.

The game is not forgiving either of these characters, but it isn't passing judgement on them either.

I do definitely agree that the game is forgiving to neither Abby nor Ellie, and going right back to the first comments I had in this thread: I got to the point where I didn't really want to play the game to its conclusion. I did not want Ellie to leave for Santa Barbara, I did not want her to hunt Abby down, and I did not want to fight that sad, pathetic, emaciated sunburnt shell of a person Abby had become. Those last few bits of the game were a slog for me.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by timun

How is it not sadistic? From the OED:

sadistic adj. deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others

She was textbook, 'definition', sadistic. She enjoyed killing Joel. That she ultimately found little relief or peace afterward is irrelevant.



She did these things as means to an end, but didn't seem to get any pleasure out of it, whereas Abby did. Ergo, Abby is sadistic, and Ellie is not.

I get the other arguments you've been making, but this I categorically disagree on.




I do definitely agree that the game is forgiving to neither Abby nor Ellie, and going right back to the first comments I had in this thread: I got to the point where I didn't really want to play the game to its conclusion. I did not want Ellie to leave for Santa Barbara, I did not want her to hunt Abby down, and I did not want to fight that sad, pathetic, emaciated sunburnt shell of a person Abby had become. Those last few bits of the game were a slog for me.

I agree with most of the things you've stated, but I think we're just going to have to disagree with the sadistic part.

This is just my opinion, but I personally don't think Abby derived any pleasure from killing Joel. I think she wanted to, I think she wanted to feel happy and satisfied. I think she wanted to sit there and relish it. But I really do believe that she hated every moment she swung that golf club, just hoping that the next swing would bring her the pleasure she was praying for. I think the look on her face as she stared at him after swinging that final blow tells me that there was nothing satisfying from that experience.

I've finished the game three times now and took a nearly two year break between the first and second play-through. In my most recent play-throughs, Ellie's actions horrified me more than Abby's did..

I know it's part of the structure, but Abby's story is all about starting at broken and monstrous place and finding redemption through the heroes journey, while Ellie's story goes in the opposite direction. Her story ends with her making decisions as monstrous as Abby did at the beginning of the game.

I also think it can be argued that Ellie could have been deriving pleasure in what she did to Nora, as she was exacting some form of revenge for what happened to Joel.

I think that's what makes this story so good, is that there isn't really a right answer or right interpretation.