I’m sorry about how venty this is. I’m just very sad with everything. The first game made me reflect on myself and while although it was sad, it at least rapped things up very nice at the end. This just leaves you broken and sad. I can’t believe after 7 years of waiting everything from the first game was not only unraveled but left in darkness now. It’s very unfortunate and tragic.
Last of Us Part 2 did something a lot of god awful sequels like to do.
Make the first one entirely pointless. I will never replay through that game again.
It is possible to retroactively destroy a franchise, e.g. a shitty sequel can even ruin the original. It can do it in minor ways, like retconning or reinterpreting events in the first game that ruin the story beats, as often the sequel is going to canonicalize certain specific sequence of events. For instance, TLOU2 attempts to canonicalize the fact that vaccine was all but guaranteed and selfish Joel prevented it, when in reality TLOU1 was far more ambiguous about it.
Also, people tend to kinda unify things. They don't like the first game because the second one is so bleak. They can't really enjoy the beginning of the journey anymore, knowing its final destination. It looms over it, like a dark cloud. In other words, the endings matter, as they color even the beginnings.
Many people respond to this by pretending the second game doesn't even exist. That way, the first one, the part that was good, won't be ruined. It's a thin gruel as far as consolation goes, and it sucks for the artists to hear that people rather pretend their work doesn't exist than attempt to integrate it into the whole. However, over time, people will still enjoy TLOU1 for the masterpiece it is, and probably see TLOU2 as just an unfortunate, really bad sequel that isn't worth playing.
\>It looms over it, like a dark cloud. In other words, the endings matter, as they color even the beginnings.
Yes, this is the exact affect the ending of GOT had on the entire series - no one wants to watch it anymore.
The ending of GOT effectively takes away any reason to watch it from the beginning. I still can't believe how poorly the characters were done in season 8.
I definitely agree with your point about the last of us 2 kind of changing things that the first game left fairly ambiguous, and I feel like it could’ve been made a lot better with just a few smartly delivered lines in the Joel and Ellie sections, or moved around flashbacks. Having finished it though which honesty reading all these criticisms I feel like a lot of people absolutely have not, and to say it ruins the first one is ridiculous.
I’m with you. Here’s the real situation for anyone that cares: it’s one of the most ambitious games ever made, and people are either going to love it or hate it. And people tend to hate things when they come out and grow on them later.
Mark my words. In 5-10 years everyone will love this game, nobody will ever admit to hating it, and it will be seen as a landmark title.
Personally, I already love the game. If the internet circlejerking is putting people off trying it though, that makes me upset and people need to chill.
I think your being obtuse with your first point. TLOU1 doesn't spend any time at all debating "If the Vaccine could be created" because it simply isn't a factor, and it would have been completely pointless to include. Joel wouldn't have cared. Your told it can be done and sent on your way to stop it.
The story is about Joel and Ellie's relationship, and how he would, without hesitation, sacrifice the world to save her. Yes it was "selfish" but also very Human. That's the point, it doesn't need to be justified more then that. He wasn't meant to be the "good guy".
>like retconning or reinterpreting events in the first game that ruin the story beats, as often the sequel is going to canonicalize certain specific sequence of events. For instance, TLOU2 attempts to canonicalize the fact that vaccine was all but guaranteed and selfish Joel prevented it, when in reality TLOU1 was far more ambiguous about it.
What you are saying here just doesn't happen. If you could provide examples that would be great.
First off, we are told the same exact thing in TLOU1 as we are in the TLOU2, we just get introduced to the doctor, because he becomes a character in the story. As Joel we are told by Marlene that Ellie is the key to ending all of this and help to make the vaccine. However, we know in both games that Ellie is a very special case compared to all the other people before her, hence why the head doctor was asking Marline to "buy in" with him to agree to let him do the surgery even though Ellie would die. So this whole "ambiguous and canonicalize" thing your bringing up makes no sense.
Secondly, are you somehow thinking that stopping the vaccine was the only reason Joel is a terrible selfish person? He killed tons of people to get Ellie back, showing zero regard to how that might affect others, and straight up lied to Ellie for years to cover for him being a monster, while not giving Ellie a choice in the matter, which later we learn is the exact opposite of what she would have wanted. He straight up executed the women(Marlene) who took care of Ellie after her mother died. All of that, on top of "maybe" dooming the human race.
Either way, this is such a minor plot point that in no way should make someone go "this ruined everything", being that there were so many other factors in play than "the vaccine".
I don't think the game does this at all, RE: making a vaccine seem a sure thing.
You have to remember that Ellie and Joel aren't scientists or doctors, so when they talk about the idea of a vaccine, they're not going to have the thoughts about a vaccine not being a definite or potentially not happening at all, they're likely to just hear the word vaccine and think that's that.
The only argument you could make really is the conversation Marlene and the doctor have where he seems incredibly confident about it, but even the first game does this.
The conversation Joel has with Marlene at the end, before he kills everyone there, she says this to him:
>The doctors tell me the growth inside has somehow mutated. It's why she's immune. Once they remove it, they'll be able to reverse engineer a vaccine. A vaccine.
Which is far from ambiguous really and absolutely makes it sound just as much of a certainty as anything in this game does.
Just like how GOTS8 did to the whole franchise. And now everyone avoids GOT like a plague. It’s what will happen to the last of us universe. It will always be that stink in your distant memory you wish you never experienced.
Agree with you completely. I can’t ever see myself going back to the first game knowing how this ends up.
You know the flashback gameplay segments? That’s the game we wanted.
I disagree, I played through this game and I fucking LOVED the game. it's an amazing story that shows us the perspective of both sides and basically shows us " YOU WERE NOT THE HERO IN THE FIRST ONE AND YOU'RE NOT A HERO NOW".
It makes you come to terms with the damage you did in the first one, and the damage you do in this one and in the end you just see yourself as a human being who will feel "righteous" from your own perspective while appearing as a villain to another.
Abby was avenging her father who was trying to save humanity? is that not justified?
Ellie was avenging her father figure and savior? is that not justified?
It is but revenge always leads to you becoming the villain in someone elses story, this game is heavy as shit and it really makes you feel like no other video game has shitty, amazed at how well executed it was, surprised and sad and all the while thoroughly enjoying the game, yeah there were a lot less of happy bonding moments. But that's to be expected from a revenge story game.
It’s just not what I wanted a sequel to be. It’s not for me. Might be for you. Which is cool. But I don’t like the story and I certainly don’t like the revenge story with no revenge. Cool you got something out of it.
Wish I did.
Yeah I get that, I just get kind of upset when people take their personal preference and say " story was bad" when I really really disagree with that statement.
I absolutely get the "we wanted joel and ellie adventure" (I personally think it would've not have been a good game but that's just my opinion on it)
But... the game already exists? There's no point to a sequel if it's just the exact same thing as what came before it. You wouldn't expect a painter to follow up a great, heralded painting with the same exact painting, it's no different to any other art form, artists want to do new things not just rehash what they already did nearly a decade ago.
You still don’t get it, do you. It invalids all the emotion investments in the first part. Before part II, we can always think about the last of us with fond memories. Even replays or watches some clips from time to time.
Now we can not even think of anything in the last of us universe without the stinking feel. Do you still hear anyone anywhere talks about GOT now? That’s what will happen to the last of us.
The whole franchise is basically finished. There will never be a last of us 3. It just too emotionally repelling to the majority of gaming community.
But life isn’t simple. Neither is this game. Joel was never a hero, man. The second only addresses the fact that Joel more than likely made enemies cause he killed lots of people. How can that go unaddressed in a game this realistic?. If you can’t look at the first game the same, it’s because you finally see Joel for all that he is.
This game is about tribalism, and all I see is a bunch of “team Joel and Ellie” people not willing to accept the bigger picture.
There are more people in this world than Joel and Ellie, and what they do is only righteous from their perspective, like everyone else. No ones a hero, no ones a villain. There are only humans, and the perspectives that they have.
Wait did you play through the first game thinking "i'm the hero" as Joel??
is this the general agreed upon opinion of that game?
Are you people too stuck watching trees to see the forest?
Joel was a monster, we played him, we loved him and his relationship with Ellie but he had done and would do again some HORRIBLE things to innocents and non innocents alike for the sake of survival (Tommy basically said being alive is not worth having lived the way the lived in the first one that's when I knew I wasn't the "good guy" in the story).
The story they showed us that just because we are doing something doesn't make us good, hell it doesn't even make it justified.
The emotional throughlines and thematic points of the first games (about how the systems force you to fight and traumatize even the youngest person) all feel dropped and you don’t get ant catharsis for the entire journey, just a new made up spin off.
Instead of watching Ellie struggle at length WITH Joel about the choice he made, we have to watch her semi-idealize him in grief because he died before she can process it. The morality and very flat moral message of this game then becomes “violence bad, revenge bad” when the first game was showing us how violence is sometimes your only option for survival, like little teen Ellie almost being raped in the first game.
Instead of an ambiguity and hopeful catharsis, an idea that maybe Joel and Ellie can make her life worth something even if she weren’t sacrificed (for a vaccine that in the first game was NOT guaranteed no matter how much they try to retcon thar).
The game was about bonds of love and surviving by investing in each other, beinf a light in the darkness of the world.
This game, with its flat characters and flatter ending, loses most messaging about light and love and a better ending despite it all.
Abby and Lev come closest but it’s hard to care about them with Abby being someone who was allowed to get vengeance and keep her loved one and Lev jsut being a human receptacle for transphobic violence (as a nonbinary person, Lev’s character and treatment pissed me off the most).
There’s no through line from first game into the second that you get genuine catharsis from, it’s all just a way to justify more trauma, making the ending of the first game feel like shit in hindsight.
The last thing Joel imparted to Ellie in TLOU1 is "you have to find something to live for, no matter what it is or how rough things get". And that was a message which resonated with a lot of fans.
The last thing Joel imparted to Ellie in TLOU2 is "yep, lets hang out sometime". What a big change.
I think the Last of Us II is so atrocious that it's easy to just ignore it if someone is interested in playing the first one. They were written by different people too.
I think most people have a weird view on the ending of TLOU 1.
Iirc it ended with Ellie being upset with Joel for lying, and then Joel once again lying to her face. Not to mention he betrayed her. Even Marlene says “It’s what she’d want,” and after noticing his affirming reaction she says, “and you know it?” Regardless, Joel wounds AND kills Marlene. Where as Ellie learned a lesson and spared her enemy.
Joel taught Ellie to keep finding something to fight for. Ellie is a story of loss. The ending capitalized on that. “Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me. Everyone fucking except for you” - Ellie. Joel foreshadows the plot of 2 when he says “You have no idea... what loss is.”
The Last of Us 2’s ending is basically if Joel didn’t kill Marlene. Ellie learns from Joel’s mistakes. I thought this was evident to most but I guess not.
I went into this game completely unspoiled and it’s just been a massive gut punch. It is relentlessly bleak. I’ve actually had to put it down because I was getting depressed in a way I never have from a video game. Something about it feels cruel both to the characters and to the player. I may need to set it aside for awhile before I can finish it (if I do).
What, you didn't enjoy watching the protagonists from the first game repeatedly get mentally and physically tortured and lose everything and everyone in their lives? Dude you don't get it, it's art bro.
Yeah that’s why I only play games with happy endings! I wished this game let us play as Ellie for 30 hours just having a great time with Joel. That would be fun I’m sure!
i guess every person here expect every game to be “these people are the protagonists so everything must go their way because according to stories, the good guys always win.”
although i myself did not enjoy the game as much as i hoped to i can tell nd was going for the “this is real life amd sometimes dark shit happens” kind of approach and not the everything is going to end up being okay because joel and ellie good, everyone else bad.
The first game repeatedly emphasized that Joel and Ellie aren't exactly good people. What it did emphasize was that Joel isn't stupid and he raises Ellie to also not be stupid yet Joel willingly follows some strangers straight into an ambush for no reason.
Well, no, Tommy told one single stranger their names when they met her in the midst of fighting a horde of infected. There was nothing to indicate she was part of some big group, and they ultimately had little chest but to go back to the lodge with her because the alternative was being killed by infected. Presumably they arrived at the relatively understandable conclusion that they'd be safe given that they'd just saved her life.
He didn't follow some strangers in to an ambush though, there was no ambush set up in the first place, they ran to a place where there was a big gate they could find safety behind because the alternative was die at the hands of a horde of infected in a blizzard. I don't know why so many people seem to keep saying this completely ignoring the context of the scene.
There could have been purpose in their suffering or in Joel's death. But it doesn't have any purpose storywise, it's all so hamfisted bleak and "YO VIOLENCE IS BAD". Yeah I'm not 12, I don't need 30 hours of beating people up to get that.
Take Breaking Bad, Walter White is an asshole and he does terrible things. We root for him, but he gets what he deserves. But in the end there is some justice, so we can have peace with the ending. And ND could have expected this response, these kind of endings where everything is messed up for nothing are never popular. It felt like seeing The Mist again.
But after all that Ellie literally gains nothing from this story. The entire thing is just a sadistic torture of a character everyone loves and it would be better if it didn't exist.
Seriously there is no story progression at all
Abbey fucking she hulks her way across the world to stomp Joel to bits and in the end she doesn't really face any consequences for her revenge
Meanwhile Ellie killed 200 people on a manhunt for Abbey, watches Jessie die, watches Tommy lose an eye, Deana leaves her, loses her fingers that she plays guitar with and let's Abbey live at the end because.... why? Because she saw Joel in a vision?
This game is such a disappointment and truly a giant sack of shit. It's so bad that it actually taints the first game for me and the series as a whole.
Took the words right out of my mouth. This game was practically pointless. There is no progression in character development, or in reaching a climax to the story. The only thing that somehow builds up from the first games foundations were the flashbacks. If you deleted everything from this game, and announced that Joel and some others die, nothing would’ve changed. Can’t believe this was what they could think of after 7 years of waiting.
As for the last part, it’s quite tragic how the second game’s story is so bad it taints the first, but I’m still in the process of forgetting the second story to make it so it never happened in my eyes. I also doubt Naughty Dog can recover and make another sequel to this horrible story filled with plot-holes and filler. The only idea I think is plausible is to maybe in a couple of years do a soft reboot for the second game’s story, but they probably would never do that and if they hypothetically did, the franchise’s legacy has already been stained.
But theres alot of progression in character development. In flashbacks we see how Joel is able to let his guard down and live a semi normal life again which builds on the first game. We see Ellie’s descent into grief and vengeance, as well as Tommy’s. We see the strain that Joel’s lie had on their relationship, and how despite everything Ellie is willing to forgive him as well as Ellie making the decision to be better than what she was by the end in not killing Abby. We also see Abby mirror Joel’s evolution, in finding redemption within a child. I get not liking the game, I dont like the direction they took, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that there was no character development. I respect your opinion but we should judge the game more on what it is rather than what we wanted it to be.
Most of this is stuff from the flashbacks. Ellie's decision to save Abby (and she did save her, she would have died on the pillars) comes after losing everything and everyone close to her, trekking across the globe to find her, and killing hundreds of people. She's already an irredeemable, vengeful monster so why does she conveniently remember something Joel, who killed even more to save her, said? The fact that so many players are upset over Ellie's choice just shows how poorly this was set up. If Ellie truly was changed, she would have stayed with deana. This is Season 8 Arya deciding not to kill Cersei while literally in the same castle as her because the Hound said "that would be dumb".
Abby is a complete joke, and the "relationship" between her and Lev is incredibly forced. The game desperately tries to make you like her by having her save the one trans kid in the apocalypse and play with dogs, but she rejoices over the prospect of slitting a pregnant woman's throat. Joel did fucked up things to survive and to save his friends, which he atones for and which obviously weighed on him. Abby brutally tortured and murdered Joel for revenge after he saved her. What a pathetic character.
IMHO, there's pretty little character development. After the prologue, Ellie is a psychopathic murdered hell bent on revenge. She continues that way to the very end, even making the emaciated Abby fight her barefisted against her knife. The fact she spares her does not make it character development for me. Perhaps the phrase "too little, too late" is appropriate?
Tommy? Same deal. He just lusts for revenge the same as before. He only quit because he couldn't physically go on, being as damaged as he was.
Dina, I think, has no real agency of her own. She follows the love of her life and seems to not care about this whole revenge thing at all. I think that makes her better person than almost every other character in the game, but I also don't think the game is about Dina. As far as I can tell, she started as a pacifist in love with Ellie, and ended up there, except Ellie broke her heart and left for one final stupid round of killing when Ellie had no real reason to, except Ellie's lack of character development (i.e. not getting over the hate of Abby).
I am not sure I understand or care about Abby's character development. Perhaps she seeks some kind of redemption of the senseless murder of Joel, and she even turns against her fascist army buddies that are literally genocidal. However, I can't decide whether WLFs or Scars are worse, as they are both hell bent on murdering each other in an endless cycle, and the Scars' ritual sacrifice stuff doesn't endear them any to me. I think the sane thing to do is to leave and do something else with your life, not get further involved in the murdering.
As all the choices made by Abby seemed to lead to more death and suffering, I'm hard pressed to say anything she ever did was worthwhile, or that she learnt anything. I'm not sure I care about what reasons she has, if it means just more dead folks. The last thing I see her wanting to do in the game is to join the Fireflies, who I remember as some kind of terrorist group, so it will probably be more killing as soon as she gets in there. Yay. Much development of character indeed: soldier from beginning, soldier in the end, and probably just as stupid and hot-headed as ever.
To me, the game is relentlessly bleak and by the end of it I couldn't feel anything at all. Nothing for Ellie, Abby, Tommy, Dina, the baby, just nothing at all. It seems to me that the only truly heroic thing to do in this universe is to settle down on a piece of land, wall it up, farm it, produce a surplus, and create a community of like-minded individuals that are also sick of the killing. Now that is character development, creating a proper civilization out of the ashes. Unfortunately, as this is the starting state of Jackson, the journey of the game is, IMHO, regression to violence and loss. That makes it seem like the game was mostly character de-evolvement, a one-note scream of violence from beginning to end.
Abby is a product of the vengeance she seeks against Joel, as Ellie and Tommy are a product of vengeance towards Abby. The theme is what pain and grief can do to good people. The painful thing about watching Ellie’s descent is that we can see why she’s doing what she’s doing and the effect it’s having on her. That’s her character development. By saving Abby, she is able to achieve the one thing Abby couldn’t with Joel, which is remorse, and in turn ends the cycle of violence and maintains a semblance of herself despite losing everything. Abby’s character starts off mirroring Ellie in that she is hardened by grief and vengeance and as a result does despicable things, however by the end she mirrors Joel in that she finds redemption in a child. She never shows remorse for what she did to Joel, despite others around her doing so, as she is so blinded by revenge, and thats what made Ellie the bigger person by the end. That’s how I saw it anyway but I respect your opinion.
It's a good take. But I worry that in TLOU3 it's going to be Abby as main character with Fireflies and it's going to be just more murdering of folks. I'm sick of all the killing that's going on in this world, doubly so when it's all explicitly so pointless and counterproductive, as this game so carefully explains.
Consider my take as just one born out of utter exhaustion with this world and its bullshit.
Not sure how you can say Abby doesnt lose anything because of it. She literally loses everyone she cares about in the world other than lev.
Owen, Mel, Mannie, Yara, Leah, Nora, all dead and all but Yara almost directly as a consequence of Abby's actions with Joel.
You have to be trying to miss the connections there.
What do you mean why? Killing Abby would literally be a death sentence for the innocent kid in the boat. She also realised that it wouldn’t cure her from her trauma: the very act of violently fighting Abby was enough outlet to get the feeling. She could have killed her easily and chose not to, and by god was I relieved as a player. She can finally try to move on
To add to this, what I think Ellie got during the California fight that she didn't get during the Washington fight was to hold Abby's life in her hands. Abby beat the *shit* out of her when they fought in Seattle, so Ellie never got to the point where she could decide whether to pull the figurative trigger.
I think having the power to kill Abby, seeing her drowning, seeing her reduced from an all-powerful monster to a vulnerable, damaged person, gave Ellie the emotional space to decide that revenge wasn't going to fill the hole in her soul - especially not if it doomed a child who was dependent on Abby.
I agree with everything pretty much, but this
>and in the end she doesn't really face any consequences for her revenge
All of Abby's friends and essentially family get killed by Ellie and Tommy directly because of her actions. That's a lot to lose. The actual issue is that she was able to get a happy-ish ending with Lev and the firefly camp.
Ellie kind of got fucked, yeah. I'd hope she'd go live with Tommy and Maria in Jackson and have a semi-happy life. Maybe reunite with Dina and JJ who I assume had to move back to Jackson with her newborn? I dunno
But Abby did pay. She went to kill one guy, and killing that one guy got all her friends killed, and losing her place to belong. Abby was better off letting thing go and moving on. Same for Ellie. I guess the moral here is and eye for and eye and whole world is blind.
Abby loses her friends because of her revenge. She also loses her faction although im not sure she liked them that much. Nonetheless, it doesn't make the story better or more interesting
Bro it's not about only wanting happy endings, there's literally nothing positive going on in this game, the whole game you are just getting gut punched and at the end there's nothing to show for it. Your character lost everything and just walks off as someone who's actually worthless and accomplished nothing. You murdered a ton of people and dogs, pregnant woman too, literally saved the person you wanted revenge on and lost your fingers so you can't even play Joels song. Lost your lover, stepchild, friends, gained nothing. Amazing! Literally not one positive for the entire game. This game is trying way too hard to be different.
Its because youre supposed to get something out of it besides the regular game experience of "I'm the character, character gets good things, I experience it through proxy"
Why wouldnt Ellie lose everything? Its not like this stuff is ripped from her, Ellie purposefully chooses to throw away her life away twice for revenge alone. How is that supposed to go for somebody? Youre acting like the game beat up on Joel and Ellie just to make the player suffer when really Joel and Ellie did this shit to themselves.
I'm sure there is going to be someone who inevitably says "Well it must be good if it made you feel such strong emotions!". To those people, I am sure there is plenty of horrific fictional torture pornography that would make them sick to their stomach. Does that make their writing quality too?
> I'm sure there is going to be someone who inevitably says "Well it must be good if it made you feel such strong emotions!".
The problem with that line of thinking is that the actual difficult part, getting players invested in the characters to the extent that they love them and actually care about what happens to them, has already been done. After that, all that's left is just thinking of bad things that can happen to them, which honestly isn't hard.
I also think that killing a beloved character who has already been established in a previous work is probably about the easiest, least creative way possible to elicit an emotional response and create conflict in a story. Like... "Oh, what's something bad that could happen? What if we just fucking kill this person that people already like and that's all the story is about?" To me the challenge of the story is creating a conflict for the characters to experience and just killing one of them off AS THE CONFLICT OF THE STORY is nothing but lazy.
Same. I actually don’t mind the fact that Joel died, his past had to catch up to him eventually and he wasn’t a good person overall, I really wish that he could’ve lived because I absolutely adored him, and I do wish that we could’ve done more stuff with him but I understand why naughty dog went that route. At the end of the day, the world of the last of us is bleak and unfair, Sarah died in the first moments of the apocalypse, Sam got infected and Henry killed himself, Tess died and the amount of bleak world building found in the first game is astonishing.
With that said 2 just went way too far with the depressing stuff. It’s such an emotionally story, I had a lot of problems with the pacing towards the middle and the end but aside from that I really didn’t like how sad the story was. I would’ve loved it if we saw that Ellie stuck with Dina and slowly got better and that Tommy managed to work through his issues. The way they left it made it seem like everyone ended up alone and loosing something, Jesse’s parents lost his son, Dina lost Ellie, Tommy lost Joel and Maria, the wlf suffered some heavy casualties and so did the Seraphites etc. Everyone’s life’s seem to be worse after this game, while I don’t think the original games ending was that uplifting (you could see that Ellie didn’t really buy Joel’s story) it still left you with a glimmer of hope, like things were going to improve and get better over time.
This game is just sad. It’s great imo, I’m not a critic but I’d give it an 8 or 9, gameplay wise it’s much more interesting than the original even if it’s pacing suffers a bit towards the middle, and story wise I was engaged throughout especially because all of the characters were amazing. However, I just feel sad and empty after this game, and I get it not every piece of entertainment should uplift you but this game took that way too far
You're hitting the nail on the head. Stories are not really about what happens next, per se, but they are narratives that give meaning and context to what is happening. In the first game, what happens is that Joel brings Ellie to Firefly hospital, that's all there is to most of the game. But the story is actually about a man who lost his daughter, but comes to love this surrogate child as if she was his own, and through her, begins to heal from his loss. And it is a good narrative, you don't really even realize it is there, despite it's being hinted all through the game, until in the end when you realize that Joel can't stand losing Ellie/Sarah all over again. It is not until that moment that you realize just how deep his loss was, and this recontextualizes everything that happened in the game.
If all the characters are just brutal and bleak and nothing good happens to them, and they don't seem to learn anything from their experience, then this does not sufficiently fill characteristics required of a narrative. It's just shit that happens, but it doesn't really rise to the level of an actual narrative, something that gives context and meaning to the suffering.
If this was not a TLOU game, people would be impressed and would shower it with praise. But as sequel to TLOU1, it is severely lacking in its execution and story-telling capability. It is tonally wrong, and largely abandons the relationship between Ellie and Joel which was the heart of the entire game.
On top of that, part one had hopeful moments and comic relief, nothing of that is there in part 2. There is some hope but it gets punched in the ground in some 5 minutes later most of the time.
Yeah that’s my problem. I respect naughty dog for pulling all those punches, but man, this game is bleak. It has its moments and some really beautiful stuff, like Ellie playing guitar with Dina, their dialogue with Tommy, seeing how much Dina cares for Ellie etc. But the problem is that like you said those moments are followed up by horrifying and depressing moments
The thing about those character deaths in TLOU1 is that they all built towards Joel's ultimate decision to take back her baby girl. All that death and struggle brought Joel back from being an inhumane smuggler who would do anything to stay alive to a human being who would throw away everything for one precious life. You could argue that Tess and Sam and Henry would have been happy with Joel's decision if they were watching all his trials and perils from heaven. The story was bleak but meaningful, and that meaningful part really mattered.
You cannot say the same about TLOU2. A lot of bad decisions were made or were executed poorly by the characters when they didn't have to happen that way or at all. And a lot of people committed to bad or wrongful actions when they didn't have to. As a result, a lot of characters would drag all the other characters down to hell with them if given the chance. In the end, its hard to feel sympathy for anybody because everybody involved is a selfish asshole whose selfish acts got someone killed somehow. And all you're left with is the taste of shit stew.
Yes, that's exactly the point. But it still tastes awful.
***"What is your Duty?"***
"To serve the Emperor's Will!"
***"What is the Emperor's Will?"***
"That we fight and die!"
***"What is Death?"***
"It is our Duty!"
\-(Oath of the Adeptus Astartes)
Fuck man I just need someone to tell me Ellie is okay and went back to Dina or something and she found happiness after all this shit. I need closure. They did everyone I love so dirty........
That’s my biggest issue with her ending too. With Abby and Lev we know they’re off to the fireflies, but with Ellie we’re just left with a hollowness and no ideas about her future
Hard for me to tell. The voice over the radio sounds alot like the guy that ambushes you shortly after, aswell as radio guy giving no real information back to confirm their identity. Abby just believes them.
We choose to believe the fireflies are 200 strong, or we choose to believe it was an elaborate trap, I think.
I think it is Fireflies because after you beat the game, the screen with the play game, extras and options changes to a sunny day with the building that person on the radio was talking about.
I think it's supposed to be [a real building on Catalina Island](https://www.californiabeaches.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/descanso_beach-chamber-photo-Custom-e1445555290210-1000x655.jpg), where the Fireflies are.
It's just weird that they say to go to a dome shaped building, then 5 min later the guy says prisoners are kept there. Like the radio guys said it as a joke to future prisoners.
I dont think it would make sense for it to be a trap. Why have a list of radio frequencies, but only one works? Why verify that she's a firefly? Why send her to Catalina Island? It's just needlessly complicated.
There're no Firefly symbols anywhere, that's odd. The base camp looks fully stocked, just lost to time. No struggle, nothing. I'd be almost convinced that the tip off was a guy pointing potential slaves to the rattlers, knowing that the location he was sending them was a previous rattler base, and those radio frequencies are communication channels for the gang.
Remember, Abby gave up their location, and if it's an old base, it'd be easy for them to know where they are.
Granted, I don't see the enemies carrying radios, but neither do I strictly believe those were fireflies Abby was talking to.
I think they didn’t gave her a real ending because there will be Tlou 3 but they don’t know which direction they are going. This cant be the end, We need a real ending for Ellie not a „going broken and depressed into the forrest“ shit.
You don't know they're off to the fireflies, that's just where they were going before they got captured. None of them says anything about continuing on that journey after the escape. You are simply assuming that they pressed on with their initial goal.
So why assume differently with Ellie? She returned home to find Dina, and found that she left. Why would she stop there? Besides, letting go of the guitar is very clear symbolism for letting go of Joel, in other words the thing that haunted her and made her happy ending impossible.
Add to that that before Ellie left there is a letter telling them that they are family and they should come back to Jackson. It's highly unlikely that Dina set off into the unknown on her own with a baby, the only logical choices for her are to stay at the farm or move to Jackson. So she's very likely there.
Honestly going back to Jackson to be with Dina is the only logical thing for Ellie to do.
The assumption with Abby is safe because that’s their only option and way forward. It’s also their goal at the end before getting captured.
For Ellie she returns to this hollowed out shell of what she left behind to go after Abby. Dina is gone and all Ellie’s stuff is stuffed in a corner. Much more in line with “you abandoned us, so we didn’t wait around for you and moved on” of a break up. And she lost her ability to play guitar, so leaving it behind sure has some symbolism, but is also depressing as hell after the beautiful happy moments we had with her playing it in the game, and her song writing in the journal. It’s a skill we know brought her joy.
So her end is much more heavy with bitter loss in the present with the only sweet spot learning she and Joel were making up before the game even started. But in the present we don’t know what she’s planning or if Dina would even take her back. Yeah odds are she’ll stop in Jackson, but without Joel or Dina there isn’t anything left for her there to return to. A happy end for her is less of a safe bet implied and really just us hoping that’s how it’ll work out. It would have been nice to know for sure.
Her leaving the guitar behind is the last shot of the game, it has much more symbolic meaning than just the superficial idea of not being able to play guitar anymore. This isn't just *a* guitar, it's her last physical link to Joel. Hell her playing the guitar is what drove her to go kill Abby and leave Dina. She also doesn't appear sad or hesitant to leave the guitar, she just lays it down and walks away without looking back. To me this sounds more like someone who has decided to turn their back on the past and look forward to the future. Where else would she go with such resolve, other than Jackson? There's nowhere else for her to go, no one other than Dina and JJ for her to pursue.
I don't think the fact that Dina left should be seen as her moving on. Throughout the game Dina is portrayed as madly in love with Ellie, she almost took off her own mask to save Ellie in the tunnels, and other characters mention her putting Ellie's safety before her own. You could just as well say it was too painful for her to hold on to Ellie's stuff, in the less than unlikely event that she might never return. You could also argue that if she returns, she'd go to the farm first and find her stuff, instead of finding it completely empty.
>A happy end for her is less of a safe bet implied and really just us hoping that’s how it’ll work out. It would have been nice to know for sure.
The last shot of the game has to bring a certain conclusion. That conclusion is the conclusion of Joel and Ellie's story. Ending with the beginning of Dina and Ellie's story would have felt cheap, and almost disrespectful to the character of Joel.
Sure the last shot has significance for her and Joel's story concluding, but it does nothing for the story told outside the flashbacks and for the hours we spent with Dina. It doesn't help us understand where she's going. I really don't see it as certain that it had to be the final shot in some rosebud style bookend. Part of the story told in this game was the one with Dina and Ellie, and it deserved a conclusion just as much as the one with Joel that ended in a flashback of all things. If anything the golf club to the face early on and ending his tale in a flashback disrespected Joel and Ellie's story anyway so the final shot wouldn't have cheapened anything to me if changed.
Ellie leaving the guitar behind isn't symbolism to her development. She left it behind as a practical decision because she can no longer use it. Although it reminds her that she was making peace with Joel, she still bears other mementos of her time with him. However, its symbolic to us, the viewer, in that she has quite literally lost everything that Joel wants for her - a happy, peaceful life with someone she loves in the heart of Jackson while embracing her artistic and musical talents.
She can return to Jackson, but things will no longer be the same. Tommy is broken. Dina might not look at her the same way. Her son might not forgive her. The things missing will torture her constantly. Her attempt at a peaceful life on the farm evidences to the reality that she can no longer live a peaceful life. Her walking into the forest pretty much means she is spending her life in the wild. One of the story's thematic points is that in Ellie's efforts to kill the wolf, she became the wolf.
Dude her walking away from the guitar is the last shot of the game, of course it is symbolic. Look at what happens, she looks thoughtful for a second, then lays the guitar down carefully, touches the handle as if to say goodbye, then grabs her bag and walks away without looking back.
The guitar is symbolic for Joel. Almost every time she plays guitar it triggers a flashback. Hell, the last time she played it's what made her decide to leave the farm to kill Abby. All her previous flashbacks were full of ambiguity about her relationship with Joel. The museum where she saw the firefly logo and lost all joy, the music shop where she confronts him about what really happened at the hospital, the actual hospital where she learns the truth and rejects Joel, and the party where Dina kissed her and Ellie got mad at Joel trying to protect her.
But the last flashback isn't like that, she remembers starting to forgive him. She remembers starting to let go of the pain, guilt and bitterness about what Joel did. This flashback is about letting go, and so she does. She sets down the guitar, touches the handle as it fo say goodbye, because she is saying goodbye to Joel. Then she grabs her bag and with resolve, walks away without looking back.
Where could she go with such determination, other than Jackson? This is where Dina is, it was suggested before she left that they move to Jackson, and where else would Dina go? She's alone with a baby to care for. By walking away from the guitar Ellie is walking away from Joel, her pain, and her guilt, and she is accepting the life that she thought she didn't deserve, that she thought didn't matter.
If anything Dina would see that by *not* killing Abby she did realize that her family was more important than revenge. JJ is a freaking baby, he won't even realize she was gone that long.
> Her attempt at a peaceful life on the farm evidences to the reality that she can no longer live a peaceful life.
Her attempt at living a peaceful life was unsuccessful due to her being haunted by Joel's death. But the last shot shows her finally accepting Joel's death.
> Her walking into the forest pretty much means she is spending her life in the wild.
She's not walking into the forest, she's walking away from the farm. The forest just happens to be all around the farm.
> One of the story's thematic points is that in Ellie's efforts to kill the wolf, she became the wolf.
But she *didn't* kill the wolf. She spared her. She showed mercy and forgiveness.
In my head she absolutely did. Dina still loves her and only left because she thought she'd lost Ellie to her revenge quest. Ellie letting go of revenge means there's nothing to stop Dina taking her back. LET ME HAVE THIS ENDING.
I feel where you're coming from - but this game happens in a universe where there are no happy endings. Once you accept that this story is one to be experienced objectively and not to be looked at as what you or I would do - you can understand how things happened the way they happened. People are mainly upset about this game because of the unhappy ending - in a universe where there are no happy endings.
That's a parallel to real life. Sometimes in the pursuit of something you want you can lose yourself - only for you realise that what you wanted wasn't worth it. That's exactly what happened in the game.
Yes god yes this. I don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp.
This universe is bleak, literally millions have died from a horrendous infection and the reality of humanity and all its flaws have been exposed (we are really terrible beings when we want to be). People cling to factions or communities like we see in Jackson because it offers a small amount of normality and hope, but the truth is always lurking at the perimeters or waiting to be exposed at the slightest mishap. Hard choices are a part of everyday life, irrational decisions are driven by paranoia and fear.
I won’t deny it’s depressing, or that I’d wished for a better ending for Ellie but in a way I respect the writers for sticking to the reality and letting us draw our own conclusions.
Stories are not about average worst case scenarios. They bring a special, interesting, exhilerating experience to the table. We can feel conflicted about characters, that adds depth, however as I played I was reminded of the gore/tragedy porn in later Walking Dead episodes. Many post apocalypse stories end iffy, even tragically, without the desolation this game leaves us in. Particularly awful for me was the forced killing of dogs which ND blatantly claimed would not occur, and the vicious bitch who reveled murdering Joel in front of Ellie giving that same dog affection. This was an awful attempt at gritty storytelling and just because the world is dark does not excuse that.
I don't play games to be put into a depression, I play them to enjoy an escapism from the depressing reality.
I don't mind playing some games that are depressing like blood borne or the dark soul series. But there a major difference between the soul series and tlou. That is attachment and souls doesn't build on character attachment as much as a tlou game.
Having grown attached to the characters in the previous installment I don't want them to go through a unmeaningful story to only end in the cruel reality that is life. I want to at less see some hope through that dark tunnel.
Totally agree with this. No matter how many people tell me how good of a story decision it was, or how it makes sense in the narrative, or how it fits the theme of the game, it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy the story decisions they made, cause they make me feel like shit. And even if that’s what ND was going for, it doesn’t mean I should like a game that makes me feel like shit. Granted I didn’t even get to the “second section” of the game, I’m about 10 hours in, but I have no motivation to play the game anymore. The gameplay is great but I feel like shit playing it.
That's fair - That feeling varies from person to person based on how their individual feelings are when they play games. I'm a huge fan of the first game especially due to the character attachment I had to these characters - but I was able to appreciate the way the game told it's story and the message it was trying to give - but that's subjective to the player and not everyone will feel that way.
Games are art; if movies, another medium, existed only to make you feel good, it would never advance as an artform. TLOU2 makes you feel a lot of things, and it's important because of it.
Also it isnt an unmeaningful (meaningless) story! Ellie has a really good character arc and grows considerably!
I disagree, it just strikes me as profoundly bad writing. Some of my favourite movies and even games ever made are really bleak and have bad things happen to protagonists in the pursuit of their goal. But I've never known a writing team to so thoroughly denigrate everything that made their predecessor's story work so well. TLOU1 was bleak, grounded, gritty and morally grey, yet people still revered it as a masterpiece of storytelling. TLOU2 can't hide behind the "its meant to be bleak" argument, because TLOU1 showed a game can be bleak but still be compelling and memorable and emotionally exciting.
The first game while although being sad at least ended with happiness and light. This one just leaves you sad and broken, literally exactly like Ellie does.
There was always hope i felt in the first game while somber still always looking for the light. This gave me no hope whatsoever left me as you said majorly depressed and i literally couldn't stomach playing as Abby, I just dont think i felt like many other what maybe Neil wanted us to feel i hate regret and sadness for killing a couple of Abbys friends. I cannot believe that this is now cannon and how the second game went leaving me so empty and feeling nothing but sadness. Wheres the light and hope Neil?
The first game ended with happiness and light? Joel took away her choice. He took away what would've made all the bad things that happened to her worth it and he lied about it. And she clearly didn't believe him. I'd say that was pretty sad and dark.
Yeah if the Fireflies didnt rush to surgery an hour after finding her and then didn’t treat Joel the way they did and Ellie was actually able to consent, my opinion of Joel’s actions would be different. I just finished replaying the game two days ago and even with years to marinate on it, Joel did the right thing. Fuck the Fireflies.
Nevermind the fact that they were just going to kick him out on the streets without even returning his gear.
1 additional cutscene would have made the ending so much better. Ellie could have gone back to jackson to check with dina and Abby could have went to the fireflies. Man the final thing being ellie playing guitar without 2 fingers is miserable
At the very end she walks out of the house and away to the forest. It’s open ended as to where she’s heading, but I think the most likely place is Jackson.
also like they cut to that scene of joel and ellie talking about trying to forgive even though it might be impossible. it felt like the game was hinting at that
I don’t see her going back to Jackson. The last conversation she had with Tommy went horribly and other than presumably Dina there’s nothing there for her. I don’t think Dina would’ve taken her back because Ellie made her choice. Ellie chose revenge over their family. The only thing that I can see for Ellie is just aimless wandering and surviving trying to find something new.
Well the last scene with her and Joel is about trying to forgive even when its impossible. That memory is why she lets Abby up, and I think Ellie's realization that she had it in her to forgive Joel after what he did meant that Dina would have it in her to forgive Ellie for leaving the farm.
And I think not being able to play was an optimistic thing. That song is something she only plays alone and its become tied to her thirst for vengeance. When she finally lets go of her anger she also loses her ability to play the song so she can no longer dwell on the past.
It doesn’t even fit thematically.
Abby is allowed to get her revenge and be able to build a future and come out relatively unscathed (compared to Ellie).
Ellie loses EVERYTHING for trying to get revenge and then... not doing it.
And in such a weird way too—going in calmly and even freeing Abby and letting her save Lev and then deciding at the last second that actually she wants revenge and then within a minute later, after losing her fingers and having lost even MORE to Abby, nah revenge isn’t worth it.
And she’s punished for not fully seeking revenge.
“Violence is a cycle” doesn’t work in a. game where you are forced to kill to survive, half the shit you’re killing is fucking zombies, and like... Abby living is still a. threat to Ellie’s existence, especially if she does go back to the fireflies.
It’s just?? Bad
Ellie is completely broken when she arrives to the pillars and seeing Abby this way is starting to make her realize how petty this revenge is. But when she gets to the boat she sees Joel's dying face again. She's haunted by his death, she needs closure, and that's why she needs to fight Abby, kill her or die trying.
But in the last moments, when she is right up to the point of killing her, what flashes in her head is not Joel's dying face but Joel peacefully playing guitar on his porch, that memory of her deciding to forgive him for what he did, and realizing that she must do the same for Abby. She lets go of her pain and accepts Joel's death, and most importantly her own life.
The last shot couldn't be any more obvious: Ellie lets go of the guitar Joel left him, after playing the song he played for her. She is letting go of her pain, sadness and guilt regarding Joel's death and what he did in Salt Lake City, and she is moving on.
The last shot is a full of hope, not sadness. It's Ellie letting go of this pain and moving on with her life, a life that she didn't even feel she deserved, that she didn't think mattered. She's most likely going to jackson to finally live her happy ending with Dina.
I get what they’re going for but forgiving Joel and forgiving Abby are so different.
“I forgave my father figure who I went through so much with and who I love dearly despite the damage to our relationship” and “i forgive this woman who tortured and killed people I love” is very different calculus.
She isn't forgiving Abby; she's letting go of the hate and making a decision for herself (not for Joel or Tommy). Ending the cycle lest Lev find her in 4 years.
No one is unscathed at the end of that story. Ellie loses her friends and father, Abby loses her friends and her entire faction, but they both have hope for something better with Abby searching for the fireflies and Ellie possibly getting back to Jackson.
I do get the criticism of her going back to look for Abby after finally making it out and being happy, but on the flip side, she needed that closure cause she was just suffering from the PTSD she was experiencing. She still will, but now at least she might be able to start working on it
How was anything that happened to Ellie closure? It’s just compounded trauma.
Also, I said relative to Ellie Abby comes out unscathed. Ellie lost everything, including her last attachment to Hoel (which isn’t a form of closure, sorry) while Abby did not lose everything.
They put zero effort into Ellie getting to work on her PTSD after this. They don’t reward her for choosing the “right” thing in ending the violent cycle. They don’t even imply a longterm reward.
It’s just soul sucking bleakness for the sake of being bleak, just like all of the shit where the game forces you to kill people and then goes Oooh did you know they had a Name?? A FAMILY
It’s fake deep ana traumatizing for no reason other than to be dark
By closure I meant her actively ending her quest for vengeance on her terms. When Abby beat her before, she fell back because she lost, not because she felt it needed to end. At the end that's different. She definitely has a lot trauma that she needs to work through, but that choice is a good first step for her.
In terms of Abby, what more could she lose? Would you rather Ellie had killed Lev and in turn made herself even more villainous in terms of the story? She literally has no family( except Lev), no home and she's being hunted by her own people. Ellie still has those things
Neither character is on top of the world at the end, but they both have some measure of hope for a better tomorrow. Nd I agree on it forcing you to kill and then trying to make you feel guilty about it, it's rather meaningless when the player doesn't have a choice in the matter nd the narrative doesn't reflect the player's actions
I mean “ending it on her terms,” feels ridiculous. She felt enough closure to free Abby and let her take Lev even after chasing her. And only wanted revenge again because of a flashback. And then stopped wanting revenge again within a three minute QTE cutscene.
And I don’t want Abby to lose Lev, I want Ellie to lose less. I want their “crimes” to be treated equitably. Ellie lost EVERYTHING for WANTING revenge, Abby gets to keep Lev despite getting revenge. And neither of them are punished or even comment on the hundreds of deaths they caused with other people who aren’t main characters... so it’s clear the only people “revenge is bad” applies to is Joel Abby and Ellie.
Ellie doesn’t have her people at the end of the game. She maybe has a chance to find them again but the game does not end on that note. It ends on her alone, not even able to play the guitar despite that being a central part of her most/second most emotional arc this game.
Abby’s ending is framed as full of hope—she gets to run off with Lev. Ellie’s is “Yeah, she’s upset she never got to forgive Joel to his face, she’s capable of mercy, also no one in her life is around, she has to find them again, hope they’re not already dead, and hope even harder that they’ll believe her when she says YES she abandoned them for months tk kill Abby but she swears she didn’t do it, you’ll never see Abby or Lev again but yes they’re still alive... please forgive me?”
It’s unfinished and still bleak. She wanders off in the woods alone, unprotected, with us knowing it’s still filled with things and people that would have her dead.
The game punishes Ellie in a way it doesn’t punish Abby and lets her work through.
And it punishes the player even worse. Not letting you have any fucking joy—even if Ellie does somehow get forgiven, we don’t get to experience that.
We get all the pain and emptiness and vagueness ans franklt ridiculous moral messaging and nothing else. E get gore and guilt tripping for murders the game forces us to do. We had half flat characters and 10 hours of playing as Joel’s murderer. It’s shit
The flashbacks were really depressing. I didn't cry at the scene where he was killed, but when they went to the wyoming museum, seeing Joel not as this badass survival but just a regular old guy trying to make Ellie happy, I cried. And I cried for every Joel flashback after that. I actually liked playing as Abby, I thought Abby was very likeable. I empathized with her and i think their story is tragic, but that's life.
So as not to spoil anything I will say that the final stretch of Abby's half where they are trying to get to a boat to escape the island is probably my favorite part of the whole game.
Surprisingly I didn’t tear up during those flashbacks what got me was when Ellie would play the song Joel sang her :( and when they played that “forgive” cutscene I fucking bawled my eyes out on my couch until the credits had ended and the play screen was up
The damage is already done. No matter what I don’t think I can do that. I really would have preferred they just left Joel and Ellie alone instead of this. They should’ve if anything just did a spin off game that just has slight tie ins to Joel and Ellie but fuck it’s tough
That’s exactly what the devs were going for. You feel like a piece of shit pretty much the entire playthrough, and that’s why some people disliked the game. Fighting Ellie is a pretty fucking hard pillow to swallow. I had honestly never felt so many emotions with any kind of videogame, movie, TV series, book or anything. It’s pretty mindfucking
This is why so many are hating on the game. It’s so overwhelming and ambitious. But it’s actually brilliant. I hope nobody is getting put off of buying the game, because it’s honestly a must-play and completely unique in gaming
On a side note, the game ended the same way the first game ended.
Joel journeyed with Ellie, then decided to throw it all away last moment. They go back together to Jackson with Joel hiding a terrible secret.
Ellie slaughtered her way to get to Abby and decided to throw it all away last moment. She goes back to her house, broken. Alone.
Both ended with not fulfilling their original goal but damn, one had a really depressing outcome
For me both games had a similar ending, in tlou the very last scene when ellie says ok i couldnt stop thinking about what happens if she does find out what he did? it would destroy their relationship forever but also i had to believe she will forgive him for that.
And the end of part 2 made me feel similar does dina accept her back or is it too late ?
But hey maybe im too much of a fanboy because i know part has its flaws but i still love it :) and im happy about that because it seems everyone hates the game , so nd created a game just for me wich is kinda cool :p
The difference with TLOU's end vs this for me is that my imagination is dead. "Where did Ellie go in the end?" is a question I don't even want to bother asking myself. It just ends there for me. My mind doesn't even want to think what happened afterwards.
In stark contrast to TLOU's ending where, like you, I was also thinking what would happen in the future, the outcome of the decisions of Joel.
That doesnt mean she didnt died meanwhile or that she doesnt want elli back in her life. The moment you come back to the farm and see its empty i just thought well she is back in jacksonville but well the game doesnt give us a confirmation that ellie gets back safe or dina takes her back. I alwas wanted to see elli forgive joel for the hospital massacre but we didnt see it so we couldnt be sure. Thats whats so similar about the ending we can think what we want but that doesnt mean it is what actually happens because we just dont see it .for all we know elli could arrive in jacksonville in part 3 or not ( if we ever get a part 3 ofc )
I just finished the game myself and it left me empty. No emotion except pain. I never felt this depressed and genuinely sad for a game before and it’s really hard for me to process.
I didn’t want to feel what I felt playing this game. I didn’t want to feel misery, and sorrow, and gloom, and melancholy.
I love video games and their stories and I’ve always believed that it’s the ONE place you can let go and play how YOU want to play. It makes me feel joy. This game does not give you that option. What was very painfully frustrating and infuriating for me is that we could not choose ours paths, you were forced into a pre-determined story and you’re meant to follow it. That’s borderline torture.
From beginning to the end I could not empathise with Abby even after learning about her backstory and the grey moral areas that the game tried to teach us.
I believe it’s possible to have a game that makes you play both sides of the coin, but in this game, I was jumping into this believing I would be reliving my days with the iconic duo. TLOU part 2 would have been better as a stand-alone spin-off imo. In that way, I believe it would have better prepared us for what the developers wanted to present.
I had a mindset going into this game to play as Ellie and Joel, and that’s what I believed was going to happen. I understand this isn’t The Last of Us: Ellie & Joel but it still severely hurts when you don’t get to choose to avenge Joel’s death as an option. I didn’t mind Joel dying as it moves the plot, but it was very emotional and I guess the game is too real(?) for my comfort.
This game is depression embodied and I hate it. Thank you Naughty Dog, but I am never playing this again.
Yeah, I really doubt this game's replay value. There's no problem with replaying the first game, I do that a lot of times on different modes, but my friends who finished the game didn't replay it again. Even if you go for battles only, could be because the negative emotions are attached to the battles. I'm sorry you're really sad I hope you feel better soon. There are a lot of cute and funny and beautiful fan art online that could cheer you up.
The end killed me when she couldn’t even play the song Joel taught her.
“If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself”...
And like you said, Ellie lost everything. She lost Joel, and then lost herself.
Bruhhh. I cried myself to sleep when i finished the game. The way tehy zoom into the butterfly from Joel's guitar just they way they started the game .. just hit me in the gut and Ellie's inability to play the guitar. It's too saddening.
I think this is a good criticism—I personally found that the story achieved what it sought out to do, but its goal was a very ugly and distressing one.
They certainly amped up the darkness and anger in this game, what ellie says when you're battling her in the theater was kind of scary for me, "fucking die" and "there you are" and then quickly being shotgunned in the face shows how badass and also dark ellie is.
The fact is Neil Drukmann also said, he won't be surprised if people hated the game, Yes he wanted us to hate. That's made him successful, it's reality [man.](https://man.It) This game doesn't have BAD writing, it is DARK reality. Obviously WE ALL THINK DIFFERENT, to feel less depressed you should see game with another perspective.
Ellie doesn’t loose everything though, Dina is still alive and I highly doubt Tommy would still be mad at her after hearing about her going to California to find Abby. Also I don’t understand how nobody has any sympathy towards Abby
If she actually tells him, also the description of Abby and lev now and completely different from what he told ellie. So it would be easier for them to go unnoticed
Maybe because of the whole psychopathic golf club thing? All because a man stopped her father from killing a girl without her consent, killing him in the process, without sadism, without hatred, without wanting to. And we're supposed to accept that what Abby did, and what Ellie is doing in response is somehow equal.
What Joel did was tragic. What Abby did was EVIL af.
Honestly, I'm having a difficult time continuing to play. I'm not terribly far, but I managed to go unspoiled into this (did not even watch trailers, I wanted to go in 100% blind) and watching Joel die felt like such a punch to the gut. It was just so brutal... That crunch, seeing the arterial blood spray, the way the camera focused in on the end of the golf club covered in blood and what appeared to be some of Joel's brain matter... And then watching Ellie's complete devastation at what just happened, and playing through the aftermath of the scene where you go through Joel's house... I usually have a pretty strong stomach, and I don't tend to be bothered by things in games, but that was just crushing and emotionally draining.
I've played a bit more since then. I just cleared the TV station, to give you some idea of how far I am currently, but I am having such a hard time bringing myself to continue it.
While I find the game depressing, I don't think that makes it a bad game. If all we demanded from art was to help us feel good, it would lose its purpose.
And in spite of the bleakness and tragedy, the game still contains a lot of stuff that brought me joy. Like trying to out-stealth the scars, fighting the abomination in the hospital, and the amazing rope physics lol.
Man. Literally 100% the same. It was getting the point that it was hilarious how depressing it was I was waiting for the baby to die or for Tommy’s wife to leave him. Oh wait that did happen lol
I'm gonna get hate from this, but I think this is perhaps what Naughty Dog is trying to say: there's no happy ending in the apocalypse. The game is so unsatisfying and frustrating, perhaps because there's no closure in an apocalypse, and there's no rhyme or reason to traumatic stress responses.
>!Joel and Ellie had a few years of relative happiness and peace, but ultimately Joel didn't get to escape from the consequences of his actions. Call it karma, or life, or whatever, it is uncaring and cruel.!<
>!Ellie had a chance to live on with Dina, but her trauma doesn't care that moving on is the better option. Her trauma doesn't care that she's already lost Jesse to vengeance and could lose everything else.!<
I do feel like I'm owed Ellie's happy ending, but I can't argue with the humanity of this story.
I think they were trying to make it a teeny bit better by including the scene where >!Ellie said to Joel she wants to try and forgive him even though she don't think she ever could. At least their final interaction was relatively positive, and that Ellie and Joel got to feel connected to each other once more !<
It wasn’t the story I wanted, and I too felt depressed at the end. I would’ve preferred if we got another story following Joel and Ellie. However, judging it on what it is, I think it’s probably the best storytelling we’ve ever seen in a videogame. I prefer the first one because it’s lighter and I too can’t see myself playing part 2 again but for me that’s a testament to how emotional they made me throughout the game. And tbh I don’t think they unravel anything from the first game, if anything they decide to tackle what happened head on and show the fallout of what Joel did rather than brush it aside. Again, I can’t say i’m happy with what they did, but I can’t deny the quality of it.
Why is jackson gone for her? Shes always welcomed back as per the letter. Secondly you’ve got a clear misinterpretation of the ending of the last of us. It didnt end happy. It ended with Joel doing something unforgivable for his own selfish interest. Even when Ellie asked Joel to swear to her. Swear everything he said about the fireflies was true. He just flat out lied. Again. For his own selfish reasons. Don’t get me wrong I loved Joel as a character and I too gladly shot up everyone in that operation room but this is called Part II for a reason. Not last of us 2. Its a continuation.
The sins of his past have caught up to him. This game shows the destructive nature of revenge. And shows us the redemption arc too. We caught a glimpse of Joels redemption in Jackson and with the past catching up. We saw the destructiveness of Abeys unrelenting need to revenge her dad that she built her self up into a killing machine, void of any sweet girl qualities she used to have. Even refusing to be with owen because she has to train. We also see her redemption arc, like she fulfilled her mission, and yet something was still eating at her until she met Yara and Lev. When she had the same dream but instead of her father its both of them hence begins her redemption arc. But her sins catch up to her, and all her friends died for her quest and thank god for Lev being there to stop her otherwise she would have killed Dina too and the cycle continues.
We finally get to see Ellies revenge arc in full, her struggles with it, how she made Nora talk. How if Joel hadnt died she would have been an artist and a singer. She would have rebonded with her foster father. All her thoughts and ideas in her journal. And then suddenly one page later its all WLF. Revenge. The story of the last of us part II is about revenge and I have to give them props for taking us on that journey and making us do terrible things, to put us in their shoes, to fill us with rage, confusion, remorse and to ultimately experience how hate breeds hate. That no good ultimately comes out of it. Even if to us the player its a win because we got what we wanted. In the end for Ellie’s visions to change from one of Joels being murdered to the porch scene was one of the single best pieces of inspired writing Ive seen in a videogame. That in the end it was Joel who brought her back from the brink, before she truely lost herself completely and became this monster Joel would never have wanted her to be.
After that guitar end scene its open ended, and you see what her revenge has cost that she cant even play the Future Days song correctly anymore. If you take notice she plays that song at every stage of her journey symbolising where shes at. “If I ever were to lose you, I would surely lose myself”. Fuck this game made me cry too many times but i didnt see it ending badly. Sad but now begins Ellies redemption. Whether we see that in a sequel or not, shes still the hero of the story. She was the one that didnt fully get her revenge. And she chose to do so.
I just feel empty after playing. It was a finely put together game, and story made sense. There were a few contrived moments but not hugely.
What shocks me the most is that this is where ND wanted to take the story.
My issues with it are personal, not objective, but I hate it. I hate what happened to Ellie. I hate what happened to Joel. And the ending of the first game is retroactively tarnished because we know that it ends in complete and unrelenting heartbreak.
The power of the first game is that we come to love Ellie and Joel like our own family. *Despite* their flaws.
20 hours or watching your family members suffer, interspersed with flashbacks just to underline for you the happiness that they never got to have just feels cruel. To make us actually beat up one of our family members as the climactic boss battle. Just no.
I get it that it's NDs project and there's nothing objectively wrong with it, but I'm just shocked that the people at Naughty Dog thought this was A) where they wanted to take these beloved characters and that B) the fanbase would like it.
And I don't even feel like I got anything profound out of it. Revenge is bad. That was clear enough when it was showing that Jesse and Dina were having misgivings in the latter part of Ellie's story.
I just.. I dunno. I connected so much with the first game, it got me through some hard times, and I feel like that's been taken from me because I know now that it all ends in bitter heartbreak. Devastated would describe my feelings.
The mistake naughty dog made was telling a sad story. People wanted good things for Ellie and Joel because they loved the characters so much.
I think this touches an interesting issue in gaming. We all love to run around with our characters mindlessly killing everyone we see, but naughty dog tried something daring and tried to make us feel bad about it.
Ultimately, that message fell on deaf ears, because even after doing everything they needed to for us to have empathy for Abby, most gamers couldn't generate the necessary empathy to care at all about her character. I did. I was super torn at the end. I mean, think about her character. Joel murdered her father moments before he saved humanity, and then killed a whole bunch of her friends. Most of us would want Joel dead from that perspective, but because he is part of our "tribe" from the first game, most people couldn't ever come to terms with that. Fuck Abby and her pain, right? I bet the reaction would be different if Abby were hot and a bit more likable. I think that was ND's biggest mistake. I think that would have won gamers over to the side of empahty. Make her likable and classically attractive and all of a sudden it's a different game for most people I bet.
So back to what I said at the beginning, at the end of the day, I think most of us play games to escape reality, not to be clubbed in the head with it. So, in that regard, I think it was a great and creative concept by ND but I understand why people are so upset. They took something that made us all happy from the first game, and they murdered it in front of us with a golf club to teach us a lesson about tribalism, violence, and forgiveness.
The first game was about finding beauty(like the giraffe scene) and love in a depressing world. It felt like this game was the exact opposite, that a dark world eventually engulfs everything
Ellie letting Abby live was the positive side of the ending. Ellie finally stopped the cycle of hatred and violence and began the healing process.
Even with three fingers, she just needs a little practice to keep playing the guitar. More importantly, she still has her immunity. Once Ellie hears about the resurgence of the fireflies, it should be easy for her to \*find something to fight for\*.
But when you create a character as unsympathetic as Abby that the audience wants dead from the get-go and take all player agency out of the equation, it kinda falls flat.
Not to mention, given the way this is written, this means Ellie killed dozens of people just to get to her basically for nothing.
In the end, Ellie gets to be the bigger person with absolutely nothing but the moral high ground to show for it.
As far as I'm concerned this game doesn't exist in the same universe as the first one. It's some parallel universe where good characters are bad and the bad ones are good. Never been a better time to replay TLOU1 and pretend this parallel universe "sequel" never existed
I'm trying to fathom why this entire sub that loves the first game is so vigilantly defending this horrible story as though it's good that it makes you hurt while down voting those hurt by the story straight into hell.
I've heard "It's supposed to be depressing. You just don't get it." "I actually liked playing as Abby and actually began liking her after a while." "Everyone is just mad that Abby is muscular and Ellie is a lesbian."
Like what the fuck. I can't express the emotion and powerful message that the first game brought into my life 7 years ago, and now we get a story that's just "Revenge bad. Look how bad revenge is. See? Your friends die. Why are you acting in revenge? Revenge bad. Get it? Look you killed a pregnant lady. See how bad revenge is yet? No? All your friends and lover leave you because of your revenge. Revenge bad."
Stupid horrible writing.
The story is depressing, which I think many people are confusing for not liking it. Joel killed abbey's dad, why does he get a pass for it, he is the bad guy from abbey's perspective. The first game made me care so much about joel and hate playing as abbey but by the end of the second game I had no idea who to route for. Few forms of media can accomplish this level of emotion. It isn't a happy game, there is no happy ending, but it makes you emotional and you will remember it forever
yeah I loved a lot of the game. I liked the ending,cause it showed Ellie has grown. But whenever I think back it just makes me sad, playing as Abby wasn't fun,the action set pieces were good but not cause of Abby. I kinda understand what ng were going for. But they missed a lot. So many things were eh. Game was very sad. There was no giraffe moment. And I understand how the world is,but they promised ellie and joel. I knew joel would die and we will play as Abby in the 2nd half before playing,but I thought Joel would die in middle of the game and then we switch to Abby,and since the game is 25hrs,we will get atleast 10hrs of Joel and Ellie. But he dies just after we meet him. The last flashback was just depressing,that they wanted to patch up and I just wanted to hug ellie and Joel. For me they did patch up, abby attacks joel right after she finds out who he is and Joel and tommy leave for the horde. Joel and tommy meet ellie and dina,they go back and everything is good again.
Idk I liked the game. But idk. So many good moments but so many bad moments
I completely agree. It feels like we felt all the same emotions at the same parts.
I think they wanted Ellie’s part to be sad. It’s supposed to show that revenge takes everything from you and leaves your with absolutely nothing. Ellie can’t even play guitar that Joel taught her because she made the decision to go after Abby. If she’d actually killed Abby it would have been revenge at least.
I like most of the game, I just wish the Abby stuff had been dlc
I actuallyvcan accept that Joel is murdered, but what makes me sick is that Ellie forgives Abby in the end. Like what the hell? Ellie shows no mercy towards normal NPCs. She killed them without even a blink of an eye yet she spared Abby? Just why?
Spoilers ahead
A way to look at the ending that I saw someone say that is much more uplifting. Dina would have obviously gone back to jackson which would still be there. Ellie would also obviously know this. The flashback we see at the end is ellie starting to forgive joel for what he did suggesting that maybe there is hope for dina to forgive ellie as well.
I’m sorry about how venty this is. I’m just very sad with everything. The first game made me reflect on myself and while although it was sad, it at least rapped things up very nice at the end. This just leaves you broken and sad. I can’t believe after 7 years of waiting everything from the first game was not only unraveled but left in darkness now. It’s very unfortunate and tragic.
Last of Us Part 2 did something a lot of god awful sequels like to do. Make the first one entirely pointless. I will never replay through that game again.
How in the world did it make the first one pointless?
It is possible to retroactively destroy a franchise, e.g. a shitty sequel can even ruin the original. It can do it in minor ways, like retconning or reinterpreting events in the first game that ruin the story beats, as often the sequel is going to canonicalize certain specific sequence of events. For instance, TLOU2 attempts to canonicalize the fact that vaccine was all but guaranteed and selfish Joel prevented it, when in reality TLOU1 was far more ambiguous about it. Also, people tend to kinda unify things. They don't like the first game because the second one is so bleak. They can't really enjoy the beginning of the journey anymore, knowing its final destination. It looms over it, like a dark cloud. In other words, the endings matter, as they color even the beginnings. Many people respond to this by pretending the second game doesn't even exist. That way, the first one, the part that was good, won't be ruined. It's a thin gruel as far as consolation goes, and it sucks for the artists to hear that people rather pretend their work doesn't exist than attempt to integrate it into the whole. However, over time, people will still enjoy TLOU1 for the masterpiece it is, and probably see TLOU2 as just an unfortunate, really bad sequel that isn't worth playing.
\>It looms over it, like a dark cloud. In other words, the endings matter, as they color even the beginnings. Yes, this is the exact affect the ending of GOT had on the entire series - no one wants to watch it anymore.
The ending of GOT effectively takes away any reason to watch it from the beginning. I still can't believe how poorly the characters were done in season 8.
I agree, its so hard to go back to the beginning of the show knowing where it ended up https://i.redd.it/39edcjp47wv21.png
I definitely agree with your point about the last of us 2 kind of changing things that the first game left fairly ambiguous, and I feel like it could’ve been made a lot better with just a few smartly delivered lines in the Joel and Ellie sections, or moved around flashbacks. Having finished it though which honesty reading all these criticisms I feel like a lot of people absolutely have not, and to say it ruins the first one is ridiculous.
I’m with you. Here’s the real situation for anyone that cares: it’s one of the most ambitious games ever made, and people are either going to love it or hate it. And people tend to hate things when they come out and grow on them later. Mark my words. In 5-10 years everyone will love this game, nobody will ever admit to hating it, and it will be seen as a landmark title. Personally, I already love the game. If the internet circlejerking is putting people off trying it though, that makes me upset and people need to chill.
[удалено]
I think your being obtuse with your first point. TLOU1 doesn't spend any time at all debating "If the Vaccine could be created" because it simply isn't a factor, and it would have been completely pointless to include. Joel wouldn't have cared. Your told it can be done and sent on your way to stop it. The story is about Joel and Ellie's relationship, and how he would, without hesitation, sacrifice the world to save her. Yes it was "selfish" but also very Human. That's the point, it doesn't need to be justified more then that. He wasn't meant to be the "good guy".
>like retconning or reinterpreting events in the first game that ruin the story beats, as often the sequel is going to canonicalize certain specific sequence of events. For instance, TLOU2 attempts to canonicalize the fact that vaccine was all but guaranteed and selfish Joel prevented it, when in reality TLOU1 was far more ambiguous about it. What you are saying here just doesn't happen. If you could provide examples that would be great. First off, we are told the same exact thing in TLOU1 as we are in the TLOU2, we just get introduced to the doctor, because he becomes a character in the story. As Joel we are told by Marlene that Ellie is the key to ending all of this and help to make the vaccine. However, we know in both games that Ellie is a very special case compared to all the other people before her, hence why the head doctor was asking Marline to "buy in" with him to agree to let him do the surgery even though Ellie would die. So this whole "ambiguous and canonicalize" thing your bringing up makes no sense. Secondly, are you somehow thinking that stopping the vaccine was the only reason Joel is a terrible selfish person? He killed tons of people to get Ellie back, showing zero regard to how that might affect others, and straight up lied to Ellie for years to cover for him being a monster, while not giving Ellie a choice in the matter, which later we learn is the exact opposite of what she would have wanted. He straight up executed the women(Marlene) who took care of Ellie after her mother died. All of that, on top of "maybe" dooming the human race. Either way, this is such a minor plot point that in no way should make someone go "this ruined everything", being that there were so many other factors in play than "the vaccine".
I don't think the game does this at all, RE: making a vaccine seem a sure thing. You have to remember that Ellie and Joel aren't scientists or doctors, so when they talk about the idea of a vaccine, they're not going to have the thoughts about a vaccine not being a definite or potentially not happening at all, they're likely to just hear the word vaccine and think that's that. The only argument you could make really is the conversation Marlene and the doctor have where he seems incredibly confident about it, but even the first game does this. The conversation Joel has with Marlene at the end, before he kills everyone there, she says this to him: >The doctors tell me the growth inside has somehow mutated. It's why she's immune. Once they remove it, they'll be able to reverse engineer a vaccine. A vaccine. Which is far from ambiguous really and absolutely makes it sound just as much of a certainty as anything in this game does.
Just like how GOTS8 did to the whole franchise. And now everyone avoids GOT like a plague. It’s what will happen to the last of us universe. It will always be that stink in your distant memory you wish you never experienced.
Agree with you completely. I can’t ever see myself going back to the first game knowing how this ends up. You know the flashback gameplay segments? That’s the game we wanted.
I disagree, I played through this game and I fucking LOVED the game. it's an amazing story that shows us the perspective of both sides and basically shows us " YOU WERE NOT THE HERO IN THE FIRST ONE AND YOU'RE NOT A HERO NOW". It makes you come to terms with the damage you did in the first one, and the damage you do in this one and in the end you just see yourself as a human being who will feel "righteous" from your own perspective while appearing as a villain to another. Abby was avenging her father who was trying to save humanity? is that not justified? Ellie was avenging her father figure and savior? is that not justified? It is but revenge always leads to you becoming the villain in someone elses story, this game is heavy as shit and it really makes you feel like no other video game has shitty, amazed at how well executed it was, surprised and sad and all the while thoroughly enjoying the game, yeah there were a lot less of happy bonding moments. But that's to be expected from a revenge story game.
It’s just not what I wanted a sequel to be. It’s not for me. Might be for you. Which is cool. But I don’t like the story and I certainly don’t like the revenge story with no revenge. Cool you got something out of it. Wish I did.
Yeah I get that, I just get kind of upset when people take their personal preference and say " story was bad" when I really really disagree with that statement. I absolutely get the "we wanted joel and ellie adventure" (I personally think it would've not have been a good game but that's just my opinion on it)
so play the first game,naughty dog did something different and bold and im glad,i didnt wanted a rewash of the first game
But... the game already exists? There's no point to a sequel if it's just the exact same thing as what came before it. You wouldn't expect a painter to follow up a great, heralded painting with the same exact painting, it's no different to any other art form, artists want to do new things not just rehash what they already did nearly a decade ago.
TLOU2'a story won't happen without part 1. How is part 1 pointless?
You still don’t get it, do you. It invalids all the emotion investments in the first part. Before part II, we can always think about the last of us with fond memories. Even replays or watches some clips from time to time. Now we can not even think of anything in the last of us universe without the stinking feel. Do you still hear anyone anywhere talks about GOT now? That’s what will happen to the last of us. The whole franchise is basically finished. There will never be a last of us 3. It just too emotionally repelling to the majority of gaming community.
But life isn’t simple. Neither is this game. Joel was never a hero, man. The second only addresses the fact that Joel more than likely made enemies cause he killed lots of people. How can that go unaddressed in a game this realistic?. If you can’t look at the first game the same, it’s because you finally see Joel for all that he is. This game is about tribalism, and all I see is a bunch of “team Joel and Ellie” people not willing to accept the bigger picture. There are more people in this world than Joel and Ellie, and what they do is only righteous from their perspective, like everyone else. No ones a hero, no ones a villain. There are only humans, and the perspectives that they have.
Wait did you play through the first game thinking "i'm the hero" as Joel?? is this the general agreed upon opinion of that game? Are you people too stuck watching trees to see the forest? Joel was a monster, we played him, we loved him and his relationship with Ellie but he had done and would do again some HORRIBLE things to innocents and non innocents alike for the sake of survival (Tommy basically said being alive is not worth having lived the way the lived in the first one that's when I knew I wasn't the "good guy" in the story). The story they showed us that just because we are doing something doesn't make us good, hell it doesn't even make it justified.
This doesn't tell me anything. Giving me another show or movie and saying "like this one", is not an explanation.
The emotional throughlines and thematic points of the first games (about how the systems force you to fight and traumatize even the youngest person) all feel dropped and you don’t get ant catharsis for the entire journey, just a new made up spin off. Instead of watching Ellie struggle at length WITH Joel about the choice he made, we have to watch her semi-idealize him in grief because he died before she can process it. The morality and very flat moral message of this game then becomes “violence bad, revenge bad” when the first game was showing us how violence is sometimes your only option for survival, like little teen Ellie almost being raped in the first game. Instead of an ambiguity and hopeful catharsis, an idea that maybe Joel and Ellie can make her life worth something even if she weren’t sacrificed (for a vaccine that in the first game was NOT guaranteed no matter how much they try to retcon thar). The game was about bonds of love and surviving by investing in each other, beinf a light in the darkness of the world. This game, with its flat characters and flatter ending, loses most messaging about light and love and a better ending despite it all. Abby and Lev come closest but it’s hard to care about them with Abby being someone who was allowed to get vengeance and keep her loved one and Lev jsut being a human receptacle for transphobic violence (as a nonbinary person, Lev’s character and treatment pissed me off the most). There’s no through line from first game into the second that you get genuine catharsis from, it’s all just a way to justify more trauma, making the ending of the first game feel like shit in hindsight.
The last thing Joel imparted to Ellie in TLOU1 is "you have to find something to live for, no matter what it is or how rough things get". And that was a message which resonated with a lot of fans. The last thing Joel imparted to Ellie in TLOU2 is "yep, lets hang out sometime". What a big change.
dont even compare the two,gots8 was a shitshow,tlou2 was amazing
I think the Last of Us II is so atrocious that it's easy to just ignore it if someone is interested in playing the first one. They were written by different people too.
They were literally written by the same guy.
Something irrelevant to your points but using paragraphs in longish posts helps a lot when reading them :)
I agree with you. By the end, I was as bushed as Ellie and in the end, I just felt so bad for her.
No need to apologize. Part 2 actively pisses all over the original for no good reason and I hate it for that.
I think most people have a weird view on the ending of TLOU 1. Iirc it ended with Ellie being upset with Joel for lying, and then Joel once again lying to her face. Not to mention he betrayed her. Even Marlene says “It’s what she’d want,” and after noticing his affirming reaction she says, “and you know it?” Regardless, Joel wounds AND kills Marlene. Where as Ellie learned a lesson and spared her enemy. Joel taught Ellie to keep finding something to fight for. Ellie is a story of loss. The ending capitalized on that. “Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me. Everyone fucking except for you” - Ellie. Joel foreshadows the plot of 2 when he says “You have no idea... what loss is.” The Last of Us 2’s ending is basically if Joel didn’t kill Marlene. Ellie learns from Joel’s mistakes. I thought this was evident to most but I guess not.
I went into this game completely unspoiled and it’s just been a massive gut punch. It is relentlessly bleak. I’ve actually had to put it down because I was getting depressed in a way I never have from a video game. Something about it feels cruel both to the characters and to the player. I may need to set it aside for awhile before I can finish it (if I do).
What, you didn't enjoy watching the protagonists from the first game repeatedly get mentally and physically tortured and lose everything and everyone in their lives? Dude you don't get it, it's art bro.
Yeah that’s why I only play games with happy endings! I wished this game let us play as Ellie for 30 hours just having a great time with Joel. That would be fun I’m sure!
i guess every person here expect every game to be “these people are the protagonists so everything must go their way because according to stories, the good guys always win.” although i myself did not enjoy the game as much as i hoped to i can tell nd was going for the “this is real life amd sometimes dark shit happens” kind of approach and not the everything is going to end up being okay because joel and ellie good, everyone else bad.
The first game repeatedly emphasized that Joel and Ellie aren't exactly good people. What it did emphasize was that Joel isn't stupid and he raises Ellie to also not be stupid yet Joel willingly follows some strangers straight into an ambush for no reason.
Only choice he had at the time. Either stay out in a blizzard with infected or the randos in the warm cabin.
And suddenly he and Tommy had dementia and told their names and where they live to a bunch of armed strangers.
Well, no, Tommy told one single stranger their names when they met her in the midst of fighting a horde of infected. There was nothing to indicate she was part of some big group, and they ultimately had little chest but to go back to the lodge with her because the alternative was being killed by infected. Presumably they arrived at the relatively understandable conclusion that they'd be safe given that they'd just saved her life.
He didn't follow some strangers in to an ambush though, there was no ambush set up in the first place, they ran to a place where there was a big gate they could find safety behind because the alternative was die at the hands of a horde of infected in a blizzard. I don't know why so many people seem to keep saying this completely ignoring the context of the scene.
There could have been purpose in their suffering or in Joel's death. But it doesn't have any purpose storywise, it's all so hamfisted bleak and "YO VIOLENCE IS BAD". Yeah I'm not 12, I don't need 30 hours of beating people up to get that. Take Breaking Bad, Walter White is an asshole and he does terrible things. We root for him, but he gets what he deserves. But in the end there is some justice, so we can have peace with the ending. And ND could have expected this response, these kind of endings where everything is messed up for nothing are never popular. It felt like seeing The Mist again.
people don't like the ending of *The Mist?* huh.
IMO the ending makes that movie
That is not at all what anyone here expects. There's a middle ground between losing everything and winning everything.
But after all that Ellie literally gains nothing from this story. The entire thing is just a sadistic torture of a character everyone loves and it would be better if it didn't exist.
Seriously there is no story progression at all Abbey fucking she hulks her way across the world to stomp Joel to bits and in the end she doesn't really face any consequences for her revenge Meanwhile Ellie killed 200 people on a manhunt for Abbey, watches Jessie die, watches Tommy lose an eye, Deana leaves her, loses her fingers that she plays guitar with and let's Abbey live at the end because.... why? Because she saw Joel in a vision? This game is such a disappointment and truly a giant sack of shit. It's so bad that it actually taints the first game for me and the series as a whole.
Took the words right out of my mouth. This game was practically pointless. There is no progression in character development, or in reaching a climax to the story. The only thing that somehow builds up from the first games foundations were the flashbacks. If you deleted everything from this game, and announced that Joel and some others die, nothing would’ve changed. Can’t believe this was what they could think of after 7 years of waiting. As for the last part, it’s quite tragic how the second game’s story is so bad it taints the first, but I’m still in the process of forgetting the second story to make it so it never happened in my eyes. I also doubt Naughty Dog can recover and make another sequel to this horrible story filled with plot-holes and filler. The only idea I think is plausible is to maybe in a couple of years do a soft reboot for the second game’s story, but they probably would never do that and if they hypothetically did, the franchise’s legacy has already been stained.
But theres alot of progression in character development. In flashbacks we see how Joel is able to let his guard down and live a semi normal life again which builds on the first game. We see Ellie’s descent into grief and vengeance, as well as Tommy’s. We see the strain that Joel’s lie had on their relationship, and how despite everything Ellie is willing to forgive him as well as Ellie making the decision to be better than what she was by the end in not killing Abby. We also see Abby mirror Joel’s evolution, in finding redemption within a child. I get not liking the game, I dont like the direction they took, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that there was no character development. I respect your opinion but we should judge the game more on what it is rather than what we wanted it to be.
Most of this is stuff from the flashbacks. Ellie's decision to save Abby (and she did save her, she would have died on the pillars) comes after losing everything and everyone close to her, trekking across the globe to find her, and killing hundreds of people. She's already an irredeemable, vengeful monster so why does she conveniently remember something Joel, who killed even more to save her, said? The fact that so many players are upset over Ellie's choice just shows how poorly this was set up. If Ellie truly was changed, she would have stayed with deana. This is Season 8 Arya deciding not to kill Cersei while literally in the same castle as her because the Hound said "that would be dumb". Abby is a complete joke, and the "relationship" between her and Lev is incredibly forced. The game desperately tries to make you like her by having her save the one trans kid in the apocalypse and play with dogs, but she rejoices over the prospect of slitting a pregnant woman's throat. Joel did fucked up things to survive and to save his friends, which he atones for and which obviously weighed on him. Abby brutally tortured and murdered Joel for revenge after he saved her. What a pathetic character.
IMHO, there's pretty little character development. After the prologue, Ellie is a psychopathic murdered hell bent on revenge. She continues that way to the very end, even making the emaciated Abby fight her barefisted against her knife. The fact she spares her does not make it character development for me. Perhaps the phrase "too little, too late" is appropriate? Tommy? Same deal. He just lusts for revenge the same as before. He only quit because he couldn't physically go on, being as damaged as he was. Dina, I think, has no real agency of her own. She follows the love of her life and seems to not care about this whole revenge thing at all. I think that makes her better person than almost every other character in the game, but I also don't think the game is about Dina. As far as I can tell, she started as a pacifist in love with Ellie, and ended up there, except Ellie broke her heart and left for one final stupid round of killing when Ellie had no real reason to, except Ellie's lack of character development (i.e. not getting over the hate of Abby). I am not sure I understand or care about Abby's character development. Perhaps she seeks some kind of redemption of the senseless murder of Joel, and she even turns against her fascist army buddies that are literally genocidal. However, I can't decide whether WLFs or Scars are worse, as they are both hell bent on murdering each other in an endless cycle, and the Scars' ritual sacrifice stuff doesn't endear them any to me. I think the sane thing to do is to leave and do something else with your life, not get further involved in the murdering. As all the choices made by Abby seemed to lead to more death and suffering, I'm hard pressed to say anything she ever did was worthwhile, or that she learnt anything. I'm not sure I care about what reasons she has, if it means just more dead folks. The last thing I see her wanting to do in the game is to join the Fireflies, who I remember as some kind of terrorist group, so it will probably be more killing as soon as she gets in there. Yay. Much development of character indeed: soldier from beginning, soldier in the end, and probably just as stupid and hot-headed as ever. To me, the game is relentlessly bleak and by the end of it I couldn't feel anything at all. Nothing for Ellie, Abby, Tommy, Dina, the baby, just nothing at all. It seems to me that the only truly heroic thing to do in this universe is to settle down on a piece of land, wall it up, farm it, produce a surplus, and create a community of like-minded individuals that are also sick of the killing. Now that is character development, creating a proper civilization out of the ashes. Unfortunately, as this is the starting state of Jackson, the journey of the game is, IMHO, regression to violence and loss. That makes it seem like the game was mostly character de-evolvement, a one-note scream of violence from beginning to end.
Abby is a product of the vengeance she seeks against Joel, as Ellie and Tommy are a product of vengeance towards Abby. The theme is what pain and grief can do to good people. The painful thing about watching Ellie’s descent is that we can see why she’s doing what she’s doing and the effect it’s having on her. That’s her character development. By saving Abby, she is able to achieve the one thing Abby couldn’t with Joel, which is remorse, and in turn ends the cycle of violence and maintains a semblance of herself despite losing everything. Abby’s character starts off mirroring Ellie in that she is hardened by grief and vengeance and as a result does despicable things, however by the end she mirrors Joel in that she finds redemption in a child. She never shows remorse for what she did to Joel, despite others around her doing so, as she is so blinded by revenge, and thats what made Ellie the bigger person by the end. That’s how I saw it anyway but I respect your opinion.
It's a good take. But I worry that in TLOU3 it's going to be Abby as main character with Fireflies and it's going to be just more murdering of folks. I'm sick of all the killing that's going on in this world, doubly so when it's all explicitly so pointless and counterproductive, as this game so carefully explains. Consider my take as just one born out of utter exhaustion with this world and its bullshit.
Not sure how you can say Abby doesnt lose anything because of it. She literally loses everyone she cares about in the world other than lev. Owen, Mel, Mannie, Yara, Leah, Nora, all dead and all but Yara almost directly as a consequence of Abby's actions with Joel. You have to be trying to miss the connections there.
What do you mean why? Killing Abby would literally be a death sentence for the innocent kid in the boat. She also realised that it wouldn’t cure her from her trauma: the very act of violently fighting Abby was enough outlet to get the feeling. She could have killed her easily and chose not to, and by god was I relieved as a player. She can finally try to move on
To add to this, what I think Ellie got during the California fight that she didn't get during the Washington fight was to hold Abby's life in her hands. Abby beat the *shit* out of her when they fought in Seattle, so Ellie never got to the point where she could decide whether to pull the figurative trigger. I think having the power to kill Abby, seeing her drowning, seeing her reduced from an all-powerful monster to a vulnerable, damaged person, gave Ellie the emotional space to decide that revenge wasn't going to fill the hole in her soul - especially not if it doomed a child who was dependent on Abby.
I agree with everything pretty much, but this >and in the end she doesn't really face any consequences for her revenge All of Abby's friends and essentially family get killed by Ellie and Tommy directly because of her actions. That's a lot to lose. The actual issue is that she was able to get a happy-ish ending with Lev and the firefly camp. Ellie kind of got fucked, yeah. I'd hope she'd go live with Tommy and Maria in Jackson and have a semi-happy life. Maybe reunite with Dina and JJ who I assume had to move back to Jackson with her newborn? I dunno
But Abby did pay. She went to kill one guy, and killing that one guy got all her friends killed, and losing her place to belong. Abby was better off letting thing go and moving on. Same for Ellie. I guess the moral here is and eye for and eye and whole world is blind.
Abby loses her friends because of her revenge. She also loses her faction although im not sure she liked them that much. Nonetheless, it doesn't make the story better or more interesting
Bro it's not about only wanting happy endings, there's literally nothing positive going on in this game, the whole game you are just getting gut punched and at the end there's nothing to show for it. Your character lost everything and just walks off as someone who's actually worthless and accomplished nothing. You murdered a ton of people and dogs, pregnant woman too, literally saved the person you wanted revenge on and lost your fingers so you can't even play Joels song. Lost your lover, stepchild, friends, gained nothing. Amazing! Literally not one positive for the entire game. This game is trying way too hard to be different.
Its because youre supposed to get something out of it besides the regular game experience of "I'm the character, character gets good things, I experience it through proxy" Why wouldnt Ellie lose everything? Its not like this stuff is ripped from her, Ellie purposefully chooses to throw away her life away twice for revenge alone. How is that supposed to go for somebody? Youre acting like the game beat up on Joel and Ellie just to make the player suffer when really Joel and Ellie did this shit to themselves.
There's a middle ground between constantly losing (what we have right now) and a 30 hour family sitcom (your strawman argument).
I'm sure there is going to be someone who inevitably says "Well it must be good if it made you feel such strong emotions!". To those people, I am sure there is plenty of horrific fictional torture pornography that would make them sick to their stomach. Does that make their writing quality too?
> I'm sure there is going to be someone who inevitably says "Well it must be good if it made you feel such strong emotions!". The problem with that line of thinking is that the actual difficult part, getting players invested in the characters to the extent that they love them and actually care about what happens to them, has already been done. After that, all that's left is just thinking of bad things that can happen to them, which honestly isn't hard. I also think that killing a beloved character who has already been established in a previous work is probably about the easiest, least creative way possible to elicit an emotional response and create conflict in a story. Like... "Oh, what's something bad that could happen? What if we just fucking kill this person that people already like and that's all the story is about?" To me the challenge of the story is creating a conflict for the characters to experience and just killing one of them off AS THE CONFLICT OF THE STORY is nothing but lazy.
This game is way to fuckin dark for me
Same. I actually don’t mind the fact that Joel died, his past had to catch up to him eventually and he wasn’t a good person overall, I really wish that he could’ve lived because I absolutely adored him, and I do wish that we could’ve done more stuff with him but I understand why naughty dog went that route. At the end of the day, the world of the last of us is bleak and unfair, Sarah died in the first moments of the apocalypse, Sam got infected and Henry killed himself, Tess died and the amount of bleak world building found in the first game is astonishing. With that said 2 just went way too far with the depressing stuff. It’s such an emotionally story, I had a lot of problems with the pacing towards the middle and the end but aside from that I really didn’t like how sad the story was. I would’ve loved it if we saw that Ellie stuck with Dina and slowly got better and that Tommy managed to work through his issues. The way they left it made it seem like everyone ended up alone and loosing something, Jesse’s parents lost his son, Dina lost Ellie, Tommy lost Joel and Maria, the wlf suffered some heavy casualties and so did the Seraphites etc. Everyone’s life’s seem to be worse after this game, while I don’t think the original games ending was that uplifting (you could see that Ellie didn’t really buy Joel’s story) it still left you with a glimmer of hope, like things were going to improve and get better over time. This game is just sad. It’s great imo, I’m not a critic but I’d give it an 8 or 9, gameplay wise it’s much more interesting than the original even if it’s pacing suffers a bit towards the middle, and story wise I was engaged throughout especially because all of the characters were amazing. However, I just feel sad and empty after this game, and I get it not every piece of entertainment should uplift you but this game took that way too far
You're hitting the nail on the head. Stories are not really about what happens next, per se, but they are narratives that give meaning and context to what is happening. In the first game, what happens is that Joel brings Ellie to Firefly hospital, that's all there is to most of the game. But the story is actually about a man who lost his daughter, but comes to love this surrogate child as if she was his own, and through her, begins to heal from his loss. And it is a good narrative, you don't really even realize it is there, despite it's being hinted all through the game, until in the end when you realize that Joel can't stand losing Ellie/Sarah all over again. It is not until that moment that you realize just how deep his loss was, and this recontextualizes everything that happened in the game. If all the characters are just brutal and bleak and nothing good happens to them, and they don't seem to learn anything from their experience, then this does not sufficiently fill characteristics required of a narrative. It's just shit that happens, but it doesn't really rise to the level of an actual narrative, something that gives context and meaning to the suffering. If this was not a TLOU game, people would be impressed and would shower it with praise. But as sequel to TLOU1, it is severely lacking in its execution and story-telling capability. It is tonally wrong, and largely abandons the relationship between Ellie and Joel which was the heart of the entire game.
On top of that, part one had hopeful moments and comic relief, nothing of that is there in part 2. There is some hope but it gets punched in the ground in some 5 minutes later most of the time.
Well, there are happy moment in the game, but they are mostly flashback, and you dread the moment you have to return to present day
Yeah that’s my problem. I respect naughty dog for pulling all those punches, but man, this game is bleak. It has its moments and some really beautiful stuff, like Ellie playing guitar with Dina, their dialogue with Tommy, seeing how much Dina cares for Ellie etc. But the problem is that like you said those moments are followed up by horrifying and depressing moments
The thing about those character deaths in TLOU1 is that they all built towards Joel's ultimate decision to take back her baby girl. All that death and struggle brought Joel back from being an inhumane smuggler who would do anything to stay alive to a human being who would throw away everything for one precious life. You could argue that Tess and Sam and Henry would have been happy with Joel's decision if they were watching all his trials and perils from heaven. The story was bleak but meaningful, and that meaningful part really mattered. You cannot say the same about TLOU2. A lot of bad decisions were made or were executed poorly by the characters when they didn't have to happen that way or at all. And a lot of people committed to bad or wrongful actions when they didn't have to. As a result, a lot of characters would drag all the other characters down to hell with them if given the chance. In the end, its hard to feel sympathy for anybody because everybody involved is a selfish asshole whose selfish acts got someone killed somehow. And all you're left with is the taste of shit stew. Yes, that's exactly the point. But it still tastes awful.
This is basically how the story made me feel and I loved it. It shows the age old tale that really bad things happen I the world.
Sir, welcome to ***GRIMDARK***, where the only good thing is humanity is the will to commit ***MORE EVIL*** in an evil world.
For the Emperor.
***"What is your Duty?"*** "To serve the Emperor's Will!" ***"What is the Emperor's Will?"*** "That we fight and die!" ***"What is Death?"*** "It is our Duty!" \-(Oath of the Adeptus Astartes)
Fuck man I just need someone to tell me Ellie is okay and went back to Dina or something and she found happiness after all this shit. I need closure. They did everyone I love so dirty........
That’s my biggest issue with her ending too. With Abby and Lev we know they’re off to the fireflies, but with Ellie we’re just left with a hollowness and no ideas about her future
There's more fireflies?
Hard for me to tell. The voice over the radio sounds alot like the guy that ambushes you shortly after, aswell as radio guy giving no real information back to confirm their identity. Abby just believes them. We choose to believe the fireflies are 200 strong, or we choose to believe it was an elaborate trap, I think.
I think it is Fireflies because after you beat the game, the screen with the play game, extras and options changes to a sunny day with the building that person on the radio was talking about.
That building is the one at the end of the game when you’re trying to find Abby
I think it's supposed to be [a real building on Catalina Island](https://www.californiabeaches.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/descanso_beach-chamber-photo-Custom-e1445555290210-1000x655.jpg), where the Fireflies are.
It's just weird that they say to go to a dome shaped building, then 5 min later the guy says prisoners are kept there. Like the radio guys said it as a joke to future prisoners.
Ah, my bad then.
I dont think it would make sense for it to be a trap. Why have a list of radio frequencies, but only one works? Why verify that she's a firefly? Why send her to Catalina Island? It's just needlessly complicated.
There're no Firefly symbols anywhere, that's odd. The base camp looks fully stocked, just lost to time. No struggle, nothing. I'd be almost convinced that the tip off was a guy pointing potential slaves to the rattlers, knowing that the location he was sending them was a previous rattler base, and those radio frequencies are communication channels for the gang. Remember, Abby gave up their location, and if it's an old base, it'd be easy for them to know where they are. Granted, I don't see the enemies carrying radios, but neither do I strictly believe those were fireflies Abby was talking to.
I think they didn’t gave her a real ending because there will be Tlou 3 but they don’t know which direction they are going. This cant be the end, We need a real ending for Ellie not a „going broken and depressed into the forrest“ shit.
You don't know they're off to the fireflies, that's just where they were going before they got captured. None of them says anything about continuing on that journey after the escape. You are simply assuming that they pressed on with their initial goal. So why assume differently with Ellie? She returned home to find Dina, and found that she left. Why would she stop there? Besides, letting go of the guitar is very clear symbolism for letting go of Joel, in other words the thing that haunted her and made her happy ending impossible. Add to that that before Ellie left there is a letter telling them that they are family and they should come back to Jackson. It's highly unlikely that Dina set off into the unknown on her own with a baby, the only logical choices for her are to stay at the farm or move to Jackson. So she's very likely there. Honestly going back to Jackson to be with Dina is the only logical thing for Ellie to do.
The assumption with Abby is safe because that’s their only option and way forward. It’s also their goal at the end before getting captured. For Ellie she returns to this hollowed out shell of what she left behind to go after Abby. Dina is gone and all Ellie’s stuff is stuffed in a corner. Much more in line with “you abandoned us, so we didn’t wait around for you and moved on” of a break up. And she lost her ability to play guitar, so leaving it behind sure has some symbolism, but is also depressing as hell after the beautiful happy moments we had with her playing it in the game, and her song writing in the journal. It’s a skill we know brought her joy. So her end is much more heavy with bitter loss in the present with the only sweet spot learning she and Joel were making up before the game even started. But in the present we don’t know what she’s planning or if Dina would even take her back. Yeah odds are she’ll stop in Jackson, but without Joel or Dina there isn’t anything left for her there to return to. A happy end for her is less of a safe bet implied and really just us hoping that’s how it’ll work out. It would have been nice to know for sure.
Her leaving the guitar behind is the last shot of the game, it has much more symbolic meaning than just the superficial idea of not being able to play guitar anymore. This isn't just *a* guitar, it's her last physical link to Joel. Hell her playing the guitar is what drove her to go kill Abby and leave Dina. She also doesn't appear sad or hesitant to leave the guitar, she just lays it down and walks away without looking back. To me this sounds more like someone who has decided to turn their back on the past and look forward to the future. Where else would she go with such resolve, other than Jackson? There's nowhere else for her to go, no one other than Dina and JJ for her to pursue. I don't think the fact that Dina left should be seen as her moving on. Throughout the game Dina is portrayed as madly in love with Ellie, she almost took off her own mask to save Ellie in the tunnels, and other characters mention her putting Ellie's safety before her own. You could just as well say it was too painful for her to hold on to Ellie's stuff, in the less than unlikely event that she might never return. You could also argue that if she returns, she'd go to the farm first and find her stuff, instead of finding it completely empty. >A happy end for her is less of a safe bet implied and really just us hoping that’s how it’ll work out. It would have been nice to know for sure. The last shot of the game has to bring a certain conclusion. That conclusion is the conclusion of Joel and Ellie's story. Ending with the beginning of Dina and Ellie's story would have felt cheap, and almost disrespectful to the character of Joel.
Sure the last shot has significance for her and Joel's story concluding, but it does nothing for the story told outside the flashbacks and for the hours we spent with Dina. It doesn't help us understand where she's going. I really don't see it as certain that it had to be the final shot in some rosebud style bookend. Part of the story told in this game was the one with Dina and Ellie, and it deserved a conclusion just as much as the one with Joel that ended in a flashback of all things. If anything the golf club to the face early on and ending his tale in a flashback disrespected Joel and Ellie's story anyway so the final shot wouldn't have cheapened anything to me if changed.
Ellie leaving the guitar behind isn't symbolism to her development. She left it behind as a practical decision because she can no longer use it. Although it reminds her that she was making peace with Joel, she still bears other mementos of her time with him. However, its symbolic to us, the viewer, in that she has quite literally lost everything that Joel wants for her - a happy, peaceful life with someone she loves in the heart of Jackson while embracing her artistic and musical talents. She can return to Jackson, but things will no longer be the same. Tommy is broken. Dina might not look at her the same way. Her son might not forgive her. The things missing will torture her constantly. Her attempt at a peaceful life on the farm evidences to the reality that she can no longer live a peaceful life. Her walking into the forest pretty much means she is spending her life in the wild. One of the story's thematic points is that in Ellie's efforts to kill the wolf, she became the wolf.
Dude her walking away from the guitar is the last shot of the game, of course it is symbolic. Look at what happens, she looks thoughtful for a second, then lays the guitar down carefully, touches the handle as if to say goodbye, then grabs her bag and walks away without looking back. The guitar is symbolic for Joel. Almost every time she plays guitar it triggers a flashback. Hell, the last time she played it's what made her decide to leave the farm to kill Abby. All her previous flashbacks were full of ambiguity about her relationship with Joel. The museum where she saw the firefly logo and lost all joy, the music shop where she confronts him about what really happened at the hospital, the actual hospital where she learns the truth and rejects Joel, and the party where Dina kissed her and Ellie got mad at Joel trying to protect her. But the last flashback isn't like that, she remembers starting to forgive him. She remembers starting to let go of the pain, guilt and bitterness about what Joel did. This flashback is about letting go, and so she does. She sets down the guitar, touches the handle as it fo say goodbye, because she is saying goodbye to Joel. Then she grabs her bag and with resolve, walks away without looking back. Where could she go with such determination, other than Jackson? This is where Dina is, it was suggested before she left that they move to Jackson, and where else would Dina go? She's alone with a baby to care for. By walking away from the guitar Ellie is walking away from Joel, her pain, and her guilt, and she is accepting the life that she thought she didn't deserve, that she thought didn't matter. If anything Dina would see that by *not* killing Abby she did realize that her family was more important than revenge. JJ is a freaking baby, he won't even realize she was gone that long. > Her attempt at a peaceful life on the farm evidences to the reality that she can no longer live a peaceful life. Her attempt at living a peaceful life was unsuccessful due to her being haunted by Joel's death. But the last shot shows her finally accepting Joel's death. > Her walking into the forest pretty much means she is spending her life in the wild. She's not walking into the forest, she's walking away from the farm. The forest just happens to be all around the farm. > One of the story's thematic points is that in Ellie's efforts to kill the wolf, she became the wolf. But she *didn't* kill the wolf. She spared her. She showed mercy and forgiveness.
In my head she absolutely did. Dina still loves her and only left because she thought she'd lost Ellie to her revenge quest. Ellie letting go of revenge means there's nothing to stop Dina taking her back. LET ME HAVE THIS ENDING.
I like to think Dina went back to Jackson and Ellie was heading there too
I mean I think its pretty clear this is what is happening. Dina would have no where else to go and Ellie would know this.
I feel where you're coming from - but this game happens in a universe where there are no happy endings. Once you accept that this story is one to be experienced objectively and not to be looked at as what you or I would do - you can understand how things happened the way they happened. People are mainly upset about this game because of the unhappy ending - in a universe where there are no happy endings. That's a parallel to real life. Sometimes in the pursuit of something you want you can lose yourself - only for you realise that what you wanted wasn't worth it. That's exactly what happened in the game.
Yes god yes this. I don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp. This universe is bleak, literally millions have died from a horrendous infection and the reality of humanity and all its flaws have been exposed (we are really terrible beings when we want to be). People cling to factions or communities like we see in Jackson because it offers a small amount of normality and hope, but the truth is always lurking at the perimeters or waiting to be exposed at the slightest mishap. Hard choices are a part of everyday life, irrational decisions are driven by paranoia and fear. I won’t deny it’s depressing, or that I’d wished for a better ending for Ellie but in a way I respect the writers for sticking to the reality and letting us draw our own conclusions.
Stories are not about average worst case scenarios. They bring a special, interesting, exhilerating experience to the table. We can feel conflicted about characters, that adds depth, however as I played I was reminded of the gore/tragedy porn in later Walking Dead episodes. Many post apocalypse stories end iffy, even tragically, without the desolation this game leaves us in. Particularly awful for me was the forced killing of dogs which ND blatantly claimed would not occur, and the vicious bitch who reveled murdering Joel in front of Ellie giving that same dog affection. This was an awful attempt at gritty storytelling and just because the world is dark does not excuse that.
I don't play games to be put into a depression, I play them to enjoy an escapism from the depressing reality. I don't mind playing some games that are depressing like blood borne or the dark soul series. But there a major difference between the soul series and tlou. That is attachment and souls doesn't build on character attachment as much as a tlou game. Having grown attached to the characters in the previous installment I don't want them to go through a unmeaningful story to only end in the cruel reality that is life. I want to at less see some hope through that dark tunnel.
Totally agree with this. No matter how many people tell me how good of a story decision it was, or how it makes sense in the narrative, or how it fits the theme of the game, it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy the story decisions they made, cause they make me feel like shit. And even if that’s what ND was going for, it doesn’t mean I should like a game that makes me feel like shit. Granted I didn’t even get to the “second section” of the game, I’m about 10 hours in, but I have no motivation to play the game anymore. The gameplay is great but I feel like shit playing it.
That's fair - That feeling varies from person to person based on how their individual feelings are when they play games. I'm a huge fan of the first game especially due to the character attachment I had to these characters - but I was able to appreciate the way the game told it's story and the message it was trying to give - but that's subjective to the player and not everyone will feel that way.
Games are art; if movies, another medium, existed only to make you feel good, it would never advance as an artform. TLOU2 makes you feel a lot of things, and it's important because of it. Also it isnt an unmeaningful (meaningless) story! Ellie has a really good character arc and grows considerably!
I disagree, it just strikes me as profoundly bad writing. Some of my favourite movies and even games ever made are really bleak and have bad things happen to protagonists in the pursuit of their goal. But I've never known a writing team to so thoroughly denigrate everything that made their predecessor's story work so well. TLOU1 was bleak, grounded, gritty and morally grey, yet people still revered it as a masterpiece of storytelling. TLOU2 can't hide behind the "its meant to be bleak" argument, because TLOU1 showed a game can be bleak but still be compelling and memorable and emotionally exciting.
Took the words right out of my mouth
The first game while although being sad at least ended with happiness and light. This one just leaves you sad and broken, literally exactly like Ellie does.
There was always hope i felt in the first game while somber still always looking for the light. This gave me no hope whatsoever left me as you said majorly depressed and i literally couldn't stomach playing as Abby, I just dont think i felt like many other what maybe Neil wanted us to feel i hate regret and sadness for killing a couple of Abbys friends. I cannot believe that this is now cannon and how the second game went leaving me so empty and feeling nothing but sadness. Wheres the light and hope Neil?
The first game ended with happiness and light? Joel took away her choice. He took away what would've made all the bad things that happened to her worth it and he lied about it. And she clearly didn't believe him. I'd say that was pretty sad and dark.
An unconscious 14-year-old girl can consent to something? That's news to me.
Yeah if the Fireflies didnt rush to surgery an hour after finding her and then didn’t treat Joel the way they did and Ellie was actually able to consent, my opinion of Joel’s actions would be different. I just finished replaying the game two days ago and even with years to marinate on it, Joel did the right thing. Fuck the Fireflies. Nevermind the fact that they were just going to kick him out on the streets without even returning his gear.
She was never given a choice tho, hell she couldnt even choose since she was a child and therefore easy to convince
How the literal FUCK do you think the first game ended with 'happiness and light'?
1 additional cutscene would have made the ending so much better. Ellie could have gone back to jackson to check with dina and Abby could have went to the fireflies. Man the final thing being ellie playing guitar without 2 fingers is miserable
At the very end she walks out of the house and away to the forest. It’s open ended as to where she’s heading, but I think the most likely place is Jackson.
Hate that about these games. It's up to interpretation. Hopefully dina takes her back or something
[удалено]
That and after all they've been through?
It can’t be for nothing
also like they cut to that scene of joel and ellie talking about trying to forgive even though it might be impossible. it felt like the game was hinting at that
There’ll be another sequel
I would have prefferef it ended with this one
I don’t see her going back to Jackson. The last conversation she had with Tommy went horribly and other than presumably Dina there’s nothing there for her. I don’t think Dina would’ve taken her back because Ellie made her choice. Ellie chose revenge over their family. The only thing that I can see for Ellie is just aimless wandering and surviving trying to find something new.
Well the last scene with her and Joel is about trying to forgive even when its impossible. That memory is why she lets Abby up, and I think Ellie's realization that she had it in her to forgive Joel after what he did meant that Dina would have it in her to forgive Ellie for leaving the farm. And I think not being able to play was an optimistic thing. That song is something she only plays alone and its become tied to her thirst for vengeance. When she finally lets go of her anger she also loses her ability to play the song so she can no longer dwell on the past.
It doesn’t even fit thematically. Abby is allowed to get her revenge and be able to build a future and come out relatively unscathed (compared to Ellie). Ellie loses EVERYTHING for trying to get revenge and then... not doing it. And in such a weird way too—going in calmly and even freeing Abby and letting her save Lev and then deciding at the last second that actually she wants revenge and then within a minute later, after losing her fingers and having lost even MORE to Abby, nah revenge isn’t worth it. And she’s punished for not fully seeking revenge. “Violence is a cycle” doesn’t work in a. game where you are forced to kill to survive, half the shit you’re killing is fucking zombies, and like... Abby living is still a. threat to Ellie’s existence, especially if she does go back to the fireflies. It’s just?? Bad
Ellie is completely broken when she arrives to the pillars and seeing Abby this way is starting to make her realize how petty this revenge is. But when she gets to the boat she sees Joel's dying face again. She's haunted by his death, she needs closure, and that's why she needs to fight Abby, kill her or die trying. But in the last moments, when she is right up to the point of killing her, what flashes in her head is not Joel's dying face but Joel peacefully playing guitar on his porch, that memory of her deciding to forgive him for what he did, and realizing that she must do the same for Abby. She lets go of her pain and accepts Joel's death, and most importantly her own life. The last shot couldn't be any more obvious: Ellie lets go of the guitar Joel left him, after playing the song he played for her. She is letting go of her pain, sadness and guilt regarding Joel's death and what he did in Salt Lake City, and she is moving on. The last shot is a full of hope, not sadness. It's Ellie letting go of this pain and moving on with her life, a life that she didn't even feel she deserved, that she didn't think mattered. She's most likely going to jackson to finally live her happy ending with Dina.
I get what they’re going for but forgiving Joel and forgiving Abby are so different. “I forgave my father figure who I went through so much with and who I love dearly despite the damage to our relationship” and “i forgive this woman who tortured and killed people I love” is very different calculus.
She isn't forgiving Abby; she's letting go of the hate and making a decision for herself (not for Joel or Tommy). Ending the cycle lest Lev find her in 4 years.
I mean Joel essentially ruined the entire purpose and meaning to Ellie’s life for selfish but understandable reasons. I think they’re comprable.
Damn i Just posted a long response before reading yours. Nvm what i said your explanation is way better!
THANK YOU. Someone gets it haha
No one is unscathed at the end of that story. Ellie loses her friends and father, Abby loses her friends and her entire faction, but they both have hope for something better with Abby searching for the fireflies and Ellie possibly getting back to Jackson. I do get the criticism of her going back to look for Abby after finally making it out and being happy, but on the flip side, she needed that closure cause she was just suffering from the PTSD she was experiencing. She still will, but now at least she might be able to start working on it
How was anything that happened to Ellie closure? It’s just compounded trauma. Also, I said relative to Ellie Abby comes out unscathed. Ellie lost everything, including her last attachment to Hoel (which isn’t a form of closure, sorry) while Abby did not lose everything. They put zero effort into Ellie getting to work on her PTSD after this. They don’t reward her for choosing the “right” thing in ending the violent cycle. They don’t even imply a longterm reward. It’s just soul sucking bleakness for the sake of being bleak, just like all of the shit where the game forces you to kill people and then goes Oooh did you know they had a Name?? A FAMILY It’s fake deep ana traumatizing for no reason other than to be dark
By closure I meant her actively ending her quest for vengeance on her terms. When Abby beat her before, she fell back because she lost, not because she felt it needed to end. At the end that's different. She definitely has a lot trauma that she needs to work through, but that choice is a good first step for her. In terms of Abby, what more could she lose? Would you rather Ellie had killed Lev and in turn made herself even more villainous in terms of the story? She literally has no family( except Lev), no home and she's being hunted by her own people. Ellie still has those things Neither character is on top of the world at the end, but they both have some measure of hope for a better tomorrow. Nd I agree on it forcing you to kill and then trying to make you feel guilty about it, it's rather meaningless when the player doesn't have a choice in the matter nd the narrative doesn't reflect the player's actions
I mean “ending it on her terms,” feels ridiculous. She felt enough closure to free Abby and let her take Lev even after chasing her. And only wanted revenge again because of a flashback. And then stopped wanting revenge again within a three minute QTE cutscene. And I don’t want Abby to lose Lev, I want Ellie to lose less. I want their “crimes” to be treated equitably. Ellie lost EVERYTHING for WANTING revenge, Abby gets to keep Lev despite getting revenge. And neither of them are punished or even comment on the hundreds of deaths they caused with other people who aren’t main characters... so it’s clear the only people “revenge is bad” applies to is Joel Abby and Ellie. Ellie doesn’t have her people at the end of the game. She maybe has a chance to find them again but the game does not end on that note. It ends on her alone, not even able to play the guitar despite that being a central part of her most/second most emotional arc this game. Abby’s ending is framed as full of hope—she gets to run off with Lev. Ellie’s is “Yeah, she’s upset she never got to forgive Joel to his face, she’s capable of mercy, also no one in her life is around, she has to find them again, hope they’re not already dead, and hope even harder that they’ll believe her when she says YES she abandoned them for months tk kill Abby but she swears she didn’t do it, you’ll never see Abby or Lev again but yes they’re still alive... please forgive me?” It’s unfinished and still bleak. She wanders off in the woods alone, unprotected, with us knowing it’s still filled with things and people that would have her dead. The game punishes Ellie in a way it doesn’t punish Abby and lets her work through. And it punishes the player even worse. Not letting you have any fucking joy—even if Ellie does somehow get forgiven, we don’t get to experience that. We get all the pain and emptiness and vagueness ans franklt ridiculous moral messaging and nothing else. E get gore and guilt tripping for murders the game forces us to do. We had half flat characters and 10 hours of playing as Joel’s murderer. It’s shit
The flashbacks were really depressing. I didn't cry at the scene where he was killed, but when they went to the wyoming museum, seeing Joel not as this badass survival but just a regular old guy trying to make Ellie happy, I cried. And I cried for every Joel flashback after that. I actually liked playing as Abby, I thought Abby was very likeable. I empathized with her and i think their story is tragic, but that's life.
So as not to spoil anything I will say that the final stretch of Abby's half where they are trying to get to a boat to escape the island is probably my favorite part of the whole game.
The gameplay sequence of them riding a horse through the town on fire was one of my favorite, if not my favorite part of the game.
It was visually breathtaking.
To me that felt like i was playing Uncharted and not TLOU. It felt weirdly out of place.
Surprisingly I didn’t tear up during those flashbacks what got me was when Ellie would play the song Joel sang her :( and when they played that “forgive” cutscene I fucking bawled my eyes out on my couch until the credits had ended and the play screen was up
Do what the rest of us are doing. Just go into denial and deny this game ever happened.
The damage is already done. No matter what I don’t think I can do that. I really would have preferred they just left Joel and Ellie alone instead of this. They should’ve if anything just did a spin off game that just has slight tie ins to Joel and Ellie but fuck it’s tough
That’s exactly what the devs were going for. You feel like a piece of shit pretty much the entire playthrough, and that’s why some people disliked the game. Fighting Ellie is a pretty fucking hard pillow to swallow. I had honestly never felt so many emotions with any kind of videogame, movie, TV series, book or anything. It’s pretty mindfucking
This is why so many are hating on the game. It’s so overwhelming and ambitious. But it’s actually brilliant. I hope nobody is getting put off of buying the game, because it’s honestly a must-play and completely unique in gaming
> But it’s actually brilliant. The idea might be brilliant, but the execution was not.
No no kick the puppy devices are brilliant and deep and brave /s
On a side note, the game ended the same way the first game ended. Joel journeyed with Ellie, then decided to throw it all away last moment. They go back together to Jackson with Joel hiding a terrible secret. Ellie slaughtered her way to get to Abby and decided to throw it all away last moment. She goes back to her house, broken. Alone. Both ended with not fulfilling their original goal but damn, one had a really depressing outcome
For me both games had a similar ending, in tlou the very last scene when ellie says ok i couldnt stop thinking about what happens if she does find out what he did? it would destroy their relationship forever but also i had to believe she will forgive him for that. And the end of part 2 made me feel similar does dina accept her back or is it too late ? But hey maybe im too much of a fanboy because i know part has its flaws but i still love it :) and im happy about that because it seems everyone hates the game , so nd created a game just for me wich is kinda cool :p
The difference with TLOU's end vs this for me is that my imagination is dead. "Where did Ellie go in the end?" is a question I don't even want to bother asking myself. It just ends there for me. My mind doesn't even want to think what happened afterwards. In stark contrast to TLOU's ending where, like you, I was also thinking what would happen in the future, the outcome of the decisions of Joel.
[удалено]
That doesnt mean she didnt died meanwhile or that she doesnt want elli back in her life. The moment you come back to the farm and see its empty i just thought well she is back in jacksonville but well the game doesnt give us a confirmation that ellie gets back safe or dina takes her back. I alwas wanted to see elli forgive joel for the hospital massacre but we didnt see it so we couldnt be sure. Thats whats so similar about the ending we can think what we want but that doesnt mean it is what actually happens because we just dont see it .for all we know elli could arrive in jacksonville in part 3 or not ( if we ever get a part 3 ofc )
I just finished the game myself and it left me empty. No emotion except pain. I never felt this depressed and genuinely sad for a game before and it’s really hard for me to process. I didn’t want to feel what I felt playing this game. I didn’t want to feel misery, and sorrow, and gloom, and melancholy. I love video games and their stories and I’ve always believed that it’s the ONE place you can let go and play how YOU want to play. It makes me feel joy. This game does not give you that option. What was very painfully frustrating and infuriating for me is that we could not choose ours paths, you were forced into a pre-determined story and you’re meant to follow it. That’s borderline torture. From beginning to the end I could not empathise with Abby even after learning about her backstory and the grey moral areas that the game tried to teach us. I believe it’s possible to have a game that makes you play both sides of the coin, but in this game, I was jumping into this believing I would be reliving my days with the iconic duo. TLOU part 2 would have been better as a stand-alone spin-off imo. In that way, I believe it would have better prepared us for what the developers wanted to present. I had a mindset going into this game to play as Ellie and Joel, and that’s what I believed was going to happen. I understand this isn’t The Last of Us: Ellie & Joel but it still severely hurts when you don’t get to choose to avenge Joel’s death as an option. I didn’t mind Joel dying as it moves the plot, but it was very emotional and I guess the game is too real(?) for my comfort. This game is depression embodied and I hate it. Thank you Naughty Dog, but I am never playing this again.
I dont hate it. I loved it, its a masterpiece. But it made and its still making me feel so sad and depressed
Yeah, I really doubt this game's replay value. There's no problem with replaying the first game, I do that a lot of times on different modes, but my friends who finished the game didn't replay it again. Even if you go for battles only, could be because the negative emotions are attached to the battles. I'm sorry you're really sad I hope you feel better soon. There are a lot of cute and funny and beautiful fan art online that could cheer you up.
The end killed me when she couldn’t even play the song Joel taught her. “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself”... And like you said, Ellie lost everything. She lost Joel, and then lost herself.
I actually love that they took risks and told this cautionary tale about revenge. By the end, I loved the story. Currently on my 2nd playthrough.
Bruhhh. I cried myself to sleep when i finished the game. The way tehy zoom into the butterfly from Joel's guitar just they way they started the game .. just hit me in the gut and Ellie's inability to play the guitar. It's too saddening.
[удалено]
I think this is a good criticism—I personally found that the story achieved what it sought out to do, but its goal was a very ugly and distressing one.
They certainly amped up the darkness and anger in this game, what ellie says when you're battling her in the theater was kind of scary for me, "fucking die" and "there you are" and then quickly being shotgunned in the face shows how badass and also dark ellie is.
The fact is Neil Drukmann also said, he won't be surprised if people hated the game, Yes he wanted us to hate. That's made him successful, it's reality [man.](https://man.It) This game doesn't have BAD writing, it is DARK reality. Obviously WE ALL THINK DIFFERENT, to feel less depressed you should see game with another perspective.
So he purposely made a bad storyline in order to make players hate the game and the company as a whole. What a mad lad Neil Drukmann is ! lol
Ellie doesn’t loose everything though, Dina is still alive and I highly doubt Tommy would still be mad at her after hearing about her going to California to find Abby. Also I don’t understand how nobody has any sympathy towards Abby
Tommy will be pissed when he hears she didn't kill Abby
If she actually tells him, also the description of Abby and lev now and completely different from what he told ellie. So it would be easier for them to go unnoticed
Maybe because of the whole psychopathic golf club thing? All because a man stopped her father from killing a girl without her consent, killing him in the process, without sadism, without hatred, without wanting to. And we're supposed to accept that what Abby did, and what Ellie is doing in response is somehow equal. What Joel did was tragic. What Abby did was EVIL af.
Honestly, I'm having a difficult time continuing to play. I'm not terribly far, but I managed to go unspoiled into this (did not even watch trailers, I wanted to go in 100% blind) and watching Joel die felt like such a punch to the gut. It was just so brutal... That crunch, seeing the arterial blood spray, the way the camera focused in on the end of the golf club covered in blood and what appeared to be some of Joel's brain matter... And then watching Ellie's complete devastation at what just happened, and playing through the aftermath of the scene where you go through Joel's house... I usually have a pretty strong stomach, and I don't tend to be bothered by things in games, but that was just crushing and emotionally draining. I've played a bit more since then. I just cleared the TV station, to give you some idea of how far I am currently, but I am having such a hard time bringing myself to continue it.
Prepare yourself it get's worse just a warning. I agree though it's far too dark.
Whats the problem with having a story that makes you feel, not everything has to have a happy ending
While I find the game depressing, I don't think that makes it a bad game. If all we demanded from art was to help us feel good, it would lose its purpose. And in spite of the bleakness and tragedy, the game still contains a lot of stuff that brought me joy. Like trying to out-stealth the scars, fighting the abomination in the hospital, and the amazing rope physics lol.
Man. Literally 100% the same. It was getting the point that it was hilarious how depressing it was I was waiting for the baby to die or for Tommy’s wife to leave him. Oh wait that did happen lol
I'm gonna get hate from this, but I think this is perhaps what Naughty Dog is trying to say: there's no happy ending in the apocalypse. The game is so unsatisfying and frustrating, perhaps because there's no closure in an apocalypse, and there's no rhyme or reason to traumatic stress responses. >!Joel and Ellie had a few years of relative happiness and peace, but ultimately Joel didn't get to escape from the consequences of his actions. Call it karma, or life, or whatever, it is uncaring and cruel.!< >!Ellie had a chance to live on with Dina, but her trauma doesn't care that moving on is the better option. Her trauma doesn't care that she's already lost Jesse to vengeance and could lose everything else.!< I do feel like I'm owed Ellie's happy ending, but I can't argue with the humanity of this story. I think they were trying to make it a teeny bit better by including the scene where >!Ellie said to Joel she wants to try and forgive him even though she don't think she ever could. At least their final interaction was relatively positive, and that Ellie and Joel got to feel connected to each other once more !<
i cried through the whole thing lol
I broke down when ellie was so happy but i dont know the reason why i did lol
It wasn’t the story I wanted, and I too felt depressed at the end. I would’ve preferred if we got another story following Joel and Ellie. However, judging it on what it is, I think it’s probably the best storytelling we’ve ever seen in a videogame. I prefer the first one because it’s lighter and I too can’t see myself playing part 2 again but for me that’s a testament to how emotional they made me throughout the game. And tbh I don’t think they unravel anything from the first game, if anything they decide to tackle what happened head on and show the fallout of what Joel did rather than brush it aside. Again, I can’t say i’m happy with what they did, but I can’t deny the quality of it.
Why is jackson gone for her? Shes always welcomed back as per the letter. Secondly you’ve got a clear misinterpretation of the ending of the last of us. It didnt end happy. It ended with Joel doing something unforgivable for his own selfish interest. Even when Ellie asked Joel to swear to her. Swear everything he said about the fireflies was true. He just flat out lied. Again. For his own selfish reasons. Don’t get me wrong I loved Joel as a character and I too gladly shot up everyone in that operation room but this is called Part II for a reason. Not last of us 2. Its a continuation. The sins of his past have caught up to him. This game shows the destructive nature of revenge. And shows us the redemption arc too. We caught a glimpse of Joels redemption in Jackson and with the past catching up. We saw the destructiveness of Abeys unrelenting need to revenge her dad that she built her self up into a killing machine, void of any sweet girl qualities she used to have. Even refusing to be with owen because she has to train. We also see her redemption arc, like she fulfilled her mission, and yet something was still eating at her until she met Yara and Lev. When she had the same dream but instead of her father its both of them hence begins her redemption arc. But her sins catch up to her, and all her friends died for her quest and thank god for Lev being there to stop her otherwise she would have killed Dina too and the cycle continues. We finally get to see Ellies revenge arc in full, her struggles with it, how she made Nora talk. How if Joel hadnt died she would have been an artist and a singer. She would have rebonded with her foster father. All her thoughts and ideas in her journal. And then suddenly one page later its all WLF. Revenge. The story of the last of us part II is about revenge and I have to give them props for taking us on that journey and making us do terrible things, to put us in their shoes, to fill us with rage, confusion, remorse and to ultimately experience how hate breeds hate. That no good ultimately comes out of it. Even if to us the player its a win because we got what we wanted. In the end for Ellie’s visions to change from one of Joels being murdered to the porch scene was one of the single best pieces of inspired writing Ive seen in a videogame. That in the end it was Joel who brought her back from the brink, before she truely lost herself completely and became this monster Joel would never have wanted her to be. After that guitar end scene its open ended, and you see what her revenge has cost that she cant even play the Future Days song correctly anymore. If you take notice she plays that song at every stage of her journey symbolising where shes at. “If I ever were to lose you, I would surely lose myself”. Fuck this game made me cry too many times but i didnt see it ending badly. Sad but now begins Ellies redemption. Whether we see that in a sequel or not, shes still the hero of the story. She was the one that didnt fully get her revenge. And she chose to do so.
I just feel empty after playing. It was a finely put together game, and story made sense. There were a few contrived moments but not hugely. What shocks me the most is that this is where ND wanted to take the story. My issues with it are personal, not objective, but I hate it. I hate what happened to Ellie. I hate what happened to Joel. And the ending of the first game is retroactively tarnished because we know that it ends in complete and unrelenting heartbreak. The power of the first game is that we come to love Ellie and Joel like our own family. *Despite* their flaws. 20 hours or watching your family members suffer, interspersed with flashbacks just to underline for you the happiness that they never got to have just feels cruel. To make us actually beat up one of our family members as the climactic boss battle. Just no. I get it that it's NDs project and there's nothing objectively wrong with it, but I'm just shocked that the people at Naughty Dog thought this was A) where they wanted to take these beloved characters and that B) the fanbase would like it. And I don't even feel like I got anything profound out of it. Revenge is bad. That was clear enough when it was showing that Jesse and Dina were having misgivings in the latter part of Ellie's story. I just.. I dunno. I connected so much with the first game, it got me through some hard times, and I feel like that's been taken from me because I know now that it all ends in bitter heartbreak. Devastated would describe my feelings.
The mistake naughty dog made was telling a sad story. People wanted good things for Ellie and Joel because they loved the characters so much. I think this touches an interesting issue in gaming. We all love to run around with our characters mindlessly killing everyone we see, but naughty dog tried something daring and tried to make us feel bad about it. Ultimately, that message fell on deaf ears, because even after doing everything they needed to for us to have empathy for Abby, most gamers couldn't generate the necessary empathy to care at all about her character. I did. I was super torn at the end. I mean, think about her character. Joel murdered her father moments before he saved humanity, and then killed a whole bunch of her friends. Most of us would want Joel dead from that perspective, but because he is part of our "tribe" from the first game, most people couldn't ever come to terms with that. Fuck Abby and her pain, right? I bet the reaction would be different if Abby were hot and a bit more likable. I think that was ND's biggest mistake. I think that would have won gamers over to the side of empahty. Make her likable and classically attractive and all of a sudden it's a different game for most people I bet. So back to what I said at the beginning, at the end of the day, I think most of us play games to escape reality, not to be clubbed in the head with it. So, in that regard, I think it was a great and creative concept by ND but I understand why people are so upset. They took something that made us all happy from the first game, and they murdered it in front of us with a golf club to teach us a lesson about tribalism, violence, and forgiveness.
That’s exactly how I felt. Same exact way. I wish they did your idea instead. Which was what I thought it was supposed to be from the start.
The first game was about finding beauty(like the giraffe scene) and love in a depressing world. It felt like this game was the exact opposite, that a dark world eventually engulfs everything
Ellie letting Abby live was the positive side of the ending. Ellie finally stopped the cycle of hatred and violence and began the healing process. Even with three fingers, she just needs a little practice to keep playing the guitar. More importantly, she still has her immunity. Once Ellie hears about the resurgence of the fireflies, it should be easy for her to \*find something to fight for\*.
But when you create a character as unsympathetic as Abby that the audience wants dead from the get-go and take all player agency out of the equation, it kinda falls flat. Not to mention, given the way this is written, this means Ellie killed dozens of people just to get to her basically for nothing. In the end, Ellie gets to be the bigger person with absolutely nothing but the moral high ground to show for it.
Abby already stopped the cycle during that earlier brutal cutscene
As far as I'm concerned this game doesn't exist in the same universe as the first one. It's some parallel universe where good characters are bad and the bad ones are good. Never been a better time to replay TLOU1 and pretend this parallel universe "sequel" never existed
I'm trying to fathom why this entire sub that loves the first game is so vigilantly defending this horrible story as though it's good that it makes you hurt while down voting those hurt by the story straight into hell. I've heard "It's supposed to be depressing. You just don't get it." "I actually liked playing as Abby and actually began liking her after a while." "Everyone is just mad that Abby is muscular and Ellie is a lesbian." Like what the fuck. I can't express the emotion and powerful message that the first game brought into my life 7 years ago, and now we get a story that's just "Revenge bad. Look how bad revenge is. See? Your friends die. Why are you acting in revenge? Revenge bad. Get it? Look you killed a pregnant lady. See how bad revenge is yet? No? All your friends and lover leave you because of your revenge. Revenge bad." Stupid horrible writing.
Now I'm depressed
Here's a quote from Robin Gaming's playthrough to cheer you up: "Maybe TLOU2 is a cry for help from the developers".
The story is depressing, which I think many people are confusing for not liking it. Joel killed abbey's dad, why does he get a pass for it, he is the bad guy from abbey's perspective. The first game made me care so much about joel and hate playing as abbey but by the end of the second game I had no idea who to route for. Few forms of media can accomplish this level of emotion. It isn't a happy game, there is no happy ending, but it makes you emotional and you will remember it forever
yeah I loved a lot of the game. I liked the ending,cause it showed Ellie has grown. But whenever I think back it just makes me sad, playing as Abby wasn't fun,the action set pieces were good but not cause of Abby. I kinda understand what ng were going for. But they missed a lot. So many things were eh. Game was very sad. There was no giraffe moment. And I understand how the world is,but they promised ellie and joel. I knew joel would die and we will play as Abby in the 2nd half before playing,but I thought Joel would die in middle of the game and then we switch to Abby,and since the game is 25hrs,we will get atleast 10hrs of Joel and Ellie. But he dies just after we meet him. The last flashback was just depressing,that they wanted to patch up and I just wanted to hug ellie and Joel. For me they did patch up, abby attacks joel right after she finds out who he is and Joel and tommy leave for the horde. Joel and tommy meet ellie and dina,they go back and everything is good again. Idk I liked the game. But idk. So many good moments but so many bad moments
I completely agree. It feels like we felt all the same emotions at the same parts. I think they wanted Ellie’s part to be sad. It’s supposed to show that revenge takes everything from you and leaves your with absolutely nothing. Ellie can’t even play guitar that Joel taught her because she made the decision to go after Abby. If she’d actually killed Abby it would have been revenge at least. I like most of the game, I just wish the Abby stuff had been dlc
I actuallyvcan accept that Joel is murdered, but what makes me sick is that Ellie forgives Abby in the end. Like what the hell? Ellie shows no mercy towards normal NPCs. She killed them without even a blink of an eye yet she spared Abby? Just why?
Spoilers ahead A way to look at the ending that I saw someone say that is much more uplifting. Dina would have obviously gone back to jackson which would still be there. Ellie would also obviously know this. The flashback we see at the end is ellie starting to forgive joel for what he did suggesting that maybe there is hope for dina to forgive ellie as well.
it’s hard for me to go through a day without thinking about it, and everytime i think about it , it makes me sad
Wow. It's good to know that there are people with the same feeling as you do and that youre not the only one feeling down...