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bobjr posted:Yeah, I've seen some people think it's unrealistic that Ellie would leave to get Abby one last time based on a somewhat vague clue, but the lamb scene is really good at selling how she still isn't over things or able to put it behind her and work on moving on. It's most likely better than the planned hunting scene where she kills a boar that sounds like Joel. Joel is more interesting as a self-serving grief suppression machine who's convinced himself his mass murder and potential dooming of humanity was righteous if only because it allows him to cope. I found it odd that Tommy was so gung-ho to avenge Joel considering how hesitant he was around him in the first game as this destructive influence suddenly walking back into his life. snoremac fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 04:10
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snoremac posted:I believe it, and the lamb scene really sells it. I only dislike it as an obvious setup to a message about revenge which doesn't make Ellie more interesting in her realizing it since it's been signposted from the start. a lot of events surrounding 2lou's final act feel very contrived but the tommy's behavior is one of the less egregious examples. the guy had three years to reconnect with joel and convince himself that he'd turned over a new leaf, and everything after that was just sunk cost. even if you don't think the headshot wound scrambled his brains (and if you want to talk odd, how in the gently caress did he make it back to colorado with a freshly-dug trench in his face?), he'd have spent the next year or so without anything to occupy his thoughts but finishing the job he'd started
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Jul 15, 2021 04:18
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Another thing I liked was the brief shot of Joel on the porch flashing before Ellie that leads her to spare Abby. That's where I could feel her grief transcending the moment, where she comprehends that Abby has nothing to do with the loss she's feeling. It's very nice.
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Jul 15, 2021 04:23
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Oxxidation posted:a lot of events surrounding 2lou's final act feel very contrived but the tommy's behavior is one of the less egregious examples. the guy had three years to reconnect with joel and convince himself that he'd turned over a new leaf, and everything after that was just sunk cost. even if you don't think the headshot wound scrambled his brains (and if you want to talk odd, how in the gently caress did he make it back to colorado with a freshly-dug trench in his face?), he'd have spent the next year or so without anything to occupy his thoughts but finishing the job he'd started
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Jul 15, 2021 04:26
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Considering all the stuff in his yard Joel was a well liked figure in the community, and while Jesse most likely went for Dina and Ellie most of all it's still said he really respected Joel. I'm not sure how much people knew about Joel's past or what Tommy might have said before, but in terms of Jackson Joel did seem like he was someone who wanted the community to be the best it could be.
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Jul 15, 2021 04:29
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snoremac posted:Another thing I liked was the brief shot of Joel on the porch flashing before Ellie that leads her to spare Abby. That's where I could feel her grief transcending the moment, where she comprehends that Abby has nothing to do with the loss she's feeling. It's very nice. That flash happens right after her fingers get bitten off, the guitar being her last remaining emotional connection to joel. It's a real nice touch and someone deserves a gold star for thinking it up. As a player it's pretty much the one thing you've been waiting 25 hours for and been kept in the dark on, that insight into whether or not they patched things up, and it just hangs over the entire story in this dreadful sort of way where you almost come to think the devs missed something...but they didn't, they've simply been loving with you for that long.
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Jul 15, 2021 04:31
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:That flash happens right after her fingers get bitten off, the guitar being her last remaining emotional connection to joel. It's a real nice touch and someone deserves a gold star for thinking it up. As a player it's pretty much the one thing you've been waiting 25 hours for and been kept in the dark on, that insight into whether or not they patched things up, and it just hangs over the entire story in this dreadful sort of way where you almost come to think the devs missed something...but they didn't, they've simply been loving with you for that long. What I like is that it casts her whole crusade in a new light. It's not just that she wants revenge for Joel's death, and it's not just that the potential to mend their relationship one day is gone; it's the fact that they just started mending that relationship the night before and suddenly the rug is pulled out right from under that reconciliation in the worst way. So somehow, for me, it hits way worse than if they'd patched things up months earlier or if they hadn't even started.
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Jul 15, 2021 05:10
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christmas boots posted:What I like is that it casts her whole crusade in a new light. It's not just that she wants revenge for Joel's death, and it's not just that the potential to mend their relationship one day is gone; it's the fact that they just started mending that relationship the night before and suddenly the rug is pulled out right from under that reconciliation in the worst way. So somehow, for me, it hits way worse than if they'd patched things up months earlier or if they hadn't even started. Yeah, to be able to string the player along for that long, building substance and symbolic interconnectivity for so many hours and have it all hinge on such a subtle moment at the very last breath that recontextualizes almost everything...really not an easy task to write a narrative with that many moving pieces that comes together so completely.
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Jul 15, 2021 05:25
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I’ve been critical in the past of having the Ellie and Abby sections broken up the way they are but in this case I think it works to the game’s advantage because it puts so much space between that flashback and the last one you had with Ellie that you naturally assume that the flashback at the hospital was the end of that story
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Jul 15, 2021 05:46
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:it's kind of the whole point of the ending shot, and the entire reason she lets abby live, and the whole theme of the game I don't know if I'm shadowbanned or something but I've been saying for the last 3 pages that I enjoyed the game but I'm not actually sure if I actually understood it. That's one of the things I mean. Stuff like Abby dropping off Yara and Lev and later on sleeping and going back to get them after having a nightmare of the two of them dead? That's straightforward, I can understand that. Other stuff is just over my head like you're swinging a baseball bat but I'm underground in a coffin. christmas boots posted:What I like is that it casts her whole crusade in a new light. It's not just that she wants revenge for Joel's death, and it's not just that the potential to mend their relationship one day is gone; it's the fact that they just started mending that relationship the night before and suddenly the rug is pulled out right from under that reconciliation in the worst way. So somehow, for me, it hits way worse than if they'd patched things up months earlier or if they hadn't even started. That absolutely sold Ellie's devotion to hunting Abby to me. Joel dying the day after she confronts him about what happened and maybe making some level of peace with it and beginning to come to terms to possibly forgive him works just fine for me. Absolutely understandable for a world with therapy even more unattainable than usual.
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Jul 15, 2021 09:14
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RareAcumen posted:I don't know if I'm shadowbanned or something but I've been saying for the last 3 pages that I enjoyed the game but I'm not actually sure if I actually understood it. Sorry, maybe I'm just being a butt. I haven't kept track of posts itt very well.
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Jul 15, 2021 09:17
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Sorry, maybe I'm just being a butt. I haven't kept track of posts itt very well. Well that's understandable, this is the not-talking-about-factions thread after all.
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Jul 15, 2021 12:15
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Even if the reconciliation didn’t happen right before I still see it making sense that Ellie would go after them, just because of how the world is now. The less realistic part to me is probably Isaac being okay with his top men and women from both a combat and medical perspective going on what they consider a vague hint in the dead of winter, considering what we see of him later on in the game.
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Jul 15, 2021 13:34
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Am I going crazy or does the end credits song change the 2nd time you beat 2LOU? I remember it being a sad-ish duet between Ellie and Joel, and this time it definitely was not. It was just Ellie and the whole song seemed way darker than I remember from the first time around, ending with the line: "my soul is damned"
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Jul 16, 2021 01:35
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snoremac posted:...A point of the game is revenge is destructive to those around you and isn't a cure for grief, which I'd be fine with if Ellie's grief was handled in a similar way to Joel's. For Joel it hovers in the background and isn't a motivation for his journey. Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought Joel's guilt over Marlene's death is literally the reason he continues the journey. He doesn't get to really start getting to know Ellie until after. He was seeing through what Marlene swore to do and died for, then morphed because of his relationship with Ellie. I never once even suspected that of Joel's primary motivations were anything other than guilt in one way or another after the story starts properly. I believe it's guilt all the way down on top of a foundation of other guilt. Going back decades, and for Joel the game even ends on guilt yet again.
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Jul 16, 2021 01:46
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snoremac posted:Having finished, I had a good time but this won't leave a lasting impression on me like the first game. A point of the game is revenge is destructive to those around you and isn't a cure for grief, which I'd be fine with if Ellie's grief was handled in a similar way to Joel's. For Joel it hovers in the background and isn't a motivation for his journey. It colours his developing relationship with Ellie and then explodes in such a shocking way that it's more viscerally felt. It also makes you reflect on his past actions to make more plain how dubious a guy he is. TLoU2 tries to sustain the same emotion over 40 hours and it's clear with every beat where it's going and what point is being made. There's no surprises beyond minute to minute plot developments. I don't think that's accurate at all. LTOU is a game basically defined by Joel's grief where it motivates the vast majority of the decisions he makes. At first it is Tess' death that really pushes him and from there it's a greater fear of losing people he'd grown to care about with his greatest bursts of violence coming when one of them is seriously threatened because he can't stand that happening again. What Joel did at the end isn't shocking and I doubt anyone was shocked by it. It's exactly what had been building up for the entire game where Joel's pain over loss was gradually stripped away and he allowed himself to connect with someone again, only to have the idea of them being taken away dangled in front of his face. He exploded because that is literally the only way Joel could respond as we've seen on multiple occasions. BitBasher posted:Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought Joel's guilt over Marlene's death is literally the reason he continues the journey. He doesn't get to really start getting to know Ellie until after. He was seeing through what Marlene swore to do and died for, then morphed because of his relationship with Ellie. I never once even suspected that of Joel's primary motivations were anything other than guilt in one way or another after the story starts properly. Tess. Marlene is the woman he murders at the end of the game. But yes, it's all motivated by guilt and grief, which leads him to do terrible things, which leads to more guilt and grief when consequences happen, all the way until he gets his pumpkin carved by a golf club.
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Jul 16, 2021 03:15
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I was speaking of motivation in the sense that Ellie literally is travelling to Seattle for revenge. I forget the details, but I thought Joel initially set out to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies for some kind of reward, then gradually became close with her because she filled the hole his daughter had left, then did what he did because he couldn't cope with losing her. There's a progression of change in him throughout the story that makes it more compelling to me than Ellie in 2, who's left spinning her wheels from start to end without any development (until the end). Admittedly I've forgotten about Tess so maybe I have his early motivations wrong and it's more guilt driven than pragmatic. I thought the ending of 1 was shocking because it's the first time on-screen that Joel explicitly does something reprehensible. He's murdered/tortured a heap of people already but they were mostly cannibals. snoremac fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 04:22
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It didn't shock me since off-screen in Joel's past he murdered innocent people for their stuff. That comes up in Pittsburgh when others attempt the same on him and Ellie. He's just a violent son of a bitch. Joel's actions at the hospital seeming natural and even sympathetic was reinforced for me by that section being a culmination of the gameplay mechanics that I'd been learning all game. Killing the surgeon was just another gratifying melee animation. I think grief is the right word for his motivation at points, not really guilt. Joel doesn't feel responsible for Tess's death, he feels obligated to carry out the last wish of his dead lover. And he's reluctant as hell, his grief over his daughter has walled him off from Ellie. From Jackson until Salt lake, he's finally processing that grief. He opens up and allows himself to care for Ellie's safety for its own sake, making him feel obligated to complete the journey rather than dump her on Tommy. His motivation here is healthy, he cares for the safety of a child. By the time they get to the university they're comfortable and open with each other, he's talking about Sarah. After the events of winter they've truly bonded. Joel promises to teach her how to play a guitar. And then a tense underground river segment puts Ellie at risk and the grief and trauma come roaring back, and you wake up from that nightmare into something even darker. The grief summons fear and then rage and you do what you would naturally do, what you're good at.
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Jul 16, 2021 05:19
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acksplode posted:I think grief is the right word for his motivation at points, not really guilt. Joel doesn't feel responsible for Tess's death, he feels obligated to carry out the last wish of his dead lover. poo poo, yes. I think this is entirely accurate. This is what I was looking to say. ImpAtom posted:Tess. Marlene is the woman he murders at the end of the game. But yes, it's all motivated by guilt and grief, which leads him to do terrible things, which leads to more guilt and grief when consequences happen, all the way until he gets his pumpkin carved by a golf club. Right! My bad! BitBasher fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 05:23
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acksplode posted:It didn't shock me since off-screen in Joel's past he murdered innocent people for their stuff. That comes up in Pittsburgh when others attempt the same on him and Ellie. He's just a violent son of a bitch. Joel's actions at the hospital seeming natural and even sympathetic was reinforced for me by that section being a culmination of the gameplay mechanics that I'd been learning all game. Killing the surgeon was just another gratifying melee animation.
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Jul 16, 2021 05:36
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yeah, grief over guilt is a decent summary. by far one of joel's less savory qualities is that he's incapable of feeling remorse, or at least openly expressing it. everything gets covered in an armor plate of "i did what i had to do" and he sets his jaw and soldiers on
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Jul 16, 2021 05:42
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Oxxidation posted:yeah, grief over guilt is a decent summary. by far one of joel's less savory qualities is that he's incapable of feeling remorse, or at least openly expressing it. everything gets covered in an armor plate of "i did what i had to do" and he sets his jaw and soldiers on Yeah lol even in his last conversation with Ellie he says he'd do it all again if he had to. He's a straightforward one, that Joel.
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Jul 16, 2021 05:50
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I need more examples of stories where you don't kill the 'villain' to be faux indignant over when people get mad about the ending. So far I've got: 'What is this, Xenoblade Chronicles?!' 'What is this, Yakuza 0-7?!' 'What is this, Star Wars Episode V?!' 'What is this, Spider-Man?!' 'What is this, Final Fantasy 7 Remake?!' 'What is this, Crash Bandicoot?!'
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Jul 16, 2021 08:57
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snoremac posted:I thought the ending of 1 was shocking because it's the first time on-screen that Joel explicitly does something reprehensible. He's murdered/tortured a heap of people already but they were mostly cannibals. I will never get how people actually come to this conclusion. Like, people have been doing this take for years and I will never understand it. They literally attack and subdue Joel and Ellie the second they reach their destination, plan on killing Ellie without her knowledge, all on some hope they can make a vaccine they don't know would work and probably could never even mass produce. The Fireflies are sadder, more desperate, and more amoral than Joel ever was. People even used to do this goony rear end fanfic thing on the forums where they decided "Joel took away Ellie's agency" which was just so bad. Tlou 2 completely stomped it into the ground, even though it was pretty obvious that the fireflies were sketch as gently caress to begin with in the first game. I'm not even saying Joel was 100% the good guy or a "hero". If anything the end of TLOU 1 is a precursor to how much TLOU 2 focuses on how different perspectives of the same situation can chance how you view it immensely. Joel doing bad things and "being the bad guy" will never not be the worst take though.
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Jul 16, 2021 09:25
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veni veni veni posted:I will never get how people actually come to this conclusion. Like, people have been doing this take for years and I will never understand it. They literally attack and subdue Joel and Ellie the second they reach their destination, plan on killing Ellie without her knowledge, all on some hope they can make a vaccine they don't know would work and probably could never even mass produce. The Fireflies are sadder, more desperate, and more amoral than Joel ever was. It really throws me for a loop that people barely mention it. The only way it could've been more primed to set Joel off is if they brought up out of nowhere that also they collect eyes as proof that someone's completed a delivery and just rushed at him with a knife to take one of them.
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Jul 16, 2021 09:28
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It’s no surprise at all Joel said he would do the same thing again, because in his situation he really couldn’t have done anything else and just walked away fine with it and accepted it. But yeah I wasn’t affected by any kind of sympathy towards Jerry or the Fireflies in 2 because of everything from how they treated Joel(less that I agree with what he did and more “what did they think would happen”) to how long term ineffective they were acting.
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Jul 16, 2021 12:28
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veni veni veni posted:I will never get how people actually come to this conclusion. Like, people have been doing this take for years and I will never understand it. They literally attack and subdue Joel and Ellie the second they reach their destination, plan on killing Ellie without her knowledge, all on some hope they can make a vaccine they don't know would work and probably could never even mass produce. The Fireflies are sadder, more desperate, and more amoral than Joel ever was. Well said, and agreed.
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Jul 19, 2021 07:13
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Also I'm not convinced that the Fireflies that you encounter in Salt Lake City were the last people who on Earth that could perform the necessary surgery. Like, just try again with a group that waits till everyone's conscious first.
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Jul 19, 2021 07:19
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I remember it being a someone common idea pre-2 that the surgeon was way out of their depth and grasping at straws, but 2 kind of pushes that Jerry knew what he was doing way more and implied he was one of the last with any kind of experience.
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Jul 19, 2021 12:45
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bobjr posted:I remember it being a someone common idea pre-2 that the surgeon was way out of their depth and grasping at straws, but 2 kind of pushes that Jerry knew what he was doing way more and implied he was one of the last with any kind of experience. This is not supported by the game in any way and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you
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Jul 19, 2021 13:46
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Whatever the case, what IS supported by the narrative is that the Fireflies are at the end of their rope as an ideological organization and that 'Ellie-as-cure' has become a sort of flashpoint within the group leadership to maintain control of whatever organizational structure the current leaders have. Marlene's notes confirm that the rest of the leadership is very nearly overriding her authority and has almost lost faith in the original Firefly mission statement to the point of complete dissolution of the movement, hence why the remainders seem almost like religious zealots rather than freedom fighters. In this, her choice (successful vaccine or no) is revealed to be more about keeping a crumbling organization together, and 2LOU shows the further disintegration of factional efforts to maintain control over now blighted former urban centers and how misguided that notion is, while other factions demonstrate a sort of harmony with nature that accepts those dead civilized zones as irretrievably lost. Whether the surgical operation would've been a success or not, the Fireflies original mission statement doesn't realistically fit the picture of what has become of civilization, the damage is done and even though Marlene might be doing the 'right thing' by killing Elllie she's doing it for the wrong reasons. There is no way to turn back the clock, and similar to our own very real human predicament of living on the verge of total climate collapse in the next decade or two...the only way out is through.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:10
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That is, again, one of those bits of fan headcanon justification that serves only to flatten the moral dilemma at the core of the ending and make the entire game worse in the process. e: but you might be, and I apologize if I'm wrong, the guy who once called the Fireflies "neoliberals" in a different thread, something that has absolutely no textual justification, so I dunno why I'm bothering Arist fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 14:12
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I mean at the end of the day how trained they are as a surgeon probably doesn’t matter a ton if they’re going to kill her and take her brain out if they’re qualified to be a surgeon in the first place. The bigger issue would always be in actually making and distributing a cure in a world two decades removed from any kind of modern civilization.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:27
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Arist posted:That is, again, one of those bits of fan headcanon justification that serves only to flatten the moral dilemma at the core of the ending and make the entire game worse in the process. I...doubt it? Maybe making a joke on a stream chat? I overwhelmingly view the Fireflies as a pseudo-religious cult at the point in the story where we encounter them, and that view is supported by the documents and voice recordings from the original game, so definitely not headcannon. Feel free to revisit them at your leisure. My own personal cli-fi/climate fiction read of the environmental storytelling that is so front and center in 2LOU is, I feel, well supported by both games, but feel free to make your own judgements.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:28
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bobjr posted:I mean at the end of the day how trained they are as a surgeon probably doesn’t matter a ton if they’re going to kill her and take her brain out if they’re qualified to be a surgeon in the first place. The bigger issue would always be in actually making and distributing a cure in a world two decades removed from any kind of modern civilization. This doesn't matter. It just doesn't. The details of "how would the Fireflies make and distribute the cure" legitimately aren't important to the story, not just because they never get that far but also because it's beyond the scope of the story being told. Again, it's a fairly straightforward moral dilemma, and it's infuriating that people go so far to try to invalidate it because they don't know how to interpret media in a reasonable way.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:30
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Nothing about TLOU/2LOU is straight forward, and all of it can be interpreted/reinterpreted symbolically, allegorically, and topically in dozens of ways at the very least.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:34
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That's not the point. I'm saying TLOU isn't telling a story where that stuff matters. You might as well ask why all the gasoline hasn't gone bad. In order for the ending to work at all on any level other than "pure, selfless hero Joel" you need to accept that the Fireflies had some chance of success, and that their success at least could have gone well for the world.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:39
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Joel did nothing wrong
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Jul 19, 2021 14:46
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WaltherFeng posted:Joel did nothing wrong I'm a complete idiot for getting pulled into this awful argument yet again, christ
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Jul 19, 2021 14:47
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Arist posted:That's not the point. I'm saying TLOU isn't telling a story where that stuff matters. You might as well ask why all the gasoline hasn't gone bad. It's a plot contrivance. It actually is the point and it does matter, because it's an interactive medium where all kinds of things can be sought, heard, traversed, and inspected. Everything matters within the context of story, all the details which the devs painstakingly added to paint a broad and complex picture of a world and social tapestry [not entirely unlike our own] matter, regardless of how many times you energetically tell people in any of these threads that they don't. Both games are engaging in a variety of storytelling techniques through mechanical design, performance, and art direction that ultimately converge and funnel into more confined yet ultimately ambiguous conclusions. If certain things don't matter to you it's because you are omitting them from the record by choice.
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Jul 19, 2021 14:50
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