The Last of Us II is my favorite story out of any medium. There are others that are held in higher esteem by better-educated people, but my own subjectivity puts TLOU2 at the very top.
I could go on and on about it. I've been thinking about it since I played late last summer. But one central theme I've noticed, that many people have slightly touched on but maybe not quite realized, is consequence. The inciting event of the entire game is a consequence of how Joel wrapped up the first game's plot. If you watch the final cutscene from the first game, you'll see so many comments expressing the sentiment of "The story ended here".
Why? Because they can't handle the fact that Joel's actions would have consequences. Independent of if he did the "right" thing or not (I happen to disagree with what he did, but that's not the point), such a monumental choice is going to have CONSEQUENCES. And that consequence shows up to play golf with his face. The rest of the game is a series of consequences based on that, spiraling ever deeper down the rabbit hole.
But all that the Gamers saw was their self-insert, rugged, loner, asshole survivor murdered by a GURL. And they lost their minds over it. The conversation around this game, around this incredible story, is going to be poisoned for years to come because Gamers aggressively ignore subtext - both hidden and overt.
I love all the loops people jump through to argue that the Fireflies would not be able to create a cure and thus Joel was morally correct to save Ellie and the consequences are undeserved.
I read somewhere once that people who look for those justifications are missing the point of that ending. Even if it was 100% certain the Fireflies would succeed in a cure, Joel would still have gone through with killing them all. It doesn't matter what those people think, the writers basically decided that a cure was possible and Joel's actions prevented that.
That's a great way to summarize that, thank you! They said to save a life is to save the world entire, but not for Joel.
The extra twist is that Ellie would have said yes. She took it as her life's purpose in both games. Both the Fireflies and Joel took Ellie's agency away. People tend to be sympathetic towards Joel because he kept her alive, but her wants mattered just as little to him as they did to the Fireflies.
The Last of Us II is my favorite story out of any medium. There are others that are held in higher esteem by better-educated people, but my own subjectivity puts TLOU2 at the very top.
I could go on and on about it. I've been thinking about it since I played late last summer. But one central theme I've noticed, that many people have slightly touched on but maybe not quite realized, is consequence. The inciting event of the entire game is a consequence of how Joel wrapped up the first game's plot. If you watch the final cutscene from the first game, you'll see so many comments expressing the sentiment of "The story ended here".
Why? Because they can't handle the fact that Joel's actions would have consequences. Independent of if he did the "right" thing or not (I happen to disagree with what he did, but that's not the point), such a monumental choice is going to have CONSEQUENCES. And that consequence shows up to play golf with his face. The rest of the game is a series of consequences based on that, spiraling ever deeper down the rabbit hole.
But all that the Gamers saw was their self-insert, rugged, loner, asshole survivor murdered by a GURL. And they lost their minds over it. The conversation around this game, around this incredible story, is going to be poisoned for years to come because Gamers aggressively ignore subtext - both hidden and overt.
I love all the loops people jump through to argue that the Fireflies would not be able to create a cure and thus Joel was morally correct to save Ellie and the consequences are undeserved.
I read somewhere once that people who look for those justifications are missing the point of that ending. Even if it was 100% certain the Fireflies would succeed in a cure, Joel would still have gone through with killing them all. It doesn't matter what those people think, the writers basically decided that a cure was possible and Joel's actions prevented that.
That's a great way to summarize that, thank you! They said to save a life is to save the world entire, but not for Joel.
The extra twist is that Ellie would have said yes. She took it as her life's purpose in both games. Both the Fireflies and Joel took Ellie's agency away. People tend to be sympathetic towards Joel because he kept her alive, but her wants mattered just as little to him as they did to the Fireflies.
You can't have overt subtext.
Oh fuck I've been owned