Board 8 > **SPOILER TOPIC** The Last of Us Part 2 **SPOILERS**

(+) Yeah! (+)

So here it is.

You start playing Ellie and her girlfriend having giggly adventures about weed and porn and bigot sandwiches.

You play as Abby in the first 30 minutes. Apparently Abby is just looking around for random Joels to murder.

Joel saves Abby's life. And then Abby ruthlessly murders him in the scene we've seen/heard about right after. No second thoughts. No "Wait maybe he's not so bad." Just straight up Joel goes "lol Hey, you guys look like you know me" and she shotguns him in the knees and then tortures and murders him. No discussion at all. No explanation. Just murders him.

Joel is super fucking dead 2 hours into the game and then Ellie goes after Abby for revenge. No interactions between Joel and Ellie at all in this game. Not even one. Joel barely gets maybe 10-15 minutes at most in this game? And most of it is just him summarizing the last game?

This is Metal Gear Solid 2, where instead of Raiden just being playable for the majority of the game, Raiden gets saved by Solid Snake and then murders him in front of Otacon, who wants revenge for 23 hours.

It's really bad, and we were all horribly wrong when we thought Abby killed Joel halfway through the game. It's so much worse. And we have to play as Abby for A LOT of the game after she murders Joel, without question, without explaining why she didn't even hear him out, AFTER HE SAVED HER LIFE. Presumably the "halfway through the game" is where we get a flashback explaining why Abby killed Joel, which doesn't make her any less of a maniac.

Oh and Abby is trans after all, according to Time Magazine. So that's the trans representation they chose to go with: a horrible murderous psychopath.

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So wait, when you say she is going around looking for random Joels to murder, does she not know what he even looks like? Does she get confirmation or what is that about? Figured she'd at least have a photo or something?

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Just saw a re-upload on Youtube of the first three hours (skipped around a lot to the more important parts) and I can personally confirm all of this is true.

Absolutely insane that this is what happens. I can't imagine being in so much of a rush to kill the main character from the last game that you refuse to even give him any time to have a meaningful interaction with anyone. Not even the person who kills him.

I just can't wrap my head around this decision at all.

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Pirateking2000 posted...

So wait, when you say she is going around looking for random Joels to murder, does she not know what he even looks like? Does she get confirmation or what is that about?

She's looking for someone named Joel. That's all she knows is that his name is Joel. No picture to a face or anything.

Abby is about to get her face ripped off by a zombie. She's completely helpless and Joel blows its head off and literally saves her life completely. Tommy, who is helping Joel save Abby in a big sequence, says his name when they're trying to escape and Abby believes this is the Joel she's looking for.

Having watched the video, it plays out that Abby is convinced this is the same Joel for literally no reason. She shotguns him in the knee and demands that she tell him who she is. Joel just looks absolutely baffled for a while, like he's actually thinking hard about who she could possibly be for like 10 seconds, before ultimately telling her to give him a speech and just kill him. She hits him in the head and knocks him out with the golf club and tells him that he doesn't get to rush this, and orders a tourniquet to be put on his knee.

Ellie hears his screams of anguish as he's literally being tortured later as she looks for him. And then Abby kills him after forcing Ellie to watch. Maybe when they flash back to show it from Abby's point of view, she tells him more about who she is?

But for right now, we played as a random person who kills Joel for no reason and we have no idea why. And we will continue to play as her later in the game, despite how sadistic she is in killing Joel without context.

Edit: Actually, after she shotguns him in the leg, she says his full name and he doesn't... deny it's him? I guess? But she still shotguns him in the leg without any confirmation that he's the same Joel.

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Welp.

I was already planning on skipping this from the leaks but figured I'd wait and see how everything plays out in context.

My mistake.

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I need to explain this further.

Joel and Tommy go out of their way to save Abby's life, when they could have just left the area with the rampaging zombies. Joel personally kills the zombie about to end Abby's life. They go through a long sequence, fighting together and trying to come up with a plan of escape. Abby tells them to head to her friends' place, so that they can be tricked into being surrounded by people who hate Joel and they can all torture and kill him. After he personally saves her from death.

Tommy and Joel are completely unassuming about the whole thing before they shotgun Joel in the leg and then beat Tommy unconscious. Joel still has no idea why Abby and these people want to kill him. Completely oblivious, and he tries to understand why they want to kill him.

And later on when they do the surprise reveal that Joel killed Abby's father, I guess we're supposed to understand her side when we play as her? Like the whole thing is so twisted, and the fact that Druckmann says "Joel is actually a villain." Like fuck you he's the villain, he just saved Abby's life! She'd be DEAD right now if he didn't get involved!

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There a couple of issues with that. If Abby had nothing to work with and if she is indeed just offing any somewhat older man who happens to be named Joel then that is dumb. Especially if she gets no confirmation afterward and just goes "well that's good enough for me because he didn't deny it". Maybe it might be revealed that she had a file or something so her jumping to that conclusion and doing what she does makes some modicum of sense.

Though even then, Joel seems pretty out of character just going along with it and getting ambushed like that at least from what I recall.

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Having not played any of these games but being invested in this ****show, is there any reason given why joel killed her father?
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Emeraldegg posted...

Having not played any of these games but being invested in this ****show, is there any reason given why joel killed her father?

Her father was one of the surgeons that was going to kill Ellie. Particularly the one you have no choice but to kill (there are three of them and you can ignore the other two). He stands there holding a scalpel up at Joel and refuses to move so...

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Wait is this really all this is about?

Based on the first game I adore Joel as a character but he is absolutely a reprehensible person and saying he's a villain is pretty accurate.

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Yeah, they're extremely trusting of Abby and that is a little bit weird. There's also a bit of weirdness because it seems like a lot of the people in her group know Joel before he's introduced, so maybe they actually did have a picture of him? Or maybe some of the guys there personally recognized him from his rampage? Like Abby doesn't pull everyone aside and say "Hey, it's the guy we've wanted to kill!" I don't know. It felt extremely sloppy and rushed.

It goes they arrive > they walk into a room > Abby has a hushed conversation about how lucky she is to be alive > Tommy introduces him and Joel > Joel says they're looking at him like they know him > shotgun to knee

They took no time. Like, they couldn't have had Abby or the others ask leading questions to see if Joel really was the same Joel? Or see if he's really the vicious murderer they thought he was? They just... didn't explore this scene with any nuance at all. Just absolutely mindless violence.

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Pirateking2000 posted...

Her father was one of the surgeons that was going to kill Ellie. Particularly the one you have no choice but to kill (there are three of them and you can ignore the other two). He stands there holding a scalpel up at Joel and refuses to move so...

If I remember right, he makes a move with the scalpel to harm Joel with it too. Also, he was black in the first game but now he's white. So that's weird too. Like he's so meaningless of a character that they're willing to just change his race because they thought nobody would remember, but he's not so meaningless because the entire game revolves around his death.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Wait is this really all this is about?

Based on the first game I adore Joel as a character but he is absolutely a reprehensible person and saying he's a villain is pretty accurate.

I disagree with that. He tried to do a lot of the right things, and he had a lot of humanity to him. The ending of the game is crafted in a way to make you feel like Joel is making the right decision to save Ellie and kill the Fireflies, who are billed as very nasty people overall throughout the game. It's only now, before this game is released, that they are trying to convince us that Joel was actually in the wrong for it, to the point of retconing things (such as Druckmann saying if they got to crack open Ellie's brain, they absolutely would have found the cure when the game states that these scientists suck and they've had no success).

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Joel isn't a great guy overall because he's obsessed with self-preservation to a fault, even at the expense of others (which is what causes him to do what he does at the end), but he's not villainous.

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But hey, you know what IS villainous?

Luring someone who just saved your life into a trap to murder them without context.

That's pretty fucking villainous. And that's also the secret main character in your story.

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I'm fully on board with the fact that there was no guarantee killing Ellie would have guaranteed a cure.

Again, that feels like a retcon they are using to justify treating Joel as a villain this game.

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So I'm curious. The dilemma here seems to be that Abby acted out irrationally, not even asking Joel why he did what he did and going above and beyond what he seems to have "deserved," and for that she is being labeled as a psychopath. Would Joel have done the same thing if someone had actually killed Ellie? Would he have gone on a rampage against anyone involved, or would he have listened to their reasoning, especially if it was for "the good of the world"?

Basically I'm asking if joel were in abby's shoes, and ellie died in place of abby's father, woudl joel have acted the same way?
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

He tried to do a lot of the right things, and he had a lot of humanity to him.

I agree with this, which is why Joel is a good character, but man as for the rest I have almost the complete opposite interpretation of that ending

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Oh, I think Joel was wrong in the ending, and it's part of the reason I don't like the ending, but I get why he did it. Regardless, he's more of a tragic hero than a villain.

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I would say if Joel started killing random people and rampage against them to murder them, yes. He'd be a psychopath too. But you'd also have to contend with the fact that they killed a little girl too, which is pretty unconscionable in itself.

Also keep in mind they've been obsessively looking for Joel for seven years (I think?) now.

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Oh sure, I don't disagree that he would be a psychopath should he do those things, but that's not really what I was asking. I was asking if his character traits would make him do what abby did in the first place were the roles reversed.

Either way, it sounds like the devs are trying to push the narrative that abby is somehow justified, when in reality it's quite plausible that joel and abby could BOTH be villains. Like, having one villain kill another doesn't really make the 2nd villain more sympathetic imo.
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Leonhart4 posted...

Oh, I think Joel was wrong in the ending, and it's part of the reason I don't like the ending, but I get why he did it. Regardless, he's more of a tragic hero than a villain.

He's an antihero for sure, but there's nothing heroic about that ending! He's acting selfishly there. In that context specifically he is the villain.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I agree with this, which is why Joel is a good character, but man as for the rest I have almost the complete opposite interpretation of that ending

So let me ask this then. This isn't a gotcha, but more just to see what you think. If the game stopped and let you decide between:

Joel going on a murder spree to save Ellie's life after they took her without consent to crack her head open for a cure, in which they've stated they've had zero success with despite trying countless times to use immune people for the cure

or

Joel letting Ellie die for a very slim chance of a cure being made, without Ellie's consent

What do you choose?

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Emeraldegg posted...

Oh sure, I don't disagree that he would be a psychopath should he do those things, but that's not really what I was asking. I was asking if his character traits would make him do what abby did in the first place.

For Joel I doubt he'd care to hear them out on their reasons (though he did let that one Firefly lady talk before offing her so who knows). Depending on the circumstances I think he'd just off the person / people who did the deed then retreat back into himself falling heavily back to how he was at the start of the game never trusting / getting that close to others again. However, at the very least, I think he would make damn sure of who he was after if he wasn't (probably capture them first and interrogate). That doesn't seem to be the case with Abby unless something else is revealed on her end. Right now it seems she went from zero to kill upon learning the guy's name was Joel and that's it which is why later on they will probably have some stuff to suggest she was pretty sure on who she was fucking up.

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Emeraldegg posted...

Oh sure, I don't disagree that he would be a psychopath should he do those things, but that's not really what I was asking. I was asking if his character traits would make him do what abby did in the first place were the roles reversed.

Either way, it sounds like the devs are trying to push the narrative that abby is somehow justified, when in reality it's quite plausible that joel and abby could BOTH be villains. Like, having one villain kill another doesn't really make the 2nd villain more sympathetic imo.

I think the thing here is that people don't know what they're capable until they're pushed to that point. As for Joel spending his life trying to hunt down them for seven years straight... I mean, I could see it being believable given what we know about him.

But Abby still had a giant support system with her group she's been with her whole life, currently lives in a place with electricity and air conditioning and a state of the art gym, while Joel would have his brother in his life and that small community where they eat squirrel and shit soup to survive.

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Pirateking2000 posted...

For Joel I doubt he'd care to hear them out on their reasons (though he did let that one Firefly lady talk before offing her so who knows). Depending on the circumstances I think he'd just off the person who did the deed then retreat back into himself falling heavily back to how he was at the start of the game never trusting / getting that close to others again. However, at the very least, I think he would make damn sure of who he was after if he wasn't (probably capture them first and interrogate). That doesn't seem to be the case with Abby unless something else is revealed on her end. Right now it seems she went from zero to kill upon learning the guy's name was Joel and that's it.

I should clarify this too:

They're actively SEARCHING for Joels. They are here because they are trying to find a Joel that they know might be here. They have been searching for a Joel to murder for 7 years. So it's not that she is just going about her business and then happens to run into Joel, but they ran into each other like this because they came to this area to seek out a Joel they heard was in these parts.

She is trying to hunt down and murder him, full stop. But she couldn't just murder him right there because she still needed his help to survive, so she essentially used him and his good nature to help her get back to her people so they could all murder him like they wanted to for 7 years.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

So let me ask this then. This isn't a gotcha, but more just to see what you think. If the game stopped and let you decide between:

Joel going on a murder spree to save Ellie's life after they took her without consent to crack her head open for a cure, in which they've stated they've had zero success with despite trying countless times to use immune people for the cure

or

Joel letting Ellie die for a very slim chance of a cure being made, without Ellie's consent

What do you choose?

Probably option B but that's missing the point because both are bad choices. It's not that Joel's choice isn't understandable or that the doctors aren't also in the wrong, it's that Ellie should be the one choosing and Joel is MORE in the wrong. The game makes the case that Ellie most likely would have chosen to try to find the cure had she known, but Joel is making his choice because he personally does not want to give up Ellie. That's what makes him selfish and the villain in that situation.

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So Abby is like literally the T-800 from The Terminator. If there was somehow a real live human being that thought like a T-800.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Probably option B but that's missing the point because both are bad choices. It's not that Joel's choice isn't understandable or that the doctors aren't also in the wrong, it's that Ellie should be the one choosing and Joel is MORE in the wrong. The game makes the case that Ellie most likely would have chosen to try to find the cure had she known, but Joel is making his choice because he personally does not want to give up Ellie. That's what makes him selfish and the villain in that situation.

But they tell you in the game that they are first of all bad people judging by the fact they're doing this to Ellie without her consent, that they have failed every single time before this, and that they would likely lie to Ellie about the chances of success if she asked about the success rate and probably would've taken her by force regardless of if she gave consent or not.

Like, Joel is saving Ellie from some people who don't give a shit and will do whatever they can for another likely failed crack at a cure. That's the sticking point here.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Like, Joel is saving Ellie from some people who don't give a shit and will do whatever they can for another likely failed crack at a cure. That's the sticking point here.

Bruh and Joel also does not give a shit about how successful the cure could be. That's the point! They are all bad people!

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At any rate this certainly does put the reviews in context. A common theme among positive AND negative reviews is that they found the game exhausting because they already agreed with its premise going in. Meanwhile it's obvious now that not everyone agreed with it in the first place and aren't convinced by it. So the few unconditionally positive reviews I guess are the very few Team Joel fans and fence-sitters the game actually managed to convert.

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Why could he possibly give a shit when he's dealing with awful people like that who are ready to take full advantage of an unconscious little girl to murder her for a chance at a cure?

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I cant really get too upset about Joel, but early spoilers suggested you continue playing the game as Abby eventually trying to kill Ellie and taking joy in beating up a pregnant woman and junk.

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There have been clips released of Abby viciously pounding Ellie's girlfriend's face into a shattered surface repeatedly and when it was mentioned she was pregnant, Abby held a knife to her throat and said "Good." And then eventually she decides not to murder both of them.

And at the end of the game you do play as Abby trying to viciously choke Ellie to death.

So yes, it just supports the idea that Abby is psychopath that is impossible to enjoy playing as but here we are.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

So yes, it just supports the idea that Abby is psychopath that is impossible to enjoy playing as but here we are.

I know you don't agree, but I'm just going to point out this is what the ending sequence to the first game feels like if you don't support Joel. <_<

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I didn't agree with Joel and this sounds way worse. I could at least empathize with Joel.

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ok neat I definitely dont want this game
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I mean Joel is a bad person against other not so great people.

Playing as a raging psychopath that relishes in the idea of killing a pregnant girl for the crime of trying to save her girlfriend feels a bit worse. And then since youre also trying to kill Ellie, its like... Are they trying to punish you for liking the character?

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The discourse around this game is gonna be hilarious to watch over the next month.

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Shadow Dino posted...

The discourse around this game is gonna be hilarious to watch over the next month.

Micheal Jackson might actually run out of popcorn.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I didn't agree with Joel and this sounds way worse. I could at least empathize with Joel.

This. The fact that he just saved Abby's life makes Abby all the more unlikable.

Shadow Dino posted...

The discourse around this game is gonna be hilarious to watch over the next month.

I agree.

I'm still getting it though. I wanna be in on it.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I know you don't agree, but I'm just going to point out this is what the ending sequence to the first game feels like if you don't support Joel. <_<

It really isn't very comparable and it ignores the fact that you are killing noted awful people trying to murder an unconscious little girl.

In this you are playing as Abby, girl who spends 7 years obsessively trying to kill somebody who actively saved your life, tricked him, tortured him, and killed him in front of his surrogate daughter while taking absolute glee in doing so, beating pregnant girls nearly to death and loving that too, and at the end you leave understandably angry surrogate daughter for dead after breaking multiple bones in her legs and arms.

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Basically, if you're going to kill Joel... Okay. I think the idea sucks. Super sucks. Terrible concept for your story. But fine.

You aren't giving him any sort of meaningful interaction though. Not with Ellie, not with Abby, not with anybody. You don't give him a chance to talk with Ellie and solidify their relationship in this game. All you get is a summary at the beginning. You don't get to see them hang out together and be like "Hey, look at how much they love each other and how their relationship has evolved!"

You don't get to see Abby talk with the man who killed her father, see Joel's reaction to that or what he would say in response to her and her insane amount of vengeance, him try to reason or just accept his fate for it.

You just rush to kill him as fast as you can, like he means nothing. There's nothing to explore here. There's no nuance to anything. There's no time to appreciate him and fondly look at how much Ellie cares for him now. They don't let Joel say anything meaningful about Abby's situation so she and Joel can reflect on it. They just remove the entire human aspect from this and then jump into their shitty revenge story.

Why is a sequel to a game built so firmly on character interaction taking NO TIME to do any character interaction here? It's like they couldn't wait to just get Joel out of the way 2 hours in.

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I'm not touching any of the political stuff, but I will say the trans friends I have that I regularly talk to hated the first batch of leaks and thought Abby was a terrible representation for them.

I haven't talked with any of them after Time Magazine all but confirmed that Abby actually is trans, but given that everything we know about Abby is somehow worse than we thought it would be after these leaks, they're going to be even more upset that this is their trans representation.

I do think Neil Druckmann does think this is great representation for the trans community, but I also think he's an idiot who doesn't know how to write anything well, and that this is just the clumsiest he could have possibly written a character, trans or otherwise. But I think he's proud of this character, but now he's scared at how she'll be received now not just by the right-wing bigot types but by progressive types and the LGBTQ community at large.

In 3 hours, Abby just kills Joel in probably the most evil way that she could. We don't know she's trans yet in the game at that point, and we don't know how or when they'll reveal that. But it's incredibly hard to root for this trans character after this or appreciate her as a character when the first thing she does is murder Joel (a character a lot of people like) in front of Ellie as she sobs and begs for Abby to spare him (and Ellie is universally liked).

From talking with my trans friends, they just want positive representation. This isn't positive, at all. Ellie gets a cutesy little flirty and make-out session with Dina while Abby gets to torture and murder a man who saved her from death. It's just not going to go over well at all.

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"Clumsy" is the simplest way to put it.

Druckman clearly thinks he's doing something amazing by including a playable trans character with this much power and agency.

Druckman is clearly an older, aging cis white dude who doesn't know better. The only person people are going to see here is a rampaging murderous psychopath who killed and horrifically assaulted characters they loved from the first game. They think that by having this character "justified" it's going to save face. In reality, it won't matter in the slightest.

This game is going to severely regressive, not progressive, in its clumsy "bigot sandwich" hands. I don't think it's malicious in it's intent, it just fails spectacularly at what people who want representation are looking for.

If only Henning was there.

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I'm legit not sure, but is this even Druckmann's fault? Like he was the sole writer I see credited on both TLoU and Left Behind, but this time he's got a co-writer in Halley Gross.

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I've been eye balling that. I'm not familiar with any of her work, other than those two episodes of West World which I haven't seen myself. Druckmann is the one out in front of it all, but that could just be him trying to go full auteur.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

So let me ask this then. This isn't a gotcha, but more just to see what you think. If the game stopped and let you decide between:

Joel going on a murder spree to save Ellie's life after they took her without consent to crack her head open for a cure, in which they've stated they've had zero success with despite trying countless times to use immune people for the cure

or

Joel letting Ellie die for a very slim chance of a cure being made, without Ellie's consent

What do you choose?

Might be way behind but I do not in any way remember the fireflies indicating that they have tried to create a cure with immune people before. I am 95% sure that is not an accurate explanation of what happens in the game

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