Fixed it for you. 
No, I’m actually trying give you some constructive criticism. And again it shows how you just rage without reading what people say. I don’t like TLJ, do like Alita: Battle Angel, and I find the story of TLOU2 to be very poor. Yet I don’t care for you. You see, unlike you, I make an effort to read what you say. When people that agree with you on things don’t like you. That indicates an issue with you not them. TLDR Grow up man.
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I blew bear the fuck up.
Fucking rude.
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So… Yeah. I liked the game a lot. I can see why Youtubers started making clickbaity titles about how trash the game is once the script leaked. Turns out the story was successful at invoking some emotion after all.
I think I’ll save my overall thoughts for a review video, but I’d like to discuss the ending. What did ya’ll think the parting message was, overall?
I think the game tackled a lot of themes and intentionally leaves you thinking about those themes by the end. The game is telling a story about revenge, and the consequences of pursuing it. It’s also a story about forgiveness, and how an act of kindness can be just as contagious as an act of malice.
I also think the parrelels that are slowly drawn between Ellie and Joel are really well done. It just goes to show how someone like Joel became the jaded, complicated person he ended up becoming. They draw parralels between him and Abby as well, even down to the point of her becoming a parental figure to a child she met along the journey. I think there’s some clever irony in the idea that both Abby and Ellie end up becoming the very things they hated about Joel.
And by the end, she loses the one thing that reminded her of Joel in a positive light. Her ability to play guitar, something Joel taught her. I think the fact that she leaves his guitar in the house and walks away is possibly implying that she’s finally let go of him. Maybe it even symbolizes how she’s trying not to go down the same path that Joel did. She’s ending a cycle of hatred by letting go.
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Also, I know this video is just joking around, but it sure does take take some convinient logical leaps to make some of these jokes lmfao.
The parting message was that revenge is pointless and violence solves nothing.
I differ widly from you on how stuff was done and if that message stands up, but those issues have been beat to death already in this thread.
Eh, that’s a pretty surface level assessment of everything that happened.
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The smooth brain take is “REVENGE BAD” but there’s a lot of layers to the overall story and themes presented like the things you suggested. There’s parallels between Abby and Ellie too in the cycle of revenge… which oddly was started by Joel killing Abby’s father. I found it interesting when you play as Abby during Seattle that Abby lived in a settlement that was pretty much just like Ellie’s Jackson. In many ways, they were just people trying to live “normal” lives in a post apocalyptic setting. Their only connection to each other was Joel, whose actions doomed them in a cycle of anguish that Ellie only broke by letting Abby go at the end. It’s hard to say for sure why Ellie let Abby go, but maybe she realized at that moment when she nearly kills Abby that killing Abby will never bring Joel back. I think Abby realizes this sometime after killing Joel too, that killing Joel is never going to bring her father back and really did nothing for her. To expand on that, killing Joel did nothing to improve her life back at home in Seattle, and in the end it just made her life even worse.
Discussions like these is why I think TLOU2’s writing is vastly superior than the first game’s. The first game is good, and I do enjoy it more overall, but it doesn’t really push the envelope in exploring its themes because of how tropey everything is. The most intriguing discussion you would have at the end of the game is if you agree with Joel’s decision to save Ellie at the very end. There really isn’t much to analyze except the very obvious themes of Joel seeing another daughter in Ellie after he lost his.
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Yeah exactly, couldn’t agree more. I think their attempts to humanize Abby when at first you share Ellie’s hatred and resentment was done very effectively. It makes you empathize with a character you never thought you’d empathize with while you’re playing the first half.
I think a lot of people try to downplay the messages the game tackles because it’s easier than actually chewing on all the fat you’re presented with. The game is clearly not just a revenge story but goddamn, you wouldn’t be able to get that out of anyone who doesn’t like the game.
There’s a lot of things the narrative tackles, and I think a lot of it is intentionally left open to your own interpretation by the time the credits roll. It’s not trying to shove pre-conceived notions down your throat about how terrible revenge is or how awful of a person Ellie/Abby is, it naturally let’s you come to your own conclusions by showing you these characters in a myriad of situations you could easily find yourself in.
Whether it’s displaying the worst of us or the best of us, it’s a very human story, and I love that. I had some issues here and there with the pacing for sure, but at the same time I’m not really sure what I’d even trim out. It takes its time letting you get to know these characters and I think it’s done to great affect. You’ve got a lot more stake in Joel and Ellie as characters if you’ve played the first game too, making it that much harder to watch their struggles.
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Eh, maybe my general dislike of the story on a macro level putting a stake in it’s heart for me that you’d have to pull like hell to get out and appreciate. I’m not against other people enjoying it/discussing it. It’s just a failure to me compared to the first when you consider all the potential they had.
Out of curiosity: Let’s say we’re in an alternate universe where the game drops and it hits all of its “potential”. What exactly would be different?
Admittedly, that’s hard to say. When I say “potential”, I mean various potential storylines they could have gone with other than this one. We could have had stuff like:
-An alternate hope for a cure, or one developed already that has people fighting over it or fighting to protect it. In this world, we know a cure isn’t going to magically just get to whoever needs it without a bunch of fuckery involved.
-Since Ellie was believing Joel at the end of 1, you could have made an entire game around the fallout between them when she found out about the hospital, and what happens after.
-Like others have said before, you could have had Abby (if she just had to exist and fulfill her role) be introduced as someone you get along with for a whole game before you (and she) find out who she’s after. Then carry that into 3.
-Something, anything, to do with the actual zombie apocalypse going on. More mutations than the Shamblers and the Rat King. Maybe the CBI evolves to a point where Ellie is in danger of actually being infected.
There’s more, but they’re all just speculative ideas I think ND would have handled and crafted something better out of than just a revenge plot that (in my opinion) fucks up plenty along the way.
See, this is the problem I run into with every person who criticizes the story. I can’t have an objective and fair conversation about the game when people consistently miss the point and devolve the plot into its most basic, distilled form. If all you see is a revenge story, I would honestly argue you missed the vast majority of what the game is trying to say.
I mean… Did you actually play the game or just listen to someone else summarize it? Because that’s literally what a good chunk of the story is about.
The game also spends a huge amount of time with the infected, so I’m confused about your comment there too. It even introduces new types and there’s plenty of lore surrounding humanity’s struggles with the infection. Something else you’d realize had you played the game and spent some time exploring the world.
Not trying to just blindly defend the game, because I do think it has problems, but I feel like I’m arguing with someone who only read a brief summary if I’m being perfectly honest man. A lot of these criticisms just sound like you want to write your own game.
Complete outsider on this trainwreck, so take my opinion with a huge grain of salt, but it seems like a lot of the people who dislike the story dislike it because of the way it was structured. They give Abby her big revenge moment, then try to justify it after it’s happened. At that point, it’s too late. The perspective of the character has already been colored by the action and the audience having spent time on “Team Joel” as it were.
Had they moved the Abby section to the forefront of the game, show her growing up and building that sympathy with her, then her defining moment that put her on the path of revenge before actually going through everything, it might have been better recieved.
The game never justifies Abby’s actions. It doesn’t “justify” anyone’s actions, really. That’s preposterous to the point of hilarity, and only more evidence to me that a lot of these people did not understand what they were being shown.
I’m saying justify as in to show the motivation behind, not necessarily that her actions are right or “just” in that sense.
Well, of course it’s going to show you her motivations. It’s a huge mystery for half of the game why she even wanted revenge on Joel. I hardly see that as the game taking sides though, yet a lot of people seem to take it that way.
Yeah, I agree, but people weren’t going to like that. To a lot of people, Joel was their perspective into this world, then Abby just up and kills him. That puts her in the “enemy” camp in the minds of the player. THEN you have to play as this person (whom you don’t like now) only for them to say “oh yeah, she totally had her reasons, you might even agree with her” when it was too late by then. She was just “the enemy”
The point the game was giving was lost because the way it was delivered was muddled in the details. Indirect story telling is really hard to get right. And even when you do, not everyone will like it.
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