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  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Farealmer View Post
    ...
    I am quoting and arguing what you say here, making no reference to anything preceding.

  2. #17
    Extraordinary Member Drako's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Farealmer View Post
    He was human. I doubt Joel would of taken on the fireflies for the life of a stranger even without the cure aspect in it. The point was to show that he and Joel were more alike than they knew.
    And? Joel stance is always the same, he doesn't care about people outside of his family. In the prologue, before the apocalypse, he ignored a family asking for help because he puts the safety of his people before the others.

    Abby's daddy was so adamant on "saving" humanity, but only if cost the life of someone else's daughter.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drako View Post
    And? Joel stance is always the same, he doesn't care about people outside of his family. In the prologue, before the apocalypse, he ignored a family asking for help because he puts the safety of his people before the others.

    Abby's daddy was so adamant on "saving" humanity, but only if cost the life of someone else's daughter.
    Everyone has importance tiers they place everything in. Even someone who wishes to save humanity has lines they wouldn't cross to do it. Usually those lines are the closest to home. If Ellie had saved his life and nursed him back to health the way she did with Joel I see no reason he wouldn't feel different than he did. But she was a stranger who was put before him that he never even spoke with. Why I feel he jumped the gun(which was more for plot reasons than anything) I understand why it was something he could do verses if it was the person he valued most.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post

    Which doesn't land emotionally. When we start the game we have no idea of this break or divide between Ellie and Joel (sure there are vague dialogues but the issue is initially presented as being about Joel defending her from Seth). So we get to be told of this divide between Ellie and Joel several hours into the game and well past Joel died...so that prevents any real emotional impact because audiences are distracted from identifying with the characters in favor of some processing the game's highly manipulative structure and pacing.
    I can understand having a dislike for the structure and non-linear storytelling on this game, I go back and forth myself on whether it would have been better to tell the story chronologically, but I find myself more often on the side of it's just fine the way it was told, because it is all the more powerful because of it. The flashbacks become way more precious and we appreciate them more because we know what happens to Joel, so we take in every new moment we see him as if it was the last, because it might have well been the last as far as we knew.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Revenge Stories are only powerful when, to quote The Revenger's Tragedy, "When the bad bleeds, only then is the tragedy good." Or you know when we actually see the Bride Kill Bill.
    And if that's your opinion it's totally fine, but don't act as if it's a fact that a revenger story is automatically bad when it doesn't follow that structure, simply state that YOU don't like it and prefer when the bad bleeds. Personally, that is one point I agree with, I also would have preferred if Ellie killed Abby at the end, it would have been way more satisfying, but I can appreciate the story even if I don't fully agree with all its decisions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    The game initially presents things that way. Until the third flashback, we are given no reason to think that Ellie knew about what Joel did all along. The manipulation of the game became laughable after that.
    It is not manipulation in a bad way, it is the very structure of the game and what makes the story good, it constantly turns upside down what you think will happen and plays with your expectations and subverting them, consistently taking you by surprise with all the choices being made.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Again that's manipulative as hell. When the game wants you to feel a certain way, they bring out the right flashback to make it work. When Ellie is about to drown Abby...they insert a flashback which has never been foreshadowed and presented until then to make Ellie back down. That's classic deus-ex-machina. It's obvious and trite manipulation.
    Well, that's exactly what makes good writing and storytelling, to bring just the right scene at the right time to make it work, weird you complain about that lol. I do have to partially concede on one point though, the quick "one second" flashback that Ellie sees that makes her spare Abby was out of nowhere and just didn't click right, and left a sense of not fully understanding what happened. All that is solved though once we get to see the final scene and everything comes into place. Again, your main problem seems to be with the structure this game employs for its storytelling, so it's understandable you don't like their approach, but for many player this was the right approach and it is exactly what made the story so good and all the more powerful, because one starts putting the pieces one by one, understanding the puzzle in its entirety once it is done.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Except for Ellie. You can't say he wanted to help everyone and pass over the murder of a 14 year old child, especially one that had survived and endured so much to get there (as Marlene pointed out to him).
    He couldn't do anything for Ellie, if he could then things would have been different, it was either Ellie (a girl he did not even know) or the rest of humanity, the choice is quite clear, you have a very narrow and close minded view of things.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Hitler liked animals more than people too.
    You see, I was willing to have a discussion, but with dumb and uninformed claims like this, I just lost any willingness I had to debate. Abby's dad did not kill millions of people, he did not torture men, he didn't run camps where people suffered incredible pain and wished to die instead of being kept there, he was not an inhuman piece of sh*t.

    He had a choice, save one girl or save all of humanity. Not to mention Ellie would have died quick and without pain, your comparison is one of the most incoherent things I have ever seen on these forums, and quite honestly, just took away all willingness I had to talk with you about this.

    Don't bother replying, or do, I won't reply back either way, have a nice day.

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drako View Post
    So he is a hypocrite?
    He was a father, as simple as that.

    No father would ever sacrifice their child, even if it means saving the rest of humanity. Joel would have done the same thing in his place if he had to choose between a girl he doesn't know or the rest of humanity, but he would choose his child (or a girl he sees as his child) over all of humanity, the very same thing the doctor would have chosen. Neither of the two are hypocrites, they are FATHERS, as simple as that.

  6. #21
    Extraordinary Member Drako's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Farealmer View Post
    Everyone has importance tiers they place everything in. Even someone who wishes to save humanity has lines they wouldn't cross to do it. Usually those lines are the closest to home. If Ellie had saved his life and nursed him back to health the way she did with Joel I see no reason he wouldn't feel different than he did. But she was a stranger who was put before him that he never even spoke with. Why I feel he jumped the gun(which was more for plot reasons than anything) I understand why it was something he could do verses if it was the person he valued most.
    You just explained in another words why Abby's dad is a hypocrite. He can racionalize that a life of millions are worth more than a life of one child, except when if it's his daughter. If he can't cross this line, then Joel was not wrong after all.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drako View Post
    You just explained in another words why Abby's dad is a hypocrite. He can racionalize that a life of millions are worth more than a life of one child, except when if it's his daughter. If he can't cross this line, then Joel was not wrong after all.
    Joel may very well not have been to Abby's father if he had known why Joel did what he did. It's possible for people to be on opposing sides and acknowledge they would do the same thing the other side would do in their shoes.

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wall-Crawler View Post
    I can understand having a dislike for the structure and non-linear storytelling on this game, I go back and forth myself on whether it would have been better to tell the story chronologically, but I find myself more often on the side of it's just fine the way it was told, because it is all the more powerful because of it.
    Flashback structures work best when you are dealing with stories and contexts that are murky with stories that are fundamentally uncertain and unclear, as well as a way to concise structure so that you can easily move to and from interesting scenarios. Max Payne games do that well. It works fine with the Uncharted games where using flashbacks (from the second game onwards) allows one to peel back the layers of Nathan Drake who's a character who lies a lot and has a lot to hide, and also the stories deal with thieves, conmen, heists, treasure hunts and plot twists. In that game and in a few others, flashbacks are a creative and interesting tool and add to the story.

    However, used badly, flashbacks can be manipulative. And certainly one can argue that it's use is dubious when you have characters like Joel and Ellie who are quite straightforward and hearts-on-the-sleeves types, that it doesn't work all that well. (The Last of Us didn't use any flashbacks at all). Because it amounts to tricking the audience and manipulating them to feel a certain way in a given moment rather than allowing the character to act and react in that moment organically and lead to that. Until Ellie met Nora, the expectation was that she didn't know entirely that Joel lied to her at the end of the last game. And the expectation was that she would discover Abby's motivations. The game was quite shamelessly leading you to think that.

    Personally, that is one point I agree with, I also would have preferred if Ellie killed Abby at the end, it would have been way more satisfying...
    The developers themselves said that for more than half of the production Abby was going to die at Ellie's hands at the end. So that was something they changed late in the production and never something that was organically leading to that conclusion to start with. The game was never made with the intent that Ellie would forgive Abby from the ground-up so you can see why it doesn't work.

    Well, that's exactly what makes good writing and storytelling, to bring just the right scene at the right time to make it work...
    There's a difference between doing it right, where you accept what the characters do and the scene in question, and a difference between putting the thumb on the scales. As I mentioned above for much of the production Ellie was intended to kill Abby, the flashback was inserted late to explain why she would spare Abby. So the use of that flashback was manipulative.

    Again, your main problem seems to be with the structure this game employs for its storytelling, so it's understandable you don't like their approach,
    It's one of the reasons why I think the game's story was a failure in what it was trying to do. I have no problems with the concept of the game and its themes, but the execution of the product felt utterly flawed to me. The game felt manipulative, it felt like the characters were puppeteered rather than acting according to what was established, and the way they did it, was highly dubious, especially in terms of what it was trying to do and say.

    He couldn't do anything for Ellie, if he could then things would have been different, it was either Ellie (a girl he did not even know) or the rest of humanity, the choice is quite clear, you have a very narrow and close minded view of things.
    Let me get this straight. Arguing against human experimentation or dissecting humans, is being "narrow and close minded".

    To repeat, if The Last of Us ended with Ellie's death for a miracle vaccine, would gamers have accepted it? Would people think the Fireflies were right? It's only because Joel killed them and stopped them that people feel bad for the Fireflies. They have the comfort of imagining (at least before the second game) anything they wished to be outside Joel's perspective. The sequel though had to give us a true perspective and that perspective, unwittingly and unintentionally on ND's part, condemns them even more.

    You see, I was willing to have a discussion, but with dumb and uninformed claims like this, I just lost any willingness I had to debate. Abby's dad did not kill millions of people, he did not torture men, he didn't run camps where people suffered incredible pain and wished to die instead of being kept there, he was not an inhuman piece of sh*t.
    My point was obviously, that if your argument that Abby's Dad is a nice person is that he was nice to zebras, then that's not a good argument. Lot of people can be nice to animals and horrible to human beings. If the Hitler comparison bothers you, well I mean in James Bond movies, the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld likes petting cats but that doesn't mean he's a good guy. A number of bad guys have pets after all, and are quite capable of being nice to them. And by the way, the Fireflies are terrorists who brutally killed hundred and thousands of people and fought a civil war. Sure they might have had good reasons but as we saw in the flashback in TLoU-2, where one Firefly quit them and called them "liars" they burned civilians and innocent people in large numbers.

    Jerry's Dad is not some doctor/scientist working in the trenches to help people on all sides caught in the middle like say Doctors without Borders, he's actively serving a group that killed a lot of innocent people. Remember his justification to Marlene in the flashback is that killing Ellie would justify all their atrocities and all the things they did.

    So again, not enough was done in the flashbacks to make Abby's Dad a good person. He comes off in fact as a terrible hypocrite and moral coward. Emotionally Abby's Dad is necessary for us to buy sympathy to Abby. It's important for Abby to be sympathetic for the second half of the game and so the game on the whole, to work. Since Abby's Dad isn't a good person the entire project collapses on the weak foundation.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 06-29-2020 at 01:09 PM.

  9. #24
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    Mechanically its top tier and well crafted. The story certainly made me feel things. It was compelling and emotionally complex. At the same time though it never gave me satisfaction or closure to any of the emotions it evoked. We had two sides, but both sides screamed the same thing. While many of the new characters were not very compelling and honestly rather generic. Seemed like they existed just to help make a point, but had little substance beyond that. By the end of it i was just done, and had no desire to go back and do any of it again.
    Last edited by Godlike13; 06-29-2020 at 05:28 PM.

  10. #25
    Extraordinary Member Drako's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wall-Crawler View Post
    He was a father, as simple as that.

    No father would ever sacrifice their child, even if it means saving the rest of humanity. Joel would have done the same thing in his place if he had to choose between a girl he doesn't know or the rest of humanity, but he would choose his child (or a girl he sees as his child) over all of humanity, the very same thing the doctor would have chosen. Neither of the two are hypocrites, they are FATHERS, as simple as that.
    Jerry, as a father should try to see the other side too. But the dude begged to kill a girl as quickly as possible without her consent. When Joel came to rescue her, this is what he says:



    He only thinks about the lives he'll save if is not his daughter. He also threatened a armed guy with a scalpel, so i guess he wasn't very bright.

    Joel is not a hypocrite cause he doesn't act like the savior of humanity. As a matter of fact, he doesn't even care. He took Ellie to the fireflies in the first place cause he was getting paid.

    Marline didn't want to kill the Ellie either, a girl that she care for and knew for years, but reluctant aceppted. She was willing to do anything for the cure.
    Last edited by Drako; 06-29-2020 at 01:21 PM.

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drako View Post
    Joel is not a hypocrite cause he doesn't act like the savior of humanity. As a matter of fact, he doesn't even care. He took Ellie to the fireflies in the first place cause he was getting paid.
    He did start to care. Right before the end, during the moment of the entire Giraffes, Joel asks Ellie that they could go back to Jackson and forget about the fireflies but Ellie wanted to know about her immunity and what it meant.

    Marline didn't want to kill the Ellie either, a girl that she care for and knew for years, but reluctant aceppted. She was willing to do anything for the cure.
    Him talking Marlene into it was the clincher for me. That Abby's Dad was a scumbag.

    The game did a terrible job of making a character, one the story intended to be sympathetic, actually being sympathetic. It's a failure of writing and execution.

    The larger problem of The Last of Us Part II is that unlike the first game which says a lot about human stuff like parental love, motivations, survival and so on...this game speaks about nothing human or relatable. It's main reference is entirely the first game. It's like they got drunk on the Kool-Aid of all the praise they got for the ending and forgot everything human that led to that ending working. The fact that co-director Bruce Straley and the many animators left might be a factor in that.

    The sequel feels like it was spreadsheet into existence by fan theories and debates about the first game. It's similar to The last Jedi, a movie that addresses fandom but not real people.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 06-29-2020 at 01:30 PM.

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Let me get this straight. Arguing against human experimentation or dissecting humans, is being "narrow and close minded".

    To repeat, if The Last of Us ended with Ellie's death for a miracle vaccine, would gamers have accepted it?
    Maybe, maybe not. It's easy to argue they wouldn't have given the ending we got but that's hard to tell. If Naughty Dog could convince people Joel's rather selfish decision in the first game was a good thing maybe they could have made Ellie's sacrifice work as well. To use another Star trek example, I don't recall anyone calling Sisko a villain after "In The Pale Moonlight".

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    The larger problem of The Last of Us Part II is that unlike the first game which says a lot about human stuff like parental love, motivations, survival and so on...this game speaks about nothing human or relatable.
    Yeah, it's only the story of two women dealing with grief and loss of two people they loved and what they endure in trying to achieve their idea of justice for those people. Nothing human or relatable about that.

    The sequel feels like it was spreadsheet into existence by fan theories and debates about the first game. It's similar to The last Jedi, a movie that addresses fandom but not real people.
    The two are not mutually exclusive. Or are you saying fandom isn't real people? Because that honestly sounds more disrespectful of this game series' fans than anything I've seen people accuse Naughty Dog of.
    Last edited by Agent Z; 06-29-2020 at 10:31 PM.

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Maybe, maybe not. It's easy to argue they wouldn't have given the ending we got but that's hard to tell. If Naughty Dog could convince people Joel's rather selfish decision in the first game was a good thing maybe they could have made Ellie's sacrifice work as well.
    Joel's decision at the end of the first game was intended to be ambiguous, uncertain, but human, in the sense of in-his-position-I'd-do-it-too. The first game wasn't telling you outright that it was a bad thing to do.

    Yeah, it's only the story of two women dealing with grief and loss of two people they loved and what they endure in trying to achieve their idea of justice for those people. Nothing human or relatable about that.
    Because none of that is remotely presented in a way similar to how real people will deal with it. The entire concept and premise of the sequel is rooted far more in genre conventions than the first game is. Far more rooted in its "lore".

    Or are you saying fandom isn't real people?
    In general, no. Games or works of entertainment, especially new IP, are created by people who bring to the table a huge range of experiences that the audience aren't familiar with. Whereas fans of the game when they discuss stuff online, largely only have the one game to talk about or talk against. So when you make a sequel, especially one built on anticipation and interest developed over an ambiguous ending in the first game (an ending whose power would have been stronger if it had been untouched btw), your standards are no longer the ones you chose for yourself but the ones the fandom set for you.

  14. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Joel's decision at the end of the first game was intended to be ambiguous, uncertain, but human, in the sense of in-his-position-I'd-do-it-too. The first game wasn't telling you outright that it was a bad thing to do.
    Well, the same could easily apply to the Fireflies' decision.


    Because none of that is remotely presented in a way similar to how real people will deal with it.
    What exactly about the previous game made it more real than this one? For one thing, both games are set in a fictional zombie apocalypse so neither is a total copy of reality but wanting to avenge someone you love who was murdered is hardly an unusual trait among humans. People in the real world have killed over less.

    The entire concept and premise of the sequel is rooted far more in genre conventions than the first game is. Far more rooted in its "lore".
    I have no idea what you are talking about with this.



    In general, no. Games or works of entertainment, especially new IP, are created by people who bring to the table a huge range of experiences that the audience aren't familiar with. Whereas fans of the game when they discuss stuff online, largely only have the one game to talk about or talk against. So when you make a sequel, especially one built on anticipation and interest developed over an ambiguous ending in the first game (an ending whose power would have been stronger if it had been untouched btw), your standards are no longer the ones you chose for yourself but the ones the fandom set for you.
    Well, it seems more fans liked this than hated it. Either way, I'm not sure this proves your "fandom isn't real people" claim.

  15. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Well, the same could easily apply to the Fireflies' decision.
    Nope. Because again in real life, people relate to "I will save a child from becoming a human sacrifice" than "Man, if only we killed that child for a cure". The latter is a cold rational thought experiment which is not an universal experience.

    Especially because we now live in a global pandemic where a certian knowledge of epidemiology has become common. The premise of the first game rests on ignorance since a pandemic was a remote experience, a thing of the past, in the first game (not that I am blaming ND for not knowing about the future, but on the other hand, Contagion was made in 2011, so it had a better more realistic reference at hand). In real life many people have developed natural immunity to Covid-19, but nobody goes around arguing that these people be cut up and dissected for an insta-vaccine. And again consider the public backlash to some politicians arguing that we must "kill grandma for the economy".

    Likewise, people now know that vaccines depend not only on laboratory production which is a long process and can only be shortened by global collective effort on the part of multiple science teams rather than what seems like a veterinarian with spare time. And they know that producing the formula isn't enough, manufacturing, containment, and distribution is even more important. So the fireflies look less believable than before and the sequel, owing entirely to its timing, feels completely dated.

    What exactly about the previous game made it more real than this one?

    ...

    I have no idea what you are talking about with this.
    It was more rooted in character interactions than plot. You were entirely in Joel and Ellie's shoes, so you didn't know what they didn't know. You were never given any global picture of the "world building" i.e. what happened in X country and so on. Joel and Ellie were regular people making their way in a world they didn't understand and know. The first game was trying to give you a sense of regular people in a broken world. So that made it feel realistic and grounded. The final level of The Last of Us-1 conveyed that well where Joel after an entire game of improvised weapons, jury-rigged shotguns and pistols, finally confronts soldiers with military grade assault rifles. So you were a regular smuggler, lowest of the low, going against a powerful self-annointed elite.

    That changes when you move past that perspective, and choose another point of view. Naughty Dog made the decision to choose for its point of view an ex-Firefly soldier, and daughter of a Firefly doctor, so that means you no longer have the point of view of a regular person. You now have a somewhat elite perspective. The Fireflies are a faction fighting a civil war, they also governed and controlled sections of the land. So now, ND is automatically putting you in perspective of the wider world-building. And its strength and weakness rests on their lore. Since the lore was established from the view of entirely ordinary people in the first game, it basically needs to be redrawn to be done properly. The Last of Us Part-II is a plot driven game and not a character driven game, I don't think that can be denied.

    Well, it seems more fans liked this than hated it.
    We can't tell that for sure. The successful launch of The Last of Us Part II depends on the goodwill and equity built up about previous Naughty Dog games. In the same way that Spider-Man 3's success owed itself greatly to the reputation and status of the preceding two movies. Likewise, The Last Jedi's success owed itself to the buildup and excitement of The Force Awakens (which ultimately made far more money than TLJ, and TROS' weaker opening haul can be credited in part to the backlash to TLJ). The success a title enjoys at launch, at a time when most gamers hadn't played it, is largely driven by marketing, anticipation, and the good will of the previous titles in the series or by the developer, rather than the intrinsic worth of the product in question.

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