I'll never understand the fallout between Ellie and Joel. Ellie KNEW Joel was, at the very least, hiding something. Something important enough to lie to her about, obviously, and that stopped her from being able to help cure the disease, thus giving her life, and the lives of everyone who had died for her, meaning. She may not know Joel shot up an entire facility, but she knows it's NOT simply the case that the Fireflies decided it wouldn't work. She chose to accept it because she loved him, and knew he loved her, and neither of them could afford to lose the other. It was a tacit agreement--we never speak of this, for our relationship is too important. Yet when she finds out that Joel was hiding something from her, which she already knew, she pushes him away, despite already having chosen to NOT to do that. This is pretty much just a retcon. Furthermore, after several years of a stable life, building friendships, feeling like she finally has a permanent home, her survivor's guilt should be much less than it was in the timeline of the first game, so how is she MORE upset NOW then back when her one dream was snatched away from her? And the fact that it's not discussed, that Joel doesn't make an actual argument of all the reasons he did what he did, and just presents himself as a selfish prick, is just more proof that Niel only cared about forcing this conflict, he didn't care how he got there. And that's really the entire game, narratively; many great scenes, great emotional moments, great fodder for thought and introspection, that's all poorly tied together by a contradictory, contrived plot, that doesn't properly use the emotional moments it creates.
Well the reason for that is because the first game was written by competent writers who decided to write Ellie as a halfway competent kid who grew up in a hostile world that forced her to be skeptical of others. IE an individual. TLOU2 was written by a failed comic author who retconned her into being a childish, ignorant, single-minded individual driven purely by emotions. . . Which describes just about every female character in TLOU2. Coincidentally, his original idea for TLOU2 was for Ellie to be devoid of personality and just a prop for Joel's character development. If you only played the second game, like most people pretending it's good, it's real easy to not notice the retcon or disrespect shown to the previous author's characters.
Joel taking away ellie at the end does not give those who died for her meaning it makes their deaths useless since there was no cure made thus making their deaths useless. She suffers from survivors guilt as you said and she was waiting for her turn to die as she said at the end of the first game. She probably would have let them kill her for the cure since to her for the first time her life would have a meaning and purpose and joel stole that from her. She pushes him away because he lied to her and took away the purpose she believed she had in life which meant her life would mean something. In the flashback of her and joel finding the couple that left town and got infected almost immediately you can see her face as if she was thinking “If they had the cure this wouldnt have happened” which further shows her survivors guilt which reinforces her pushing joel away. She did not accept hiding something from her. Which is why they were so standoffish in most of their flashbacks after the museum. Its her figuring out joel is hiding something. I havent played the game in a while but i dont remember how they showed her survivors guilt is shown to be worse than it was during her flashbacks.
@@weird_0 If the Fireflies were invested in a cure, why didn't they turn Ellie over to the people with infection scanners? Y'know, the people they kidnapped her from in the first place? This premise only works because TLOU2 neglects to remember that Ellie can still develop a cure with people who *have* researched into it and actually developed new technology.
one of my biggest issue is that the game's theme supposedly about forgiveness and cycle of violence but the game contradicts it by not giving the player a non violent solution to subdue the in game enemies. Elie always goes for the throat with that knife of hers.
you can ignore 99% of the combats, the game gave you options to keep the enemies alive, you just dont care, also, it isnt the same thing, ellie killed the enemies in combat for self defense, they attack her first, its different from going after someone to kill him for revenge, it does not contradict the moral of the game.
15:00 I've seen people play it blind in real time, WITHOUT being "spoiled," and they were just as pissed off as anyone else. Because the leaks didn't ruin the story. The story ruined the story.
@@miller-joel im not a hater, i love joel and he's the best character in the franchise but complaining he didnt get a honored death when he didnt even deserved one is just.
@@iconicguy1072 Yeah, right 🤣 And why didn't he deserve a better death? Because he rescued a child from a deranged cult that was going to kill her? And what about what Ellie and Tommy deserved? Did they deserve to have Joel tortured to death in front of them? Funny how you pathetic haters never say the Fireflies got what they deserved.
@@miller-joel taking the cure from the world, dont even come with "the cure wouldnt have worked" because there is nothing in the game supporting this, he believed the cure would be succesful and made his decision anyways, he tricked innocent people to death as a hunter, he made up a torture method to get info, i never said he deserved to be tortured or that ellie and tommy deserved to watch but he sure as hell didnt deserved a honored death and lets all be honest, you would do worse if your dad killer was sitting in front of you after years seeking for him, and no the fireflies arent a cult or demons, ya'll dont have to demonize then at this level. of course they did bad things like everyone but their cause was noble, its funny that when the fireflies do bad things they deserve to die but when joel does he deserves a honored death.
24:00 Actually, I'm pretty sure that moronic "theory" about Joel "going soft" came straight from NG and/or Neil and/or Troy themselves. If Joel and Tommy were "soft," they would not be going out on patrol. Period.
Not to mention Joel was never soft. He told Tommy not to stop for a family the day of the outbreak. He was protective and paranoid from day 0. Going soft, you have to be kidding me.
They wanted to gaslight excuses as they smelled their farts about why Joel gave Abby his identity without care that they were going against how he was.
The only way I’m ok with referring to Tommy or Joel as soft, is in comparison to themselves 4 years prior. I do believe a man like Joel would soften up slightly going from a deeply threatening journey thru Part 1. Followed by 4 years of relative peace, with their only major outings being against infected and not people. I’m ok with the idea that Joel or Tommy would slightly drop their guard under these circumstances. But I still believe either dude would have zero problem taking care of soft ass me in their world. Plus, people that say Joel drops his guard aren’t paying attention to the game. Joel only ever gives his name after Tommy has already done so. Tommy introduces them both to Abby’s group. Joel never had a chance to lie about his name. The line is even delivered like Joel has no choice but to agree he is Joel.
@@robertkovarna8294bro the fact Neil gets the love he gets is hilarious. Cause this game was the only game where he was given complete creative freedom, this was all his vision. Every other game he has ever written on had multiple writers where they checked eachother on the dumb ideas they would have, and seeing how this story played out I'd bet it was usually Neil's dumb ideas that were checked.
When I finished the Last of Us, I felt that Ellie understood that Joel could be laying to her but she didnt push him because she really didnt care at that point, she now had a family.
@@smoker5989 IS that true though? I don't think it's as unsubtle as that. I think she's lied to HERSELF. Do you see how that's more - in the key of the two games? She knew. But she chose to bury it. Because those two became more important to each other than saving the world. So Ellie is conflicted on multiple levels. Whatever crimes Naughty Dog commited against the fanbase- such as traumatizing us with the brutal death of a dearly loved character, or making (half) a game about an assasin on a killing spree instead of about a growing mutually protective bond between two broken people- they didn't really fail us in terms of rewriting anything from the first game. Ellie for example seems to "know" in exactly the same way in the scene where Joel plays her the song. She's gone into cognitive dissonance, and quite understandably. I'll prove it. She doesn't come across that hospital by accident. She went there to confirm what she already suspected. WHY go there if she didn't already "know"? The ending of TLOU#1 is exactly as it's always been. This is NOT an area where ND failed. They EXPANDED on it. It's much more worrying how they made a game that fails to give the player agency while morally hectoring us for being full of vengeful hate. That's MUCH more troubling to me. But as for Ellie. There's nothing like being angry with yourself.
@@smoker5989 She didn't "totally believed", it was clear that their relationship got strange, that is why she looked after the firefly hospital in the first place, it is VERY CLEAR in the "finding strings" flashback.
A great summary of what was happening in this game: Neil wanted to dehumanize the most sympathetic character and then humanize the person who we're introduced to as such a brutal, sociopathic monster.
Something really weird about it is how contradictory he is about humanizing Abby and trying to get people to sympathize with her. I can genuinely see what the idea was about there: make the players hate her for all of Ellie's campaign, then test them on how they feel after they get to see what life in her shoes is like. But despite being gifted all those sympathetic cheats like her enemies not having names like Ellie's did, and her getting to pet dogs when Ellie killed dogs, and her getting to go through a super abridged version of taking on a younger apprentice vaguely similar to how Joel and Ellie got along, her character actually isn't that much of a sympathetic one. She's extremely harsh on her own ally for just not having been okay with personally watching a man get tortured to death while some of his loved ones were in the room, she turns on her entire subfaction AND the faction it got absorbed into with almost no sign of having this cause any sort of dilemma, and her core trigger for going after the ex-Scar kids to ensure their safety is... because she had a nightmare. Also, while I don't expect her and Ellie to be BFFs, it's ELLIE who actually tries talking to her about how she can understand her anger, whereas Abby has just... nothing to say to her at all? No sympathy, no anger, not even a frustrated curse about how Ellie's status as immune to the fungus is meaningless now? Not even at the ending, when the tables are turned and it's Ellie who has the upper hand and wants to do a violence? (Seriously, if Abby had actually opened up to Ellie and had a real, well-written plea to Ellie's humanity there, with remorse expressed, I would honestly feel very differently about the game as a whole.) It would almost leave me wondering whether Abby was truly supposed to be sympathetic, because there's just no sign of it when it comes to anything to do with the conflict with Ellie, not even when Ellie saves her fucking life in the final ending. Except not only does she get all the stuff I alluded to above, but Naughty Dog basically swerved from "not everyone is going to like this game" to Druckmann's weird defensiveness online that goes beyond just laughing at bigots. "Vote for TLOU2 to piss off the haters" or something during the game awards. Like, did you actually forget you CHOSE to make a game that not everyone would like? Do you genuinely not realize that large numbers of players fail to sympathize with Abby because you seemingly couldn't make up your mind on her characterization, and instead of doing the slow burn of Joel opening up you just bounce back and forth with her personality in any given scene? It would always have been a brutal task to accomplish that with Abby, and with writing so bad I legitimately can't tell if half the writing team didn't get the memo about her, the game just utterly fails to manage it.
@@Nyzer_ Abby's enemies very much do have names just like Ellie's did. You're just lying on that front. One of the first things Ellie does in the entire game is pet a dog. I'm more pissed at the WLF for using dogs in war. Abby doesn't take on a young apprentice. That's now what her relationship is with Lev at all. And their dynamic is very different from Joel and Ellie's. In fact, it's literally the opposite. Joel was reluctant to get attached to Ellie, so he made an effort to remain distant. Abby wants to get attached to Lev and dedicates herself to protecting him relentlessly. Abby was being defensive about Joel's murder out of guilt. Her ally was right, and she knew it. Abby never turns on her Salt Lake crew, and she turns on the wider WLF because they were going to execute a 13 year old boy. She also panics briefly after killing her first WLF soldier. Uh no, she's not doing this because of a nightmare. Abby is protecting Lev to lighten the load on her conscience. She's trying to do some good to make up for the bad. The nightmares illustrate that revenge didn't actually solve anything for her, but helping others and showing compassion does. The nightmares stop after she gets the surgery supplies for Yara. Abby did express anger to Ellie, but she was angry about the death of Owen, the man Abby was in love with. This is what Abby was thinking about because, at that moment, Owen's corpse was found like an hour prior. It was still fresh and dominating her thoughts. In the end, Abby didn't want to fight at all. She was forced to after repeatedly refusing. Abby is obviously sympathetic. I'm sorry you misunderstood her character so severely. The conflict with JOEL is the core of Abby's motivation. Same as Ellie. Abby's personality doesn't bounce at all. You're just outright wrong here. Give a single example.
@@chuuwars Naughty Dog removes most of the nuance and ambiguity from it. In TLOU1, there were tons of potential issues that drastically reduced the likelihood that the Fireflies could even make a single dose of a fungal vaccine (including the fact that it would have been made by a surgeon, not a fungal lab tech specialist), let alone distribute it across the world. Now it's treated like Joel killed off a sure-fire worldwide cure. There's also the issue that they didn't even wake Ellie up to get her consent, and added fuel to the fire by basically telling Joel "fuck off now, asshole". It portrayed the Fireflies as selfishly pursuing the best way for them to gain any shred of power over the military, and once they had what they needed, they didn't care about the humans responsible for getting it to them. This behavior contributed to the righteous, protective fury that leads to Joel saving Ellie. In TLOU2, not even Ellie can admit that it's kind of shitty that the Fireflies were just going to murder her while she was still unconscious - it's all about how Joel cruelly took her choices away. Also, the ending of TLOU1 made it seem like Ellie chose to accept Joel's lie, knowing it was a lie, but choosing her new bond with him over whatever truth he was trying to protect her from. Also, the new idea that the Fireflies surgeon was the only man in the whole world who could have made a cure. Really? The failing Fireflies are the only ones who can? The US military doesn't have anyone working on this issue after 20-some years? Hahaha - no. No, that's total BS. But it adds to the idea that Joel selfishly sacrificed the world's one and only chance at a vaccine. It's all stuff like this. All nuance is stripped from it.
@@Nyzer_ No, you invented all that. The vaccine would've worked. The first game's narrative depends on that fact. The reason why Joel's character arc is so impactful is because of the sacrifice he's willing to make for Ellie. If the vaccine would've failed anyways, the power of his choice is reduced to the point of triviality. Joel killing off a vaccine for the world was ALWAYS the case here. Joel didn't ask for consent either though... No no no. That was never the case. Ellie was suspicious. She didn't know. He was the only man the Fireflies knew of who could do it. Why is that hard to believe?
48:30 In the original, the Fireflies are constantly portrayed as incompetent terrorists about to be wiped out, who can't even escort Ellie out of Boston, so a "doctor" that doesn't understand the difference between a fungus and a virus is not much of a stretch. It's consistent with the incompetence of the Fireflies. In "part II," Mr. Wonderful zebra-saving father of the year surgeon who is also the only person on the planet who can make a v, is just absurd beyond description. I made the same arguments you are making here, too many times. Also, the hospital tapes in the original story show the desperation and delusion of Marlene and the "doctor(s)" about "finding a cure." Much like a cult waiting for a UFO to take them to their home planet, to justify their beliefs and actions. In "part II," Marlene is retcon'ed into a more rational person. It's not the same character.
@@miller-joel im not a troll, just using brain here, would the fireflies be able to actually make the cure? its irrelevant, they most likely would, all the arguments to say it wouldnt are irrelevant to the story, like "there is no vaccine for fungal infection🤓" its a game bro lmao "how would they manufacture it?" procreating cordyceps, "how would they distribute it?" it is a mistery but it doesnt mean they couldnt. stop making up useless arguments about jerry, fireflies or the vaccine, all that matters is that they all believed the vaccine would be succesful and made their choices based on that.
@@iconicguy1072 You call that a "brain"? :D The Fireflies are constantly and consistently portrayed as incompetent beginning to end, but your "brain" tells you they are the ones who are going to find a "cure" and "save humanity." With a "doctor" who is not even a doctor. Ignoring all the logistical problems clearly established in that world. "All that matters is what they believe" is how cults operate.
the fireflies were portrayed as imcopetent terrorists because 1. they fought a fascist organization by getting them what they deserved. 2. they werent able to completely destroy fedra. 3. they were searching for vaccine for years without success we dont if they were able to escort ellie or not because they died before joel part of the deal was concluded. what does make you think he didnt understand the difference between a fungus and a virus? in part 1 they never portrayed jerry as a imcopetent doctor or a bad one, jerry was the only firefly doctor who would be able to make the cure because he probably was the most experienced of them and better which tapes and which word of the tape shows them like a cult? everyone was delusioned about the cure there, idk about desperation. in part 2 they didnt, marlene just didnt wanted ellie to die for this but she thought it was necessary, they just portrayed a described argue between her and the doctor.
24:50 "Subverting expectations." Just like Last Jedi. Arrogant writers doing something completely stupid and antagonizing just to feel smarter than they actually are.
Let's not forget that they did some false marketing having joel be in ellie's place in the trailer having joel's present day character model being used instead of his flashback look they also kinda implied that dina was the one who dies in a cinematic trailer they showed a very close up shot of her bracelet and then cut to an angry ellie wearing it So they were marketing a game were ellie gets revenge for a love interest while joel joins her on her journey... Yeah I'm kinda glad the game got leaked
This game would’ve been perceived the way Neil wanted it to be if Abby’s section took place first, and the story was Abby hunting her father’s killer, which would be revealed to be Joel towards the end.
And i actually googled if that is possible and its basically impossible. She couldve maybe degloved the finger or something like that but you cant break adult bones with your jaw.
Yes, people don’t talk enough about how stupid these characters decisions are. There are multiple groups of people who travel back and forth across multiple states in search of one person they know almost nothing about other than that they might be in some city based on a rumor or a hunch. This is supposed to be a realistic game? But how believable is that? Why would real people make a decision like that? Just because they’re obsessed with revenge? Really? That’s it?
I love the game. I think it’s amazing. I was fully invested and enjoyed every minute I had with it. I like it more than part 1. But this is a reasonable complaint that pushes the boundaries of believability. But it is a videogame, and I’m glad it took place in the biomes and cities that it did, cuz it was awesome. I’ve traveled between Seattle and Jackson and it could be done sticking to the countryside and avoiding cities, on horseback pretty easily, but not fast. But how Ellie’s gets to Santa Barbara and back on her own from Wyoming, that’s a bit far fetched. Not because it’s too far to travel for revenge, but because it would take so long on horseback and you’d probably die on the way. Just doing the that and figuring out how to eat and feed your horse would be hard enough. I mean she can hunt but still… I do think it’s important to remember it is the apocalypse. To lose someone you love in this world, is to Lose Everything.
Excellent breakdown. You mentioned in the first game that the game doesn't try to make you feel bad for NPC kills. I would argue that it does, a little, like when you kill Jerry. It's framed as Joel killing a helpless unarmed man. But the key difference is that TLOU 1 isn't trying to force down your throat that Joel is a good and perfect person. And Joel is framed as morally grey (and for the record, I agree with Joel's decisions), but that's up to us players to decide. TLOU 2 makes Abby and Ellie both look like hypocrites when they frame certain deaths as meaning "more" than killing other random NPCs. The game wants so badly for you to love Abby and see her as a good person, that they turn her into a selfless person that would do anything for Lev who she met 2 days ago and 180'd on the WLF who she has been with for years, instead of just writing her in a realistic way with motivations that make sense, and then letting us decide.
I never interpreted it as Abby being a good person, or even trying to make her a good person, I took it more as "Abby's a piece of shit, Joel is a piece of shit, Ellie is a piece of shit, stop defending human garbage because of a few nice scenes they had." Hell, Abby only saved Lev because she needs to clear her head and absolve herself, she says as much herself, which is pretty fucking selfish. The argument of manipulation of the audience seems to be made either in bad faith, or out of a refusal to engage the story on its terms. I never got the impression Abby was made out to be a good person, even her own friends literally call her a piece of shit. Feeling empathy doesn't mean you've been manipulated. Changing your opinion doesn't mean you've been manipulated, having an opinion between "untouchable saint" and "irredeemable monster" doesn't mean you've been manipulated. It's a complicated and mature story that doesn't work in absolutes.
@billjacobs521 I thought his attempt at manipulation wasn't making one protagonist seem objectively better, he didn't. The story outright uses the words "piece of shit" to describe Abby. Those words are said by Mel, one of her friends. As for the pet vs kill dogs argument I see all the time, Ellie gets to pet Buckley from the first game in the Jackson walk-around segment, but people either ignore that for the sake of proving their false point or don't pay attention and skip right by it. The manipulation aspect was more based around audience expectation. Manipulate the audience into expecting something, and then subvert those expectations. Now whether you like it or not, that's entirely personal, but to act like that's inherently a bad idea is just being ridiculous. Spec Ops: The Line did the same thing, admittedly far better than TLOU2. In terms of what we see in game, no, you're not being "manipulated" because you felt empathy, or a villain got humanized. Those conflicting emotions, those feelings, are what makes it a mature story. Mature shouldn't mean blood and tits, it should mean something complicated and nuanced. As for the arrogant clown comment, I guess you're entitled to that opinion, I won't change it, nor will I try to. You're allowed to interpret the story however you want and walk away with whatever feelings you have towards Druckmann. You can and should make up your own mind, but I'm going to call out almost demonstrably factually incorrect statements, like the story "trying to make Abby look like a good person" as so many people put it.
Do you think this downfall of story writing was due to the loss of Bruce Straley? Perhaps there was no more balance and only groupthink? Genuinely curious as what happened to the balance and story writing from TLOU 1 to TLOU 2
You'll see *exactly* how Bruce made TLOU when Neil Druckmann tries to remake the good game. It's going to be like that one legal case where a guy was stealing credit for his wife's work for years, only to be called out in court to try and replicate it, and fail miserably. Edit: He DID fail miserably. TLOU remake sold worse than Saints Row and has quite a few changes that only serve to make it worse.
Then: Neil was a writer. Allegedly. Now: Neil is the co-president of the company. Without Amy, without Bruce, and without 70% of the employees that made the original game.
@@iconicguy1072 Not ignoring anything. You just don't know how to read. On the first one, Neil was in a position where he didn't have the last word, and took direction from others. Even the actors helped WRITE the story and shape the characters. Not so on the second one. And it shows.
@@krasmasov6852 You mean like how you're doing the exact same thing by desperately trying to belittle every valid argument against your precious little polished turd? Project harder bro.
Thank you for this! One thing I kept bringing up against people defending Ellie’s attitude towards Joel was that Joel’s decision to save Eli, was based on him acting as a father. That doctor, who is the father of Abby, wasn’t thinking that killing at all about the little girl, and not explaining that the procedure will kill her. Creating a double standard with his own daughter when Marlene asked him ‘if it was his own, what would he do?’ Ellie was a child, And him making executive decision to save her isn’t something she should have any animosity towards Joel for because he was acting as a parent. When it comes to the well-being your kid, you shouldn’t have to care about the feelings of the child. Joel saved Eli to preserve her life knowing that something would kill her. And the doctors didn’t tell Eli that it was going to kill her. It was more of a guarantee that she died, then the vaccine would’ve been made. The father of Abby was not a bad guy, but if he was willing to withhold information and willingly kill another man’s daughter, then he deserved what he got.
@@samcooper2474 yes he knew, thats why he lied to her, he knew she would be angry with the truth because she wanted that and no, i dont think joel is a bad person, i think he is a broken person trying to protect what he loves but it doesnt mean we have to lick his boots and say "joel did nothing wrong" or "joel isnt selfish" edit: i just saw you said "no one knew" but marlene literally said she knew lmao did you even played the game?
@@iconicguy1072 Marlene just pretended she knew what Ellie wanted to make herself feel better. No one knew what Ellie wanted because no one ever asked her in the first place, but you keep on ignoring that while making up mental gymnastics boyo.
@@samcooper2474 Argumentum ad ignorantiam here + marlene headcanon is unreal. both marlene and joel knew it because they knew ellie for years and they were right, thats why joel lied, not hard to understand, both of them were selfish.
I don't think it's an error though; I mean, there might other guys named Tommy at the settlement; but a Tommy with a brother named Joel? That was the clincher. Still pure luck, but that bit kinda works.
@@michaelbell6894 Everything about this "game" is forced and contrived AF. And btw, when Owen tells Abby "that's a big town, how are we going to find him?" she suggests capturing people from the town, complete strangers, and torturing them for information. Because she's a psychopath with a delusional obsession with revenge that not even Owen can get behind.
The fact that the whole situation hinges on it being one massive coincidence aside, I think them ignoring Tommy makes sense since Joel is with him in that moment. The only reason they wanted to find Tommy is to get to Joel. Well Joel just happens to be with him so who gives a shit about Tommy now is what I imagine is one of the things going through their heads.
i will never buy a game associated with Neil Druckman solely because of the way he treated his fans, there are plenty of other studios offering great games
I’m genuinely a huge fan of both games. lots of fans of the first game love the second game. Not a few of his fans. Literal legions of them Love both games. If you hate it, don’t buy the next one. More than enough Genuine Last of Us fans will buy it.
I went into the game completely blind too, and I think the moment it fell apart for me was when we found out Abby's motivation. With Joel's extremely checkered past, I expected an intriguing story behind why anyone would be driven to such brutality to exact revenge, and then we get the reveal... and wow, they brought back what was easily the weakest plot point from the first game and decided to make it the centerpiece for this one. Like you, I have a lot of other issues with the writing as well, but that was the moment that I knew this was going sideways fast.
So it all fell apart for you because you found out that Abby's motivation was exactly the same as Ellie's. You don't care. Right. Don't you understand the game is about empathy, not clan loyalty. Not team Ellie vs team Abby. Not revenge at any cost, demonising the enemy in order to justify atrocities. Ellie battered and tortured Nora exactly the same as Abby did to Joel. Nora may have been Marlene's daughter. Ellie loved Marlene. Do you think Ellie would have slaughtered Nora if she had known that Joel shot Marlene in the face. Think it through.
@@itsjusterthought7941 I don’t think that’s what that person was getting at. It’s hinted that Joel and Tommy did AWFUL things in their past. I would have liked to have seen Joel killed for something from he did in that era, something that would be hard for the player to defend. I think a lot of people, me included, defend his actions at the hospital. For me because of multiple reasons. To find out Abby hunted him down cause he killed her daddy because her daddy was going to butcher a 14 year old kid was stupid, jerry deserved that. And I don’t think comparing what Ellie did to Nora to what Abby did to Joel is a fair comparison because of the circumstances surrounding each of their actions.
@@itsjusterthought7941Ellie going after the people who hunted down and killed Joel solely out of revenge is not even remotely similar to Abby hunting Joel who's crime was.....stopping a terrorist group from killing an innocent 14 year old girl and not even talking to her about it. ESPECIALLY given all the info the game gives you to support Joels actions. That's the issue, game 1 gives you all the reasons to support Joel only to then try in game 2 to be like "oh no no no joel actually did a terrible thing and Abby wanting revenge doesn't make her a bad person actually cus Joel killed her daddy"
Neil wanted to prove how good of a writer he is by making us absolutely hate a character at the beginning and then try to make us sympathize with the same character at the end. I don't care if this little experiment worked or not. I still feel cheated because he took something I really cared about and used it for a selfish experiment...
@@krasmasov6852 Yes it is. And the first game demonstrated that perfectly. But games aren't just pure art. They're also consumerist products. If all games are pure art then a tampon is art. It's also incredibly stupid to pull the "art argument" since there is still no clear and objective definition of art. People haven't reached a conclusion on that since the dawn of time, so I'm not gonna have this debate with you, and Neil Druckmann shouldn't have made this game a catalyst for that debate. Gamers are also not some rich art piece collectors, we're paying with our own money for a story and experience, we have every right to scrutinize it if it's unsatisfactory. Van Gogh made Starry Night because he wanted to. Last of Us Part II was made to sell. Your buyers aren't people you can experiment with. It's a semi false equivalence to compare games to art because of this. A correct statement would be "Games aren't automatically art, but they CAN be" A game like Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian, those are art. This one was a sequel first, art piece second. And it was a terrible sequel. I don't need proof for that statement because it's self-evident. Just look how divided the fanbase is. When a sequel attracts a new audience but spits on the original audience, it's a bad sequel. The people who love this game don't seem to share that love for the original, and the people who absolutely love the first (like me), despise this one. There's obviously an overlap in the middle, but they're just a minority. On it's own, is it a great game? Hell yes. But as a sequel? F*ck no. This is what nobody seems to understand. I keep hearing people say it's great game, but is it a great sequel?
@@dead7781 I reject that entirely. I mean it's true under capitalism, but I hope capitalist brain rot doesn't get in the way of proper art appreciation too much. Modern art basically being a money laundering scheme between a bunch of rich ghouls doesn't change the value of the art itself. And I don't mean monetary value. If they were only concerned about Part 2 selling and making fans happy, they would've made another Joel and Ellie adventure. You do need proof for that statement because it's both a great game and a great sequel. I am the original audience. I played the original when it first came out in 2013. I used my first ever paycheck to buy it. I love the first game. I love the sequel. I don't understand how anyone could like either without liking the other.
@ Yeah, it’s true. The gameplay really is fun and I play No Return sometimes, but the story and character work is just very frustrating and such a letdown, when that was what made the first game so great.
@@chambeetthe tlou community has become very toxic. I challenge you to go to a tlou 2 video and comment "I didn't like the game" that's all. I bet $50 that someone will insult you
this game is the epitome of ludonarrative dissonance. they want to tell us revenge and by extension killing is bad but force us to mow down dozens of ppl as each character.
Your rant is why I didn't like Part 2. The entire first game shows you that the fireflies suck at everything. All they do is get people killed. Their science labs are always over run due to oversight and the leadership is always failing. They are not to be trusted with the only immune person ever seen. The 2nd game just throwing all of this out the window to force a story outcome is why the game is frustrating and poorly written. Joel dying isn't an issue, it happens in stories all the time. I'm upset because he's unceremoniously killed by a character who was only invented to make Joel's objectively moral decision at the end of the first game, seem evil. It's insulting
36:50 Ah, but guess what? That sequence in the museum is AFTER we are forced to watch Joel being tortured to death in front of Ellie. They just want to give you a taste of what you wanted from this game, knowing you are never going to get it. That's how sadistic this is. Even the best part of it is poisoned.
@@iconicguy1072 Why are you so butthurt over Joel fans? Did a bunch of them beat you up in school or something? Pretty sad to hold such a grudge over a video game. Edit: What? No low effort poorly constructed grade school response? Must have struck a nerve.
Every narrative problem in the Last of Us part 2 is fixed if they don't kill Marlene in the first game and have her replace Abby. Marlene and Ellie already had a more meaningful relationship, Marlene's motives and character were already explained, Marlene hunting Joel in that way is already perfectly in character. It is even foreshadowed in the first scene they meet. The entire game would feel more natural and make more sense on every level. You would not have to pause the game at the climax to explain everything again. Ellie not being able to kill Marlene makes perfect sense since Marlene is Ellie's last connection to her mother. You don't have to make up any stupid crap with the doctor. Instead all the wasted exposition can be used to explore more interesting questions since in the parts of the game where you play as Marlene, you would get to know who Ellie's mother was and what the deal with the fireflies is. The last fight on the beach would be way more tragic, the dialogue in every encounter between Marlene and Ellie would be way more meaningful. Marlene may have killed Joel but she would also be the only reason Joel and Ellie ever met in the first place, the reason they ever had any hope.
I find it so funny how people take the Fireflies BS at face value considering they've been screwing up in EVERY way in the original game even wanted to kill Joel for doing his job! Most TLOU2 reviewers often forget this and just assume the Fireflies were actually competent enough to do the job right. If this game is a "part 2" then reviewers should do better and point this out. It's like expecting post-apocalyptic Antifa to actually be competent. :/
Even Naughty Dog takes that shit at face value, when the Fireflies' competence or lack thereof was one of the biggest talking points on forums after the first game. TLOU1 seems like its ending was absolutely meant to emphasize the low odds the surgery would pay off, and the Fireflies' lack of competence - why else would they rush to make that decision before Ellie could even wake up? Why else would the soldiers basically treat Joel like a total piece of shit and not... you know... the guy who hand-delivered them the source of the vaccine? The game goes OUT OF ITS WAY to showcase the Fireflies' incompetence, likely specifically in order to further justify Joel's choice, especially since, IIRC, he already knows Ellie would be willing to trade her life to save so many others. I was outright bewildered to learn that Naughty Dog not only took its success for granted, but that they also decided to write the asinine idea that now with the surgeon dead, there is literally no one else who can make a fungal vaccine and so therefore Ellie's immunity has become utterly meaningless. Do they literally not remember the plot of the first game? Did they lose all the writers who did the best writing, and everyone left has about the same skill D&D do at taking what's there and building further off of it?
You can make the same argument about TLOU2 fanboys who take the game itself at face value by ignoring it's terrible writing and hackneyed approach to conveying it's themes and just herald it as some masterpiece of thematic storytelling simply for attempting to tackle dark and complicated subject matter.
I started playing TLOU2 two months ago...after I beat it, I felt like something was waaaay off. I did not look at reviews or anything before playing, I just remember it winning game of the year from some questionable outlets. Revenge is a terrible plot motive. I wish the game ended at the farmhouse when Ellie and Dina were together but the segment after that failed me. I’m not going to leave my girlfriend and child to Travel more than 600+ miles ON FOOT across land filled with thousands of infected and multiple groups of violent lunatics(ok they’re all lunatics at this point) just to kill one person who spared my life not once, but twice. This is why I give TLOU 2 a 8/10 which is the same number of functioning fingers Ellie has left at the end of the game. I’m ok with people liking the game but when they claim this is the Greatest game of All time, this game is NOWHERE NEAR BEING THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME, HELL NAW!!
I will say that Ellie's motivations for leaving the farm do run a bit deeper than that, but the rest of the game just kills the presentation of her motivations there. I've talked with people who consider Ellie leaving the farm (and the guitar) at the end to be a hopeful ending scene, and they've been surprised when I said I thought I was going to hear a gunshot after the screen faded to black because Ellie had just committed suicide. The game abuses plot contrivances so often to make things happen - specifically, to shit on Ellie so often - that I was completely unable to see that as Ellie taking a step forward. The game as a whole drowns the player in "REVENGE BAD" so thoroughly and kicks everyone's characterization around so often as the plot demands it that it's hard to see past that bullshit. And besides, I'd still argue that while Ellie's motivation isn't quite as weak as it seems at a glance, is Abby really going to still be in the area after 335 hours of walking (plus however many hours of sleep, hunting, going around obstacles like infected or hostile factions) to get there? PLUS the time it took for this news to even GET to Jackson? Realistically, Ellie would arrive there something like three or four months after this random guy spotted Abby in the area - if it was even her to begin with, since "strong woman and kid with cuts on face" isn't (or at least shouldn't be) QUITE as narrowed down as it seems in this setting. Never even mind the issues with going alone, and how they lost so many people last time, and how there wouldn't be an abundance of Abby's allies around to use to narrow down her location once she's actually in the area. AND never mind the fact that if Ellie had been this burdened by PTSD, it would likely have come up on the first trip down to Seattle, and that she likely wouldn't have gone back at all. None of those points are dealbreakers to the idea on their own, but added up? Ellie's not likely to survive a trip down there. Even if she does, she's not likely to find Abby's location. Even if she does, she likely can't find the one specific location. Even if she does, Abby isn't likely to still be there or to have left traces showing her next destination. Even if that wasn't true, it's not guaranteed to actually BE Abby. Even if she is, Ellie's not even remotely guaranteed to win the encounter. Even if she does, she's not very likely to survive the trip back, especially since she's likely to be injured. But even if she does, then when she returns, Dina won't be waiting for her. So even though her motivations aren't so shallow, they're still nowhere near enough to make total sense here. They only make sense when you consider that this is a video game and that Ellie can make that journey off screen and hone in on the exact location Abby was living at or going to.
@@Nyzer_ Thank you for the additional elaborate take on it. I’m hoping the HBO series fixes these nuances, with a more plausible and connected flow….Also by Abby biting Ellie’s fingers, that means some of Ellie’s high antibody blood is in Abby…hmmm I wonder
@@Ardante11 If HBO has the ability to make drastic calls like "hey, let's have the characters actually interact more", they might have a shot. One of the game's biggest weaknesses is that they don't do this, and just choose to make plot points happen not because characters are talked into/out of things but because they had a bad dream and now flipped their characterization again. As for Ellie's blood... it really seems like ND is just not going that route. At all. Otherwise they'd have done more with running tests on Ellie in 1, and literally anything with her immunity in 2 besides having one "oh shit, it's you" moment.
It could have been. Before the leak, ND seemed to be pretty aware that the game would not be universally liked by fans, but that because of the shift to the theme of hate from the theme of love, this was intentional. They also went out of their way to doctor trailers so that Joel's death would catch fans off guard. After the leak, though, Druckmann in particular seems to have become radically defensive. It's not that they wanted the game to have the emotional impact it did and so therefore corners were cut as necessary, but just that characters changed off-screen and the fans who didn't change their headcanon to match Naughty Dog's during the years of development are the ones in the wrong.
@@Nyzer_ I hear what your saying but you don't really have to know what's going to happen to make a joke about a "follow up" not being as good as the orginal. They knew what they were making was going to divide and challenge people. But they pressed ahead like Nirvana making "In Utero" (orginally called "I hate myself and want to die"). Rickie Gervais made a similar joke just before the launch of "Extras" after the remarkably successful "The Office" series. It's a just a joke you make- but not because you don't believe in the product. In fact it's a joke you make when you do, and even more so when you believe in it but you know it's going to be departure from what you've previously established.
As a person who was a veterinary technician (I assisted with surgeries and did anesthesia for said surgeries as well as dental cleanings) it's always been my opinion that the reason Ellie wasn't woken up from surgery was because they would be wasting medicine (really expensive meds like propofol and some sort of anesthetic agent). Those would already be in short supply post-apocalypse. When a patient is undergoing surgery that requires full sedation they are given an induction agent first via catheter. For animals it varies, but for humans I've heard it's propofol. This is a short acting agent that does not even last through the entire surgery. The patient is usually (in the animal world) held under anesthesia by a gas like isoflurane. So you would be wasting the drugs and doubling the cost of the induction agent (propofol). I imagine that there might not be enough propofol available to do more than one induction.
It's all contrived such as Ellie torturing Nora. That's put in so that you can compare her torture to Abby's torturing Joel, but ofc their not the same as Abby does it for revenge/hate and Ellie does it to get information. It's not really in Ellie's character either, where Abby enjoys hurting people. Again, contrived to get bullet points for comparison. Complete drivel!
It’s self gratifying nonsense. It’s just cute how the game thinks it’s being deep and clever but it’s so on the nose and generic that I can’t help but laugh
This game is so far from being the last of us you could just change the name of the game and it wouldn’t matter… they just added a bunch of characters that don’t mater, tbh my least favourite part of the WHOLE game is when Joel dies
It has never been done irl. Could we some day develop a way, yeah. Could some random dude with nothing more then a bachelor's in biology be the first to ever do it in a post apocalyptic setting? No
Honestly I think Ellie going on revenge quest for Dina would've worked a lot better since she lost her first love already. They should've gone with that instead of whatever this game is.
Not gonna lie, I find the first game so compelling that when you showed clips of it, especially with dialogue I'd have to rewatch cause I got distracted haha.
Reading through all these comments, I gotta say it's pretty hilarious how all these starry-eyed fanboys of the sequel who are still high off of neil druckmans farts are crying excuses, projections and mental gymnastics to cope with the fact that more and more people see this polished turd for what it is. What's even funnier is these people don't even like the game, they just claim to out of spite and resentment towards the backlash against it because these are the kind of people who hate fandoms for some reason. It's the exact same pathetic, narcissistic anti-consumer mentality that's harbored by most game journalists and studios like naughtydog.
playing as abby for 13 hours while the game tried making me like her was on of the worst parts. they did their best to make her a scumbag and didnt exactly make ellie likeable either. in the end i didnt give a fuq about any of them and didnt feel any satisfaction with the ending. 30+ hours lol
I don’t think the game was necessarily trying to make you like her, the game still works. It just puts you into her shoes, and the player quickly realises, she got no satisfaction from Joel’s death, and she wanted something to hold onto, that’s where Lev and Yara come into it. I’d argue if Abby was just simply the villain of the game, that would’ve been a disrespect to Joel as a character
@@kamakazilee6066 You may have heard the phrase "media literacy" thrown around pretty often. A big part of media literacy is picking up on tropes and the author's intent through the writing. When the writer includes a scene of Abby, literally, petting a dog, that's not to "put you in her shoes." That *is* to try and garner sympathy from the audience. They didn't write Abby as a villain, they wrote her as a replacement. Her being a villain is inferred by the audience, testers, and everyone else who worked on the game who had no vested interest in pivoting the franchise to be about her. As it turns out, petting the dog doesn't overcome remorselessness.
@@crazyinsane500yes but we’re talking about a game here, it’s not just any form of ‘media’. Yes your not the character, but your PLAYING as them. By even simply observing the set up of the WLF, it shows you they’re just people too. The whole petting the dog thing is brought up so much and for some reason people cling onto that, you can literally skip it if you want to, you don’t have to pet the dogs, it’s completely optional on the players part. Don’t opt to do something in a game then turn around and say ‘why is the game trying to make me like her’. Its like this, Abby and her friends have this one dog Alice, it’s there to humanise these characters who we wanted to brutally kill in the beginning, it’s there to CHALLENGE the player who has come to know Joel, Ellie and even Tommy. You can also pet a dog as Ellie, which is what I should’ve said in the first place because THAT in itself completely negates the argument that the game desperately wants us to cling to Abby, but the game still works regardless if you like her by the end. I think one needs the emotional maturity to accept that these characters yes are acting on negative emotions, but are also completely justified from a certain POV. The two games are all about perspective man, it’s there plain in your face
The biggest crime this game commits..... is how they completely failed abby as a character.... shes not even a character by the end of game. I prey the tv show can balance her
I guess connecting Mel's death to the other women's deaths didn't really connect to me because pregnancy may not be a huge common factor. It's not something destined or wanted by every woman especially in that type of setting.
I found myself nodding in agreement through the entirety of Part III and IV. Thank you so much for making this video and saying out loud what has been going through my head for years when I think about TLOU1 and 2.
I think the game's a solid 8/10. The story as a whole doesn't even touch the original, though some moments are good. Meanwhile the gameplay is better as are graphics but the soundtrack is also a step down from the original. Great video.
The Santa Barbara chapter did feel tacked on (it was literally the first thing I told one of my friends who had already played TLOU2, right after I finished it). I somewhat disagree with your explanation of Ellie's motives around 1:05:50; her main motivation for tracking Abby wasn't really to kill her, but to escape her PTSD (which she had for at least months) and find closure. Ironically it turns out to be an unintended rescue mission; if Ellie didn't go to SB, Abby and Lev would be dead. I do agree with your remark around 1:09:16 - Abby could have bitten off Ellie's fingers in the theater fight, then the game could've ended at the farm, with Ellie's PTSD but with Dina at her side. I feel like this would've properly set up a sequel by leaving questions as to how Ellie will move on. Gameplay wise, the SB chapter also had the most dissonance as Ellie is the most upgraded at that point (remember she was also impaled and hung for hours); it would've been interesting to see Ellie with almost no weapons and low health, forced to rely on stealth and the Rattlers' clicker hostages (my first playthrough I didn't even know you could unbind them). Overall I still really enjoyed TLOU2 and there are a lot of gameplay elements that are improved which weren't mentioned much (e.g. level design, which is far superior to TLOU1) and I also dug most of Abby's story.
3 solutions that would've been so much better. 1. You could've left Ellie on the farm with a family, with Dina, showing that forgiveness leads to a happier life. 2. You could've given the player a choice to kill or spare Abby, it would've meant the player couldn't be mad about the ending, cause they had agency, and the player could take the revenge they wanted, and I know 98% of people probably would've, touche, maybe they should've made Abby more likable. 3. Just let Ellie kill Abby... Simple right? The players would achieve their goal. But then you could hit that bitter sweet tone soo much better. Have her look at Abby's kid, seeing that she killed that kid's equivilent of "Joel". Have her look at the fingers she lost, look at the family she lost... And simply ask herself if the revenge was really worth is. It would be a 10x more beautiful ending that genuinely sells that revenge isn't worth it.
@jaebustilla2866 Did you even pay attention to the story? 🤡 Abby kills Joel = still has nightmares about her Dad. Nightmares stop when she saves Lev and Yara. Ellie saves Abby and Lev...connect the dots 🤡
The game is mid for me, the gameplay is really fun and the location looks really beautiful for a post-apocalyptic world but the story was meh for me, but if anyone enjoys it well im proud of you im glad you love the game but like i said it was mid for me.
The fact of the matter is that ND had lost 2 of its key creators, which left only Neil Druckman, and soon after he started hanging around with Anita Sarkeesian, who is an extreme far left activist, who had stated that she hated video games in all forms. then Neil said himself that he had made games wrong in the past... Then we got TLOU2, with a main target audience steered way towards the far left and the left in general, and I feel that they've made the same mistake as Disney and have put their 'Agenda' first along with our writers are 'creative geniuses who are so brave and take risks' before any plot or coherent story is decided. (My views are centred btw). Yes we also got lied to whilst they promoted the game.. These days in Hollywood all films seem to be centred towards the left, and its not even so much about being from the left, it just seems to be about race and gender equality for some reason? Now as a mixed race man who is bringing up a daughter by himself, I take gender and race equality very seriously, however the world just isn't that 2D in my opinion. Where's the equality for Ageism, why can't older people be the protagonists in modern films or in their own Franchises? Why are older people often made to look weak and feeble? What about the 100,000,000's of people who are homeless, with at least a very sizable amount in the western world? Where's their leading roles in movies and games? How about antisemitism or Mulsim'phobia? Why can't we cast more More Jewish and Muslim actors be in leading roles? What about the working class, who due to the global financial crisis are almost homeless themselves? Where's that awareness for a sizable amount of the whole worlds population? I could mention that maybe Ukrainians or people from third world countries could be cast into key roles, disabled people, Trans (lead roles), and the list goes on.. For me it seems that there is rich 'girls' and 'boys' club somewhere, where all they want to do constantly is pat themselves on the back and have their own biased opinions broadcasted to the world by any means possible. ('Thats Hollywood Baby - Rachel Zegler')
The only thing in this video I disagree with with is your comments on the Gameplay being clunky. I thought the combat was some of the best third person action combat I’ve ever played in a action adventure game, especially in TLOU2.
I'm really glad you mentioned the real moral dilemma of the game was Joel's lie. It just seems like the more definitive "what would you do in this situation?" question of the game. It's something I've believed for a while and glad to see the sentiment shared. Loved the video, btw!
@@gaia7240 It's kinda up to interpretation, but to me it was always about not burdening her. He wanted her to live guilt free, like a normal (or as normal as you can get in this world) girl. As for why Joel didn't explain himself in part 2, you'd have to ask Druckman. But I doubt he'd give you a clear answer because he'd consider you a hater.
"its probably for the best that rhey didnt explorered more of the infection" are you serious? The main focus of the first game is completely forgotten and almost nonexistent in the second one. It was a mistake making this about humans vs humans to be like all humans are pieces of shit.... Thanks hope it was worth ruining a sequel.
God of war told way better story about consequences of revenge, had better fighting gameplay, and to top it off free dlc to wrap everything up. Yes I did play both the last of us and god of war.
> [58:00] playing in pacifist mode, violence is a player choice - but no, that means you don't get to use any of the game's mechanics I recall a fellow MungoJerry do excellent write-ups of wacky Diablo 2 character builds he played. One of them was Maldar, the Pacifist-a necromancer who used the blinding curse to walk past most monsters, killing only those necessary to complete all the quests. Also useful were the decrepitude (slow) and fear (run away) curses, and the bone wall and bone prison spells which created obstacles in the way of monsters, plus bone armor for some fake extra hit points. Unlike most builds he doesn't (routinely) use a hireling, since the hireling might not be sufficiently pacifistic. It's a very creative use of the tools in the game and probably not something the creators foresaw. ... point being: I agree: in _some_ games a pacifist strategy can be viable, interesting and fun, but turning a game into a walking/crawling simulator is not the recipe for a fun pacifist strategy. Maybe more to the point: even though you technically have a choice, it's fair to discount pacifist strategies if the way to implement them is not by playing the game differently but by avoiding or skipping (most of) the game.
@@miller-joelit’s hilarious how he comments on your year old comment with such a compelling argument 😂 I agree with you though. The story was absolute trash because it was poorly written with the pacing of it being haphazard and the flashbacks were randomly placed all of which resulted in breaking immersion.
You brought up a lot of Valid Criticisms of the Last of Us Part II. If the Game comes out as a PC Port on Steam, I'm going to wait for It to go On Sale! Maybe, I'll be Lucky Twice & get It Bundled/w a New AMD Graphics Card??
I think that, and this is my opinion, any couple - gay or straight - has to be written in a way that serves the plot. Having it just to have it feels forced and can detract from the bigger picture of all. That being said I remember the biggest gripe I heard about the game was the fact there was a lesbian couple in the game. Like, okay? What about the Cordiceps?
Well we’re really only seeing the beginnings of Ellie and Dina’s true relationship, but it’s bad timing on both ends considering the course of events that follow, and it’s made to be even more tragic when you realise Joel made it clear that he wanted nothing but for Dina to have the best intentions, and she absolutely does in the end. But Ellie in reality is her own worst enemy, and leads herself down the path of potentially ending up alone. All because she put all the blame on Joel not seeing his side at all, but then tries to take back those 2-3 years of agony and goes on the path she takes………..
@@joshh1740i feel like it’s not even about that. the lev plot line took way too much time while being unrelated to the general story and could ultimately be cut entirely and the story would be unchanged
I don't care about LGBT representation. In fact, I support it, and had no issues with Ellie and Dina. But it was pretty ridiculous that a kid raised in the woods by a religious whackjob hyper-conservative cult in the post-apocalypse comes out as trans at like 13. This is sheer tokenism; a trans character when and where they should not exist is crowbarred in for social credit points. To be clear, I'm not saying trans people wouldn't actually exist at all, I'm saying the concept of it would be unknown to Lev, and the idea of throwing EVERYTHING away to live as a different gender, while puberty has only barely started, is entirely unbelievable. It would be like if, in the same world, we stumbled across a vegan complaining about the ethical implications of eating eggs, or an envrionmentalist destroying the few remaining cars to ensure no one drives them and emits CO2. In context, these are all absurd.
I like your video, I've had a strange journey with tlou2 and it just can't seem to leave me, I guess because there's some subconscious part of me that feels "offended" when saying this game as a masterpiece when it really isn't. The part I most connected with was the strawman argument, how whenever you say something they'll just say this like the sneaking past enemies part in response to Ellie kills hundreds of people. Like yes you can do that but the game doesn't enable insentivise or reward you for doing that at all but doesn't matter since your argument is shot down. But yeah liked the editing structure and content of the video good job!
They should have let us kill Abby. It wouldn't have fixed everything wrong with the game, but it would have given the player some reward/catharsis without any necessary change to the way it all ends. Again, not a perfect fix, but the game wouldn't have felt so utterly spiteful to the player and such a fucking waste of 20 odd hours and $60.
Revenge not being a reward is one of the central themes of the entire story. Framing the player killing Abby as a reward would contradict everything that built up to that.
And that's why the game is awful and an abject failure. People play games for escapist fantasy, not to be browbeaten with ham-fisted moral lessons they learned back when they were 7.
@@saltandsoysauce175 Nope, YOU play games for escapist fantasy. Not everyone does. Some people like more heavy hitting games like the GOAT Disco Elysium. I would agree that the general moral lesson of TLOU2, which isnt the central aspect of the story, is pretty basic, yet so many people still wanted Abby dead by the end. It's like gamers are children.
@@krasmasov6852Look, I'm glad you enjoyed that self-righteous hack job slog more than the rest of us, but to imply that the majority of we who loved TLOU1, which was hardly a shallow, lighthearted game, are children who can't handle dark, morally grey adult games makes you sound as vain and out of touch as Neil Druckmann.
As much as I dislike the game, I think the game should have let us kill Abby, but for the opposite reason. I feel like the random flashback of Joel, who would have DEFINITELY strung up Abby himself if she did the same to Ellie, was ineffective. Having Ellie kill Abby, THEN come home to an empty house with missing fingers would have driven the point home much more than what we got - that her journey for revenge was wrong and pointless.
Great video, very well done. I don’t agree about the combat at all though. It’s very good and visceral. Really captures the violence of the world. The thing about the game that makes me the most mad is the potential it had. It’s so fun to play, it’s still one of the most beautiful games out there, but it is not satisfying narratively. Also, I believe the character who calls Joel “Pendejo”, is basically Druckman’s self Insert in the game.
I'll never understand the fallout between Ellie and Joel. Ellie KNEW Joel was, at the very least, hiding something. Something important enough to lie to her about, obviously, and that stopped her from being able to help cure the disease, thus giving her life, and the lives of everyone who had died for her, meaning. She may not know Joel shot up an entire facility, but she knows it's NOT simply the case that the Fireflies decided it wouldn't work. She chose to accept it because she loved him, and knew he loved her, and neither of them could afford to lose the other. It was a tacit agreement--we never speak of this, for our relationship is too important. Yet when she finds out that Joel was hiding something from her, which she already knew, she pushes him away, despite already having chosen to NOT to do that. This is pretty much just a retcon. Furthermore, after several years of a stable life, building friendships, feeling like she finally has a permanent home, her survivor's guilt should be much less than it was in the timeline of the first game, so how is she MORE upset NOW then back when her one dream was snatched away from her? And the fact that it's not discussed, that Joel doesn't make an actual argument of all the reasons he did what he did, and just presents himself as a selfish prick, is just more proof that Niel only cared about forcing this conflict, he didn't care how he got there.
And that's really the entire game, narratively; many great scenes, great emotional moments, great fodder for thought and introspection, that's all poorly tied together by a contradictory, contrived plot, that doesn't properly use the emotional moments it creates.
Well the reason for that is because the first game was written by competent writers who decided to write Ellie as a halfway competent kid who grew up in a hostile world that forced her to be skeptical of others. IE an individual.
TLOU2 was written by a failed comic author who retconned her into being a childish, ignorant, single-minded individual driven purely by emotions. . . Which describes just about every female character in TLOU2. Coincidentally, his original idea for TLOU2 was for Ellie to be devoid of personality and just a prop for Joel's character development.
If you only played the second game, like most people pretending it's good, it's real easy to not notice the retcon or disrespect shown to the previous author's characters.
Joel taking away ellie at the end does not give those who died for her meaning it makes their deaths useless since there was no cure made thus making their deaths useless. She suffers from survivors guilt as you said and she was waiting for her turn to die as she said at the end of the first game. She probably would have let them kill her for the cure since to her for the first time her life would have a meaning and purpose and joel stole that from her. She pushes him away because he lied to her and took away the purpose she believed she had in life which meant her life would mean something. In the flashback of her and joel finding the couple that left town and got infected almost immediately you can see her face as if she was thinking “If they had the cure this wouldnt have happened” which further shows her survivors guilt which reinforces her pushing joel away. She did not accept hiding something from her. Which is why they were so standoffish in most of their flashbacks after the museum. Its her figuring out joel is hiding something.
I havent played the game in a while but i dont remember how they showed her survivors guilt is shown to be worse than it was during her flashbacks.
@@weird_0 If the Fireflies were invested in a cure, why didn't they turn Ellie over to the people with infection scanners? Y'know, the people they kidnapped her from in the first place?
This premise only works because TLOU2 neglects to remember that Ellie can still develop a cure with people who *have* researched into it and actually developed new technology.
Sounds like Neil Druckmann owns your head 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521sounds like everyone who hates this game owns your head 🤡
one of my biggest issue is that the game's theme supposedly about forgiveness and cycle of violence but the game contradicts it by not giving the player a non violent solution to subdue the in game enemies. Elie always goes for the throat with that knife of hers.
@@WhyDoIDoThings well, i think the game didnt intended to show they lived.
you can ignore 99% of the combats, the game gave you options to keep the enemies alive, you just dont care, also, it isnt the same thing, ellie killed the enemies in combat for self defense, they attack her first, its different from going after someone to kill him for revenge, it does not contradict the moral of the game.
@@iconicguy1072 Cool story bro.
@@samcooper2474 keep coping bro, i love it.
@@iconicguy1072 I'm sure that's what you tell yourself at night, project harder bro.
15:00 I've seen people play it blind in real time, WITHOUT being "spoiled," and they were just as pissed off as anyone else. Because the leaks didn't ruin the story. The story ruined the story.
"im pissed of cause my torturer, liar, selfish joel didnt get a honorable death 🤓"
@@iconicguy1072 Another pathetic Joel hater 🤣
@@miller-joel im not a hater, i love joel and he's the best character in the franchise but complaining he didnt get a honored death when he didnt even deserved one is just.
@@iconicguy1072 Yeah, right 🤣
And why didn't he deserve a better death? Because he rescued a child from a deranged cult that was going to kill her? And what about what Ellie and Tommy deserved? Did they deserve to have Joel tortured to death in front of them? Funny how you pathetic haters never say the Fireflies got what they deserved.
@@miller-joel taking the cure from the world, dont even come with "the cure wouldnt have worked" because there is nothing in the game supporting this, he believed the cure would be succesful and made his decision anyways, he tricked innocent people to death as a hunter, he made up a torture method to get info, i never said he deserved to be tortured or that ellie and tommy deserved to watch but he sure as hell didnt deserved a honored death and lets all be honest, you would do worse if your dad killer was sitting in front of you after years seeking for him, and no the fireflies arent a cult or demons, ya'll dont have to demonize then at this level.
of course they did bad things like everyone but their cause was noble, its funny that when the fireflies do bad things they deserve to die but when joel does he deserves a honored death.
24:00 Actually, I'm pretty sure that moronic "theory" about Joel "going soft" came straight from NG and/or Neil and/or Troy themselves. If Joel and Tommy were "soft," they would not be going out on patrol. Period.
Not to mention Joel was never soft. He told Tommy not to stop for a family the day of the outbreak. He was protective and paranoid from day 0. Going soft, you have to be kidding me.
They wanted to gaslight excuses as they smelled their farts about why Joel gave Abby his identity without care that they were going against how he was.
The only way I’m ok with referring to Tommy or Joel as soft, is in comparison to themselves 4 years prior. I do believe a man like Joel would soften up slightly going from a deeply threatening journey thru Part 1. Followed by 4 years of relative peace, with their only major outings being against infected and not people. I’m ok with the idea that Joel or Tommy would slightly drop their guard under these circumstances. But I still believe either dude would have zero problem taking care of soft ass me in their world.
Plus, people that say Joel drops his guard aren’t paying attention to the game. Joel only ever gives his name after Tommy has already done so. Tommy introduces them both to Abby’s group. Joel never had a chance to lie about his name. The line is even delivered like Joel has no choice but to agree he is Joel.
@@robertkovarna8294 Joel doesn’t give his name, Tommy does.
@@robertkovarna8294bro the fact Neil gets the love he gets is hilarious. Cause this game was the only game where he was given complete creative freedom, this was all his vision. Every other game he has ever written on had multiple writers where they checked eachother on the dumb ideas they would have, and seeing how this story played out I'd bet it was usually Neil's dumb ideas that were checked.
When I finished the Last of Us, I felt that Ellie understood that Joel could be laying to her but she didnt push him because she really didnt care at that point, she now had a family.
Joel lied to her because he had to. He loved her.
I hate how they retconned Ellie into totally believing Joel's lie at first and then make her act all shocked when he told her the truth.
@@smoker5989 It was never established that Ellie totally knew Joel was lying. What are you talking about?
@@smoker5989 IS that true though? I don't think it's as unsubtle as that. I think she's lied to HERSELF. Do you see how that's more - in the key of the two games? She knew. But she chose to bury it. Because those two became more important to each other than saving the world. So Ellie is conflicted on multiple levels.
Whatever crimes Naughty Dog commited against the fanbase- such as traumatizing us with the brutal death of a dearly loved character, or making (half) a game about an assasin on a killing spree instead of about a growing mutually protective bond between two broken people- they didn't really fail us in terms of rewriting anything from the first game. Ellie for example seems to "know" in exactly the same way in the scene where Joel plays her the song. She's gone into cognitive dissonance, and quite understandably. I'll prove it. She doesn't come across that hospital by accident. She went there to confirm what she already suspected. WHY go there if she didn't already "know"? The ending of TLOU#1 is exactly as it's always been. This is NOT an area where ND failed. They EXPANDED on it. It's much more worrying how they made a game that fails to give the player agency while morally hectoring us for being full of vengeful hate. That's MUCH more troubling to me.
But as for Ellie.
There's nothing like being angry with yourself.
@@smoker5989 She didn't "totally believed", it was clear that their relationship got strange, that is why she looked after the firefly hospital in the first place, it is VERY CLEAR in the "finding strings" flashback.
A great summary of what was happening in this game: Neil wanted to dehumanize the most sympathetic character and then humanize the person who we're introduced to as such a brutal, sociopathic monster.
Something really weird about it is how contradictory he is about humanizing Abby and trying to get people to sympathize with her. I can genuinely see what the idea was about there: make the players hate her for all of Ellie's campaign, then test them on how they feel after they get to see what life in her shoes is like.
But despite being gifted all those sympathetic cheats like her enemies not having names like Ellie's did, and her getting to pet dogs when Ellie killed dogs, and her getting to go through a super abridged version of taking on a younger apprentice vaguely similar to how Joel and Ellie got along, her character actually isn't that much of a sympathetic one. She's extremely harsh on her own ally for just not having been okay with personally watching a man get tortured to death while some of his loved ones were in the room, she turns on her entire subfaction AND the faction it got absorbed into with almost no sign of having this cause any sort of dilemma, and her core trigger for going after the ex-Scar kids to ensure their safety is... because she had a nightmare. Also, while I don't expect her and Ellie to be BFFs, it's ELLIE who actually tries talking to her about how she can understand her anger, whereas Abby has just... nothing to say to her at all? No sympathy, no anger, not even a frustrated curse about how Ellie's status as immune to the fungus is meaningless now? Not even at the ending, when the tables are turned and it's Ellie who has the upper hand and wants to do a violence? (Seriously, if Abby had actually opened up to Ellie and had a real, well-written plea to Ellie's humanity there, with remorse expressed, I would honestly feel very differently about the game as a whole.)
It would almost leave me wondering whether Abby was truly supposed to be sympathetic, because there's just no sign of it when it comes to anything to do with the conflict with Ellie, not even when Ellie saves her fucking life in the final ending. Except not only does she get all the stuff I alluded to above, but Naughty Dog basically swerved from "not everyone is going to like this game" to Druckmann's weird defensiveness online that goes beyond just laughing at bigots. "Vote for TLOU2 to piss off the haters" or something during the game awards. Like, did you actually forget you CHOSE to make a game that not everyone would like? Do you genuinely not realize that large numbers of players fail to sympathize with Abby because you seemingly couldn't make up your mind on her characterization, and instead of doing the slow burn of Joel opening up you just bounce back and forth with her personality in any given scene?
It would always have been a brutal task to accomplish that with Abby, and with writing so bad I legitimately can't tell if half the writing team didn't get the memo about her, the game just utterly fails to manage it.
@@Nyzer_ Abby's enemies very much do have names just like Ellie's did. You're just lying on that front.
One of the first things Ellie does in the entire game is pet a dog. I'm more pissed at the WLF for using dogs in war.
Abby doesn't take on a young apprentice. That's now what her relationship is with Lev at all. And their dynamic is very different from Joel and Ellie's. In fact, it's literally the opposite. Joel was reluctant to get attached to Ellie, so he made an effort to remain distant. Abby wants to get attached to Lev and dedicates herself to protecting him relentlessly.
Abby was being defensive about Joel's murder out of guilt. Her ally was right, and she knew it.
Abby never turns on her Salt Lake crew, and she turns on the wider WLF because they were going to execute a 13 year old boy. She also panics briefly after killing her first WLF soldier.
Uh no, she's not doing this because of a nightmare. Abby is protecting Lev to lighten the load on her conscience. She's trying to do some good to make up for the bad. The nightmares illustrate that revenge didn't actually solve anything for her, but helping others and showing compassion does. The nightmares stop after she gets the surgery supplies for Yara.
Abby did express anger to Ellie, but she was angry about the death of Owen, the man Abby was in love with. This is what Abby was thinking about because, at that moment, Owen's corpse was found like an hour prior. It was still fresh and dominating her thoughts.
In the end, Abby didn't want to fight at all. She was forced to after repeatedly refusing.
Abby is obviously sympathetic. I'm sorry you misunderstood her character so severely. The conflict with JOEL is the core of Abby's motivation. Same as Ellie.
Abby's personality doesn't bounce at all. You're just outright wrong here. Give a single example.
I really don't get the part of "dehumanizing joel", everything this game depicts as bad from him IS ALREADY in the first game.
@@chuuwars Naughty Dog removes most of the nuance and ambiguity from it. In TLOU1, there were tons of potential issues that drastically reduced the likelihood that the Fireflies could even make a single dose of a fungal vaccine (including the fact that it would have been made by a surgeon, not a fungal lab tech specialist), let alone distribute it across the world. Now it's treated like Joel killed off a sure-fire worldwide cure.
There's also the issue that they didn't even wake Ellie up to get her consent, and added fuel to the fire by basically telling Joel "fuck off now, asshole". It portrayed the Fireflies as selfishly pursuing the best way for them to gain any shred of power over the military, and once they had what they needed, they didn't care about the humans responsible for getting it to them. This behavior contributed to the righteous, protective fury that leads to Joel saving Ellie. In TLOU2, not even Ellie can admit that it's kind of shitty that the Fireflies were just going to murder her while she was still unconscious - it's all about how Joel cruelly took her choices away.
Also, the ending of TLOU1 made it seem like Ellie chose to accept Joel's lie, knowing it was a lie, but choosing her new bond with him over whatever truth he was trying to protect her from.
Also, the new idea that the Fireflies surgeon was the only man in the whole world who could have made a cure. Really? The failing Fireflies are the only ones who can? The US military doesn't have anyone working on this issue after 20-some years? Hahaha - no. No, that's total BS. But it adds to the idea that Joel selfishly sacrificed the world's one and only chance at a vaccine.
It's all stuff like this. All nuance is stripped from it.
@@Nyzer_ No, you invented all that. The vaccine would've worked. The first game's narrative depends on that fact. The reason why Joel's character arc is so impactful is because of the sacrifice he's willing to make for Ellie. If the vaccine would've failed anyways, the power of his choice is reduced to the point of triviality. Joel killing off a vaccine for the world was ALWAYS the case here.
Joel didn't ask for consent either though...
No no no. That was never the case. Ellie was suspicious. She didn't know.
He was the only man the Fireflies knew of who could do it. Why is that hard to believe?
48:30 In the original, the Fireflies are constantly portrayed as incompetent terrorists about to be wiped out, who can't even escort Ellie out of Boston, so a "doctor" that doesn't understand the difference between a fungus and a virus is not much of a stretch. It's consistent with the incompetence of the Fireflies.
In "part II," Mr. Wonderful zebra-saving father of the year surgeon who is also the only person on the planet who can make a v, is just absurd beyond description. I made the same arguments you are making here, too many times.
Also, the hospital tapes in the original story show the desperation and delusion of Marlene and the "doctor(s)" about "finding a cure." Much like a cult waiting for a UFO to take them to their home planet, to justify their beliefs and actions.
In "part II," Marlene is retcon'ed into a more rational person. It's not the same character.
all of the fireflies retcon argument is irrelevant bullshit to hate the game, ya'll needed to make info up.
@@iconicguy1072 Whatever, troll.
@@miller-joel im not a troll, just using brain here, would the fireflies be able to actually make the cure? its irrelevant, they most likely would, all the arguments to say it wouldnt are irrelevant to the story, like "there is no vaccine for fungal infection🤓" its a game bro lmao "how would they manufacture it?" procreating cordyceps, "how would they distribute it?" it is a mistery but it doesnt mean they couldnt.
stop making up useless arguments about jerry, fireflies or the vaccine, all that matters is that they all believed the vaccine would be succesful and made their choices based on that.
@@iconicguy1072 You call that a "brain"? :D
The Fireflies are constantly and consistently portrayed as incompetent beginning to end, but your "brain" tells you they are the ones who are going to find a "cure" and "save humanity." With a "doctor" who is not even a doctor. Ignoring all the logistical problems clearly established in that world.
"All that matters is what they believe" is how cults operate.
the fireflies were portrayed as imcopetent terrorists because 1. they fought a fascist organization by getting them what they deserved. 2. they werent able to completely destroy fedra. 3. they were searching for vaccine for years without success
we dont if they were able to escort ellie or not because they died before joel part of the deal was concluded.
what does make you think he didnt understand the difference between a fungus and a virus?
in part 1 they never portrayed jerry as a imcopetent doctor or a bad one, jerry was the only firefly doctor who would be able to make the cure because he probably was the most experienced of them and better
which tapes and which word of the tape shows them like a cult? everyone was delusioned about the cure there, idk about desperation.
in part 2 they didnt, marlene just didnt wanted ellie to die for this but she thought it was necessary, they just portrayed a described argue between her and the doctor.
24:50 "Subverting expectations." Just like Last Jedi. Arrogant writers doing something completely stupid and antagonizing just to feel smarter than they actually are.
Let's not forget that they did some false marketing having joel be in ellie's place in the trailer having joel's present day character model being used instead of his flashback look they also kinda implied that dina was the one who dies in a cinematic trailer they showed a very close up shot of her bracelet and then cut to an angry ellie wearing it
So they were marketing a game were ellie gets revenge for a love interest while joel joins her on her journey...
Yeah I'm kinda glad the game got leaked
this trailer arguments is one of the worst you can use.
@@iconicguy1072literally no
@@iconicguy1072 it's not bad at all if it's actually true, which it is, so...
@@iconicguy1072 literally is the worst take ever 😂
@@iconicguy1072how?
This game would’ve been perceived the way Neil wanted it to be if Abby’s section took place first, and the story was Abby hunting her father’s killer, which would be revealed to be Joel towards the end.
1:07:18 The only "reason" for that fist fight is for Abby to bite off Ellie's fingers, so she can't play guitar anymore.
That and Abby needed that extra protein hit after months of starvation.
Not really - that could have easily been written into their previous fight, which was also scrappy.
@@lumeronswift They didn't.
And i actually googled if that is possible and its basically impossible. She couldve maybe degloved the finger or something like that but you cant break adult bones with your jaw.
Yes, people don’t talk enough about how stupid these characters decisions are. There are multiple groups of people who travel back and forth across multiple states in search of one person they know almost nothing about other than that they might be in some city based on a rumor or a hunch. This is supposed to be a realistic game? But how believable is that? Why would real people make a decision like that? Just because they’re obsessed with revenge? Really? That’s it?
Thank you! The distance from Jackson to Seattle to almost 900 miles… BY FOOT. Who is that pissed off that you want to travel that far for revenge?
Not to mention the fact that hostile humans and zombies are hiding all over the place.
I think they were relying on the she hulk that was with them. 10/10 realistic
I love the game. I think it’s amazing. I was fully invested and enjoyed every minute I had with it. I like it more than part 1. But this is a reasonable complaint that pushes the boundaries of believability. But it is a videogame, and I’m glad it took place in the biomes and cities that it did, cuz it was awesome. I’ve traveled between Seattle and Jackson and it could be done sticking to the countryside and avoiding cities, on horseback pretty easily, but not fast. But how Ellie’s gets to Santa Barbara and back on her own from Wyoming, that’s a bit far fetched. Not because it’s too far to travel for revenge, but because it would take so long on horseback and you’d probably die on the way. Just doing the that and figuring out how to eat and feed your horse would be hard enough. I mean she can hunt but still… I do think it’s important to remember it is the apocalypse. To lose someone you love in this world, is to Lose Everything.
@@williampaschall I appreciate your perspective.
For those who loved the original, look into the movie The Battery. It's better than TLoU Part 2. Low budget but very good.
Thanks man, will do
Ay thanks bro
Can I just ignore the second game and consider the first the only game?
No dumbo
I do that
I do that too
This is actually the first video I see that points out how this game assassinated Ellie as a character. Well done.
Yeah, it’s pretty sad to watch.
Yeah it's almost close to Daenerys
Excellent breakdown. You mentioned in the first game that the game doesn't try to make you feel bad for NPC kills. I would argue that it does, a little, like when you kill Jerry. It's framed as Joel killing a helpless unarmed man. But the key difference is that TLOU 1 isn't trying to force down your throat that Joel is a good and perfect person. And Joel is framed as morally grey (and for the record, I agree with Joel's decisions), but that's up to us players to decide. TLOU 2 makes Abby and Ellie both look like hypocrites when they frame certain deaths as meaning "more" than killing other random NPCs. The game wants so badly for you to love Abby and see her as a good person, that they turn her into a selfless person that would do anything for Lev who she met 2 days ago and 180'd on the WLF who she has been with for years, instead of just writing her in a realistic way with motivations that make sense, and then letting us decide.
I never interpreted it as Abby being a good person, or even trying to make her a good person, I took it more as "Abby's a piece of shit, Joel is a piece of shit, Ellie is a piece of shit, stop defending human garbage because of a few nice scenes they had." Hell, Abby only saved Lev because she needs to clear her head and absolve herself, she says as much herself, which is pretty fucking selfish. The argument of manipulation of the audience seems to be made either in bad faith, or out of a refusal to engage the story on its terms. I never got the impression Abby was made out to be a good person, even her own friends literally call her a piece of shit. Feeling empathy doesn't mean you've been manipulated. Changing your opinion doesn't mean you've been manipulated, having an opinion between "untouchable saint" and "irredeemable monster" doesn't mean you've been manipulated. It's a complicated and mature story that doesn't work in absolutes.
@@jazzlaugh6578 Druckman literally said he was trying to manipulate the audience, so...no, it's a childish and simple story told by an arrogant clown.
@billjacobs521 I thought his attempt at manipulation wasn't making one protagonist seem objectively better, he didn't. The story outright uses the words "piece of shit" to describe Abby. Those words are said by Mel, one of her friends. As for the pet vs kill dogs argument I see all the time, Ellie gets to pet Buckley from the first game in the Jackson walk-around segment, but people either ignore that for the sake of proving their false point or don't pay attention and skip right by it. The manipulation aspect was more based around audience expectation. Manipulate the audience into expecting something, and then subvert those expectations. Now whether you like it or not, that's entirely personal, but to act like that's inherently a bad idea is just being ridiculous. Spec Ops: The Line did the same thing, admittedly far better than TLOU2. In terms of what we see in game, no, you're not being "manipulated" because you felt empathy, or a villain got humanized. Those conflicting emotions, those feelings, are what makes it a mature story. Mature shouldn't mean blood and tits, it should mean something complicated and nuanced. As for the arrogant clown comment, I guess you're entitled to that opinion, I won't change it, nor will I try to. You're allowed to interpret the story however you want and walk away with whatever feelings you have towards Druckmann. You can and should make up your own mind, but I'm going to call out almost demonstrably factually incorrect statements, like the story "trying to make Abby look like a good person" as so many people put it.
Do you think this downfall of story writing was due to the loss of Bruce Straley? Perhaps there was no more balance and only groupthink? Genuinely curious as what happened to the balance and story writing from TLOU 1 to TLOU 2
You'll see *exactly* how Bruce made TLOU when Neil Druckmann tries to remake the good game.
It's going to be like that one legal case where a guy was stealing credit for his wife's work for years, only to be called out in court to try and replicate it, and fail miserably.
Edit: He DID fail miserably. TLOU remake sold worse than Saints Row and has quite a few changes that only serve to make it worse.
@@crazyinsane500 Truly Saddening
Then: Neil was a writer. Allegedly. Now: Neil is the co-president of the company. Without Amy, without Bruce, and without 70% of the employees that made the original game.
@@miller-joel lets ignore that neil was THE writer and a director just like bruce?
@@iconicguy1072 Not ignoring anything. You just don't know how to read. On the first one, Neil was in a position where he didn't have the last word, and took direction from others. Even the actors helped WRITE the story and shape the characters.
Not so on the second one. And it shows.
I thought the first game shut the door on a sequel by killing Marlene, people used to be so much more happier when there wasn't a sequel!
No matter what Bruce says i know he hated this shit thats why he didn't want to be apart of it
Lmao you're just inventing scenarios based on nothing to give yourself validation.
@@krasmasov6852 You mean like how you're doing the exact same thing by desperately trying to belittle every valid argument against your precious little polished turd? Project harder bro.
Thank you for this! One thing I kept bringing up against people defending Ellie’s attitude towards Joel was that Joel’s decision to save Eli, was based on him acting as a father. That doctor, who is the father of Abby, wasn’t thinking that killing at all about the little girl, and not explaining that the procedure will kill her. Creating a double standard with his own daughter when Marlene asked him ‘if it was his own, what would he do?’ Ellie was a child, And him making executive decision to save her isn’t something she should have any animosity towards Joel for because he was acting as a parent. When it comes to the well-being your kid, you shouldn’t have to care about the feelings of the child. Joel saved Eli to preserve her life knowing that something would kill her. And the doctors didn’t tell Eli that it was going to kill her. It was more of a guarantee that she died, then the vaccine would’ve been made. The father of Abby was not a bad guy, but if he was willing to withhold information and willingly kill another man’s daughter, then he deserved what he got.
there is one thing you ignored here, joel knew ellie wanted to die there.
@@iconicguy1072 No he didn't, no one knew. You're just making up mental gymnastics which is typical of the 'Joel bad' crowd. Troll harder bro.
@@samcooper2474 yes he knew, thats why he lied to her, he knew she would be angry with the truth because she wanted that and no, i dont think joel is a bad person, i think he is a broken person trying to protect what he loves but it doesnt mean we have to lick his boots and say "joel did nothing wrong" or "joel isnt selfish"
edit: i just saw you said "no one knew" but marlene literally said she knew lmao did you even played the game?
@@iconicguy1072 Marlene just pretended she knew what Ellie wanted to make herself feel better. No one knew what Ellie wanted because no one ever asked her in the first place, but you keep on ignoring that while making up mental gymnastics boyo.
@@samcooper2474 Argumentum ad ignorantiam here + marlene headcanon is unreal.
both marlene and joel knew it because they knew ellie for years and they were right, thats why joel lied, not hard to understand, both of them were selfish.
You're the 1st person I've seen bring up the looking for Tommy continuity error. And I didn't spot that either. Well played.
I don't think it's an error though; I mean, there might other guys named Tommy at the settlement; but a Tommy with a brother named Joel? That was the clincher. Still pure luck, but that bit kinda works.
Time stamp?
@@michaelbell6894 Everything about this "game" is forced and contrived AF. And btw, when Owen tells Abby "that's a big town, how are we going to find him?" she suggests capturing people from the town, complete strangers, and torturing them for information. Because she's a psychopath with a delusional obsession with revenge that not even Owen can get behind.
@@kilarymz4life772 around @21:50
The fact that the whole situation hinges on it being one massive coincidence aside, I think them ignoring Tommy makes sense since Joel is with him in that moment. The only reason they wanted to find Tommy is to get to Joel. Well Joel just happens to be with him so who gives a shit about Tommy now is what I imagine is one of the things going through their heads.
Ellie just becomes okay with killing, the story should've talked more about her mental state, not Abby doing whatever Abby does
Regardless of whether you love or hate this game, the fact that it caused this much controversy is proof that it has problems.
i will never buy a game associated with Neil Druckman solely because of the way he treated his fans, there are plenty of other studios offering great games
Same here. So shady and manipulative.
You'll buy the next one. Need a tissue? 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521yeah no one is besides the tards that thought this game was slightly good 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
I’m genuinely a huge fan of both games. lots of fans of the first game love the second game. Not a few of his fans. Literal legions of them Love both games. If you hate it, don’t buy the next one. More than enough Genuine Last of Us fans will buy it.
I went into the game completely blind too, and I think the moment it fell apart for me was when we found out Abby's motivation. With Joel's extremely checkered past, I expected an intriguing story behind why anyone would be driven to such brutality to exact revenge, and then we get the reveal... and wow, they brought back what was easily the weakest plot point from the first game and decided to make it the centerpiece for this one. Like you, I have a lot of other issues with the writing as well, but that was the moment that I knew this was going sideways fast.
So it all fell apart for you because you found out that Abby's motivation was exactly the same as Ellie's. You don't care. Right. Don't you understand the game is about empathy, not clan loyalty. Not team Ellie vs team Abby. Not revenge at any cost, demonising the enemy in order to justify atrocities. Ellie battered and tortured Nora exactly the same as Abby did to Joel. Nora may have been Marlene's daughter. Ellie loved Marlene. Do you think Ellie would have slaughtered Nora if she had known that Joel shot Marlene in the face. Think it through.
@@itsjusterthought7941 🙄Yet more mental gymnastics from one of neil druckmans fart huffing starry-eyed fanboys.
@@itsjusterthought7941 I don’t think that’s what that person was getting at. It’s hinted that Joel and Tommy did AWFUL things in their past. I would have liked to have seen Joel killed for something from he did in that era, something that would be hard for the player to defend. I think a lot of people, me included, defend his actions at the hospital. For me because of multiple reasons. To find out Abby hunted him down cause he killed her daddy because her daddy was going to butcher a 14 year old kid was stupid, jerry deserved that. And I don’t think comparing what Ellie did to Nora to what Abby did to Joel is a fair comparison because of the circumstances surrounding each of their actions.
@@itsjusterthought7941Ellie going after the people who hunted down and killed Joel solely out of revenge is not even remotely similar to Abby hunting Joel who's crime was.....stopping a terrorist group from killing an innocent 14 year old girl and not even talking to her about it. ESPECIALLY given all the info the game gives you to support Joels actions.
That's the issue, game 1 gives you all the reasons to support Joel only to then try in game 2 to be like "oh no no no joel actually did a terrible thing and Abby wanting revenge doesn't make her a bad person actually cus Joel killed her daddy"
Ellie and abbie didn't even have a conversation, Ellie DOESN'T EVEN KNOW why Joel died
How do people miss that, wtf
It’s just shameful. What a waste of a sequel.
Neil wanted to prove how good of a writer he is by making us absolutely hate a character at the beginning and then try to make us sympathize with the same character at the end.
I don't care if this little experiment worked or not. I still feel cheated because he took something I really cared about and used it for a selfish experiment...
Lol what do you think art is?
@@krasmasov6852 Not whatever you think it is.
@@dead7781 So it's not personal expression of someone who's free to do whatever they want with it?
@@krasmasov6852 Yes it is. And the first game demonstrated that perfectly. But games aren't just pure art. They're also consumerist products. If all games are pure art then a tampon is art. It's also incredibly stupid to pull the "art argument" since there is still no clear and objective definition of art. People haven't reached a conclusion on that since the dawn of time, so I'm not gonna have this debate with you, and Neil Druckmann shouldn't have made this game a catalyst for that debate. Gamers are also not some rich art piece collectors, we're paying with our own money for a story and experience, we have every right to scrutinize it if it's unsatisfactory. Van Gogh made Starry Night because he wanted to. Last of Us Part II was made to sell. Your buyers aren't people you can experiment with. It's a semi false equivalence to compare games to art because of this. A correct statement would be "Games aren't automatically art, but they CAN be"
A game like Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian, those are art. This one was a sequel first, art piece second. And it was a terrible sequel. I don't need proof for that statement because it's self-evident. Just look how divided the fanbase is. When a sequel attracts a new audience but spits on the original audience, it's a bad sequel. The people who love this game don't seem to share that love for the original, and the people who absolutely love the first (like me), despise this one. There's obviously an overlap in the middle, but they're just a minority. On it's own, is it a great game? Hell yes. But as a sequel? F*ck no.
This is what nobody seems to understand. I keep hearing people say it's great game, but is it a great sequel?
@@dead7781 I reject that entirely. I mean it's true under capitalism, but I hope capitalist brain rot doesn't get in the way of proper art appreciation too much. Modern art basically being a money laundering scheme between a bunch of rich ghouls doesn't change the value of the art itself. And I don't mean monetary value. If they were only concerned about Part 2 selling and making fans happy, they would've made another Joel and Ellie adventure.
You do need proof for that statement because it's both a great game and a great sequel. I am the original audience. I played the original when it first came out in 2013. I used my first ever paycheck to buy it. I love the first game. I love the sequel. I don't understand how anyone could like either without liking the other.
Glad people are finally acknowledging this game wasn’t as perfect as reviewers made it out to be.
I don’t get how it got across-the-board 10/10s.
believe me, MANY people still say the game is perfect
@ Yeah, it’s true. The gameplay really is fun and I play No Return sometimes, but the story and character work is just very frustrating and such a letdown, when that was what made the first game so great.
@@chambeetYes. The annoying thing is that you can give as many arguments as you want, but no one will respect it.
@@chambeetthe tlou community has become very toxic. I challenge you to go to a tlou 2 video and comment "I didn't like the game" that's all. I bet $50 that someone will insult you
@@PiettroGuedes Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was like that. Sad.
this game is the epitome of ludonarrative dissonance. they want to tell us revenge and by extension killing is bad but force us to mow down dozens of ppl as each character.
"Not a masterpiece" is an understatement.
NG ruined their franchise and reputation. Do not trust them. Do not pre-order. Never!
Excellent essay, matches 100% my analysis of this terribly flawed sequel after enduring it.
Your rant is why I didn't like Part 2.
The entire first game shows you that the fireflies suck at everything. All they do is get people killed. Their science labs are always over run due to oversight and the leadership is always failing. They are not to be trusted with the only immune person ever seen.
The 2nd game just throwing all of this out the window to force a story outcome is why the game is frustrating and poorly written. Joel dying isn't an issue, it happens in stories all the time. I'm upset because he's unceremoniously killed by a character who was only invented to make Joel's objectively moral decision at the end of the first game, seem evil. It's insulting
36:50 Ah, but guess what? That sequence in the museum is AFTER we are forced to watch Joel being tortured to death in front of Ellie. They just want to give you a taste of what you wanted from this game, knowing you are never going to get it. That's how sadistic this is. Even the best part of it is poisoned.
so you would like more if they didnt? these flashbacks are used to explain the story, you cant fully understand everything without them.
@@iconicguy1072 Says the rando on the internet who has zero clue what story structure is.
@@samcooper2474 your coping is so good, as i used to say joel fanboys are the masters of the lies and bad arguments.
@@iconicguy1072 Why are you so butthurt over Joel fans? Did a bunch of them beat you up in school or something? Pretty sad to hold such a grudge over a video game.
Edit: What? No low effort poorly constructed grade school response? Must have struck a nerve.
@@iconicguy1072dude you’re getting destroyed left and right in this comment section just move on 😂
Every narrative problem in the Last of Us part 2 is fixed if they don't kill Marlene in the first game and have her replace Abby. Marlene and Ellie already had a more meaningful relationship, Marlene's motives and character were already explained, Marlene hunting Joel in that way is already perfectly in character. It is even foreshadowed in the first scene they meet. The entire game would feel more natural and make more sense on every level.
You would not have to pause the game at the climax to explain everything again. Ellie not being able to kill Marlene makes perfect sense since Marlene is Ellie's last connection to her mother. You don't have to make up any stupid crap with the doctor. Instead all the wasted exposition can be used to explore more interesting questions since in the parts of the game where you play as Marlene, you would get to know who Ellie's mother was and what the deal with the fireflies is.
The last fight on the beach would be way more tragic, the dialogue in every encounter between Marlene and Ellie would be way more meaningful. Marlene may have killed Joel but she would also be the only reason Joel and Ellie ever met in the first place, the reason they ever had any hope.
Yeah because having Marlene would fix EVERYTHING...🤡
That makes so much sense.
You're right. I think it would make the game better
14:45 FORTUNATELY, there were leaks warning you about the story, which were almost 100% right. All the official advertisement was almost 100% false.
UNFORTUNATELY, many avoided leaks so as to not ruin the story/experience which a logical action.
I find it so funny how people take the Fireflies BS at face value considering they've been screwing up in EVERY way in the original game even wanted to kill Joel for doing his job! Most TLOU2 reviewers often forget this and just assume the Fireflies were actually competent enough to do the job right. If this game is a "part 2" then reviewers should do better and point this out. It's like expecting post-apocalyptic Antifa to actually be competent. :/
Even Naughty Dog takes that shit at face value, when the Fireflies' competence or lack thereof was one of the biggest talking points on forums after the first game. TLOU1 seems like its ending was absolutely meant to emphasize the low odds the surgery would pay off, and the Fireflies' lack of competence - why else would they rush to make that decision before Ellie could even wake up? Why else would the soldiers basically treat Joel like a total piece of shit and not... you know... the guy who hand-delivered them the source of the vaccine? The game goes OUT OF ITS WAY to showcase the Fireflies' incompetence, likely specifically in order to further justify Joel's choice, especially since, IIRC, he already knows Ellie would be willing to trade her life to save so many others.
I was outright bewildered to learn that Naughty Dog not only took its success for granted, but that they also decided to write the asinine idea that now with the surgeon dead, there is literally no one else who can make a fungal vaccine and so therefore Ellie's immunity has become utterly meaningless.
Do they literally not remember the plot of the first game? Did they lose all the writers who did the best writing, and everyone left has about the same skill D&D do at taking what's there and building further off of it?
You can make the same argument about TLOU2 fanboys who take the game itself at face value by ignoring it's terrible writing and hackneyed approach to conveying it's themes and just herald it as some masterpiece of thematic storytelling simply for attempting to tackle dark and complicated subject matter.
@@samcooper2474 Funny you say that cuz that's exactly what happened in the comment section here
If they make the abby flashback dlc no one decent will buy it
I started playing TLOU2 two months ago...after I beat it, I felt like something was waaaay off. I did not look at reviews or anything before playing, I just remember it winning game of the year from some questionable outlets. Revenge is a terrible plot motive. I wish the game ended at the farmhouse when Ellie and Dina were together but the segment after that failed me. I’m not going to leave my girlfriend and child to Travel more than 600+ miles ON FOOT across land filled with thousands of infected and multiple groups of violent lunatics(ok they’re all lunatics at this point) just to kill one person who spared my life not once, but twice.
This is why I give TLOU 2 a 8/10 which is the same number of functioning fingers Ellie has left at the end of the game.
I’m ok with people liking the game but when they claim this is the Greatest game of All time, this game is NOWHERE NEAR BEING THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME, HELL NAW!!
I will say that Ellie's motivations for leaving the farm do run a bit deeper than that, but the rest of the game just kills the presentation of her motivations there. I've talked with people who consider Ellie leaving the farm (and the guitar) at the end to be a hopeful ending scene, and they've been surprised when I said I thought I was going to hear a gunshot after the screen faded to black because Ellie had just committed suicide. The game abuses plot contrivances so often to make things happen - specifically, to shit on Ellie so often - that I was completely unable to see that as Ellie taking a step forward.
The game as a whole drowns the player in "REVENGE BAD" so thoroughly and kicks everyone's characterization around so often as the plot demands it that it's hard to see past that bullshit.
And besides, I'd still argue that while Ellie's motivation isn't quite as weak as it seems at a glance, is Abby really going to still be in the area after 335 hours of walking (plus however many hours of sleep, hunting, going around obstacles like infected or hostile factions) to get there? PLUS the time it took for this news to even GET to Jackson? Realistically, Ellie would arrive there something like three or four months after this random guy spotted Abby in the area - if it was even her to begin with, since "strong woman and kid with cuts on face" isn't (or at least shouldn't be) QUITE as narrowed down as it seems in this setting. Never even mind the issues with going alone, and how they lost so many people last time, and how there wouldn't be an abundance of Abby's allies around to use to narrow down her location once she's actually in the area. AND never mind the fact that if Ellie had been this burdened by PTSD, it would likely have come up on the first trip down to Seattle, and that she likely wouldn't have gone back at all.
None of those points are dealbreakers to the idea on their own, but added up? Ellie's not likely to survive a trip down there. Even if she does, she's not likely to find Abby's location. Even if she does, she likely can't find the one specific location. Even if she does, Abby isn't likely to still be there or to have left traces showing her next destination. Even if that wasn't true, it's not guaranteed to actually BE Abby. Even if she is, Ellie's not even remotely guaranteed to win the encounter. Even if she does, she's not very likely to survive the trip back, especially since she's likely to be injured. But even if she does, then when she returns, Dina won't be waiting for her.
So even though her motivations aren't so shallow, they're still nowhere near enough to make total sense here. They only make sense when you consider that this is a video game and that Ellie can make that journey off screen and hone in on the exact location Abby was living at or going to.
@@Nyzer_ Thank you for the additional elaborate take on it.
I’m hoping the HBO series fixes these nuances, with a more plausible and connected flow….Also by Abby biting Ellie’s fingers, that means some of Ellie’s high antibody blood is in Abby…hmmm I wonder
@@Ardante11 If HBO has the ability to make drastic calls like "hey, let's have the characters actually interact more", they might have a shot. One of the game's biggest weaknesses is that they don't do this, and just choose to make plot points happen not because characters are talked into/out of things but because they had a bad dream and now flipped their characterization again.
As for Ellie's blood... it really seems like ND is just not going that route. At all. Otherwise they'd have done more with running tests on Ellie in 1, and literally anything with her immunity in 2 besides having one "oh shit, it's you" moment.
Yeah, the game did NOT feel like the last of us at ALL…
Yeah, the game did NOT feel like the last of us at ALL…
Very underrated video, well done ✅
Couldn't even pay attention to the beginning of this video cause I was singing along to the background music 😅😅
The First game was very good! Like a Kid who was raised right with good influence
The sequel was a failed abortion who we're all forced to acknowledge
1:17:54 man I think that "sequel" line was a deliberate in-joke
It could have been. Before the leak, ND seemed to be pretty aware that the game would not be universally liked by fans, but that because of the shift to the theme of hate from the theme of love, this was intentional. They also went out of their way to doctor trailers so that Joel's death would catch fans off guard.
After the leak, though, Druckmann in particular seems to have become radically defensive. It's not that they wanted the game to have the emotional impact it did and so therefore corners were cut as necessary, but just that characters changed off-screen and the fans who didn't change their headcanon to match Naughty Dog's during the years of development are the ones in the wrong.
@@Nyzer_ I hear what your saying but you don't really have to know what's going to happen to make a joke about a "follow up" not being as good as the orginal. They knew what they were making was going to divide and challenge people. But they pressed ahead like Nirvana making "In Utero" (orginally called "I hate myself and want to die"). Rickie Gervais made a similar joke just before the launch of "Extras" after the remarkably successful "The Office" series. It's a just a joke you make- but not because you don't believe in the product. In fact it's a joke you make when you do, and even more so when you believe in it but you know it's going to be departure from what you've previously established.
Tlou2 was such a a wreck compared the first.
After listening to this whole video, I checked how many views it had. 15k after a year? Now that's a crime!
As a person who was a veterinary technician (I assisted with surgeries and did anesthesia for said surgeries as well as dental cleanings) it's always been my opinion that the reason Ellie wasn't woken up from surgery was because they would be wasting medicine (really expensive meds like propofol and some sort of anesthetic agent). Those would already be in short supply post-apocalypse. When a patient is undergoing surgery that requires full sedation they are given an induction agent first via catheter. For animals it varies, but for humans I've heard it's propofol. This is a short acting agent that does not even last through the entire surgery. The patient is usually (in the animal world) held under anesthesia by a gas like isoflurane. So you would be wasting the drugs and doubling the cost of the induction agent (propofol). I imagine that there might not be enough propofol available to do more than one induction.
She has to do the surgery, so they don't need her unconcious anyway--using anasthesia to sedate her in the first place was a waste.
It's all contrived such as Ellie torturing Nora. That's put in so that you can compare her torture to Abby's torturing Joel, but ofc their not the same as Abby does it for revenge/hate and Ellie does it to get information. It's not really in Ellie's character either, where Abby enjoys hurting people. Again, contrived to get bullet points for comparison. Complete drivel!
It’s self gratifying nonsense. It’s just cute how the game thinks it’s being deep and clever but it’s so on the nose and generic that I can’t help but laugh
Exactly this
This game is so far from being the last of us you could just change the name of the game and it wouldn’t matter… they just added a bunch of characters that don’t mater, tbh my least favourite part of the WHOLE game is when Joel dies
I have a question can you really make a cure for a fungus parasite? It sounds impossible.
It has never been done irl. Could we some day develop a way, yeah. Could some random dude with nothing more then a bachelor's in biology be the first to ever do it in a post apocalyptic setting? No
Honestly I think Ellie going on revenge quest for Dina would've worked a lot better since she lost her first love already. They should've gone with that instead of whatever this game is.
No player would be motivated to avenge Dina 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521LMAO FACTS
@@cinemacrow2521maybe write Dina better then🤡
@@darthrevan454 🤦♂️🤡
Not gonna lie, I find the first game so compelling that when you showed clips of it, especially with dialogue I'd have to rewatch cause I got distracted haha.
This is the most bullshit game😢
Reading through all these comments, I gotta say it's pretty hilarious how all these starry-eyed fanboys of the sequel who are still high off of neil druckmans farts are crying excuses, projections and mental gymnastics to cope with the fact that more and more people see this polished turd for what it is. What's even funnier is these people don't even like the game, they just claim to out of spite and resentment towards the backlash against it because these are the kind of people who hate fandoms for some reason. It's the exact same pathetic, narcissistic anti-consumer mentality that's harbored by most game journalists and studios like naughtydog.
You’re a funny guy but you’re right. I think that they’re just children
@@Prospect_ That just sounds like a win/win for me lol.
playing as abby for 13 hours while the game tried making me like her was on of the worst parts. they did their best to make her a scumbag and didnt exactly make ellie likeable either. in the end i didnt give a fuq about any of them and didnt feel any satisfaction with the ending. 30+ hours lol
I don’t think the game was necessarily trying to make you like her, the game still works. It just puts you into her shoes, and the player quickly realises, she got no satisfaction from Joel’s death, and she wanted something to hold onto, that’s where Lev and Yara come into it. I’d argue if Abby was just simply the villain of the game, that would’ve been a disrespect to Joel as a character
@@kamakazilee6066 You may have heard the phrase "media literacy" thrown around pretty often. A big part of media literacy is picking up on tropes and the author's intent through the writing.
When the writer includes a scene of Abby, literally, petting a dog, that's not to "put you in her shoes." That *is* to try and garner sympathy from the audience.
They didn't write Abby as a villain, they wrote her as a replacement. Her being a villain is inferred by the audience, testers, and everyone else who worked on the game who had no vested interest in pivoting the franchise to be about her. As it turns out, petting the dog doesn't overcome remorselessness.
yeah but even after that i had no real feeling towards abby as a character. she's unlikeable.
@@kamakazilee6066lol
@@crazyinsane500yes but we’re talking about a game here, it’s not just any form of ‘media’. Yes your not the character, but your PLAYING as them. By even simply observing the set up of the WLF, it shows you they’re just people too. The whole petting the dog thing is brought up so much and for some reason people cling onto that, you can literally skip it if you want to, you don’t have to pet the dogs, it’s completely optional on the players part. Don’t opt to do something in a game then turn around and say ‘why is the game trying to make me like her’. Its like this, Abby and her friends have this one dog Alice, it’s there to humanise these characters who we wanted to brutally kill in the beginning, it’s there to CHALLENGE the player who has come to know Joel, Ellie and even Tommy. You can also pet a dog as Ellie, which is what I should’ve said in the first place because THAT in itself completely negates the argument that the game desperately wants us to cling to Abby, but the game still works regardless if you like her by the end. I think one needs the emotional maturity to accept that these characters yes are acting on negative emotions, but are also completely justified from a certain POV. The two games are all about perspective man, it’s there plain in your face
The biggest crime this game commits..... is how they completely failed abby as a character.... shes not even a character by the end of game. I prey the tv show can balance her
What a great, underrated video
I guess connecting Mel's death to the other women's deaths didn't really connect to me because pregnancy may not be a huge common factor. It's not something destined or wanted by every woman especially in that type of setting.
Even if it was we can all agree that it was really dumb for her to go to missions and stuff in that state in such an eviroment. Like, come on.
@@milacruz3970 oh absolutely.
The killing of Joel hurt the game sadness
I found myself nodding in agreement through the entirety of Part III and IV. Thank you so much for making this video and saying out loud what has been going through my head for years when I think about TLOU1 and 2.
Can’t believe you have under 3k subs man you for sure deserve way more great video
1:03:00 Mel literally calls Abby a POS. With "friends" like these...
This was a well-done video and I enjoyed it.
Great video
I think the game's a solid 8/10. The story as a whole doesn't even touch the original, though some moments are good. Meanwhile the gameplay is better as are graphics but the soundtrack is also a step down from the original. Great video.
Not hating on ya, but you're description doesn't sound like it was worth an 8/10. More like a 7 or 7.5 unless those moments were REALLY good.
Awesome Review ❤ the truth is spoken. Thank You.
The Santa Barbara chapter did feel tacked on (it was literally the first thing I told one of my friends who had already played TLOU2, right after I finished it).
I somewhat disagree with your explanation of Ellie's motives around 1:05:50; her main motivation for tracking Abby wasn't really to kill her, but to escape her PTSD (which she had for at least months) and find closure. Ironically it turns out to be an unintended rescue mission; if Ellie didn't go to SB, Abby and Lev would be dead.
I do agree with your remark around 1:09:16 - Abby could have bitten off Ellie's fingers in the theater fight, then the game could've ended at the farm, with Ellie's PTSD but with Dina at her side. I feel like this would've properly set up a sequel by leaving questions as to how Ellie will move on.
Gameplay wise, the SB chapter also had the most dissonance as Ellie is the most upgraded at that point (remember she was also impaled and hung for hours); it would've been interesting to see Ellie with almost no weapons and low health, forced to rely on stealth and the Rattlers' clicker hostages (my first playthrough I didn't even know you could unbind them).
Overall I still really enjoyed TLOU2 and there are a lot of gameplay elements that are improved which weren't mentioned much (e.g. level design, which is far superior to TLOU1) and I also dug most of Abby's story.
3 solutions that would've been so much better.
1. You could've left Ellie on the farm with a family, with Dina, showing that forgiveness leads to a happier life.
2. You could've given the player a choice to kill or spare Abby, it would've meant the player couldn't be mad about the ending, cause they had agency, and the player could take the revenge they wanted, and I know 98% of people probably would've, touche, maybe they should've made Abby more likable.
3. Just let Ellie kill Abby... Simple right? The players would achieve their goal. But then you could hit that bitter sweet tone soo much better. Have her look at Abby's kid, seeing that she killed that kid's equivilent of "Joel". Have her look at the fingers she lost, look at the family she lost... And simply ask herself if the revenge was really worth is. It would be a 10x more beautiful ending that genuinely sells that revenge isn't worth it.
I am sad i did not get my revenge in the end.
You do realize that's a good thing right? 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521 please elaborate
@jaebustilla2866 Did you even pay attention to the story? 🤡 Abby kills Joel = still has nightmares about her Dad. Nightmares stop when she saves Lev and Yara. Ellie saves Abby and Lev...connect the dots 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521that's just your opinion 🤡
@@mjmb2017 he's never going to elaborate because he doesn't have a counter argument.
The game is mid for me, the gameplay is really fun and the location looks really beautiful for a post-apocalyptic world but the story was meh for me, but if anyone enjoys it well im proud of you im glad you love the game but like i said it was mid for me.
The fact of the matter is that ND had lost 2 of its key creators, which left only Neil Druckman, and soon after he started hanging around with Anita Sarkeesian, who is an extreme far left activist, who had stated that she hated video games in all forms. then Neil said himself that he had made games wrong in the past...
Then we got TLOU2, with a main target audience steered way towards the far left and the left in general, and I feel that they've made the same mistake as Disney and have put their 'Agenda' first along with our writers are 'creative geniuses who are so brave and take risks' before any plot or coherent story is decided. (My views are centred btw).
Yes we also got lied to whilst they promoted the game..
These days in Hollywood all films seem to be centred towards the left, and its not even so much about being from the left, it just seems to be about race and gender equality for some reason?
Now as a mixed race man who is bringing up a daughter by himself, I take gender and race equality very seriously, however the world just isn't that 2D in my opinion.
Where's the equality for Ageism, why can't older people be the protagonists in modern films or in their own Franchises? Why are older people often made to look weak and feeble?
What about the 100,000,000's of people who are homeless, with at least a very sizable amount in the western world? Where's their leading roles in movies and games?
How about antisemitism or Mulsim'phobia? Why can't we cast more More Jewish and Muslim actors be in leading roles?
What about the working class, who due to the global financial crisis are almost homeless themselves? Where's that awareness for a sizable amount of the whole worlds population?
I could mention that maybe Ukrainians or people from third world countries could be cast into key roles, disabled people, Trans (lead roles), and the list goes on..
For me it seems that there is rich 'girls' and 'boys' club somewhere, where all they want to do constantly is pat themselves on the back and have their own biased opinions broadcasted to the world by any means possible. ('Thats Hollywood Baby - Rachel Zegler')
Did you need to write a whole chapter? 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521did you need to comment 🤡
@@darthrevan454 I got a rat in my trap! Quick, grab a hammer! 🤡
This video has just popped up on my feed and it’s the best breakdown I’ve seen on this game 👏🏻
The only thing in this video I disagree with with is your comments on the Gameplay being clunky. I thought the combat was some of the best third person action combat I’ve ever played in a action adventure game, especially in TLOU2.
I'm really glad you mentioned the real moral dilemma of the game was Joel's lie. It just seems like the more definitive "what would you do in this situation?" question of the game. It's something I've believed for a while and glad to see the sentiment shared. Loved the video, btw!
Yes but why did Joel lied? Even when he told the truth to ellie he still omitted details and didn't full explained the situation to her, why?
@@gaia7240 It's kinda up to interpretation, but to me it was always about not burdening her. He wanted her to live guilt free, like a normal (or as normal as you can get in this world) girl. As for why Joel didn't explain himself in part 2, you'd have to ask Druckman. But I doubt he'd give you a clear answer because he'd consider you a hater.
Last of Us 2 is complete garbage.
Agreed
100% agree probably the review that best articulates how I felt.
"its probably for the best that rhey didnt explorered more of the infection" are you serious? The main focus of the first game is completely forgotten and almost nonexistent in the second one. It was a mistake making this about humans vs humans to be like all humans are pieces of shit.... Thanks hope it was worth ruining a sequel.
God of war told way better story about consequences of revenge, had better fighting gameplay, and to top it off free dlc to wrap everything up. Yes I did play both the last of us and god of war.
> [58:00] playing in pacifist mode, violence is a player choice - but no, that means you don't get to use any of the game's mechanics
I recall a fellow MungoJerry do excellent write-ups of wacky Diablo 2 character builds he played. One of them was Maldar, the Pacifist-a necromancer who used the blinding curse to walk past most monsters, killing only those necessary to complete all the quests. Also useful were the decrepitude (slow) and fear (run away) curses, and the bone wall and bone prison spells which created obstacles in the way of monsters, plus bone armor for some fake extra hit points. Unlike most builds he doesn't (routinely) use a hireling, since the hireling might not be sufficiently pacifistic.
It's a very creative use of the tools in the game and probably not something the creators foresaw.
... point being: I agree: in _some_ games a pacifist strategy can be viable, interesting and fun, but turning a game into a walking/crawling simulator is not the recipe for a fun pacifist strategy.
Maybe more to the point: even though you technically have a choice, it's fair to discount pacifist strategies if the way to implement them is not by playing the game differently but by avoiding or skipping (most of) the game.
16:40 Yes, the graphics are pretty. But none of that matters if the story and the characters are trash.
lol okay Joel.
@@williampaschall what a compelling argument 🤣
@@miller-joelit’s hilarious how he comments on your year old comment with such a compelling argument 😂 I agree with you though. The story was absolute trash because it was poorly written with the pacing of it being haphazard and the flashbacks were randomly placed all of which resulted in breaking immersion.
The Ratking did NOT belong in the TLOU world!!! An absolute joke!
Cause you said so?
It's a fictional zombie apocalypse
The Rat king is the best segment of Abby though
Yeah I agree it was tonally very out of place
It was a really really really stupid boss that felt like it would fit better in one of the shittier resident evil games.
0:12 what song is that?? its sounds so good
i commenting a year later on this video, never get emotionally attached to a video game l learned my lesson from Mass effect 3 ending...
You brought up a lot of Valid Criticisms of the Last of Us Part II. If the Game comes out as a PC Port on Steam, I'm going to wait for It to go On Sale! Maybe, I'll be Lucky Twice & get It Bundled/w a New AMD Graphics Card??
No, it's literally the opposite of a masterpiece.
Do another DCS beginner guide! ☺️
You nailed it with your analysis.
this feels like fan fiction
Written by someone who get aroused by gore stuff
Sad to see this ammout of views, defo underrated AF, btw thx for that F/A 18 tutorial.
I think that, and this is my opinion, any couple - gay or straight - has to be written in a way that serves the plot. Having it just to have it feels forced and can detract from the bigger picture of all. That being said I remember the biggest gripe I heard about the game was the fact there was a lesbian couple in the game. Like, okay? What about the Cordiceps?
Well we’re really only seeing the beginnings of Ellie and Dina’s true relationship, but it’s bad timing on both ends considering the course of events that follow, and it’s made to be even more tragic when you realise Joel made it clear that he wanted nothing but for Dina to have the best intentions, and she absolutely does in the end. But Ellie in reality is her own worst enemy, and leads herself down the path of potentially ending up alone. All because she put all the blame on Joel not seeing his side at all, but then tries to take back those 2-3 years of agony and goes on the path she takes………..
It really doesn't matter. Need a tissue? 🤡
@@cinemacrow2521 I know it just slightly annoys me when I see someone say it’s ‘forced’ even tho we knew since Left Behind that she wasn’t straight…..
@@cinemacrow2521need an English lesson? 🤡
@@darthrevan454 also this kid keep using the clown for every comment this kid makes
petition to remove all of day 2 abby
15:15 "There are gays in it" is as lame as it gets. There were "gays" in the DLC, and it still had a very high user score (until VERY recently).
Exactly. Also Bill in part 1 is a gay character and they didn’t shove it in your face like part 2.
hey shamblers were new right?
Yea
Don't care about the gay anything, but it was WAY over represented in Part2. As were other SJW elements. It felt political and that's not fun.
It was political
You when people love each other 😱😱😱
The whole game had this condescendic tone
@@joshh1740i feel like it’s not even about that. the lev plot line took way too much time while being unrelated to the general story and could ultimately be cut entirely and the story would be unchanged
I don't care about LGBT representation. In fact, I support it, and had no issues with Ellie and Dina. But it was pretty ridiculous that a kid raised in the woods by a religious whackjob hyper-conservative cult in the post-apocalypse comes out as trans at like 13. This is sheer tokenism; a trans character when and where they should not exist is crowbarred in for social credit points. To be clear, I'm not saying trans people wouldn't actually exist at all, I'm saying the concept of it would be unknown to Lev, and the idea of throwing EVERYTHING away to live as a different gender, while puberty has only barely started, is entirely unbelievable. It would be like if, in the same world, we stumbled across a vegan complaining about the ethical implications of eating eggs, or an envrionmentalist destroying the few remaining cars to ensure no one drives them and emits CO2. In context, these are all absurd.
Amazing video Aiden.
I like your video, I've had a strange journey with tlou2 and it just can't seem to leave me, I guess because there's some subconscious part of me that feels "offended" when saying this game as a masterpiece when it really isn't.
The part I most connected with was the strawman argument, how whenever you say something they'll just say this like the sneaking past enemies part in response to Ellie kills hundreds of people.
Like yes you can do that but the game doesn't enable insentivise or reward you for doing that at all but doesn't matter since your argument is shot down.
But yeah liked the editing structure and content of the video good job!
They should have let us kill Abby. It wouldn't have fixed everything wrong with the game, but it would have given the player some reward/catharsis without any necessary change to the way it all ends. Again, not a perfect fix, but the game wouldn't have felt so utterly spiteful to the player and such a fucking waste of 20 odd hours and $60.
Revenge not being a reward is one of the central themes of the entire story. Framing the player killing Abby as a reward would contradict everything that built up to that.
And that's why the game is awful and an abject failure. People play games for escapist fantasy, not to be browbeaten with ham-fisted moral lessons they learned back when they were 7.
@@saltandsoysauce175 Nope, YOU play games for escapist fantasy. Not everyone does. Some people like more heavy hitting games like the GOAT Disco Elysium. I would agree that the general moral lesson of TLOU2, which isnt the central aspect of the story, is pretty basic, yet so many people still wanted Abby dead by the end. It's like gamers are children.
@@krasmasov6852Look, I'm glad you enjoyed that self-righteous hack job slog more than the rest of us, but to imply that the majority of we who loved TLOU1, which was hardly a shallow, lighthearted game, are children who can't handle dark, morally grey adult games makes you sound as vain and out of touch as Neil Druckmann.
As much as I dislike the game, I think the game should have let us kill Abby, but for the opposite reason. I feel like the random flashback of Joel, who would have DEFINITELY strung up Abby himself if she did the same to Ellie, was ineffective.
Having Ellie kill Abby, THEN come home to an empty house with missing fingers would have driven the point home much more than what we got - that her journey for revenge was wrong and pointless.
Great video, very well done. I don’t agree about the combat at all though. It’s very good and visceral. Really captures the violence of the world. The thing about the game that makes me the most mad is the potential it had. It’s so fun to play, it’s still one of the most beautiful games out there, but it is not satisfying narratively. Also, I believe the character who calls Joel “Pendejo”, is basically Druckman’s self Insert in the game.
i knew the stalkers reminded of another game