Ellie had to kill scar dude because he was about to kill Dina, Leah got killed by scars, Mel and Owen died because Owen acted like an idiot. Norah was the only one Ellie deliberately tortured and killed. So yeah there's a big difference story wise, character wise, time wise and circumstance wise that lead to that decision. Nice quip though
@pulpficti you missed the point of the video, and the comment. What about all of the unnamed characters that were murdered to get to this point? We’re those not deliberate?
@Alvi Syahri Bullshit mate lol That's a shit a excuse and you know it. It could be one game or a thousand, the last of us still ain't about player choice.
@Alvi Syahri either that or give the player stealth routes to still pull off a no kill run like Deus Ex did. Also make Abby aknowledge those actions and create a true ending where they don't even fight each other but rather Abby apologizing for everything that she has done and if you are super edgy still allow the player to either kill or spare her
@Alvi Syahri You're trying to dictate how an ending should have been because you don't like a character. The point of whole "this isn't a game about choice" is exactly that. You think I wanted to kill a lot of important characters in the first game? Don't see anybody complaining about it People were getting to entitled to think they actually should have any control on story when they didn't even complain about the lack of it in the first game. Oh but then the argument changes right? It's not about the choice, it's about the shit ending/slash story because i don't like buff girl who killed my fav character. Listen it's okay to not like the direction the game took, but don't act like TLOU was never about that. Joel ain't a angel and thinking hr should have been killed in a heroic way is feeling entitled at least.
Exactly, you can’t make us empathize with one main character for an entire game, and in the sequel which we specifically purchased to further that character’s story, you have us control the villain, some character we never even seen before, for nearly half of the game. Naughty dog tried to reinvent the story telling wheel with this one, one of the reasons why tlou1 was so good was cuz it was a simple story anyone can follow along and empathize with.
Exept you didnt do that since you cant not kill all thoes People. If you could NOT kill all of them and then the game tells you "Wow you are a fucking piece of shit huh!" You would actually feel that you are a monster.
@@JIMT412 someone in the video said that qoute which pretty much is about degrading games and calling them all "mindless and endless action" which I really hated as a gaming fan
The person who said that is a p*ssy that only enjoys movie-games because those are the real games, the games that don't let you play but rather let you watch... oh and he plays them on Journalist difficulty. John Wick is cool af
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I know not many will agree with this idea. Some value a more focused character-driven story while other prefer interactivity. This certainly isn't an "objective" video, it's all up to personal taste.
@@DJPeachCobbler I disagree more with your analysis of the game as a whole rather than its fault or the general principles you dictated. To be honest, I think TLOU2 is a very impressive tech demo. The problem, to put it in a few words, that I have with the story is that, well, I honestly believe it's cheap. There's nothing I haven't seen done better in other games, except for the graphics and the animations. Damn, you should make a Discord, I'd love to rant with you in there.
@@matteonardone8106 Yknow who did the whole "villain turned likable" thing a million times better? Valve in Portal 2. You didn't even realize it was happening until it'd already happened
Yeah, the guards are more friendly looking and look genuently suprised when you kill them, those are also visual indicators that what you are doing isn't morally right (especially if you compare their designs to the evil carricatures of the aristocracy)
I suspect they DID allow you to choose to spare or kill Abbey in an early version, but literally every single playtester killed abbey, and they did not like that.
If they gave players a chance to spare enemies before meeting her I'd imagine sparing Abby would happen just a bit more often. It's easier to feel empathy for the jobbers than "that bitch who killed Joel." And if they all got killed before her then sparing Abby would be an insult to them and the players.
Of course not. There is no redemption for something like that, but there is an effort to do better. Easy solutions like you're suggesting don't exist. If only the game made that clear....
@@w1ckedn0nsense34 lol u so blatantly misconstruing and purposely lying about the story/relationship between the two characters of the first game is actually hilarious. LOU2 defenders need to never change
I believe/d the best change that would've made the difference was simply changing the acts around. Learning Abby's story before even touching on her revenge and Ellie would've made her far more compelling as a character, even if it left the player confused. (For that matter, all the reviews don't seem to care about her randomness as a character anyway). This would've made the tragedy of Joel's death that much more impactful, as you'd have to take a hard breath wondering on if what you did in the first game was right, even. And that much more cynical a look at Ellie's insatiable rage. All they had to do was change the order, let you breath in Abby's lungs before forcing you to.
I feel exactly the same way. Opening with Abby and her story would've made her way more compelling. It's a serious mistake, that I lightly brush on in my Top 5 Games of 2020 video. It seriously affected the game itself, and I think *severely* affected its reception
@@DJPeachCobbler I believe TLOU2 gets misunderstood as a revenge story. For me the game is a story about grief and letting go. Ellie never gets to see Abby's story. That's for the viewer exclusively and that's why a choice wouldn't have made sense in the ending. Because that choice would come from the player but the player isn't Elli. The player is above the story and Elli didn't choose to not kill Abby because she emphasizes with her... On what base, she doesn't know her, we do, she doesn't. We are the ones emphasizing, we know Abby, we feel for the npcs. All that Elli wants is for her pain to end. Killing Abby won't change a damn thing, this isn't about Elli learning to emphasize with Abby, that's for the player, we learn to emphasize with her, she never does this is about Elli running away from her pain. From her perspective, who is Abby? She hasn't played her, she doesn't know anything about Abby, where should that sudden empathetic insight come from? She just knows that killing Abby means all that is left is the pain, so when she finally gets to the point where she can... What's left? The whole fight is pointless, her whole quest is pointless, Elli knows that, she talks about it in the beginning but she doesn't know what to do with that. So she runs after the easiest idea. Get Abby. This is not about a point, a lesson, a choice. This is just a tiresome running away from pain until there is nothing left to run for. And then she has to face the pain. We are not Elli. We emphasize with Elli but we are not her. We didn't loose our dad, we don't know how that feels like, we just pretend to know. And that's why it's not our choice. Because it's hers. We are just voyeurs.
That definitely would have also helped. If not having a choice was a constant in all timelines, changing the order of events presented to us would have been welcome. Going to a game franchise that probably doesn't covey my thoughts very well, and is the exact opposite of TLOU, Kingdom Hearts. The first game had you play as a kid who's separated from his friends and his world is gobbled up by darkness. And at the end it leaves on a cliffhanger. The it has a small game that continues after the events of the game. Yadda yadda. When Kingdom Hearts 2 rolls around you expect to be playing as that same kid that you left. But no, it's this random other kid who you don't know. But becomes clear after you see to the end of this story of his, before the actual game starts. If TLOU2 did something similar it would have done wonders.
I've had the same opinion ever since I played it. Building the connection with Abby first, before watching her kill Joel would've made it much harder to decide whether you wanted her to die or not. However, when you watch Abby golf club one of your favorite characters in gaming history to death as her introduction, then are forced to play hours and hours as her, it's damn near impossible to win people back over. Obviously it worked for some as DJ said he would've spared her, but I absolutely wouldn't have. Whether it gave me a bad ending or not, said something about my inability to forgive or not, it would've felt like such a waste to go through all of Ellie's story just for Abby not to die (which is why I had a hard time with the ending, it was bold, but it also felt out of character for Ellie to finally stop right there and infuriating that there wasn't even a choice). As well, I really hated playing as Abby after seeing her kill Joel. I had such a hard time enjoying the game at all (despite the fact that the gameplay itself was solid as ever) simply because I couldn't stand the character I was playing as. Her half of the story dragged forever, and by the end she'd only redeemed herself very slightly for me.
Thanks! I'm glad you like my writing, I spend a truly embarrassing amount of time on my scripts. My next one is shaping up really well. It'll be longer but more focused. As in, I don't try to defend the game and instead just make my point. I'm surprised you like my voice, because I hate it lol. Athough I imagine everyone hates the sound of their own pre-recorded voice. Anyway, I'm glad you like my videos, they're real fun to make
Absolutely insane how the choice of a single button, and the addition of an extra scene, would’ve changed this entire game. You expressed pretty much all of the same feelings I had about this game. I went in without any spoilers luckily, and at the end I was still feeling disappointed. I wish they just gave us that choice, it’s literally all I want.
I found that choice to be completely pointless. It's her story not mine. I wouldn't have wanted to make that choice because I don't belong in that story. If I had made choices in that have I would have never left to begin with so I would have missed the entire story. To have that last decision would be weird because I never made any decisions in that game before... I am an observer of how the story unfolds and they show me something I normally wouldn't see. Worked perfectly fine for me...
@@ramrot666 I wouldn't say so. Games with story, even completely linear with no choice options, can make you experience the story in a much more intimate and unique way than movies. At least in this game, I don't feel the need for a final choice. The game makes it really clear that Ellie and Abby are their own person, and that's why they make you play as both, to see each perspective. They are the ones making the decisions. I don't think u are just an observer tho, it's a game after all. You PLAY as them, you experience their hardships and their successes, and that's what makes it very different than a movie. It's more like you are playing a role, it's an empathy machine. And I find the ending to be very fitting with the themes and the character, it's satisfying for me and I completely understand Ellie's choice. In the end, Ellie choose to forgive Abby, Joel, and herself, and choose to move on leaving hatred behind. What would you choose? (That's a great idea for a third game) At the end I think you can make very compelling narratives in games in both ways, letting the player choose or stick with a linear story. And both can be uniquely different than a movie.
So... What was in the bag behind the monster? Also, this reminds me of Death Stranding, where a character literally gives you a revolver and says "you know what to do". The game even aims it for you, iirc (haven't played it myself), but the right choice is to not use it and go hug that person instead.
there was a random poncho and best part is, you can easily continue on without that poncho, because you can brute force your way through game even with Terry only, if you're skilled enough
@@nicocee2431 people are always angry but the majority were just let down. I bought special edition on release day and have never replayed it. I reply the first one every year atleast once.
@@davidsavage3120 i have so mixed feelings about this game, i love the gameplay, the graphics and the characters (except a few of them) but i cant stand how they fucked up the pacing and the abby good joel bad theme feeled a little bit too on the nose for me, maybe it would have been better if we get involved with abby before she slaughters the character we all loved in the first game.
Perfect Dark already did this like, 20 years ago. It gave you plenty of options to deal with human enemies who cried out in pain and suffering as you gunned them down. You could disarm them, knock them out, run past them, whatever. But when you gunned them down, they cried out.
And then there TLOU2 where even if you spare an enemy they pick their gun right back and then railroad you into slaughtering dogs and pregnant women so you feel bad
Your lisa example really got my gears churning and made me realize how many games could benefit by having "hidden" choices. Like an ending where you're about to kill abby, but you could walk away. I feel like being able to disobey the story to do what you think is right is something that no other medium can do but videogames and I hardly ever see it.
lots of game do have that choice, even dishonored 1 has it which he naively mocked in this video. when u win the duel against Daud the assassin who k^lled the empress he asks u to spare his life and the choice is yours. using dishinored as an example cuz he mocked dishonored in a bit in this video. which i dont understand... the chaos system in dishonored wasnt a morality system nor a karma system, and the game doesnt "want" you to spare or choose non-lethal option on assassination target, u can k^ll every single main bad guy/ assassination target and still get the best ending easily while maintaining low chaos. and some villain for example far cry 2's jackal already tickled the question that maybe you are not moraly superior but just in a position where it is waaay too easier to be a good person. TLoU2 is a video game, whose unique biggests strength of this genre is being an interactive media, and yet it removes the players' ability to interact with the game in the most crucial moments of the game. absolute cowardice. my 14yo naive @$$ was totally absolutely ready to m^rder the sh^t out of that criminal daud but somehow when he asked to be spared i decided against it, imagine if the game decided to force me to spare him in my stead i would never have thought that i would spare him and just be p^ssed. Naughty dog almost had it with TLoU2, but it took away the most crucial decision and didnt allow the playerbase to grow beyond virtual bloodlust by denying them the option to choose
You know what would have made Abbey easier to see as human and forgive? You want her to be human? Make her human. After she leaves, after she does everything she set out to do, have her throw up. She's disgusted. That wasn't what she thought it would be. Have her regret it, or atleast question it after the fact. Make her not like what she did, but feel like she had to. But as it is? The story as presented is "one incomplete murder leads to a survivor going on a murder spree that results in a survivor going on a murder spree" That doesn't feel like "revenge is bad" That feels like "if you're going to kill someone, make sure you don't leave survivors to seek revenge.
Game: _kills Joel by having him act exceedingly out of character and being overly trusting_ Me: _angry_ Game: _forces you to kill waves of people and then acts like you’re a monster for doing so_ Me: _even angrier_ Game: _forces you to spare the literal one person who did anything wrong to you despite having you kill said waves of people who were significantly more innocent than Abby_ Me: _beyond impossibly livid_
I’m not against trying to build empathy for the villain, but wouldn’t it have been far more effective if Joel were killed at least halfway through the game and in the hours leading up to it, learning about Abby’s personality, her friend group, her desires, her rage, or just a more in depth look at her past. I also try to separate the art from the artist, but Naughty Dog didn’t exactly treat their consumer base with much respect both during that period when the leak happened and after launch when negative reviews started popping up.
*Custers Revenge actually delivered what it promised.* What irks me about the story is how it ignores it's own world and how nobody understands what the mushrooms are and people still thinks Elisabeth is "immune" instead of just being infected with a mutated mushroom...
This can be summarized in one sentence: _I'm much less likely to want a character to die if I'm not forced to spare them._ Instead, I was forced to spare her, and told I'm stupid for wanting Abby dead. Ironically, that only makes me want to kill her even more, and makes me want to make her suffer on top of it. _The story was good, it was just presented badly. So, so badly.*_ If Abby's side came first, or was an optional choice, so I could see her side before she bashes Joel's skull in, maybe I wouldn't be hellbent on watching her burn from step one, eh? Instead it's _"Hey, watch this buff girl bash the brains of the protagonist in. Now play the game, and now we're going to force you to play as her. _*_Still want to kill her? You're so shitty!"_*
You ARE stupid for wanting Abby dead. Not only does it mean you want to kill someone who just wants to keep a young boy safe, but you want Ellie to do it further destroying her humanity instead of letting her reclaim it. It sounds like you're just unable to move on from your preconception. I'm so glad Ellie was more emotionally mature than you.
One thing I looked up and found out about LISA: The Painful, is SPOILERS BTW Is that when fighting your friends, that 1: Friends picked up earlier in the game will more likely cry 2: They will do an action where they will skip their turn, saying something like "...Terry doesn't want to do this"
I definitely agree with you on that. If you remove the story, the gameplay is exciting and the environments are gorgeous. The story itself is interesting and has some real emotionally complex emotions to it that I haven't gotten from a AAA game in awhile. I feel like time will be much kinder to it than fans were initially.
I would have preferred a prequel that explained tommy and joels journey. And Joel and tess's story.. With the trial of fooling Ellie to believe the fireflies have other immune people..
Considering how well Fear TWD, a TWD side-story prequel, was received; living on to basically being TWD 1.5; there's a fair chance that's what the show's about. Assuming, ofc, it's still about Clan Miller, and not new characters in the same world.
After I played Left Behind, I wished there was a DLC that has the story of Joel and Tommy from Sarah's death to when they split up. In the first game Tommy said that he didn't like Joel's methods of surviving. What did Joel do overtime that made his younger brother say "it wasn't worth it" when Joel said "you *survived* because of me"?
@@Paradox_Sol well if somebody were to brutally murder my "dad" right in front of me and a lot of people died just so I could get to them. Yes I would indeed kill them
@@theperishedwolf575 I understand that point of view but this doesn't make it less insane. I would only take out someone who is an active threat to me. At least 95% of players would kil abby even after understanding her situation by playing through her and the sad part is that this mindset isnt limited to a video game. Most western countries have this issue in their justice system. It's primarily about revenge.
Did it? All the flashback scenes established a lot of the character development. Joel is a much more subdued, quieter person at peace with himself while Ellie discovers the truth and is slowly drifts away from Joel while still not knowing how she felt about his choice since he took that agency away from her.
@@keshav3479 at the end of the first game it's clear that Ellie is aware that Joel did something but not exactly what In this game she acts as if she didnt know at all She also acts as if she doesnt know about Sarah It would be obvious to Ellie that Joel would have saved her because of Sarah as she shows this awareness in the cabin scene in the first game however here it's completely gone Furthermore at the end of this game Ellie says "my life would have mattered" Why not the life of Sam or tess or riley This is oddly selfish of ellei
@@aidanaidan8662 She knew the entire time, and was just about to reconcile with Joel before Abby happened so I think she just scrubbed it from her mind since she would've had trouble acting like Joel was a bad person after she witnessed him dying in front of her. Her feelings on the matter were quite clearly complicated, to say the least. That's why it seemed as though she forgot about it. Also when she says "My life would have mattered", she's only talking about herself here. She quite clearly had survivor's guilt at the end of the first game and was suffering the trauma of experiencing so many of the people she knew die in vain. She wasn't forgetting about them. She just wanted HER life to mean something. I never said that Ellie REFLECTS on the fireflies (and Joel, by the way) taking that agency from her. What I meant was that Joel and the fireflies DID take agency from her by the end of the first game. Her feelings are a result of that.
@@keshav3479 I'm referring to between the end of the first game and the truth scene in this game she acts as of she didnt have a clue that Joel did something Firstly Ellies life did mean something to Joel, she should know exactly what she means to Joel and why he did it Secondly, that survivors guilt wouldn't make her give her life meaning it would make her want to give meaning to those died as Ellie was a very selfless person and wasnt doing this for herself In regards to the fireflies Ellie is completely fine with them taking her agency but not Joel And despite all this like I said earlier: ellie is aware of Sarah and would know exactly why Joel acted the way he does and would understand that Joel needs her
When enemies surrender and beg you to let them go they always retaliate if you do, I hated that, zero advances from the first game (Except that they take cover instead of always reaching for your gun)
My problem with this game was entirely from myself. I can’t blame the game for this, but I grew up on games like Marathon and Quake, so I when I heard an NPC say something like, “come closer and look me in the eye,” the only reaction I could summon was, “nah, waste of ammo,” and then resorted to bludgeoning them to death, or just walking past if I couldn’t be bothered to kill em. Then seeing the carnage from Abbies point of view, all I could take from that was whether or not I could have completed that section more efficiently. Finally, at the end, I was able to look at the entire scenario from each of the characters points of views, I couldn’t see a situation playing out where both of these people survived. Both had lost too much to the other, and leaving one or the other to survive would only leave room for conflict further down the line from either of the characters factions. Revenge good, revenge bad, who cares. After what happened in the events of TLoU2, peace really couldn’t be an option, not a permanent one at least. Or maybe that’s just what I’d learned from games of the past. Never leave a loose end.
I played this game when it first came out. It is the only game I have ever bought on release. I sat down, in the midst of a global pandemic, a few weeks after two of my grandparents died of covid... And played the entire thing. I got to the end. Cried like a bitch for literally an hour, sitting in the dark at 3am, because I didn't want to get up and crawl into bed with my girlfriend, while the broken guitar chords were still stuck in my head. It wasn't the fight that got me, or the 30-40h of gameplay before the end... It was the final scene of Ellie going back to the farm and finding it empty, everything of hers left behind, picking up Joel's guitar one last time, and not being able to play it; seeing the realisation that that last link to Joel was gone. All without saying goodbye. I came away from the game feeling emotionally wrecked, deeply saddened and yet strangely free. I didn't play any other videogames after it for months. It had a profound impact on the way I lived my life and the way I respond to others. It made me immensely grateful for the company of my girlfriend and friends, and helped me cope with the death of my grandparents. For me this game will always be a 10, because of when I played it. It's a ten because I think I came away feeling exactly what the developers were trying to make me feel. I also acknowledge that the pacing of the game is completely fucked, the way it is structured is infuriating, and that it is fucking depressing. You can tell those are valid criticisms from people who actually played the game. I still believe that playing the game sequence by sequence, alternating between Ellie and Abby would have been more engaging, as it allows you to react in real time to the events from both perspectives. It also means if you hate Abby's guts, you don't get stuck with her for 30h. And I agree with you... ENTIRELY about having the choice. Then again, if I had a choice, I would never have gone after Abby again in the first place, and I would have been sorely disappointed with the "good ending". But a choice, directly at the end to either kill Abby or not... That I think would have improved it.
To me, I feel as though the direction of the game being based off of something as random as the daughter of one of the random doctors you killed being the one that ends up killing Joel. Having Joel try to live a normal life but be forced back into constantly moving and trying to survive based off of his past and his decision to free Ellie and doom mankind would've been infinitely more interesting than just instantly killing him off in the sequel and having Ellie go on a revenge tour right away.
This is honestly my favorite take on this game. Thank you for not just running it threw the mud crying “go woke get broke.” And actually dissecting this and criticizing it where it deserves and praising it in equal measure as well. I really wish my reviews where this sensible.
I remember watching that scene where Ellie is on the farm with her family, sitting on a tractor and looking out over the mountains and feeling so satisfied with the story. But it kept going. And I don't know why.
That moment would have been an even better point to make the choice. I feel like letting Abby go at the ending is already pointless, Ellie made her choice when she left.
@@night1952 Honestly, it could've just given that choice and then ended. I feel like that would've actually been better. If you decide to chase Abby, then it just shows Ellie riding off the farm, it'd be unsatisfying because it signifies the cycle of violence continuing without having to show you. It has no payoff, and isn't the whole message here supposed to be that the cycle of revenge has no payoff? That it's never worth it? Instead, it's like "Oh actually Ellie cares less about Joel and more about Abby than you, the player who played as both characters, do. Even though Ellie only saw Abby at her worst and just killed 500 people to get to her, now she empathizes with Abby far more than you do, despite you seeing her at her best"
@@CaeruleanWren Hence the Game of Thrones comparisons. The characters were made stupid to fit the plot. Which doesn't work if you saw them when they were good.
@@CaeruleanWren she doesnt empathize with abby lol her flashbacks to joel and constantly having to deal with the grief of his death coupled with the fact of pushing her father figure away before he gets murdered weighed heavily on her.
Empathy is something that gets lost to a lot of people. It's about understanding a person's motives and their feelings. What it ISN'T is AGREEING with the steps that they take or even LIKING them in general.
If I could redesign the last act of the game I'd say the player needs a choice when Tommy comes to the farmhouse. If you decide Ellie is not going to pursue Abbie, Tommy gets angry and goes alone as in the original game. But this time when Ellie gets up in the middle of the night it's because she can't let Tommy go in good conscience. Give you a slightly different confrontation with Dina, who initially starts the conversation the same way, but Ellie replies with "I don't care about Abbie, but Tommy will die out there." Or something like that. From here the last act plays out relatively similarly to what we got, but Ellie is explicitly trying to track down Tommy and bring him home. Maybe you find him dead just before the beach, giving you that one last choice to save or kill Abbie alone, or maybe he's on the beach attacking Abbie and you can decide whether to intervene or not. I don't know, I didn't think this far ahead, but I always wished I could've actually effected Ellies choices in the last act specifically.
I would say that's the best choice in terms of how it would impact the characters but I think it would be better for the story to have it be before Ellie tries to drown Abby.
Honestly I could understand letting players choose the ending but in last of us 1 it showed you that there was no humanity left and that being close to someone will just get you killed. It grounded you to understand only the ones who focused on survival won and I believe it was great. The second one has pregnant ladies still in the fight when they have camps to stay safe at with no consequence or some other shit that I could care less about. I loved the last of us for the gritty survival aspect that emotions get you killed. I just couldn’t at understand Abby because she risked going all the way to Joel just for one death in her life and it showed no consequence to it and only consequences to Ellie. I just felt like it was one sided in how much the characters lost. Ellie and Joel had been through a lot more than Abby ever had and it’s why I wouldn’t want to understand her because she just looked like a screaming kid in a post apocalyptic world. Joel and Ellie lost more people close to them than her but they understood acting on it would only get you killed but the second one didn’t give that weight. I just didn’t like how it didn’t feel the same as the first game’s world, it felt more like the walking dead than the last of us and that’s the problem I had with it especially with how the characters from the first game acted different than in the first. It just frustrated me that a game that I love very dearly and played so much made a sequel that didn’t feel in the same world and just shat on everything I loved because “you killed my father!”
The best quote I've heard regarding this game is "it's a game about right and wrong, made by people who think they're always right," and while I don't think your idea to add choice would have solved all of my issues with the game, it would have helped with a lot of those issues, and then some
You know what's funny? I saw that "twist" coming from a mile away. Last of us 2 did the same thing some other mature game stories did -- it gave you the toys and the only way you can play with them and then told you that you are a bad person for it. I agree that they didn't have something that would finalize their statement on human condition, but the only was i saw that game finishing is the same the first one did -- what's done is done, we will live with it. But instead the third act happened.
Honestly, one of my favorite ways a game made my enemy feel human to me was when I played The Forest. Here I am, trying to survive out in the wilderness on some island in bumfuck nowhere that's inhabited by cannibals and mutants, freaks of the highest degree. The pale, naked mutants that are weak on their own tend to keep their distance, but stalk me nonetheless with their friends until my guard is down. But for the most part, they just seem to observe. Them and their more upright standing brethren. The ones who stand on their hind legs, live in villages, and generally just do what they can to live on this island with their people are uneasy about me just as I am about them. When I harm the forest they live in by chopping down too many trees or when I harm their people, even if at the time it may have been in self defense, they get agitated to my presence. I could spark a full blown war between me and them, and the traps I could use against them just feel inhumane despite being necessary to defend themselves. (Rope traps that dangle them upside down making them easy targets, fire traps that when tripped light everyone on fire, spike traps that impale them across their whole body, log traps that fall onto their head and break their skulls, etc.) Then theres how they behave when in combat. I've seen some of them take a hit and then jump back in fear/pain, some of them would drag their allies away when they're wounded, stuff like that. Made them feel human, but it didn't make me feel any more like a monster for fighting against them. I don't like killing what is essentially sentient people, but at the end of the day in that situation, it's me or them, and I'm hella outnumbered.
as the op stated it was a story about dehumanization lol joel fucking murderd abby's dad why wouldn't abby want to get back at joel just like you wanna get back at her for killing him?
@@Midwestemoisme The first game made me lament being forced to kill the doctor. The sequel made me lament not killing his child while I was at it. Unless that was their intent then the writers messed up.
it is lol even if ellie killed abby, the death of her friends are in her hands, she lost her lover, and her father figure. Her life is still in shambles
Best take on this game that I've seen so far. I remember in my first playthrough during the final fight with Abby on the beach I waited for a minute before the final prompt to finish the fight, hoping that I could keep Ellie from killing Abby. Then I had to try to kill her just for the game to forgive her for me after a button mashing sequence. As a side note, the algorithm just picked up your channel and you have an awesome backlog that I'm enjoying working through.
yeah for the people who were gonna want to spare Abby, they already wanted to not kill her by that fight scene yet are forced to try, and the people who do still want to kill her get to try and are forced to fail. It dissatisfies you no matter what
Well, this was very interesting to watch. I absolutely applaud the bravery you needed and thought you put into this, as this is very well made, and for that alone, you more than deserve a like. Still, while I usually don't do it, something's compelling me to reply. I don't know what it is, but I'll listen to it for a change. You raise a very valid point and perspective throughout the video: this game is far from the "steaming pile of garbage" or "flawless masterpiece" on both accounts, and while flawed, it still has great ideas and moments. However, I personally think there's a bit of... let's call it red herring-y focus on why people (including myself) disliked this game. Aside from a fantastically put point at the end ("the game didn't let me think, it just told me what to think"), you raise the issue of having player choice, as it's a game medium. On that, I 100% agree: this game BADLY needed to let the players decide and have much more agency. It isn't a movie, and it was treated far too much like one. However, even with having the freedom of choice, I still believe this game would have failed story-wise. As counterpoints, I'll use examples of two fantastic games, that are in a way similar to TLoU 2, at least in theme of dehumanization: Far Cry 3... and Spec Ops: the Line. First, however, I have to say that your point about ludonarrative dissonance, while 100% something I agree with, isn't quite at the core of the issue. On one hand, both the games I mentioned made sure the gameplay fed the story, vice versa, and made both serve a narrative unlike TLoU 2, but they did it in a very contrasting manner, which is the core of my opinion. Those games didn't force you to look out. They made you look IN. Far Cry 3 never tried to humanize your enemies. It never tried to get you to empathize with them. It didn't need to, and in a lot of ways, it couldn't: pirates are... well, pirates. Vaas and Hoyt especially are so far off on the extreme ends of the spectrum that it's pointless to try and humanize them. Spec Ops likewise didn't try to add a layer of humanity to your enemies save for some vaguely generic points that they were people, or in certain situations, your fellow comrades-in-arms. In both cases, despite their moral fiber (or lack thereof), they were still, on one hand, baddies to point and click to kill, and on the other, "people" who "have their reasons". Yet, even with that, both those games deliver an emotional gut punch in so many ways, and in ways TLoU 2 doesn't dare. Instead of having you live the lives of a soldier you killed, or were trying to kill, they do something far more horrifying. They put a mirror in front of you. TLoU 2 tries to get you to look at "yourself", i.e. Ellie through Abby's eyes. While an interesting idea (and one genuinely worth pursuing), it simply can't land through force. Plenty of shows and narrative media, as well as video games do this concept well: first, they give us a reason to care. A reason to be invested. From the moment we meet Abby, there is little to nothing about her we know about, or care about. Then, putting us in her shoes, and for so long is... well, frankly, it's whiplash at best, complete outrage at worst. But that's not even the worst of it. As you rightly stated, the discomfort from being in Abby's shoes, while painful in and of itself, CAN be worthwhile, if it has something to say. Something to show. But it doesn't. It has something it wants us to see, and it forces us to see it, while in the process, trying to obliterate our long-standing views and preconceptions we've already built about other characters, and what we know. And it does this by trying to convince us of something, of telling us what to think. And the message? That it's actually Ellie who's the monster. Now, I know it's not that simple, but for the sake of "brevity" (in this long-winded comment...), allow me the indulgence of putting it that way. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't reflect: it deflects, which feels cheap and shoehorned. Instead of having us face our actions and come to terms not so much "just" with what we've done, so much as that we've MADE the choice to do these things, and KEPT making that choice, it uses roundaboutism, saying "well, I might be guilty of the same thing as you, but at least I'm not AS bad as you". But it's not that simple. Severity of the "crime", as it were, isn't what tips the scale of our soul towards evil so much so as the knowledge that we've consciously made the choice to do so, and often times, without thinking... and that it was unbelievably easy to do just that.
The length and size is not the problem. The problem lies in how that size and length are achieved. Do it through crunch and mistreatment and/or idiotic design and it's a problem. Do it with respect for both the devs and the audience and you get a great thing.
Maybe the main reason I liked last of us 2 so much because I always thought Joel was in the wrong at the end of last of us one. Honestly I related to Abby way more then I did Ellie. Joel damed the world to save one person. Joel killed Abby’s dad and condemned the world. Even though I understood why Joel did what he did I never agreed with it. Probably the biggest reason this game got so much hate because they killed off everyone’s favorite character.
Love your channel and your stuff but i have to respectfully disagree. Well mainly on the story aspect. I agree that the two extremes of the fan base are well... extreme. I don't hate it or love it. I admit I haven't played it, but I have seen a full play through of the game. And honestly the game play looks fun. I love the brutality of the last of us, so a more modern bloodier version of that looks fun. And I do appreciate what the story is trying to do. But there's one problem. And that the game's story is hypocritical. It continually shoves in your face that Ellie's the bad guy, and by all means she is. But they keep making her feel bad for her decisions, and she constantly feels down by all of the deaths she's causing. And Ellie feeling bad for killing the guys who actually wronged her makes no sense, when she's sadistic as fuck when killing the npcs in game. Goes to your point of ludo-narrative dissonance. It would actually worked a lot more if Ellie acted like Abby; constantly denying and blindly justifying her actions. And Ellie feeling bad while she goes on her rampage isn't terrible, but they don't really do this with Abby. When I saw the leaks and heard that you play as the villain, I was actually excited. Playing from the perspective from the person who killed Joel sounds really cool narrative wise. And the attempt was nice but the execution was terrible. The game makes it seem like Abby's actions were justified. When she honestly goes down the same path that Ellie does. She never even really acknowledges her actions even when Ellie confronts her at the end. They had a good idea, but meh execution. Like idk about you but Abby saying "good" to "but she's pregnant" is pretty evil in my book. And I'm not saying the game is making Abby a saint but still. I think a way better example of showing the "useless cycle of violence" is Spec Ops: The Line. If you haven't played, my god you should it's honestly perfect for your channel, but anyway. In that game (without going into spoilers) the main character goes down a downward spiral of violence, but denies it and justifies until the end. Having a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" realization at the end. And the direction of Abby not acknowledging her actions and denying the violence of it isn't bad. But they don't go anywhere with that, and it seems the game implies her actions are justified, when they're equally as fucked up as Ellie's actions. I think the choosing to kill Abby or not would make it more tolerable. Like you said give the choice to the player, but honestly I think there would've been a better way to end it. Abby is basically broken at the end, all of her friends, besides one, are dead. And it would've been cool if Ellie confronting her caused her to break even more. She finally feels the remorse and acknowledges the deaths that SHE causes and breaks down. It would also be cool for her to realize how similar she really is to Ellie, they both lost their father in fucked up ways. Being broken and realizing how much she wasted by killing Joel (causing her friends deaths adding to the "cycle of violence") she can't take it anymore. And thinking about this, it's definitely very bleak, but I think it drives the point home way more than what we got. I think it would make sense for Abby to kill herself. Denying Ellie her revenge but also punishing herself for her actions. I'm not saying she deserves punishment, that would be for you to decide, but it would drive the theme home. Ellie went through this whole journey causing Tommy's death, the death of some of her friends, and her lover to leave her just to watch Abby end herself in regret. It would drive the point that all the cycle of violence does is just cause more pain. Abby's suicide would be way more of a slap in the face to Ellie to what she's done. And my point of making Ellie not feel remorse for the deaths she caused only until after Abby kills herself would also work more. If she didn't feel remorse (or maybe did feel a little but then would justify it by saying it's Abby's fault) and felt completely justified in her actions. Like she sees Abby as this evil person who killed her father; seeing Abby finally feel remorse and shoot herself, would really be a punch in the gut for Ellie. She would realize how she went on the same path that Abby did, and would realize how all of this was futile, because she can never bring her friends, and Joel back. All because she just wanted revenge for something she never had control over. P.S I really should emphasize you should play Spec Ops: the Line (if you haven't). It's really good and has one of the most amazing stories in gaming. An example of "ludo-narrative harmony" in your words. Also sorry for the huge paragraph, and any grammar mistakes I might've missed
I think Ellie's feelings towards her own actions (regretful yet persistent, due to her obsession with getting revenge), come from the major characters she faces like Nora, Owen and Mel, and soon enough Abby. Ellie acts sadisticly against every single WLF or Seraphite she finds because she sees them as nothing but obstacles, but when she finds out Nora was a firefly, that Mel is pregnant and Owen probably the father, that Abby and Lev might have a relationship similar to her's and Joel's, these things separate them from every single other person that was out hunting for her. Ellie doesn't care about random enemies screaming in agonizing pain, but when she tortures Nora whom could've been someone she would think of as an ally, when she seemingly kills someone else's equivalent to Dina aswell as an unborn baby or that she would cause as much pain to Lev as Abby caused to her by killing her, because of these things they become human to Ellie, acting out her violence on them now takes an emotional toll which she is self aware about, and yet persists on continuing her mission.
I thought TLOU 2 portrayed BOTH revenge acts as bad while also showing you that the people doing them weren't awful inherently, after all no one actually thinks they're the villain. The game doesn't say that Abby's murder of Joel is *justified* in a holistic sense, only that it is the same justification that Ellie had. This is mirrored by the WLF - Seraphite conflict, where they're only fighting each other for their limited, xenophobic understanding of the other side. I also don't think Ellie constantly feels down for her murder rampage, to start with she just kills people who are otherwise hostile towards her, and by implication, any other random person who could've been wandering through. Because she knows nothing of these people other than they kill on sight, there's no remorse for their murders. It's only after she has to *talk* to and then torture or kill Abby's friends that she slowly realises that what she's doing feels wrong, yet not as wrong as Joel's death, which she sees as totally unjustified, and backing out at the point would make all the deaths so far meaningless, so she keeps going - because *obviously* her justification is different and proper while Abby is a psychopath. The game forces you to play two people who, because of your prior attachments in part 1, appear on opposite ends of the decency spectrum. Then it shows you that they're far more alike than you thought. This is the core principle that the game challenges, and given the divide of the world today politically, it's no wonder that so many heavy critics of the game have a wall up that stops them from empathising with anyone who is "the enemy".
The most powerful scene for me was when Ellie took on the role of the cannibal leader from Last of Us 1, with Abbey trying to sneak around and survive and Ellie being this invincible scary murderous monster. That shook me.
I find it ironic that Ellie doesn’t get a choice in whether she lives or died to save humanity, and then naughty dog doesn’t give you the choice whether or not to get revenge
I’m still bummed they wouldn’t let me tell Tommy to piss off and let me live my happy lesbian life, working on my trauma and ptsd in a healthy environment. Having to go to California felt like the betrayal most felt when it switched to Abbey.
I agree. Doing monstrous things does not make you a monster. But reveling in that monstrosity and living in it through and through, does. Abby did. And while maybe she didn't start out as a monster, she did lose her humanity somewhere along the line. That's why the game ending went for the cliche trope of "I won't be a monster like you." Hero/Villian dynamic.
I'm gonna be honest, no good review of Tlou 2 will ever change my mind on the story, writing, characters, plot, so on, because most reviews on UA-cam and pretty much the rest of the internet that praise this game are almost 100% PlayStation shills, but not you, your video actually made a bit of sense, it didn't make me rethink my thoughts on TLoU 2, not by a fucking longshot, but I could honestly see where you were coming from, even though I practically disagreed with virtually everything you said about this game and it's story, characters, writing, etc I could actually understand what you meant, almost as if you weren't paid by ND to make this vid lol. Keep making more vids dude, I really like your style.
I am perfectly fine with a story playing out as the creator intended in a game. Linearity is not, nor has it ever been an inherent problem in games, but yeah, the option to make that choice at the end of TLOU2 would've been perfect as far as making the player do what it wants them to do instead of literally making them (if that makes any sense). I think another opportunity to make a choice would be to decide whether to stay at the farm or go after Abby, but the choice at the very end absolutely needed to happen in order to make the player connect with the experience as deeply as intended. If the purpose was to pose existential and moral questions to the audience and ask them to reflect, allowing them to make that final choice would've been the best way to accomplish that.
The only way i can explain this game is: this game is one beatiful shitfuck of emotional rollercoasters and everything you do lets you think about your mental health.....
for me it lets me think why some characters got so fucking stupid compared to the first game. And why Anita Sarkessian that fake feminist who never played a videogame in her whole life had a saying in this Game‘s story. You can really see in wich parts of the Story a angry agressive feminist had her influence.
Damn another good one brother. I sometimes feel like i completely think exactly what you do, when it comes to these types of games, yet you’re just that much smarter to explain how I feel about the game when i can’t lol. It’s actually a funny thing to get into that talk of decision making games where that cliche comes in like in most video games where you’re given that “moral high ground” choice, and I think not only do games include the “spare the opposition” option in order to allow the player to relate to being a good person, I think sometimes including the “kill the opposition” option allows certain people to instill their sense of their own mental fortitude. I think some people can feel just as good about themselves from choosing to kill the bad guy as they can when they chose to spare them. The whole sense that you’re willing to do what it takes to handle someone who has wronged your loved ones and close friends might confirm with some people that they have what it takes to be a strong protector of who they love. This whole “if anyone ever touched x person in my life I would be strong enough to avenge them” could be just as empowering as sparing that person. I think the game did well and not too sure why it got so much hate before it even released.
Yeah, the story leaks killed this game because the beat-by-beat plot isn't great. Actually playing it lets you get wrapped up in the characters, which is the writing's strength in my opinion. This game just sorta got killed in the cradle, I think time will be kinder to it. This game would've benefited immensely from a choice at the end. Letting the player explore a situation and reflect on it themselves, y'know? Also, I'm not smart or good at explaining things, I just fuckin slave over these scripts. I must've written 30 pages, but threw all but 10 of them out. I always appreciate the support, man. I had an epiphany while playing this game which will be the thesis of my next video. I think you'll like it a lot if you liked this one
@@DJPeachCobbler I loved the video and agree with you, but im surprised that even after all the hate this game has received you still have faith in people "reflecting" their choice of killing her after seeing how emotionally they reacted. 😅
I think this hit upon an issue I didn't even realise I had with TLOU2. I didn't enjoy the game particularly for a variety of reasons, but I still played it to completion and tried to form my own viewpoint. But it didn't even really occur to me how the ending wasn't just undercutting the game's own execution but actually hampering its ability to convey the point it was so very desperately trying to ram into your skull the entire time. I don't think it would've made me do a total 180 on the game, but I can absolutely see how simply giving the player the final say at that ending would've done a better job of bringing the themes full circle in a way that a videogame can.
“The wounds of conscience always leave a scar.” P. Syrus So how much of a conscientious act is it to go forward? Choosing to rest your conscience will only bring more unrest and destruction. It is more correct and more beneficial to try to forget and try to prevent the loss of conscience-blood rather than revenge... Unscrupulousness is one of the important factors that increase grudge and hatred. Injustice and unscrupulousness have a great role in the separation, polarization and deterioration of the ties of society. I continue with Victor Hugo. Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just. The most perfect justice is conscience... “whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche is a reminder to measure yourself and be aware of your own thoughts. In other words, you should always criticize yourself when you enter into a "questioning war" because your life and your own feelings always have plans for you. And the "narrative" of "The Last Of Us Part II" handles this with great mastery. In addition, The Last Of Us Part II's script is deep, philosophical, dark, emotional and thought-provoking. A masterpiece that has taken the industry so far and set a new bar. Again, I will continue with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “When we are unpreparedly (or impromptuly) questioned about a subject, the first thought that comes to our mind is often not our own thought but merely an ordinary thought belonging to our class, position, and ancestry. Self-thoughts rarely surface.” Time, patience and thinking skills are required for high-level, powerful and philosophical “things” that are actually difficult to understand, difficult to notice. In order to find the real and the essence... The Last Of Us Part II is a masterpiece on the meaning of life, moral relativism, the philosophy of empathy, self-criticism, the definition of the concept of human, narrative art, the creation of a post-apocalyptic universe (dystopia), the meaning of respect, the meaning of thinking and the transfer of feelings.The Last Of Us Part II is the ultimate masterpiece of the eighth generation. And these concepts require “extremely hard thinking”. Let me end with a final Nietzsche quote: “The life of the enemy. Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.” Because maybe that person or that thing is not an enemy. It is only the key that will unlock your own conscience and your own feelings... I connected quite deeply with The Last Of Us Part II. I trusted it to take me to the places it was going and I was extremely glad to have gone. I like the Ellie in first game but in the second i felt like i actually understood her and actually loved her. I felt like I actually understood Abby too and actually empathized with Abby. I am no stranger to being lost in the fog myself. We cannot talk about good and evil directly, they are related and relative concepts. Formulating that existing evil was or was not done by a God does not prevent evil from existing. Evil can be tolerated, guided by the will to live. This endurance will be through art, morality and love. Albert Camus attributes his rejection of God to the existence of evil and its abundant and violent experience by humans. According to him, the question we should ask is: Is there evil in this world? Evil, if any, is incompatible with the idea of God. In a divine order, in a world created and ruled by God, the existence of evil is inconceivable. For example, death is an evil and evil inflicts punishment on us. However, “the one who is right is the one who never kills”. This means that God cannot exist. Either we are not free, and the almighty God is responsible for evil; or we are free and responsible but God is not omnipotent. According to philosophers, evil harms the bond between people and the state of being human. In my opinion, kindness builds bridges between people, develops bonds and contributes to being human. Kindness is a joy that includes honor, not arrogance. So the fools and the dead are people who do not feel their conscience, do not understand themselves and become numb with this meaninglessness, this is not true peace, Good people are actually people who have attained peace of mind and prosperity. Their difficult but constructive and strong-willed behaviors show that they trust their own worth and justice. Because “the thing" that is better than being good is conscientious justice, and this is what real goodness and real good person are. That’s why The Last Of Us Part II is the most unique and emotional roller coaster masterpiece...
not all games need choices. This one didn't need it either. It needed more character and relationship development. Abby is the only character who changes through the game, but it feels unearned because she spends like 30 mins of game time with the kid that takes her through the same arc Joel took over the course of an entire game with Ellie. Which is why the first game was great and why the second game falls flat. Isn't terrible. Just doesn't live up to the original.
Not gonna lie this is hands down the best review of this game I've come across.. And I completely agree. Top notch my guy - just found you but you've got my attention. Time to see what else you got!
11:35 "Because at the end of the day it's not about the characters. Games are always about you." This is really the crux of the one of the main debates and gripes about the ending of the game in my opinion. I think the "debate" gets bogged down in "the player should/should not be given a choice at the end", and I put debate in air quotes because, this game isn't one that *wants* to give you a choice here. It's like trying to debate an answer on a multiple choice test. There two answers that are just wrong, one that's kinda right, and one that *is* correct. The one counter argument that DJ Peachy boy could come up with is the only objective one. Neil Druckman wanted to tell you a story that let you hold the rains for a little while throughout it. Giving the player a choice, regardless of that choice, I think, misses the point. Could it have worked as a movie... or upcoming TV show? I'd like to think yeah it could. Would it have as much impact? No.
I felt like the game writers were disappointed that you liked Ellie and Joel and decided to spend the whole game showing you what the writers think a good character to actually like would be with Abby.
There is no GOOD or BAD in this story. This world has stripped most people of their morals. Anytime they do good they are rewarded by it with by death.
It already feels like that's begun. I mean, I've almost doubled my subs this month and it was the same way the month prior. Of course, more is always better, but I'm happy with this amount of growth. I love making these videos, I'd be making these even if I still had 20 subs. I'd also be super frustrated, but I definitely don't do it for the money and fame lol.
I really enjoyed this video. I think the choice would be a great way to improve the story, and you touched on a lot of important points. My opinion on the game is pretty much this: Ellie and Abby are, just like Joel (and everyone in TLOU universe) bad people. Because the world isn't conducive to good people. Of course, if everyone is bad, who is good, if everyone is super, no one will be etc. But still. Bad people who are capable of good things, such as Joel's love for Ellie, Ellie's love for Dina, and Abby's love for Lev. That being said, I still prefer Ellie to Abby. I understand why Abby did what she did, but the way she did it was too extreme imo. She didn't just kill Joel, she tortured him. For that reason, I think I'd choose to kill Abby if given the choice (amongst other factors, such as her character broadly being more senselessly violent and remorseless) Ideally, your redux choice version of the game wouldn't overtly judge me for this reason. Killing Abby shouldn't be the Bad Ending, neither should it be the Good. It should simply be An Ending, as should sparing her. It isn't the place for a game to judge me and my actions, and tell me what I did was right or wrong. Not in a situation as morally complex as this, with so many differing perspectives and justifications. EDIT: Rewatching this a year later, 8:40 sums it up: 'I understood their actions even if I didn't condone them'.
I was thinking the same thing but a workaround would be have abby be a minor character in part 3 and have her replaced if you killed her in part 2. They do that in the dragon age games and it works. This wouln't work if abby is planned as a major character in part 3 but we'll see. Maybe part 3 will have several different endings.
As if the concept of making more than one ending and sticking with one for the sequel was new. They didn't because the lead writer didn't want the playersto have their own conclusions. He wanted to tell you the message in a way it could only have one answer. Neil has a fame of having a big ego.
@@led_tower I don't think they'd go with Abby as a main character. They spent so long (poorly) trying to humanize Abby, and massively failing for so many people. A decent chunk of their audience would still dislike Abby, if not for all of the terrible shit she did, then for how much the TLOU2 experience sucked because of her section of the game.
Let’s hope not. In my mind there was just the first game and this shithole fan made game the likes of the enclave dlc written by lizard furries for FO3
Honestly this game meant so much to me. For me it was one of those rare times when I was playing something and thought in a year I’m gonna be looking back on this and feeling nostalgic. I love this game
One of the things about this game that annoys me more because it's pet peeve more than anything is how well built Abby is. I majored in kinesiology for a long time, and was almost an Athletic Trainer. I know how much effort and how well a woman would have to eat to be built like that. She would, under no circumstance, not have access to that kind of food, equipment, or knowledge to train for that. The truth about kinesiology is that it's a niche science, and it would probably be the first one completely abandoned post-apocalypse in favor of literally everything else.
Forget about the fact that a woman wouldn't develop muscles like a man if she worked out. Natural muscular women look even more feminine. Abby looks like a female athlete on steroids. Once you realize who they based her physique on, this becomes even more obvious (It's Colleen Flotsch, an enhanced crossfit athlete).
The main reason i believe it should have ended with ellie killing abby was because when she returns to her home her young family is gone and she's lost her ability to play guitar which is her last connection to Joel, but she never got her revenge. Had she killed Abby it would have left the player with the question of "you got your revenge but was it worth it?" instead Ellie doesnt get her revenge and has lost everything. Abby by contrast did get her revenge and also went through a redemption arc with lev similar to joel with ellie and she gets to leave and rejoin the fireflies. So if anything the message of the game is "revenge is wrong, unless you're an unstoppable killing machine"
But we already know revenge isn't worth it by that point. That's kind of what Abby's entire story was. She suffered immensely for what she did. I don't understand how you missed that.
Whenever someone says tlou2 isn't a 0 or a 10 people seem to lose their minds. But the game is a 7-8 it's nowhere near perfect but the game isn't a scam.
@Alvi Syahri Man, I can’t imagine being that disappointed with a sequel that it actually dampens my enjoyment of the original. Well...actually...uh...now I’m getting The Last Jedi flashbacks. I can see where you’re coming from.
I honestly agreed with everything you said in this video, having that choice at the end would’ve really sold it. Brilliant idea. It’s also nice to see people in the comments who don’t agree put still respect the opinion.
It has already been explained that revenge is not just between Ellie and Abby, with enemy AI, well-written notes and visual narration in the environment. They have successfully created the nature of the entire The Last Of Us universe with revenge, violence, grudge, negative emotions and laws of nature, and they have described a "community of human relations" and the personal, psychological and deep journey of a few people within the world of The Last Of Us. In general, revenge seems singular, but when you dig deeper, things change completely. Enemy AI acting like real human; Like Ellie, Abby, and the people they care about around them, they (the enemy AI) have feelings of revenge, grudge, hatred, sadness, and an idea or ideas of what it means to lose someone or something they love. It is a very important narrative for the themes of empathy and revenge that every person in the universe of The Last Of Us cries when their friend or dog dies, laments for their friend or dog who died, goes crazy, and says that they will get "revenge" from the person who killed them... Don't you understand these? There's a lot of amazingly written lore, for example. There is a "lore" about the life of the hunter Boris. A revenge story is also told there. Later, these themes also have visual narratives... There are points that I disagree with in the empathy part. It's not about Joel's death with a baseball bat. Even if he was shot and killed by a gun, the job would not have changed, and the motivation of Abby's killing purpose and manner is also well given. It could have been done more sympathetically or not, it doesn't matter to me. The important thing is to provide the motivation and personal depth of that character very well. The Last Of Us Part II does that, for sure. It's not about making the character look more sympathetic either, because whatever "perception and the angle you want to look at" is, empathy takes shape. I will explain this situation within the framework of perception and perspective, but first of all, I will state the following: “Had Joel faced a "happier, more sympathetic death", this would constitute manipulative dramatization as well as stereotyping to convey the bright (good) side of empathy.” “Instead of tweezing specific moments in the story and dramatizing them with an exaggeration and cliché or an unorthodox optimistic narrative/writing”, the Naughty Dog team preferred a narrative/writing that very effectively highlights the emphasis, emotionality and depth of the story as a whole. This causes them to better blend realism, naturalism and fictionality in the story. Belfast is a perfect example of this narrative... The Last Of Us Part II is absolutely successful in establishing empathy, subjectively... But empathy is very subjective and has a unique perspective, inner-world and perception. “Empathy makes good people better because good people don't like suffering, and empathy makes that pain evident. But if you make a sadist empathetic, he/she'll just be a happier sadist." Paul Bloom/Against Empathy And that's why The Last Of Us Part II isn't 100% good at empathy, but it certainly is. The success rate in empathy is definitely above 70-50%... Because the characters of the first game were mostly dramatized and told in a one-sided way. And also, it's been 7 years since the first game came out. People saw the characters in the first game as flawless, heroic, an idol in their own life, the best written game characters, characters they always show love with patterns of kindness. And for seven years, without exception, they thought this way and turned these feelings into a reflex. Their thoughts became routine and monotonous in a way that was difficult to change. Their own feelings for the characters have all but hardened and become stereotypes, and what they always dreamed of was that the lives of those characters, which continued after the finale, were perfectly filled with goodness and sweet drama. But this is a wrong and impossible point of view... For this reason, the event will be resolved when people overcome their own instincts, their own false dreams and the false feelings they have reflexively formed and stereotyped, because the concept of empathy in The Last Of Us Part II is innovative, creative and versatile. If you have "unconditionally" loved the main character in the first game and declared him your "favourite character", you cannot remain indifferent to the "brutal and dark but justified death" of that favorite character. This type of people will tend to do this without exception, no matter how Abby is told, because the problem is in producing perception and perspective. I think these types of people are deprived of producing them. When they control Abby as a playable character, they want to "do it instinctively" because they are caught in the "hate theme" that the game wants, and they interfere with this progress only in terms of gameplay because revenge is "instinctual" as William Shakespeare said... “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?” William Shakespeare Maybe we're struggling with our self-control by controlling Abby. When we control Abby, we must test ourselves, our inner-world perceptions and our instinct-controlled emotions on a game basis, because by controlling Abby we are fighting our own instincts, our perceptions. We test our own emotions and inner world on this deep psychological journey and if we pass this test we can see that Abby is really well written and has a deep character portrayal...
hey man, i have been following you a long time, and i love what you have to say not because its teh thing i want to listenl, but because its the right opinion. thanks for that. keep going your channel is the best one in youtube. (sorry for my english, is my second lenguage)
I liked the fact that you don’t choose whether or not to save Ellie in the first game, because it solidifies Joel’s character as selfish and villainous but sympathetic and human at the same time. It would’ve felt like the bad ending I’d you’d been given a choice whereas it’s just “the ending.” But I agree that the ability for Ellie to choose, for us to choose, would have come full circle to Joel taking her choice away in the first game.
It doesn’t makes since in the story for Ellie to kill her or have the choice. If they did that then there should be the choice to take out Ellie when Abby found them in the theater
i now will instantly try to unvalidate your opnion just because you disagree with me
You're clearly just homophobic
@@DJPeachCobbler you're homophobic.
@Alerted Combine we’re all homophobic
@@iamslightlybetterthanyou2679 hi im a racist. NI-
@@Maxx-kq5qh i'm sexist. kitch-
The classic trope of "the hero kills all the minions, but killing the overlord would be too much..." hehe
Pyromancy is overrated
This post was made by the fruity sorcery gang
Wouldn't be sad if somebody'd be nice enough to kill all these annyoing yellow things.
Ellie had to kill scar dude because he was about to kill Dina, Leah got killed by scars, Mel and Owen died because Owen acted like an idiot. Norah was the only one Ellie deliberately tortured and killed. So yeah there's a big difference story wise, character wise, time wise and circumstance wise that lead to that decision. Nice quip though
@pulpficti you missed the point of the video, and the comment. What about all of the unnamed characters that were murdered to get to this point? We’re those not deliberate?
@@pulpficti damn there is no comeback from that you are officially defeated lmao
Giving the player choices would have been a wise narrative decision. That is what games are all about and can do that movies can't.
guess they truly want that "cinematic experience" lmao
But the Last of Us never was about choice
@Alvi Syahri Bullshit mate lol That's a shit a excuse and you know it. It could be one game or a thousand, the last of us still ain't about player choice.
@Alvi Syahri either that or give the player stealth routes to still pull off a no kill run like Deus Ex did. Also make Abby aknowledge those actions and create a true ending where they don't even fight each other but rather Abby apologizing for everything that she has done and if you are super edgy still allow the player to either kill or spare her
@Alvi Syahri You're trying to dictate how an ending should have been because you don't like a character. The point of whole "this isn't a game about choice" is exactly that. You think I wanted to kill a lot of important characters in the first game? Don't see anybody complaining about it
People were getting to entitled to think they actually should have any control on story when they didn't even complain about the lack of it in the first game. Oh but then the argument changes right? It's not about the choice, it's about the shit ending/slash story because i don't like buff girl who killed my fav character.
Listen it's okay to not like the direction the game took, but don't act like TLOU was never about that. Joel ain't a angel and thinking hr should have been killed in a heroic way is feeling entitled at least.
Abby was the monster naughty dog wanted me to love, but ellie was the girl I loved and the monster I made. That's the difference
Wanted me to love but instead made everyone hate.
Exactly, you can’t make us empathize with one main character for an entire game, and in the sequel which we specifically purchased to further that character’s story, you have us control the villain, some character we never even seen before, for nearly half of the game. Naughty dog tried to reinvent the story telling wheel with this one, one of the reasons why tlou1 was so good was cuz it was a simple story anyone can follow along and empathize with.
THEY made. They force you.
Shit bro, that was pretty poetic.
Exept you didnt do that since you cant not kill all thoes People. If you could NOT kill all of them and then the game tells you "Wow you are a fucking piece of shit huh!" You would actually feel that you are a monster.
"in a medium where everything is john wick, the last of us part 2 is schindler's list" I REALLY hated that line when I first heard it
Sorry I didn't understood, what do you mean?
@@JIMT412 someone in the video said that qoute which pretty much is about degrading games and calling them all "mindless and endless action" which I really hated as a gaming fan
The person who said that is a p*ssy that only enjoys movie-games because those are the real games, the games that don't let you play but rather let you watch... oh and he plays them on Journalist difficulty.
John Wick is cool af
@@yerlocaljacc8461 oh I get it, yeah I guess they didn't play Spec Ops: The Line or Halo to fully understand the history.
@@JIMT412 Or Sam and Max, or Fallout, or Baldur's Gate, or Stanley Parable, or Atelier series, or Animal Crossing, or...
Maybe the real ludonarrative dissonance is the social media shit storm we made along the way
Underrated comment
Damn
snorts* wemen w i d e shouldersn't and other gay-sorcery
(poor joewl tho ;q)
…
*THE GAME*
@@Eingewissertyp bb vv
Fucking gold
12:51 "Demons don't cry"
Doomguy: Are you sure about that?
Proceeds to pewpew chainsaw to vibe
Reminds me of that one Penny Arcade strip.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHittingYourself
Everyone know that it is the devils who never cry
B... But Dante told me devils never cry!
but.. devil may cry right?
I honestly disagree with a good chunk of what you say, but hell, this was an amazing, well thought video and I absolutely appreciate it. You did good.
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I know not many will agree with this idea. Some value a more focused character-driven story while other prefer interactivity. This certainly isn't an "objective" video, it's all up to personal taste.
@@DJPeachCobbler I disagree more with your analysis of the game as a whole rather than its fault or the general principles you dictated. To be honest, I think TLOU2 is a very impressive tech demo. The problem, to put it in a few words, that I have with the story is that, well, I honestly believe it's cheap. There's nothing I haven't seen done better in other games, except for the graphics and the animations. Damn, you should make a Discord, I'd love to rant with you in there.
@@matteonardone8106 Yknow who did the whole "villain turned likable" thing a million times better? Valve in Portal 2. You didn't even realize it was happening until it'd already happened
Yeah, the guards are more friendly looking and look genuently suprised when you kill them, those are also visual indicators that what you are doing isn't morally right (especially if you compare their designs to the evil carricatures of the aristocracy)
@@DJPeachCobbler I know I'm 8 months late, but mgs3 did a grear job in that area
I suspect they DID allow you to choose to spare or kill Abbey in an early version,
but literally every single playtester killed abbey, and they did not like that.
If they gave players a chance to spare enemies before meeting her I'd imagine sparing Abby would happen just a bit more often. It's easier to feel empathy for the jobbers than "that bitch who killed Joel." And if they all got killed before her then sparing Abby would be an insult to them and the players.
The max Payne part made be spit my water.
Well played, Cobbler.
Well played.
Glad you liked it, I couldn't stop laughing while editing it tbh
@@DJPeachCobbler new video soon?
Please and thank you
@@cyrilchannie5120 Did youtube not suggest my Death Stranding video to you? I uploaded it less than a week ago
@@DJPeachCobbler literally just saw it.
Watching it soon as I can today 🔥
@@cyrilchannie5120 Damn UA-cam. I'm glad you wanted a new video, though! Next one should be in 2 weeks
Wait so if I brutally murder someone with a golf club all I have to do to redeem myself is give a cold kid my jacket? Interesting....
That or have you and your dad save zebras or be afraid of heights
Of course not. There is no redemption for something like that, but there is an effort to do better. Easy solutions like you're suggesting don't exist. If only the game made that clear....
Are you talking about when Joel brutally murdered dozens people but then was nice to a random kid who looked like his daughter?
@@w1ckedn0nsense34 lol u so blatantly misconstruing and purposely lying about the story/relationship between the two characters of the first game is actually hilarious. LOU2 defenders need to never change
@@w1ckedn0nsense34 He did what he had to do to survive.
underrated channel, good editing, solid points made, feels unique enough, good luck with the algorithm mate
Thank you, although I'm gonna be making a drastic shift in content and presentation soon
@@DJPeachCobbler face ughh
@@DJPeachCobbler And I appreciate the Unspeakable Void's presence in your content, he should come back more often, I like him as a guest.
I believe/d the best change that would've made the difference was simply changing the acts around.
Learning Abby's story before even touching on her revenge and Ellie would've made her far more compelling as a character, even if it left the player confused. (For that matter, all the reviews don't seem to care about her randomness as a character anyway).
This would've made the tragedy of Joel's death that much more impactful, as you'd have to take a hard breath wondering on if what you did in the first game was right, even.
And that much more cynical a look at Ellie's insatiable rage.
All they had to do was change the order, let you breath in Abby's lungs before forcing you to.
I feel exactly the same way. Opening with Abby and her story would've made her way more compelling.
It's a serious mistake, that I lightly brush on in my Top 5 Games of 2020 video. It seriously affected the game itself, and I think *severely* affected its reception
@@DJPeachCobbler Honestly didn't expect a reply, but much appreciated.
@@DJPeachCobbler I believe TLOU2 gets misunderstood as a revenge story. For me the game is a story about grief and letting go.
Ellie never gets to see Abby's story. That's for the viewer exclusively and that's why a choice wouldn't have made sense in the ending. Because that choice would come from the player but the player isn't Elli. The player is above the story and Elli didn't choose to not kill Abby because she emphasizes with her... On what base, she doesn't know her, we do, she doesn't. We are the ones emphasizing, we know Abby, we feel for the npcs. All that Elli wants is for her pain to end. Killing Abby won't change a damn thing, this isn't about Elli learning to emphasize with Abby, that's for the player, we learn to emphasize with her, she never does this is about Elli running away from her pain. From her perspective, who is Abby? She hasn't played her, she doesn't know anything about Abby, where should that sudden empathetic insight come from?
She just knows that killing Abby means all that is left is the pain, so when she finally gets to the point where she can... What's left? The whole fight is pointless, her whole quest is pointless, Elli knows that, she talks about it in the beginning but she doesn't know what to do with that. So she runs after the easiest idea. Get Abby. This is not about a point, a lesson, a choice. This is just a tiresome running away from pain until there is nothing left to run for. And then she has to face the pain. We are not Elli. We emphasize with Elli but we are not her. We didn't loose our dad, we don't know how that feels like, we just pretend to know. And that's why it's not our choice. Because it's hers. We are just voyeurs.
That definitely would have also helped. If not having a choice was a constant in all timelines, changing the order of events presented to us would have been welcome. Going to a game franchise that probably doesn't covey my thoughts very well, and is the exact opposite of TLOU, Kingdom Hearts. The first game had you play as a kid who's separated from his friends and his world is gobbled up by darkness. And at the end it leaves on a cliffhanger. The it has a small game that continues after the events of the game. Yadda yadda. When Kingdom Hearts 2 rolls around you expect to be playing as that same kid that you left. But no, it's this random other kid who you don't know. But becomes clear after you see to the end of this story of his, before the actual game starts. If TLOU2 did something similar it would have done wonders.
I've had the same opinion ever since I played it. Building the connection with Abby first, before watching her kill Joel would've made it much harder to decide whether you wanted her to die or not. However, when you watch Abby golf club one of your favorite characters in gaming history to death as her introduction, then are forced to play hours and hours as her, it's damn near impossible to win people back over. Obviously it worked for some as DJ said he would've spared her, but I absolutely wouldn't have. Whether it gave me a bad ending or not, said something about my inability to forgive or not, it would've felt like such a waste to go through all of Ellie's story just for Abby not to die (which is why I had a hard time with the ending, it was bold, but it also felt out of character for Ellie to finally stop right there and infuriating that there wasn't even a choice). As well, I really hated playing as Abby after seeing her kill Joel. I had such a hard time enjoying the game at all (despite the fact that the gameplay itself was solid as ever) simply because I couldn't stand the character I was playing as. Her half of the story dragged forever, and by the end she'd only redeemed herself very slightly for me.
Dude, I really appreciate your content. You have a good voice and a good writing.
Thanks! I'm glad you like my writing, I spend a truly embarrassing amount of time on my scripts. My next one is shaping up really well. It'll be longer but more focused. As in, I don't try to defend the game and instead just make my point.
I'm surprised you like my voice, because I hate it lol. Athough I imagine everyone hates the sound of their own pre-recorded voice.
Anyway, I'm glad you like my videos, they're real fun to make
@@DJPeachCobbler I know i'm a year late but yeah, i've noticed most people hate their own voice when recorded, but you really do have a nice one
Absolutely insane how the choice of a single button, and the addition of an extra scene, would’ve changed this entire game. You expressed pretty much all of the same feelings I had about this game. I went in without any spoilers luckily, and at the end I was still feeling disappointed. I wish they just gave us that choice, it’s literally all I want.
I found that choice to be completely pointless. It's her story not mine. I wouldn't have wanted to make that choice because I don't belong in that story. If I had made choices in that have I would have never left to begin with so I would have missed the entire story. To have that last decision would be weird because I never made any decisions in that game before... I am an observer of how the story unfolds and they show me something I normally wouldn't see. Worked perfectly fine for me...
@@sonkeschmidt2027 so a movie.
@@ramrot666 I wouldn't say so. Games with story, even completely linear with no choice options, can make you experience the story in a much more intimate and unique way than movies.
At least in this game, I don't feel the need for a final choice. The game makes it really clear that Ellie and Abby are their own person, and that's why they make you play as both, to see each perspective. They are the ones making the decisions.
I don't think u are just an observer tho, it's a game after all. You PLAY as them, you experience their hardships and their successes, and that's what makes it very different than a movie. It's more like you are playing a role, it's an empathy machine. And I find the ending to be very fitting with the themes and the character, it's satisfying for me and I completely understand Ellie's choice. In the end, Ellie choose to forgive Abby, Joel, and herself, and choose to move on leaving hatred behind. What would you choose? (That's a great idea for a third game)
At the end I think you can make very compelling narratives in games in both ways, letting the player choose or stick with a linear story. And both can be uniquely different than a movie.
@Bully Maguire then any videogame with no story choices is a movie. Got it.
Adding that choice wouldn't fix all the bad writing and narrative mistakes that happened throughout the entire game.
So... What was in the bag behind the monster?
Also, this reminds me of Death Stranding, where a character literally gives you a revolver and says "you know what to do". The game even aims it for you, iirc (haven't played it myself), but the right choice is to not use it and go hug that person instead.
Something that doesn't quite feel worth it.
It's garbage. Well, a garbage bag to be precise.
I like Death Stranding but the whole Amelie part really rubbed me the wrong way. I unloaded all my ammo on her head as soon as i could.
@@night1952 yep same lmao
there was a random poncho
and best part is, you can easily continue on without that poncho, because you can brute force your way through game even with Terry only, if you're skilled enough
TLOU part 2 is the embodiment of the saying “I’m not angry, just disappointed”
Except people were angry lol.
@@nicocee2431 people are always angry but the majority were just let down. I bought special edition on release day and have never replayed it. I reply the first one every year atleast once.
@@davidsavage3120 i have so mixed feelings about this game, i love the gameplay, the graphics and the characters (except a few of them) but i cant stand how they fucked up the pacing and the abby good joel bad theme feeled a little bit too on the nose for me, maybe it would have been better if we get involved with abby before she slaughters the character we all loved in the first game.
Perfect Dark already did this like, 20 years ago. It gave you plenty of options to deal with human enemies who cried out in pain and suffering as you gunned them down. You could disarm them, knock them out, run past them, whatever. But when you gunned them down, they cried out.
And then there TLOU2 where even if you spare an enemy they pick their gun right back and then railroad you into slaughtering dogs and pregnant women so you feel bad
Perfect Dark was so good in so many ways
Your lisa example really got my gears churning and made me realize how many games could benefit by having "hidden" choices. Like an ending where you're about to kill abby, but you could walk away. I feel like being able to disobey the story to do what you think is right is something that no other medium can do but videogames and I hardly ever see it.
lots of game do have that choice,
even dishonored 1 has it which he naively mocked in this video.
when u win the duel against Daud the assassin who k^lled the empress he asks u to spare his life and the choice is yours.
using dishinored as an example cuz he mocked dishonored in a bit in this video. which i dont understand... the chaos system in dishonored wasnt a morality system nor a karma system, and the game doesnt "want" you to spare or choose non-lethal option on assassination target, u can k^ll every single main bad guy/ assassination target and still get the best ending easily while maintaining low chaos.
and some villain for example far cry 2's jackal already tickled the question that maybe you are not moraly superior but just in a position where it is waaay too easier to be a good person.
TLoU2 is a video game, whose unique biggests strength of this genre is being an interactive media, and yet it removes the players' ability to interact with the game in the most crucial moments of the game. absolute cowardice. my 14yo naive
@$$ was totally absolutely ready to m^rder the sh^t out of that criminal daud but somehow when he asked to be spared i decided against it,
imagine if the game decided to force me to spare him in my stead i would never have thought that i would spare him and just be p^ssed. Naughty dog almost had it with TLoU2, but it took away the most crucial decision and didnt allow the playerbase to grow beyond virtual bloodlust by denying them the option to choose
You know what would have made Abbey easier to see as human and forgive? You want her to be human? Make her human. After she leaves, after she does everything she set out to do, have her throw up. She's disgusted. That wasn't what she thought it would be. Have her regret it, or atleast question it after the fact. Make her not like what she did, but feel like she had to.
But as it is? The story as presented is "one incomplete murder leads to a survivor going on a murder spree that results in a survivor going on a murder spree"
That doesn't feel like "revenge is bad"
That feels like "if you're going to kill someone, make sure you don't leave survivors to seek revenge.
Justice is only wanted if there is someone seeking retribution -MeatCanyon
Game: _kills Joel by having him act exceedingly out of character and being overly trusting_
Me: _angry_
Game: _forces you to kill waves of people and then acts like you’re a monster for doing so_
Me: _even angrier_
Game: _forces you to spare the literal one person who did anything wrong to you despite having you kill said waves of people who were significantly more innocent than Abby_
Me: _beyond impossibly livid_
Exactly how I felt and it made the game feel like a slog that was going on for too long
It's even worse when the hotel flashback with Joel has him showing caution making Ellie wear a mask despite the lack of people
I never bought LoU2 because the first thing I looked up was if the player could kill Abbie.
I'd buy it in a flash if they did.
And there's nothing you can do about it whatsoever.
@@jon2260 You should play the game, maybe you might like it.
I’m not against trying to build empathy for the villain, but wouldn’t it have been far more effective if Joel were killed at least halfway through the game and in the hours leading up to it, learning about Abby’s personality, her friend group, her desires, her rage, or just a more in depth look at her past. I also try to separate the art from the artist, but Naughty Dog didn’t exactly treat their consumer base with much respect both during that period when the leak happened and after launch when negative reviews started popping up.
"It just told me what to think." Best ending remark. I couldn't have said it better.
*Custers Revenge actually delivered what it promised.*
What irks me about the story is how it ignores it's own world and how nobody understands what the mushrooms are and people still thinks Elisabeth is "immune" instead of just being infected with a mutated mushroom...
I dont understad what are you tring to say? (sorry if my english is not that good)
@@toniertbart8495 He's trying to argue people in the post-apocalyptic world of TLOU should give a shit about dumbass semantics.
This can be summarized in one sentence: _I'm much less likely to want a character to die if I'm not forced to spare them._ Instead, I was forced to spare her, and told I'm stupid for wanting Abby dead. Ironically, that only makes me want to kill her even more, and makes me want to make her suffer on top of it. _The story was good, it was just presented badly. So, so badly.*_
If Abby's side came first, or was an optional choice, so I could see her side before she bashes Joel's skull in, maybe I wouldn't be hellbent on watching her burn from step one, eh? Instead it's _"Hey, watch this buff girl bash the brains of the protagonist in. Now play the game, and now we're going to force you to play as her. _*_Still want to kill her? You're so shitty!"_*
You ARE stupid for wanting Abby dead. Not only does it mean you want to kill someone who just wants to keep a young boy safe, but you want Ellie to do it further destroying her humanity instead of letting her reclaim it. It sounds like you're just unable to move on from your preconception. I'm so glad Ellie was more emotionally mature than you.
But would you have really cared about Ellie going to Seattle to begin with
One thing I looked up and found out about LISA: The Painful, is SPOILERS BTW
Is that when fighting your friends, that
1: Friends picked up earlier in the game will more likely cry
2: They will do an action where they will skip their turn, saying something like "...Terry doesn't want to do this"
The reason people were so upset with TLOU2 was because it's a TLOU game
I definitely agree with you on that. If you remove the story, the gameplay is exciting and the environments are gorgeous. The story itself is interesting and has some real emotionally complex emotions to it that I haven't gotten from a AAA game in awhile. I feel like time will be much kinder to it than fans were initially.
I would have preferred a prequel that explained tommy and joels journey. And Joel and tess's story.. With the trial of fooling Ellie to believe the fireflies have other immune people..
Considering how well Fear TWD, a TWD side-story prequel, was received; living on to basically being TWD 1.5; there's a fair chance that's what the show's about. Assuming, ofc, it's still about Clan Miller, and not new characters in the same world.
After I played Left Behind, I wished there was a DLC that has the story of Joel and Tommy from Sarah's death to when they split up. In the first game Tommy said that he didn't like Joel's methods of surviving. What did Joel do overtime that made his younger brother say "it wasn't worth it" when Joel said "you *survived* because of me"?
my main problem with the game is that you didn’t get a choice to kill Abby
Would you ?
@@Paradox_Sol yes
@@dandman9373 well that's unusuall
@@Paradox_Sol well if somebody were to brutally murder my "dad" right in front of me and a lot of people died just so I could get to them. Yes I would indeed kill them
@@theperishedwolf575 I understand that point of view but this doesn't make it less insane. I would only take out someone who is an active threat to me.
At least 95% of players would kil abby even after understanding her situation by playing through her and the sad part is that this mindset isnt limited to a video game. Most western countries have this issue in their justice system. It's primarily about revenge.
I think the biggest problem many people had, was how it kinda tossed all the character development from the previous game.
Did it? All the flashback scenes established a lot of the character development. Joel is a much more subdued, quieter person at peace with himself while Ellie discovers the truth and is slowly drifts away from Joel while still not knowing how she felt about his choice since he took that agency away from her.
@@keshav3479 at the end of the first game it's clear that Ellie is aware that Joel did something but not exactly what
In this game she acts as if she didnt know at all
She also acts as if she doesnt know about Sarah
It would be obvious to Ellie that Joel would have saved her because of Sarah as she shows this awareness in the cabin scene in the first game however here it's completely gone
Furthermore at the end of this game Ellie says "my life would have mattered"
Why not the life of Sam or tess or riley
This is oddly selfish of ellei
@@keshav3479 also Ellie never reflects on the fireflies taking agency away from her
@@aidanaidan8662
She knew the entire time, and was just about to reconcile with Joel before Abby happened so I think she just scrubbed it from her mind since she would've had trouble acting like Joel was a bad person after she witnessed him dying in front of her. Her feelings on the matter were quite clearly complicated, to say the least. That's why it seemed as though she forgot about it.
Also when she says "My life would have mattered", she's only talking about herself here. She quite clearly had survivor's guilt at the end of the first game and was suffering the trauma of experiencing so many of the people she knew die in vain. She wasn't forgetting about them. She just wanted HER life to mean something.
I never said that Ellie REFLECTS on the fireflies (and Joel, by the way) taking that agency from her. What I meant was that Joel and the fireflies DID take agency from her by the end of the first game. Her feelings are a result of that.
@@keshav3479 I'm referring to between the end of the first game and the truth scene in this game she acts as of she didnt have a clue that Joel did something
Firstly Ellies life did mean something to Joel, she should know exactly what she means to Joel and why he did it
Secondly, that survivors guilt wouldn't make her give her life meaning it would make her want to give meaning to those died as Ellie was a very selfless person and wasnt doing this for herself
In regards to the fireflies Ellie is completely fine with them taking her agency but not Joel
And despite all this like I said earlier: ellie is aware of Sarah and would know exactly why Joel acted the way he does and would understand that Joel needs her
When enemies surrender and beg you to let them go they always retaliate if you do, I hated that, zero advances from the first game (Except that they take cover instead of always reaching for your gun)
My problem with this game was entirely from myself. I can’t blame the game for this, but I grew up on games like Marathon and Quake, so I when I heard an NPC say something like, “come closer and look me in the eye,” the only reaction I could summon was, “nah, waste of ammo,” and then resorted to bludgeoning them to death, or just walking past if I couldn’t be bothered to kill em. Then seeing the carnage from Abbies point of view, all I could take from that was whether or not I could have completed that section more efficiently.
Finally, at the end, I was able to look at the entire scenario from each of the characters points of views, I couldn’t see a situation playing out where both of these people survived. Both had lost too much to the other, and leaving one or the other to survive would only leave room for conflict further down the line from either of the characters factions. Revenge good, revenge bad, who cares. After what happened in the events of TLoU2, peace really couldn’t be an option, not a permanent one at least.
Or maybe that’s just what I’d learned from games of the past. Never leave a loose end.
I played this game when it first came out. It is the only game I have ever bought on release. I sat down, in the midst of a global pandemic, a few weeks after two of my grandparents died of covid... And played the entire thing.
I got to the end. Cried like a bitch for literally an hour, sitting in the dark at 3am, because I didn't want to get up and crawl into bed with my girlfriend, while the broken guitar chords were still stuck in my head. It wasn't the fight that got me, or the 30-40h of gameplay before the end... It was the final scene of Ellie going back to the farm and finding it empty, everything of hers left behind, picking up Joel's guitar one last time, and not being able to play it; seeing the realisation that that last link to Joel was gone. All without saying goodbye.
I came away from the game feeling emotionally wrecked, deeply saddened and yet strangely free. I didn't play any other videogames after it for months. It had a profound impact on the way I lived my life and the way I respond to others. It made me immensely grateful for the company of my girlfriend and friends, and helped me cope with the death of my grandparents.
For me this game will always be a 10, because of when I played it. It's a ten because I think I came away feeling exactly what the developers were trying to make me feel.
I also acknowledge that the pacing of the game is completely fucked, the way it is structured is infuriating, and that it is fucking depressing. You can tell those are valid criticisms from people who actually played the game. I still believe that playing the game sequence by sequence, alternating between Ellie and Abby would have been more engaging, as it allows you to react in real time to the events from both perspectives. It also means if you hate Abby's guts, you don't get stuck with her for 30h. And I agree with you... ENTIRELY about having the choice.
Then again, if I had a choice, I would never have gone after Abby again in the first place, and I would have been sorely disappointed with the "good ending". But a choice, directly at the end to either kill Abby or not... That I think would have improved it.
To me, I feel as though the direction of the game being based off of something as random as the daughter of one of the random doctors you killed being the one that ends up killing Joel. Having Joel try to live a normal life but be forced back into constantly moving and trying to survive based off of his past and his decision to free Ellie and doom mankind would've been infinitely more interesting than just instantly killing him off in the sequel and having Ellie go on a revenge tour right away.
This is honestly my favorite take on this game. Thank you for not just running it threw the mud crying “go woke get broke.” And actually dissecting this and criticizing it where it deserves and praising it in equal measure as well. I really wish my reviews where this sensible.
I remember watching that scene where Ellie is on the farm with her family, sitting on a tractor and looking out over the mountains and feeling so satisfied with the story.
But it kept going. And I don't know why.
That moment would have been an even better point to make the choice. I feel like letting Abby go at the ending is already pointless, Ellie made her choice when she left.
@@night1952 Honestly, it could've just given that choice and then ended. I feel like that would've actually been better. If you decide to chase Abby, then it just shows Ellie riding off the farm, it'd be unsatisfying because it signifies the cycle of violence continuing without having to show you. It has no payoff, and isn't the whole message here supposed to be that the cycle of revenge has no payoff? That it's never worth it?
Instead, it's like "Oh actually Ellie cares less about Joel and more about Abby than you, the player who played as both characters, do. Even though Ellie only saw Abby at her worst and just killed 500 people to get to her, now she empathizes with Abby far more than you do, despite you seeing her at her best"
@@CaeruleanWren Hence the Game of Thrones comparisons. The characters were made stupid to fit the plot. Which doesn't work if you saw them when they were good.
@@CaeruleanWren she doesnt empathize with abby lol her flashbacks to joel and constantly having to deal with the grief of his death coupled with the fact of pushing her father figure away before he gets murdered weighed heavily on her.
Empathy is something that gets lost to a lot of people. It's about understanding a person's motives and their feelings. What it ISN'T is AGREEING with the steps that they take or even LIKING them in general.
The fact that you were able to create this incredible of a video at such an early point in your career still blows my mind.
If I could redesign the last act of the game I'd say the player needs a choice when Tommy comes to the farmhouse. If you decide Ellie is not going to pursue Abbie, Tommy gets angry and goes alone as in the original game. But this time when Ellie gets up in the middle of the night it's because she can't let Tommy go in good conscience. Give you a slightly different confrontation with Dina, who initially starts the conversation the same way, but Ellie replies with "I don't care about Abbie, but Tommy will die out there." Or something like that. From here the last act plays out relatively similarly to what we got, but Ellie is explicitly trying to track down Tommy and bring him home. Maybe you find him dead just before the beach, giving you that one last choice to save or kill Abbie alone, or maybe he's on the beach attacking Abbie and you can decide whether to intervene or not. I don't know, I didn't think this far ahead, but I always wished I could've actually effected Ellies choices in the last act specifically.
I would say that's the best choice in terms of how it would impact the characters but I think it would be better for the story to have it be before Ellie tries to drown Abby.
Honestly I could understand letting players choose the ending but in last of us 1 it showed you that there was no humanity left and that being close to someone will just get you killed. It grounded you to understand only the ones who focused on survival won and I believe it was great. The second one has pregnant ladies still in the fight when they have camps to stay safe at with no consequence or some other shit that I could care less about. I loved the last of us for the gritty survival aspect that emotions get you killed. I just couldn’t at understand Abby because she risked going all the way to Joel just for one death in her life and it showed no consequence to it and only consequences to Ellie. I just felt like it was one sided in how much the characters lost. Ellie and Joel had been through a lot more than Abby ever had and it’s why I wouldn’t want to understand her because she just looked like a screaming kid in a post apocalyptic world. Joel and Ellie lost more people close to them than her but they understood acting on it would only get you killed but the second one didn’t give that weight. I just didn’t like how it didn’t feel the same as the first game’s world, it felt more like the walking dead than the last of us and that’s the problem I had with it especially with how the characters from the first game acted different than in the first. It just frustrated me that a game that I love very dearly and played so much made a sequel that didn’t feel in the same world and just shat on everything I loved because “you killed my father!”
The best quote I've heard regarding this game is "it's a game about right and wrong, made by people who think they're always right," and while I don't think your idea to add choice would have solved all of my issues with the game, it would have helped with a lot of those issues, and then some
I think that quote is from the Japanese IGN
That quote doesn't make any sense. Why would any creator put any kind of theme in a game that they didn't agree with?
You know what's funny? I saw that "twist" coming from a mile away. Last of us 2 did the same thing some other mature game stories did -- it gave you the toys and the only way you can play with them and then told you that you are a bad person for it.
I agree that they didn't have something that would finalize their statement on human condition, but the only was i saw that game finishing is the same the first one did -- what's done is done, we will live with it. But instead the third act happened.
Goddamn your channel is amazing, I can't believe you haven't got more views. Thank god for UA-cam recommendations bringing me here.
Aw, thanks. My next video should be up in a few days, and imma make some strong claims about a lot of beloved games. I hope you enjoy it.
Honestly, one of my favorite ways a game made my enemy feel human to me was when I played The Forest. Here I am, trying to survive out in the wilderness on some island in bumfuck nowhere that's inhabited by cannibals and mutants, freaks of the highest degree.
The pale, naked mutants that are weak on their own tend to keep their distance, but stalk me nonetheless with their friends until my guard is down. But for the most part, they just seem to observe. Them and their more upright standing brethren.
The ones who stand on their hind legs, live in villages, and generally just do what they can to live on this island with their people are uneasy about me just as I am about them. When I harm the forest they live in by chopping down too many trees or when I harm their people, even if at the time it may have been in self defense, they get agitated to my presence. I could spark a full blown war between me and them, and the traps I could use against them just feel inhumane despite being necessary to defend themselves. (Rope traps that dangle them upside down making them easy targets, fire traps that when tripped light everyone on fire, spike traps that impale them across their whole body, log traps that fall onto their head and break their skulls, etc.)
Then theres how they behave when in combat. I've seen some of them take a hit and then jump back in fear/pain, some of them would drag their allies away when they're wounded, stuff like that. Made them feel human, but it didn't make me feel any more like a monster for fighting against them. I don't like killing what is essentially sentient people, but at the end of the day in that situation, it's me or them, and I'm hella outnumbered.
i'm just saying, Ghost of Tsushima got robbed.
nah
Yes
havnt heard anyone say anything about the game for a long while now lol its not that great
@Diesel Cox you can disagree all you’d like but tlou2 earned GOTY for a reason
Doom eternal got robbed
“You don’t care that she had friends.”
Wrong, I did care about Abby having friends. Wanted to make sure they were piled high dead for her to see.
What is that profile pic my guy
@@LlywelynGXthat pfp it called pure Chad energy
as the op stated it was a story about dehumanization lol joel fucking murderd abby's dad why wouldn't abby want to get back at joel just like you wanna get back at her for killing him?
@@Midwestemoisme abey ghey.
@@Midwestemoisme The first game made me lament being forced to kill the doctor. The sequel made me lament not killing his child while I was at it. Unless that was their intent then the writers messed up.
Tlou2 be like : "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man ?! REVENGE IS BAD"
Abby : "i'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that"
it is lol even if ellie killed abby, the death of her friends are in her hands, she lost her lover, and her father figure. Her life is still in shambles
It always bugs me that in a game whose main theme is *“Violence is bad,”* the player’s MOST MEANINGFUL CHOICE is WHICH GUN you use to kill and HOW.
Best take on this game that I've seen so far. I remember in my first playthrough during the final fight with Abby on the beach I waited for a minute before the final prompt to finish the fight, hoping that I could keep Ellie from killing Abby. Then I had to try to kill her just for the game to forgive her for me after a button mashing sequence. As a side note, the algorithm just picked up your channel and you have an awesome backlog that I'm enjoying working through.
girlfriend reviews has a video on the last of us 2 that i think goes really well with this video
yeah for the people who were gonna want to spare Abby, they already wanted to not kill her by that fight scene yet are forced to try, and the people who do still want to kill her get to try and are forced to fail. It dissatisfies you no matter what
Well, this was very interesting to watch. I absolutely applaud the bravery you needed and thought you put into this, as this is very well made, and for that alone, you more than deserve a like. Still, while I usually don't do it, something's compelling me to reply. I don't know what it is, but I'll listen to it for a change.
You raise a very valid point and perspective throughout the video: this game is far from the "steaming pile of garbage" or "flawless masterpiece" on both accounts, and while flawed, it still has great ideas and moments. However, I personally think there's a bit of... let's call it red herring-y focus on why people (including myself) disliked this game.
Aside from a fantastically put point at the end ("the game didn't let me think, it just told me what to think"), you raise the issue of having player choice, as it's a game medium. On that, I 100% agree: this game BADLY needed to let the players decide and have much more agency. It isn't a movie, and it was treated far too much like one. However, even with having the freedom of choice, I still believe this game would have failed story-wise.
As counterpoints, I'll use examples of two fantastic games, that are in a way similar to TLoU 2, at least in theme of dehumanization: Far Cry 3... and Spec Ops: the Line. First, however, I have to say that your point about ludonarrative dissonance, while 100% something I agree with, isn't quite at the core of the issue. On one hand, both the games I mentioned made sure the gameplay fed the story, vice versa, and made both serve a narrative unlike TLoU 2, but they did it in a very contrasting manner, which is the core of my opinion. Those games didn't force you to look out. They made you look IN.
Far Cry 3 never tried to humanize your enemies. It never tried to get you to empathize with them. It didn't need to, and in a lot of ways, it couldn't: pirates are... well, pirates. Vaas and Hoyt especially are so far off on the extreme ends of the spectrum that it's pointless to try and humanize them. Spec Ops likewise didn't try to add a layer of humanity to your enemies save for some vaguely generic points that they were people, or in certain situations, your fellow comrades-in-arms. In both cases, despite their moral fiber (or lack thereof), they were still, on one hand, baddies to point and click to kill, and on the other, "people" who "have their reasons". Yet, even with that, both those games deliver an emotional gut punch in so many ways, and in ways TLoU 2 doesn't dare. Instead of having you live the lives of a soldier you killed, or were trying to kill, they do something far more horrifying.
They put a mirror in front of you.
TLoU 2 tries to get you to look at "yourself", i.e. Ellie through Abby's eyes. While an interesting idea (and one genuinely worth pursuing), it simply can't land through force. Plenty of shows and narrative media, as well as video games do this concept well: first, they give us a reason to care. A reason to be invested. From the moment we meet Abby, there is little to nothing about her we know about, or care about. Then, putting us in her shoes, and for so long is... well, frankly, it's whiplash at best, complete outrage at worst.
But that's not even the worst of it. As you rightly stated, the discomfort from being in Abby's shoes, while painful in and of itself, CAN be worthwhile, if it has something to say. Something to show. But it doesn't. It has something it wants us to see, and it forces us to see it, while in the process, trying to obliterate our long-standing views and preconceptions we've already built about other characters, and what we know. And it does this by trying to convince us of something, of telling us what to think. And the message? That it's actually Ellie who's the monster.
Now, I know it's not that simple, but for the sake of "brevity" (in this long-winded comment...), allow me the indulgence of putting it that way. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't reflect: it deflects, which feels cheap and shoehorned. Instead of having us face our actions and come to terms not so much "just" with what we've done, so much as that we've MADE the choice to do these things, and KEPT making that choice, it uses roundaboutism, saying "well, I might be guilty of the same thing as you, but at least I'm not AS bad as you". But it's not that simple. Severity of the "crime", as it were, isn't what tips the scale of our soul towards evil so much so as the knowledge that we've consciously made the choice to do so, and often times, without thinking... and that it was unbelievably easy to do just that.
Still glad this got 'crucified' since ND (Under Druckmann) mistreated it's developpers so severely. Games are too long, games are too big.
The length and size is not the problem. The problem lies in how that size and length are achieved.
Do it through crunch and mistreatment and/or idiotic design and it's a problem.
Do it with respect for both the devs and the audience and you get a great thing.
Maybe the main reason I liked last of us 2 so much because I always thought Joel was in the wrong at the end of last of us one. Honestly I related to Abby way more then I did Ellie. Joel damed the world to save one person. Joel killed Abby’s dad and condemned the world. Even though I understood why Joel did what he did I never agreed with it. Probably the biggest reason this game got so much hate because they killed off everyone’s favorite character.
Finally an actual worthwhile critique of the Last of us 2
Skinny girl mad, tough girl mad. Who's madder the game
Love your channel and your stuff but i have to respectfully disagree. Well mainly on the story aspect. I agree that the two extremes of the fan base are well... extreme. I don't hate it or love it. I admit I haven't played it, but I have seen a full play through of the game. And honestly the game play looks fun. I love the brutality of the last of us, so a more modern bloodier version of that looks fun. And I do appreciate what the story is trying to do. But there's one problem. And that the game's story is hypocritical. It continually shoves in your face that Ellie's the bad guy, and by all means she is. But they keep making her feel bad for her decisions, and she constantly feels down by all of the deaths she's causing. And Ellie feeling bad for killing the guys who actually wronged her makes no sense, when she's sadistic as fuck when killing the npcs in game. Goes to your point of ludo-narrative dissonance. It would actually worked a lot more if Ellie acted like Abby; constantly denying and blindly justifying her actions. And Ellie feeling bad while she goes on her rampage isn't terrible, but they don't really do this with Abby. When I saw the leaks and heard that you play as the villain, I was actually excited. Playing from the perspective from the person who killed Joel sounds really cool narrative wise. And the attempt was nice but the execution was terrible. The game makes it seem like Abby's actions were justified. When she honestly goes down the same path that Ellie does. She never even really acknowledges her actions even when Ellie confronts her at the end. They had a good idea, but meh execution. Like idk about you but Abby saying "good" to "but she's pregnant" is pretty evil in my book. And I'm not saying the game is making Abby a saint but still. I think a way better example of showing the "useless cycle of violence" is Spec Ops: The Line. If you haven't played, my god you should it's honestly perfect for your channel, but anyway. In that game (without going into spoilers) the main character goes down a downward spiral of violence, but denies it and justifies until the end. Having a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" realization at the end. And the direction of Abby not acknowledging her actions and denying the violence of it isn't bad. But they don't go anywhere with that, and it seems the game implies her actions are justified, when they're equally as fucked up as Ellie's actions. I think the choosing to kill Abby or not would make it more tolerable. Like you said give the choice to the player, but honestly I think there would've been a better way to end it. Abby is basically broken at the end, all of her friends, besides one, are dead. And it would've been cool if Ellie confronting her caused her to break even more. She finally feels the remorse and acknowledges the deaths that SHE causes and breaks down. It would also be cool for her to realize how similar she really is to Ellie, they both lost their father in fucked up ways. Being broken and realizing how much she wasted by killing Joel (causing her friends deaths adding to the "cycle of violence") she can't take it anymore. And thinking about this, it's definitely very bleak, but I think it drives the point home way more than what we got. I think it would make sense for Abby to kill herself. Denying Ellie her revenge but also punishing herself for her actions. I'm not saying she deserves punishment, that would be for you to decide, but it would drive the theme home. Ellie went through this whole journey causing Tommy's death, the death of some of her friends, and her lover to leave her just to watch Abby end herself in regret. It would drive the point that all the cycle of violence does is just cause more pain. Abby's suicide would be way more of a slap in the face to Ellie to what she's done. And my point of making Ellie not feel remorse for the deaths she caused only until after Abby kills herself would also work more. If she didn't feel remorse (or maybe did feel a little but then would justify it by saying it's Abby's fault) and felt completely justified in her actions. Like she sees Abby as this evil person who killed her father; seeing Abby finally feel remorse and shoot herself, would really be a punch in the gut for Ellie. She would realize how she went on the same path that Abby did, and would realize how all of this was futile, because she can never bring her friends, and Joel back. All because she just wanted revenge for something she never had control over.
P.S I really should emphasize you should play Spec Ops: the Line (if you haven't). It's really good and has one of the most amazing stories in gaming. An example of "ludo-narrative harmony" in your words. Also sorry for the huge paragraph, and any grammar mistakes I might've missed
I think Ellie's feelings towards her own actions (regretful yet persistent, due to her obsession with getting revenge), come from the major characters she faces like Nora, Owen and Mel, and soon enough Abby.
Ellie acts sadisticly against every single WLF or Seraphite she finds because she sees them as nothing but obstacles, but when she finds out Nora was a firefly, that Mel is pregnant and Owen probably the father, that Abby and Lev might have a relationship similar to her's and Joel's, these things separate them from every single other person that was out hunting for her.
Ellie doesn't care about random enemies screaming in agonizing pain, but when she tortures Nora whom could've been someone she would think of as an ally, when she seemingly kills someone else's equivalent to Dina aswell as an unborn baby or that she would cause as much pain to Lev as Abby caused to her by killing her, because of these things they become human to Ellie, acting out her violence on them now takes an emotional toll which she is self aware about, and yet persists on continuing her mission.
I thought TLOU 2 portrayed BOTH revenge acts as bad while also showing you that the people doing them weren't awful inherently, after all no one actually thinks they're the villain. The game doesn't say that Abby's murder of Joel is *justified* in a holistic sense, only that it is the same justification that Ellie had. This is mirrored by the WLF - Seraphite conflict, where they're only fighting each other for their limited, xenophobic understanding of the other side.
I also don't think Ellie constantly feels down for her murder rampage, to start with she just kills people who are otherwise hostile towards her, and by implication, any other random person who could've been wandering through. Because she knows nothing of these people other than they kill on sight, there's no remorse for their murders. It's only after she has to *talk* to and then torture or kill Abby's friends that she slowly realises that what she's doing feels wrong, yet not as wrong as Joel's death, which she sees as totally unjustified, and backing out at the point would make all the deaths so far meaningless, so she keeps going - because *obviously* her justification is different and proper while Abby is a psychopath.
The game forces you to play two people who, because of your prior attachments in part 1, appear on opposite ends of the decency spectrum. Then it shows you that they're far more alike than you thought.
This is the core principle that the game challenges, and given the divide of the world today politically, it's no wonder that so many heavy critics of the game have a wall up that stops them from empathising with anyone who is "the enemy".
"and Kirbys narrative.. I don't know I assume it matches the gameplay"
Kirby fans - HE DOESNT KNOW
God, I love this channel.
The most powerful scene for me was when Ellie took on the role of the cannibal leader from Last of Us 1, with Abbey trying to sneak around and survive and Ellie being this invincible scary murderous monster. That shook me.
I find it ironic that Ellie doesn’t get a choice in whether she lives or died to save humanity, and then naughty dog doesn’t give you the choice whether or not to get revenge
I’m still bummed they wouldn’t let me tell Tommy to piss off and let me live my happy lesbian life, working on my trauma and ptsd in a healthy environment. Having to go to California felt like the betrayal most felt when it switched to Abbey.
I agree. Doing monstrous things does not make you a monster. But reveling in that monstrosity and living in it through and through, does. Abby did. And while maybe she didn't start out as a monster, she did lose her humanity somewhere along the line. That's why the game ending went for the cliche trope of "I won't be a monster like you." Hero/Villian dynamic.
That's not at all what happened. Abby's entire story in Seattle is based on the immense guilt she feels about what she did to Joel.
12:50
Dante: “Well yes but actually no.”
This comment is so damn underrated.
When this video was made he only had 369 subs now he has 369k subs what a glow up
I'm gonna be honest, no good review of Tlou 2 will ever change my mind on the story, writing, characters, plot, so on, because most reviews on UA-cam and pretty much the rest of the internet that praise this game are almost 100% PlayStation shills, but not you, your video actually made a bit of sense, it didn't make me rethink my thoughts on TLoU 2, not by a fucking longshot, but I could honestly see where you were coming from, even though I practically disagreed with virtually everything you said about this game and it's story, characters, writing, etc I could actually understand what you meant, almost as if you weren't paid by ND to make this vid lol. Keep making more vids dude, I really like your style.
go watch dunkeys review
@@Midwestemoisme Did. It was shit, like all of his other reviews.
@@Segadrome lmao what a very nuanced opinion!
@@Midwestemoisme don't care. I stopped watching that shill years ago.
Sometimes in Fallout 3 when you shoot a raider and you almost kill them and they're by themselves they will run away in fear saying don't kill me.
Damn bobert getting traction with the new channel
Who is this Bobert? I am naught but a simple musical cobbler
I am perfectly fine with a story playing out as the creator intended in a game. Linearity is not, nor has it ever been an inherent problem in games, but yeah, the option to make that choice at the end of TLOU2 would've been perfect as far as making the player do what it wants them to do instead of literally making them (if that makes any sense). I think another opportunity to make a choice would be to decide whether to stay at the farm or go after Abby, but the choice at the very end absolutely needed to happen in order to make the player connect with the experience as deeply as intended. If the purpose was to pose existential and moral questions to the audience and ask them to reflect, allowing them to make that final choice would've been the best way to accomplish that.
The only way i can explain this game is: this game is one beatiful shitfuck of emotional rollercoasters and everything you do lets you think about your mental health.....
for me it lets me think why some characters got so fucking stupid compared to the first game. And why Anita Sarkessian that fake feminist who never played a videogame in her whole life had a saying in this Game‘s story. You can really see in wich parts of the Story a angry agressive feminist had her influence.
Damn another good one brother. I sometimes feel like i completely think exactly what you do, when it comes to these types of games, yet you’re just that much smarter to explain how I feel about the game when i can’t lol. It’s actually a funny thing to get into that talk of decision making games where that cliche comes in like in most video games where you’re given that “moral high ground” choice, and I think not only do games include the “spare the opposition” option in order to allow the player to relate to being a good person, I think sometimes including the “kill the opposition” option allows certain people to instill their sense of their own mental fortitude. I think some people can feel just as good about themselves from choosing to kill the bad guy as they can when they chose to spare them. The whole sense that you’re willing to do what it takes to handle someone who has wronged your loved ones and close friends might confirm with some people that they have what it takes to be a strong protector of who they love. This whole “if anyone ever touched x person in my life I would be strong enough to avenge them” could be just as empowering as sparing that person. I think the game did well and not too sure why it got so much hate before it even released.
Yeah, the story leaks killed this game because the beat-by-beat plot isn't great. Actually playing it lets you get wrapped up in the characters, which is the writing's strength in my opinion. This game just sorta got killed in the cradle, I think time will be kinder to it.
This game would've benefited immensely from a choice at the end. Letting the player explore a situation and reflect on it themselves, y'know?
Also, I'm not smart or good at explaining things, I just fuckin slave over these scripts. I must've written 30 pages, but threw all but 10 of them out.
I always appreciate the support, man. I had an epiphany while playing this game which will be the thesis of my next video. I think you'll like it a lot if you liked this one
@@DJPeachCobbler I loved the video and agree with you, but im surprised that even after all the hate this game has received you still have faith in people "reflecting" their choice of killing her after seeing how emotionally they reacted. 😅
I think this hit upon an issue I didn't even realise I had with TLOU2. I didn't enjoy the game particularly for a variety of reasons, but I still played it to completion and tried to form my own viewpoint. But it didn't even really occur to me how the ending wasn't just undercutting the game's own execution but actually hampering its ability to convey the point it was so very desperately trying to ram into your skull the entire time. I don't think it would've made me do a total 180 on the game, but I can absolutely see how simply giving the player the final say at that ending would've done a better job of bringing the themes full circle in a way that a videogame can.
This is by far the best review I've seen of this game, it pretty much nails everything while avoiding all the issues
“The wounds of conscience always leave a scar.”
P. Syrus
So how much of a conscientious act is it to go forward? Choosing to rest your conscience will only bring more unrest and destruction. It is more correct and more beneficial to try to forget and try to prevent the loss of conscience-blood rather than revenge...
Unscrupulousness is one of the important factors that increase grudge and hatred. Injustice and unscrupulousness have a great role in the separation, polarization and deterioration of the ties of society.
I continue with Victor Hugo.
Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just. The most perfect justice is conscience...
“whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche is a reminder to measure yourself and be aware of your own thoughts.
In other words, you should always criticize yourself when you enter into a "questioning war" because your life and your own feelings always have plans for you. And the "narrative" of "The Last Of Us Part II" handles this with great mastery.
In addition, The Last Of Us Part II's script is deep, philosophical, dark, emotional and thought-provoking.
A masterpiece that has taken the industry so far and set a new bar.
Again, I will continue with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche:
“When we are unpreparedly (or impromptuly) questioned about a subject, the first thought that comes to our mind is often not our own thought but merely an ordinary thought belonging to our class, position, and ancestry. Self-thoughts rarely surface.”
Time, patience and thinking skills are required for high-level, powerful and philosophical “things” that are actually difficult to understand, difficult to notice. In order to find the real and the essence...
The Last Of Us Part II is a masterpiece on the meaning of life, moral relativism, the philosophy of empathy, self-criticism, the definition of the concept of human, narrative art, the creation of a post-apocalyptic universe (dystopia), the meaning of respect, the meaning of thinking and the transfer of feelings.The Last Of Us Part II is the ultimate masterpiece of the eighth generation. And these concepts require “extremely hard thinking”.
Let me end with a final Nietzsche quote:
“The life of the enemy. Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.”
Because maybe that person or that thing is not an enemy. It is only the key that will unlock your own conscience and your own feelings...
I connected quite deeply with The Last Of Us Part II. I trusted it to take me to the places it was going and I was extremely glad to have gone. I like the Ellie in first game but in the second i felt like i actually understood her and actually loved her. I felt like I actually understood Abby too and actually empathized with Abby. I am no stranger to being lost in the fog myself.
We cannot talk about good and evil directly, they are related and relative concepts.
Formulating that existing evil was or was not done by a God does not prevent evil from existing. Evil can be tolerated, guided by the will to live. This endurance will be through art, morality and love. Albert Camus attributes his rejection of God to the existence of evil and its abundant and violent experience by humans. According to him, the question we should ask is: Is there evil in this world? Evil, if any, is incompatible with the idea of God. In a divine order, in a world created and ruled by God, the existence of evil is inconceivable. For example, death is an evil and evil inflicts punishment on us. However, “the one who is right is the one who never kills”. This means that God cannot exist. Either we are not free, and the almighty God is responsible for evil; or we are free and responsible but God is not omnipotent.
According to philosophers, evil harms the bond between people and the state of being human. In my opinion, kindness builds bridges between people, develops bonds and contributes to being human. Kindness is a joy that includes honor, not arrogance. So the fools and the dead are people who do not feel their conscience, do not understand themselves and become numb with this meaninglessness, this is not true peace,
Good people are actually people who have attained peace of mind and prosperity. Their difficult but constructive and strong-willed behaviors show that they trust their own worth and justice. Because “the thing" that is better than being good is conscientious justice, and this is what real goodness and real good person are.
That’s why The Last Of Us Part II is the most unique and emotional roller coaster masterpiece...
not all games need choices. This one didn't need it either. It needed more character and relationship development. Abby is the only character who changes through the game, but it feels unearned because she spends like 30 mins of game time with the kid that takes her through the same arc Joel took over the course of an entire game with Ellie. Which is why the first game was great and why the second game falls flat. Isn't terrible. Just doesn't live up to the original.
games don't need gameplay, you can just watch cutscenes 😏
@@HarshNerf that isn’t really comparable
Not gonna lie this is hands down the best review of this game I've come across.. And I completely agree. Top notch my guy - just found you but you've got my attention. Time to see what else you got!
This. The part where you compare Lisa with TLoU is exactly why SpecOps: The Line never worked.
11:35 "Because at the end of the day it's not about the characters. Games are always about you."
This is really the crux of the one of the main debates and gripes about the ending of the game in my opinion. I think the "debate" gets bogged down in "the player should/should not be given a choice at the end", and I put debate in air quotes because, this game isn't one that *wants* to give you a choice here. It's like trying to debate an answer on a multiple choice test. There two answers that are just wrong, one that's kinda right, and one that *is* correct. The one counter argument that DJ Peachy boy could come up with is the only objective one. Neil Druckman wanted to tell you a story that let you hold the rains for a little while throughout it. Giving the player a choice, regardless of that choice, I think, misses the point. Could it have worked as a movie... or upcoming TV show? I'd like to think yeah it could. Would it have as much impact? No.
I felt like the game writers were disappointed that you liked Ellie and Joel and decided to spend the whole game showing you what the writers think a good character to actually like would be with Abby.
There is no GOOD or BAD in this story. This world has stripped most people of their morals. Anytime they do good they are rewarded by it with by death.
@@Deenuhhh And when they do bad, they are still rewarded with death.
You sir have certainly earned a sub after " Am I really a good person, or am I a good person because it's easy". Could certainly say more but bravo
I really like your content man, and I think that at some point you might reach exponential growth. When you are there, innovate, don’t let this go.
It already feels like that's begun. I mean, I've almost doubled my subs this month and it was the same way the month prior.
Of course, more is always better, but I'm happy with this amount of growth. I love making these videos, I'd be making these even if I still had 20 subs. I'd also be super frustrated, but I definitely don't do it for the money and fame lol.
DJ Peach Cobbler best of luck regardless
As a game dev that was looking for a narrative impact on his story, tx im gonna save the vid to watch as many times as I need
I really enjoyed this video. I think the choice would be a great way to improve the story, and you touched on a lot of important points.
My opinion on the game is pretty much this: Ellie and Abby are, just like Joel (and everyone in TLOU universe) bad people. Because the world isn't conducive to good people. Of course, if everyone is bad, who is good, if everyone is super, no one will be etc. But still. Bad people who are capable of good things, such as Joel's love for Ellie, Ellie's love for Dina, and Abby's love for Lev.
That being said, I still prefer Ellie to Abby. I understand why Abby did what she did, but the way she did it was too extreme imo. She didn't just kill Joel, she tortured him. For that reason, I think I'd choose to kill Abby if given the choice (amongst other factors, such as her character broadly being more senselessly violent and remorseless)
Ideally, your redux choice version of the game wouldn't overtly judge me for this reason. Killing Abby shouldn't be the Bad Ending, neither should it be the Good. It should simply be An Ending, as should sparing her. It isn't the place for a game to judge me and my actions, and tell me what I did was right or wrong. Not in a situation as morally complex as this, with so many differing perspectives and justifications.
EDIT: Rewatching this a year later, 8:40 sums it up: 'I understood their actions even if I didn't condone them'.
I’m pretty sure the reason there isn’t a choice, is because there will be a part 3, and if you kill Abby, then the story wouldn’t match up.
I was thinking the same thing but a workaround would be have abby be a minor character in part 3 and have her replaced if you killed her in part 2. They do that in the dragon age games and it works.
This wouln't work if abby is planned as a major character in part 3 but we'll see. Maybe part 3 will have several different endings.
As if the concept of making more than one ending and sticking with one for the sequel was new. They didn't because the lead writer didn't want the playersto have their own conclusions. He wanted to tell you the message in a way it could only have one answer. Neil has a fame of having a big ego.
@@led_tower I don't think they'd go with Abby as a main character. They spent so long (poorly) trying to humanize Abby, and massively failing for so many people. A decent chunk of their audience would still dislike Abby, if not for all of the terrible shit she did, then for how much the TLOU2 experience sucked because of her section of the game.
Let’s hope not.
In my mind there was just the first game and this shithole fan made game the likes of the enclave dlc written by lizard furries for FO3
i mean its been accepted before to just have some endings not be canon in other series
Great video, man! I could totally see you becoming super popular later on!
ua-cam.com/video/wXe-5mUeLC8/v-deo.html
you should try fortune telling lol
@@myusernameusedtobereallycr2075 Haha, I forgot about this comment, looks like I was right!
Ellie did not forgive Abby because she spent half a game playing as her.
To be fair, you stop feeling as bad for the Joy Mutants in LISA when they go for the throat and try to kill your guys.
Honestly this game meant so much to me. For me it was one of those rare times when I was playing something and thought in a year I’m gonna be looking back on this and feeling nostalgic. I love this game
One of the things about this game that annoys me more because it's pet peeve more than anything is how well built Abby is. I majored in kinesiology for a long time, and was almost an Athletic Trainer. I know how much effort and how well a woman would have to eat to be built like that. She would, under no circumstance, not have access to that kind of food, equipment, or knowledge to train for that. The truth about kinesiology is that it's a niche science, and it would probably be the first one completely abandoned post-apocalypse in favor of literally everything else.
Forget about the fact that a woman wouldn't develop muscles like a man if she worked out. Natural muscular women look even more feminine. Abby looks like a female athlete on steroids.
Once you realize who they based her physique on, this becomes even more obvious (It's Colleen Flotsch, an enhanced crossfit athlete).
The main reason i believe it should have ended with ellie killing abby was because when she returns to her home her young family is gone and she's lost her ability to play guitar which is her last connection to Joel, but she never got her revenge.
Had she killed Abby it would have left the player with the question of "you got your revenge but was it worth it?" instead Ellie doesnt get her revenge and has lost everything.
Abby by contrast did get her revenge and also went through a redemption arc with lev similar to joel with ellie and she gets to leave and rejoin the fireflies.
So if anything the message of the game is "revenge is wrong, unless you're an unstoppable killing machine"
But we already know revenge isn't worth it by that point. That's kind of what Abby's entire story was. She suffered immensely for what she did. I don't understand how you missed that.
Whenever someone says tlou2 isn't a 0 or a 10 people seem to lose their minds. But the game is a 7-8 it's nowhere near perfect but the game isn't a scam.
You believing it's a 7-8 is the objective Truth or something ? 💀
I think it’s a 9. We are all entitled to our opinions on it but it can definitely be said that it isn’t a perfect 10/10 or a complete 0/10.
@Alvi Syahri Man, I can’t imagine being that disappointed with a sequel that it actually dampens my enjoyment of the original.
Well...actually...uh...now I’m getting The Last Jedi flashbacks. I can see where you’re coming from.
@@theeagle4463 With this game , it makes you think and realize that Last Of Us 2013 , has always been a tragedy .
I give it a 7.5 good game.
Everything that you said is true but if there was a choice there couldn’t be a sequel
I pretty much see her as she hulk with a golf club
I honestly agreed with everything you said in this video, having that choice at the end would’ve really sold it. Brilliant idea. It’s also nice to see people in the comments who don’t agree put still respect the opinion.
It has already been explained that revenge is not just between Ellie and Abby, with enemy AI, well-written notes and visual narration in the environment. They have successfully created the nature of the entire The Last Of Us universe with revenge, violence, grudge, negative emotions and laws of nature, and they have described a "community of human relations" and the personal, psychological and deep journey of a few people within the world of The Last Of Us. In general, revenge seems singular, but when you dig deeper, things change completely. Enemy AI acting like real human; Like Ellie, Abby, and the people they care about around them, they (the enemy AI) have feelings of revenge, grudge, hatred, sadness, and an idea or ideas of what it means to lose someone or something they love. It is a very important narrative for the themes of empathy and revenge that every person in the universe of The Last Of Us cries when their friend or dog dies, laments for their friend or dog who died, goes crazy, and says that they will get "revenge" from the person who killed them...
Don't you understand these? There's a lot of amazingly written lore, for example. There is a "lore" about the life of the hunter Boris. A revenge story is also told there. Later, these themes also have visual narratives...
There are points that I disagree with in the empathy part. It's not about Joel's death with a baseball bat. Even if he was shot and killed by a gun, the job would not have changed, and the motivation of Abby's killing purpose and manner is also well given. It could have been done more sympathetically or not, it doesn't matter to me. The important thing is to provide the motivation and personal depth of that character very well. The Last Of Us Part II does that, for sure. It's not about making the character look more sympathetic either, because whatever "perception and the angle you want to look at" is, empathy takes shape. I will explain this situation within the framework of perception and perspective, but first of all, I will state the following:
“Had Joel faced a "happier, more sympathetic death", this would constitute manipulative dramatization as well as stereotyping to convey the bright (good) side of empathy.”
“Instead of tweezing specific moments in the story and dramatizing them with an exaggeration and cliché or an unorthodox optimistic narrative/writing”, the Naughty Dog team preferred a narrative/writing that very effectively highlights the emphasis, emotionality and depth of the story as a whole. This causes them to better blend realism, naturalism and fictionality in the story. Belfast is a perfect example of this narrative...
The Last Of Us Part II is absolutely successful in establishing empathy, subjectively...
But empathy is very subjective and has a unique perspective, inner-world and perception.
“Empathy makes good people better because good people don't like suffering, and empathy makes that pain evident. But if you make a sadist empathetic, he/she'll just be a happier sadist."
Paul Bloom/Against Empathy
And that's why The Last Of Us Part II isn't 100% good at empathy, but it certainly is. The success rate in empathy is definitely above 70-50%... Because the characters of the first game were mostly dramatized and told in a one-sided way. And also, it's been 7 years since the first game came out. People saw the characters in the first game as flawless, heroic, an idol in their own life, the best written game characters, characters they always show love with patterns of kindness. And for seven years, without exception, they thought this way and turned these feelings into a reflex. Their thoughts became routine and monotonous in a way that was difficult to change. Their own feelings for the characters have all but hardened and become stereotypes, and what they always dreamed of was that the lives of those characters, which continued after the finale, were perfectly filled with goodness and sweet drama.
But this is a wrong and impossible point of view...
For this reason, the event will be resolved when people overcome their own instincts, their own false dreams and the false feelings they have reflexively formed and stereotyped, because the concept of empathy in The Last Of Us Part II is innovative, creative and versatile. If you have "unconditionally" loved the main character in the first game and declared him your "favourite character", you cannot remain indifferent to the "brutal and dark but justified death" of that favorite character. This type of people will tend to do this without exception, no matter how Abby is told, because the problem is in producing perception and perspective. I think these types of people are deprived of producing them. When they control Abby as a playable character, they want to "do it instinctively" because they are caught in the "hate theme" that the game wants, and they interfere with this progress only in terms of gameplay because revenge is "instinctual" as William Shakespeare said...
“If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”
William Shakespeare
Maybe we're struggling with our self-control by controlling Abby. When we control Abby, we must test ourselves, our inner-world perceptions and our instinct-controlled emotions on a game basis, because by controlling Abby we are fighting our own instincts, our perceptions. We test our own emotions and inner world on this deep psychological journey and if we pass this test we can see that Abby is really well written and has a deep character portrayal...
Aside from Hello Future Me's video, this is one of the best breakdowns I've seen of this game's themes.
girlfriend reviews has a good vid on the games themes, i think it works well with this video
Stalin *did* say that quote, in Potsdam, 1945, at the Potsdam Conference.
Watching this gain after 2 years, that "369 Subscribers" really did hit me good. Proud of you Mr.CookieMcFace, really proud of you :)
I listen to Cobbler on my little speaker, and I start to feel like Cuba Gooding jr from the movie Radio 😅
hey man, i have been following you a long time, and i love what you have to say not because its teh thing i want to listenl, but because its the right opinion. thanks for that. keep going your channel is the best one in youtube. (sorry for my english, is my second lenguage)
I liked the fact that you don’t choose whether or not to save Ellie in the first game, because it solidifies Joel’s character as selfish and villainous but sympathetic and human at the same time. It would’ve felt like the bad ending I’d you’d been given a choice whereas it’s just “the ending.” But I agree that the ability for Ellie to choose, for us to choose, would have come full circle to Joel taking her choice away in the first game.
It doesn’t makes since in the story for Ellie to kill her or have the choice. If they did that then there should be the choice to take out Ellie when Abby found them in the theater