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Now TLoU Part 2 has been out for a while, let me ask you. (Spoilers)

Did Naughty Dog do the right thing killing Joel?

  • Yes

    Votes: 159 34.0%
  • No

    Votes: 238 51.0%
  • Unsure

    Votes: 70 15.0%

  • Total voters
    467

skit_data

Member
Part 3 should be five years into the future and Ellie is a recluse living by herself in a town not far from Jackson like Bill. She is paranoid' alienated from everybody including Dina and JJ and does not trust anybody. Word gets back to her that Jackson suffers a terrible bandit attack so she goes back to see what she can do and she finds the town in shambles with only a few survivors. Some of those survivors are Tommy who has leaned to walk again but wears an eyepatch in his right eye and has closed himself off from everybody and Dina plus JJ.

Her and Tommy find out where the bandit camp is and they go to wipe it out and find a few people being held hostage. They free the hostages and one of them tells Ellie and Tommy about a doctor in Mexico who can develop a vaccine from immune people. without killing them so Ellie sees this as her chance to redeem herself and finally give her life some meaning. Tommy comes with her we see too broken people destroyed by vengeance and hate bond and rediscover their humanity through a greater purpose.

When they get to Mexico they find Abby involved with this group who are party of the newly formed Fireflies and Tommy wants to just kill her while Ellie realizes that though they will never be friends this is bigger than the both of them. She calms Tommy down and they develop this vaccine but realize it is a long way to rebuilding the world. Ellie and Tommy return and her Dina reconcile. The theme of the third game will be hope and will switch between Ellie and Tommy in gameplay. There could be SP Abby DLC if people want that.

We could also learn through notes what the origin of the outbreak is and the kind of human tinkering that made it jump from insects to people.
That’s roughly how I imagine a sequel. Moving the greater story forward by trying to use both Ellies and Abbys will to do something for the greater good of humanity. Some will call it character assassination, but I don’t give a shit. Naughty Dogs writing is good enough to keep me interested and the series need some kind of hopeful ending. Would be a nice trilogy with great themes that color each installment.
 
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Ulysses 31

Member
5yrs of relative safety, in a well run commune out in the woods somewhere can afford you the comfort, that when enjoyed a little too much, can result in a lapse of judgement.

You'd rather believe that Joel is some sort of tank, who survives countless encounters with human and clicker antagonists for his whole life?
The game gives no indication Joel and Tommy's sharpness have dulled so much to be so trusting of strangers. Joel even acknowledges to Tommy what he had to do to get Ellie out at the start of the game so they both seem well aware that people might be out for Joel or Ellie specifically.

I don't expect Joel to never make mistakes but when he does one that costs him his life, I expect it to not come out of the blue. This Joel got complacent because of the safety of the town is something players have to make up in order to make his death work better and that's not a sign of good story telling IMO.
 

Woggleman

Member
Joel and Tommy were also in a dangerous situation where their senses were geared towards surviving a horde of infected so the safety of that mansion seemed like a good idea in the moment. Also Abby's group did not seem like dangerous people when you first meet them. They look like a bunch of kids so I can see why their guard was down at first.
 

yurinka

Member
What made TLOU1 great and special was the two main characters and the bond between both. I think they should have kept it (with him alive) because it's something key for the IP, and he's a beloved character.

But seems that someone in ND in charge of Lost Legacy and TLOU2 hates white cis males so they decided to torture and kill Joel and to replace Joel and Ellie by a woke Aliexexpress cheap copy of them, that didn't work at all because didn't have half the charisma of the other characters and felt a cheap replacement to make the SJW crowd happy.

So no, I think it was an awful idea to kill him an replace him with tokenism characters who aren't great, interesting characters as Ellie and Joel but instead are just a manly looking body woman and a trans kid to put themselves the diversity quota representation badge.

Abby is only a trans friendly copy of Joel and Ellie mixed, uglyfied enough (as they said) to make sure she doesn't seems attractive to males. Lev is a trans bad copy of Ellie. And that's all they are nothing else than the trans kid and the manly looking woman (who you hate because killed a beloved character). Their relationship is just a bad copy of Joel and Ellie and doesn't add anything to the game or the franchise.

The game also features a latino who mostly basically only says 'pendejo' to make sure you know he's a latino, a black woman just to have a black woman there, and so on. Filled with uninteresting filler characters that are there due to tokenism, just to say they represented X group.

And I don't like that. I like representation as was made in Left Behind. Yes, Ellie was a girl, lesbian, and the other girl was black. But I didn't give a fuck about that because that wasn't important and the only thing about these characters wasn't that they were lesbian and the new character black. The important thing was the story being told there, which was great, was properly told and added stuff and context to the previous game (but not too much because it was a small DLC and that's ok), and the relationship between these characters (plus Ellie+Joel), which had this magic, this spark that we previously saw in TLOU1 and Uncharted games. And that Abby and Lev, or Abby and the guy don't have.

No and yes. Joel dying was inevitable for the franchise.
You're wrong, they could have made 200 games more without killing him, in fact they can still make 200 games more with him. Look at Mario or Mega Man.

People who dislike the game because their papi got clapped dont fully understand the consequences of his actions in the first game.
It's just a game. Following that logic we'd have to kill all main characters of all action games because they kill people/zombies/aliens/animals. Can't wait to see Master Chief, Lara Croft, Link, Mario, Kirby and so on getting tortured and killed in their next game.
 
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NickFire

Member
Huge mistake for me personally as it (and the notion Joel's saving her in part 1 was a grey area) turned the game from a must play into a hard no thanks (at least until there's a cheap next gen version). But the game did really well so it seems like a good decision for the game. Whether the next iteration of the franchise suffers or not is tbd, but there's not really any evidence it will.
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
It's just a game. Following that logic we'd have to kill all main characters of all action games because they kill people/zombies/aliens/animals. Can't wait to see Master Chief, Lara Croft, Link, Mario, Kirby and so on getting tortured and killed in their next game.
Yes its a games, but its a game with a plot, narrative etc. Who Master Chief kills, or Lara Croft pales in comparison that Joel clapped the only known doctor that could MAKE a cure. Imagine in our world, if the only person who could make the Covid vaccine got clapped? Different scenarios but one is a pandemic that causes sickness, the other causes people to turn into clickers, runners etc and has ruined civilization, think about that.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Huge mistake for me personally as it (and the notion Joel's saving her in part 1 was a grey area) turned the game from a must play into a hard no thanks (at least until there's a cheap next gen version). But the game did really well so it seems like a good decision for the game. Whether the next iteration of the franchise suffers or not is tbd, but there's not really any evidence it will.
Hey try not to be so stubborn and maybe give things a chance? It's a great game.
I think the initial prerelease fake news really stuck to the game and turned a huge disservice
 

Woggleman

Member
The thing is that even though it wasn't the creator's intention many people thought of Joel as some type of super hero similar to Batman so therefore the idea that his actions while understandable also did a lot of damage to many other people is hard for them to grasp. I am sure Joel himself felt he was doing the right thing but in his actions he also killed the only doctor who could possible make a cure and plus left many people's lives in shambles. His actions had a devastating ripple effect and it makes sense that one of those people affected would get their payback. TLOU series like it or not is very true to life to how most people would react.

The idea that Abby would just forgive the guy who left her father in a pool of blood dead on the floor is what would be unbelievable.
 

NickFire

Member
Hey try not to be so stubborn and maybe give things a chance? It's a great game.
I think the initial prerelease fake news really stuck to the game and turned a huge disservice
I'm not being stubborn. I'm just not interested in the story they are telling.

Also, I'm rather confident that I'll try it once the (expected by me) remaster is cheap. To me its like a movie that I want to see just to see it, but not willing to pay theatre or ppv prices for.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
I am sure Joel himself felt he was doing the right thing but in his actions he also killed the only doctor who could possible make a cure and plus left many people's lives in shambles. His actions had a devastating ripple effect and it makes sense that one of those people affected would get their payback. TLOU series like it or not is very true to life to how most people would react.

The idea that Abby would just forgive the guy who left her father in a pool of blood dead on the floor is what would be unbelievable.
A doctor who's fine with killing patients without informed consent, he knows full well what the operation will do to Ellie so that makes it attempted murder. Abby seems fine with it too so that does reveal interesting things about their moral character.

Are people really holding Joel up as a super hero though? Usually when I hear "Joel did nothing wrong" I assume it's about the hospital bit where IMO that's mostly true.
 
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Woggleman

Member
A doctor who's fine with killing patients without informed consent, he knows full well what the operation will do to Ellie so that makes him a murder. Abby seems fine with it too so that does reveal interesting things about their moral character.

Are people really holding Joel up as a super hero though? Usually when I hear "Joel did nothing wrong" I assume it's about the hospital bit where IMO that's mostly true.
You are talking about a situation where civilization has completely collapsed because of a horrific pandemic that literally turns people into monsters and the only way out of it is making a vaccine which will cost one person her life. This is a world where death and destruction are around every corner and you are lucky if you make to thirty. I understand why Jerry felt that it was justified. In his mind he was saving lives.
 

NickFire

Member
You are talking about a situation where civilization has completely collapsed because of a horrific pandemic that literally turns people into monsters and the only way out of it is making a vaccine which will cost one person her life. This is a world where death and destruction are around every corner and you are lucky if you make to thirty. I understand why Jerry felt that it was justified. In his mind he was saving lives.
There is zero grey area and the doctor deserved what he got. What he tried to do was fundamentally no different than when children were sacrificed because people thought that could end a drought.
 

Woggleman

Member
There is zero grey area and the doctor deserved what he got. What he tried to do was fundamentally no different than when children were sacrificed because people thought that could end a drought.
There is a difference between hard science and religious mumbo jumbo.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
You are talking about a situation where civilization has completely collapsed because of a horrific pandemic that literally turns people into monsters and the only way out of it is making a vaccine which will cost one person her life. This is a world where death and destruction are around every corner and you are lucky if you make to thirty. I understand why Jerry felt that it was justified. In his mind he was saving lives.
Even if civilization has collapsed, does that really mean people can't be moral/immoral anymore? Sounds like force decides what's right then and you should be siding with Joel since he came out on top of that violent altercation in part I.

I'm sure Jerry and the Fireflies meant well but if they employ methods that kill patients without asking their opinion first then they shouldn't be surprised when someone gets violent with them.

We also have to be very charitable towards the Fireflies in assuming they can produce enough vaccines to make a difference in that world and that they wouldn't abuse that power or get conquered or wiped out by other factions with less noble intentions.
 
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Woggleman

Member
Even if civilization has collapsed, does that really mean people can't be moral/immoral anymore? Sounds like force decides what's right then and you should be siding with Joel since he came out on top of that violent altercation in part I.

I'm sure Jerry and the Fireflies meant well but if they employ methods that kill patients without asking their opinion first then they shouldn't be surprised when someone gets violent with them.

We also have to be very charitable towards the Fireflies in assuming they can produce enough vaccines to make a difference in that world and that they wouldn't abuse that power or get conquered or wiped out by other factions with less noble intentions.
There is truth to this but these are desperate people who see a way out of the hellscape they are living in and they want to go for it. Jerry probably wanted a better world for Abby than violence and brutal survival. Both Joel and Jerry had noble motivations and some people can't see that from both ends.
 

Fake

Member
To be fair the leaks and rumors are far more better than the real game.

The moment I saw houses into flames and that piece of trailers showing Tommy saying ' we gonna left our city off guard' I thought Ellie took a group of the city best men/women to hunt revenge, but at the end the consequence was her seeing the city burning because she took a loads of guards to help her into this revenge pursuit.

The city was attack by some raiders/thieves and their best guards was gone. Would be amazing imo.
 
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Jerry probably wanted a better world for Abby than violence and brutal survival.
Vaccine does jack shit to amend that, as evidenced by, you know, Ellie being immune throughout the entirety of The Last Of Us franchise?
If anything, Last Of Us 2 cements that infected are complete pushovers. People wage wars not paying attention to infected at all. People make pets out of them. 99% of the time people die on-screen it's to another human, not zombies.
Entirely unconvinced it was worth taking a child's life to get rid of them. You'd much rather run into a pack of clickers than a hungry bear.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
There is truth to this but these are desperate people who see a way out of the hellscape they are living in and they want to go for it. Jerry probably wanted a better world for Abby than violence and brutal survival. Both Joel and Jerry had noble motivations and some people can't see that from both ends.
Where I fault the game and by extension the Fireflies is that we're not given any clear reason why the operation has to happen before Ellie gets the chance to regain consciousness first. What was the reason they couldn't wait a few hours/day to have Ellie and Joel talk it about it first?

The only reason I can think of with the information in the game is that the Fireflies didn't want to take the chance that Ellie doesn't want to go through with the surgery and that they'd have to force her leaving no doubt that they're the bad guys in this situation.

So for me the part I ending is not as grey as I suspect the creators intended it to be. This made it harder to sell the Fireflies as good people in part II as well for me.
 
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Ulysses 31

Member
Vaccine does jack shit to amend that, as evidenced by, you know, Ellie being immune throughout the entirety of The Last Of Us franchise?
If anything, Last Of Us 2 cements that infected are complete pushovers. People wage wars not paying attention to infected at all. People make pets out of them. 99% of the time people die on-screen it's to another human, not zombies.
Entirely unconvinced it was worth taking a child's life to get rid of them. You'd much rather run into a pack of clickers than a hungry bear.
They even have cleaners to deal with hordes, part II seems to push that Joel doomed the world but at the same time shows a world where human on human violence seems more common than infected on human. o_O
 

NickFire

Member
There is truth to this but these are desperate people who see a way out of the hellscape they are living in and they want to go for it. Jerry probably wanted a better world for Abby than violence and brutal survival. Both Joel and Jerry had noble motivations and some people can't see that from both ends.
I stand by my rejection of the grey area. One side was going to intentionally murder an innocent child, and the other killed the attempted murderer. It's not complicated.
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
I stand by my rejection of the grey area. One side was going to intentionally murder an innocent child, and the other killed the attempted murderer. It's not complicated.
The whole game is based on homicides, Joel is no saint and even his brother has nightmares about what he has done to survive based on the first game and before the first game. One side was fighting for a cure, the other side was fighting for a chance of redemption and guilt for not saving his daughter.
 
Yes he should have been killed, I don't really even mind the way he was killed, but it was so early in the game that I didn't care.

All of the Ellie and Joel flashbacks should have been the beginning of the game with Joel's death being a climax around the halfway point.
 

T8SC

Member
They had a story that invovled killing Joel early on.

Just like Executive Decision killed off Steven Seagal early in the movie.

Respect the story writers for making decisions, it's their story. You don't have to like it.
 
I 100% agree with you on this. Which is one reason it took me at months to start playing the game after that fateful cutscene ended... as a father of daughters, it removed me from that emotional attachment I felt with the first game...


Now with 2, as a revenge story, was still pretty damn great, if they ended it here as they should have...

mpQzKGd.jpg


So yeah, I feel ya OP..
Yep, I agree. I actually thin they added that last section on a few months before the game released. I have a felling that this was the original ending.
 
I voted no due to the execution (aha! See what I did there?), not because there was something inherently bad about killing a main character.

Turning him and Tommy into trusting idiots so that the death could happen was bad enough, the frankly fanfiction moment where Ellie gets to see it and also doesn't get killed as well was idiotic as well. "Hey, let's leave these guys alive that obviously care a lot about Joel and who knows how dangerous they could be since they are his buddies, what could go wrong? You mean they could come and try to get revenge? Nahhhhh. Let's leave them alive".

Not to mention that they replace the character with an insufferable Ellie, a giant unreal woman and a trans kid "look at me! I'm a victim! I suffer so much!". Everyone was annoying and there was no one to bond with or root for.

It was a badly done ultra edgy and emo story written with woke points in mind.

Now, in my own personal view, I played TLOU and loved it because it was Joel's story. Ellie was great but her playable segment was a bit comical at times tbh, but I enjoyed it. However, had I known the sequel was all about the very lesbian revenge story of Ellie and her woke friends, I wouldn't have been interested from the start.
The writing in this game is some of the worst I've seen even though I enjoy the gameplay and the flashback scenes of Joel and Ellie and even Abby and Owen.

Bigot sandwich? Really? A girl who grew up in the post apocalypse is going to all of a sudden start using this vocabulary?

And trans kids? Come on, like anyone would really be concerned with being trans or be concerned about someone being trans when people and infected are trying to shoot you in the head and rip your throat out day in and day out.
 

Madflavor

Member
1. Ellie kills a shit load of people to get to Abby, so she can get revenge for Joel's death.
2. She catches up to Abby, but Abby beats the shit out of her and leaves her alive.
3. Ellie then spends two years with her wife and son, two years to reflect on her actions, Joel's decision, and all the people she's killed.
4. After those two years pass, she finds out where Abby is and decides she's still mad enough to walk hundreds of miles to go kill her.
5. Ellie finds Abby and changes her mind about killing her. Decides to let her live.
6. Ellie changes her mind and decides to kill her after all. They both fight to the death.
7. Ellie in the heat of the moment, with emotions and adrenaline high, reflects on Joel playing a guitar for 2 seconds and changes her mind back to letting Abby live.
8. Ellie goes home to find her Wife took the kid and left her.

The Last of Us Part 2 is a masterpiece in storytelling, about a woman who can't make up her mind.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
1. Ellie kills a shit load of people to get to Abby, so she can get revenge for Joel's death.
2. She catches up to Abby, but Abby beats the shit out of her and leaves her alive.
3. Ellie then spends two years with her wife and son, two years to reflect on her actions, Joel's decision, and all the people she's killed.
4. After those two years pass, she finds out where Abby is and decides she's still mad enough to walk hundreds of miles to go kill her.
5. Ellie finds Abby and changes her mind about killing her. Decides to let her live.
6. Ellie changes her mind and decides to kill her after all. They both fight to the death.
7. Ellie in the heat of the moment, with emotions and adrenaline high, reflects on Joel playing a guitar for 2 seconds and changes her mind back to letting Abby live.
8. Ellie goes home to find her Wife took the kid and left her.

The Last of Us Part 2 is a masterpiece in storytelling, about a woman who can't make up her mind.
We never got to know if she ever forgave Seth and his bigot sandwiches after her revelation about forgiveness. :lollipop_confounded:
 

yurinka

Member
Yes its a games, but its a game with a plot, narrative etc. Who Master Chief kills, or Lara Croft pales in comparison that Joel clapped the only known doctor that could MAKE a cure. Imagine in our world, if the only person who could make the Covid vaccine got clapped? Different scenarios but one is a pandemic that causes sickness, the other causes people to turn into clickers, runners etc and has ruined civilization, think about that.
They weren't sure if the doctor was going to be able to make the cure or not, and the doctor was part of a terrorist organization that fucked them so much. And to try to make the cure would mean to kill his 'daughter', the only person he cares about and the only person that cares about him in an apocalyptic world that sucks and most people would commit suicide to avoid continue living there. And well, probably there were more doctors able to do that, and more inmune people around the world.

Many people would have taken the same decision.
 
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Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
They weren't sure if the doctor was going to be able to make the cure or not, and the doctor was part of a terrorist organization that fucked them so much. And to try to make the cure would mean to kill his 'daughter', the only person he cares about and the only person that cares about him in an apocalyptic world that sucks and most people would commit suicide to avoid continue living there. And well, probably there were more doctors able to do that, and more inmune people around the world.

Many people would have taken the same decision.
Joel even says in the beginning of the game "they were going to make a cure...and I stopped them"
Joel even knew and believed it was possible the main character that offed the doctor
 

Rickyiez

Member
Absolutely.
In tlou would there are no heroes. He does not get to have magic plot armor.
And it propelled the story in a fantastic way.

And what would tlou2 be about otherwise? Another joel scavenging tour,
Agreed , it would have been very dull and less stake to continue on Joel's campaign .

The biggest complain is that the newer characters introduced were not good .
 

Ryu Kaiba

Member
I don't like the idea that writers should write only to please the viewer.

A lot of shows and movies lose suspense or just suck simply because certain characters aren't allowed to die.
 
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