After being ambivalent about this game for a while I gotta say this thread is making me want to play it
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I think my brain has just learned to x-ray vision see through the “crime/violence will have karmic consequences for you” propaganda parts of media to get to the parts I like, or compartmentalize it into a little pocket dimension to enjoy like it’s some dnd alignment system, otherwise I’d never get anywhere in life.
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it’s not like watching a noir film though because playing a videogame, even one like the last of us, is nothing like watching a movie? movies aren’t able to force you to actively participate in the shitty things the protagonists do. and the difference is even wider because in a movie most of those shitty things happen off-screen whereas they tend to be the very actions you participate in in a game? and I mean maybe I’m in the minority here but I feel like it’s a cheap trick when movies try to invite you to go there in whatever other ways they can. it can be well done but it rarely is, it usually just feels like a bait-and-switch. and it’s even cheaper in a game because it’s such an obvious move, you don’t even have to be clever about it.
and joel is already clearly established to be the kind of guy who would do horrible things to save someone that he loved. except the game doesn’t even try to make it seem like it’s necessary. it just comes off like a heavy-handed edgelord move in a game which is otherwise almost entirely free of that kind of hamfisted storytelling. like I already got the memo about joel maybe not being a great person. having him just murder a random innocent person doesn’t do much for joel’s characterization or the ending. if anything giving the player a small choice there would make the ultimate ending even more ambiguous. I don’t need the game holding my own wrists to drive the point down my throat like that. it’s cheap. ken-levine-level storytelling. I do not like it!
love the game otherwise though! just think that’s a significant misstep which also happens to presage the problems the sequel would have.
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it would have been better removed honestly. I just don’t think it actually does much aside from just make you hate joel if you were on the fence about him. which imo sucks significant life out of the ending, which really wants you to feel uncertain about what kind of person he is, and if anything, the sequel makes it clear how much they actually wanted you to be sympathetic towards him! the fact that I was already turned against joel makes the entire premise of the sequel fall flat for me. it’s a clear and huge blind spot. the game can’t see its own reactionary bias and stumbles hard in the home stretch as a result.
I just feel like this is exact same way the sequel betrays itself. it really wants to be ambiguous but its viewpoint is inherently reactionary; it acknowledges so much nuance about the nature of cruelty and violence in its story, but it can’t help but passively insist that it’s all necessary, it’s all so very sad but there’s no hope for it to ever end. which feels painfully relevant to a lot of people’s perspective on israel-palestine right now. like I want to give him credit for at least acknowledging, tacitly, and through metaphor, the brutal reality of the ongoing occupation of palestine. but the game never has space for even the remote possibility of accountability or justice. denying the possibility of justice is a very convenient way to side with the oppressor while still nominally criticizing them.
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I thought that’s what we were here for, to inhabit some role and play out an interesting story. also he’s just shooting some armed dudes who are trying to kill some unconscious gay girl, it’s not like he’s mass murdering an old folks home here. what better gay ally could you ask for really, that man drew a line and said no, not even one lesbian
and the first time you play with no knowledge I don’t think it’s an “obvious” move at all. I don’t think it’s clearly established he’d do “horrible things to save someone he loves” either? all we know about him is what happened on day one of the outbreak and it’s alluded that he was once a raider. I think the obvious move would of been for the murder dad to heroically sacrifice himself to save humanity from the plague or some shit. I didn’t know what they were going for once you get to that hospital at the end, that was when the game caught my attention finally.
I don’t know what ambiguity and choice would add except everyone just trying to pick the “best”/most boring bog standard good ending option.
what on earth. there’s two characters you play as, one of whom murders him for doing all the things that bothered you in the first game! didn’t you not even finish the game? it only wants you to be sympathetic to him like it wants you to be sympathetic to every other person
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the dude is armed only with a scalpel, and he doesn’t shoot him, he takes the scalpel and slits the dude’s throat. it’s a lot!
and idk man it’s shocking on your first playthrough but that doesn’t mean it’s not hamfisted. I mean “obvious” in the sense that it’s heavy-handed, not predictable.
and the entire premise of the sequel is ellie getting revenge. the person who murders him is established as an antagonist from the outset, even if you get to play as them briefly. and I never finished it! it wore me down! I got what I guess would be halfway through but 90% of that was playing as ellie. I guess if you get another perspective for the rest of the game that’s cool but the first half 100% wants you to sympathize with ellie having joel taken from her, regardless of how you feel about him after the first game, and it completely took me out of the experience. the introductory sequence also goes to extreme lengths to make sure it humanizes joel as much as possible, including having you play as him again briefly, except instead of having a rifle strapped to his back, he has an acoustic guitar. it made me want to gag.
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okay well there’s a whole other half of the game
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I just can’t see it undoing my problems with the game since they have to do with the very premise of it. it may make me dislike it less. I have other issues with the writing being weirdly sloppy and doing random shit just for dramatic effect too. I will finish it someday. probably soon!
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getting very close to getting TLOU 1 and 2 at the local games store. by that I mean “thinking about it”. maybe after I finish max payne.
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This gets to the real big problem with TLOU 2: it is legit about twice as long as it should be.
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…woah.
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The brain surgeon is about to medically murder a young girl without her consent.
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yeah i’m not totally sure i buy that joel would differentiate between knife surgeon as Good (do not kill) and knife surgeon’s bouncers as Bad (kill)
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Characterizing the surgeon as “a random innocent person” is so catastrophically off the mark of what he is actually doing and his role in the story that I’m not sure toups actually played the game, maybe he half-watched a youtube or something
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this whole time i thought Ellie was like “fake Dad i think it’s important i go under for this in case it can help the entire world”
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iirc she’s already unconscious and they’re like well yeah dude let’s just remove half her brain it’ll kill her and might work idk! and then Joel starts killing them. She absolutely has no choice in the matter. Dunno if I can blame him for that 1!!
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NO. No!! This doesn’t happen at all!
IN FACT, my one criticism of the whole story has always been that this powerful emotional dilemma is entirely contrived because it is extremely stupid of the Fireflies to not just ask Ellie first. They definitely set up Ellie’s arc as she grows and matures over the game to where she’d be selfless enough to say “yes”, and if she did they could just let her talk to Joel. Rather than having him wake up under guard and Ellie’s surrogate mom come in and say “sooooooo we’re killing your new daughter. It’s for the good of all mankind. She’ll never know though. Anyway I’m going to leave you with this one guy to guard you, bye”
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I don’t think joel’s sense of justice includes principles like this, it’s as simple as the fact that they’re trying to kill his adopted daughter.
but like, me, as a player, I don’t think that means it’s justice for the surgeon to be brutally executed on the spot. even without the extremely extenuating circumstances.
you’re right that it’s weird that the fireflies don’t just like ask her first.
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im just gonna liveblog this game and determine once and for all that it sucks… OR DOES IT???
im sure no one from SB has ever done this haha [adiligian turns around and reveals he is a samurai from the tokugawa shogunate] oh fuck
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