i tried playing the first last of us and thought it was really stiff and not fun to play, the 2nd one looks like it could be like fun and violent, i chafe at “prestige game vibes” in general but how much of that is just the Pop Cultural Moment we’re in, ive watched a couple a24 movies a few years after the hype died down and probably receieved them much better than i would have if i saw them in theaters
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I mean… the game is not attempting to convince you that it is just. The theme of the game is not “I, Neil Druckmann, think that what Joel did here is correct, and you should too.” It is only attempting to portray a situation where you could at least understand a person who would think that it is just, while also attempting to characterize such a person, so you understand him as a human being. It’s an invitation to empathy, but also a tragic catharsis (in the sense that no matter whether you ultimately think Joel did the right thing, the situation sucks and there is no one crystal clear obvious “right thing”). I think it’s very successful at that, although to get there it relies on some suspension of disbelief-breaking contrivances.
Anyway my point was that mistaking a murderous surgeon for some random innocent bystander is a bad read. He just isn’t. Like, if anything, Joel is more justified in killing him than all the faceless soldiers he tears through to get to him. They’re just doing their job and from their perspective Joel is a terrifying unknown force, Michael Myers-like; the surgeon on the other hand has made an intentional moral choice that has planted his flag squarely in a particular ethical territory, one that is explicitly opposed to other territories and marks him as at war with them.
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I wish more people talked about stories in this way. It would really help me to have better conversations about things I like.
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This is what’s so strange about the sequel since it takes this ending and reveals that the characters really do think it’s fucked up (apart from maybe Joel) but no-one really profits from this in 2. Everyone either dies because of revenge or goes on yet more obviously fruitless revenge. No solutions exist for anyone to anything in the same way they might’ve in 1.
The choice is presented as irreversible and with no alternative which makes it even more insane that there’s no discussion of it by the characters. Joel would be slightly more justified maybe if the fireflies attempted to execute him on the spot to secure Ellie.
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It’s a little contrived but that’s fine cause we love the drama. in 2 it shows the firefly lady in a backroom of the hospital with the surgeon saying “okay let’s go tell her about the procedure” and the surgeon is all like “uh, no. why bother, why even risk a 1 percent chance she says no? we got her, she’s unconscious let’s just do it. all the henious post apocalyptic survival shit we’ve had to do, what’s one more, we can go live life after this one crime etc” and she’s all “that’s fucked up but okay but I’m gonna tell him at least cause he deserves to know after what they went through” (and as far as anyone knows joel is just some ice cold smuggler, not a murderdad frozen in time they’re about to thaw out and break the glass and hit the big red do not touch button with), and the doc’s just like whatever already zoned in on some xray of her brain. plus they were kind of sitting around at the hospital before you got there assuming you all were fucking dead and it was hopeless for like months beforehand. 2 is kind of like they specifically read the sb thread on 1 or I don’t know, maybe they just actually think about the shit they make
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I agree, but arguing that he’s operating on a minor without consent is appealing to normative notions of justice that joel clearly has no care for.
again, my issue is being forced to participate. of course it makes sense that joel would do it. it’s that there is no compelling reason that it was necessary, he could have easily just grabbed ellie and run, it would have resulted in the exact same outcome. it just feels like a cheap shot to do it the way that they did. it would have been more powerful if they let you choose whether or not to kill the surgeon. they could have just given you a variant on the same grapple and kill/release prompt you get for the entire game. I’m sure a lot of people would have chosen to! but I personally strongly disliked being made to do it. that’s all!
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mod to replace joel with wario
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sounds like the brain surgeon is one of the great villains of their time, he ruined a lot of lives!
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trolley problem ass game!! It does feel totally baby-level silly to me. None of us are ever gonna have to choose whether to carve our kid up to end a zombie apocalypse.
To make a game about real Dads’ Responsibility to Child Autonomy and Consent, the game would have been about whether Joel allowed Ellie to take out a college loan, or whether Joel listened to Ellie’s opinions about his girlfriends, or whether Joel would help Ellie switch therapists in high school, and it would have sold nearly zero copies to actual gamerdads. Instead we are trapped in a capitalism dad hell where the fantasy sold is the heightened absurd fantasy of having the power over whether to cut up your kid’s brain. Which for horrible meat and power reasons is I suppose a fantasy that some plurality of actual dads find interesting
Reminds me of how after september 11 this guy my mom worked with, a polite and often rather quiet and meek anesthesiologist, absolutely lost his shit and went on a huge rant at the doctor office’s holiday party about how if a terrorist attacked his plane, he would stab the terrorist in the throat with a ballpoint pen to disable them. sick dude, tell us more, the adrenaline fizzing in your blood right now is definitely there for a good reason
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i went very slightly viral when tlou2 came out by tweeting a trolly problem image (the one edited to just be one track filled with people tied to it) alongside the logo for the game, and more than a few people thought it was a spoiler for it
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lmao nice
But yeah the fantasy sold by trolley problem shit is the fantasy to be the one with your hand on the lever. That is why people like the question. We will never stop seeing it in videogames obviously.
I wouldn’t want to play a game about sending my kid to college either but I am also glad that I don’t feel the need to feel deeply about the question at the end of the actual game. As storytelling artifice I think it works fine. Cannot imagine caring enough about the question to make a game with this plot though
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I’m gonna assume this is a response to me so if it is I don’t quite find it fair, lmao.
I am saying that I am living in a world awash with media that cares so much about dudes who are animated by questions like this and I am so glad I don’t care enough to debate the justness of Joel’s actions. He’s like a pokemon of a man, to me. It’s not interesting why he does what he does. Prestige TV has been interested in why he does what he does since I was 14 years old. He’s boring
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yeah I’m sorry but we are debating a piece of drama that hinges its last setpiece on BUT WHAT IF WE COULD END THE FUCKING ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE BY… KILLING A BABEY??? the 30 hours of video game you enjoyed up to that point weren’t a gritty documentary you’re being asked to contemplate a Batman vs Superman scenario that some nerds came up with
im sure the video games Last of Us 1 & 2 are very good but seriously arguing whether the antihero was justified in murdering the surgeon who wanted to fatally remove the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE CURE GENE from the waif deuteragonist is like arguing whether the sky is green or orange in another universe please get a fucking grip
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I’m pretty sure it’s a response to me, and while it’s funny I don’t think it applies. I’m not asking for joel to be a good person uwu. that’s entirely beside the point
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I think people are hung up wanting to be annoyed by the game scolding them or “moral choices” or something. there is no choice, this is not a press a to do one thing press b to do other thing game. it’s a set story that plays out, about a doomed guy, people have been loving those stories since story telling existed. if you don’t like that though, that’s fine. sorry they made one game where you play as a 50 year old guy who dooms the world because of his tragic past and it didn’t have an anime art style or let you have a happy ending! they’ll probably make some more games where you play as some teenagers who kill god and learn to overcome their self doubts and insecurities! only when that happens I won’t be going into threads on those games telling people to get a grip, stop thinking about the game so hard, like an asshole
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I want to be very personally clear that you can think as hard about media you enjoy as you want, i mean that without a scrap of irony. I am someone who tries to mine pearls of human wisdom out of dated children’s animation. But whenever TLOU Discourse happens it fundamentally deranges me because people treat it like a serious moral argument. “Should Joel have killed the surgeon” is about as ethically relevant IMHO as “should Pinkie Pie be ok with pranking Fluttershy even though she’s very sensitive”
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I don’t think the game considers itself to be “forcing you to participate” in a 4th wall breaking way, like Spec Ops or some shit. Naughty Dog games are just prestige tv shows you can play, they are profoundly uninterested in the questions of agency posed by the unique medium of videogames. “You” have to kill the surgeon because Joel would kill the surgeon. Joel isn’t you. If it made you feel bad and unpleasant, I think the designers would consider that an artistic success.
Very much disagree. I don’t think the game is at all interested in considering trolley problem ethics. It’s a character study designed to humanize a guy who already has an extremely decisive answer to where he stands on that question.
It’s totally fair to just be tired of the humanization of grizzled white dudes, but it’s unfair to accuse the game of being a baby blanket for crazed reactionaries.
I get that a family drama with emotional stakes that one would be more likely to encounter in real life would also be a good idea for a game, but plenty of media everyone agrees is great deals with heightened stakes, usually in the form of explosive violence. It’s spectacle, man.
We all love, I dunno, Heat, right? Heat is a great film by a talented director at the top of his game. It’s also literally a cops & robbers story. Most people will never know a bank robber (I mean I know plenty actually but that’s beside the point) or even have a passing interaction with one but Heat still rules. I guess Mann could have made a movie where Bob Deniro is a guy trying to get a drivers license even though he’s suspended and Al Pacino is the DMV clerk who makes it his mission to stop him, I mean actually that sounds awesome, but I also really love the part where guys are firing FALs on the streets of LA and I wouldn’t get that part in the DMV movie.
Now I can imagine a person who is so exhausted by the very played out concept of cops & robbers that they would say “I don’t care how artfully it’s done, I just can’t make myself care about a story like this any more,” and like, fair, fine, but don’t call me some kind of Marky Mark imaginary terrorist slayer just because I can still find it interesting.
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but like Heat is also the best cops and robbers story ever told directed and acted by people at the top of their game…!! Is TLOU THAT FUCKING good? I know ive admitted multiple times im talking shit and haven’t even played it, feel free to shoot me thru my poseur heart lol, i just, fuckin… These arguments should happen around media that counts?? For something??? You can ask these fuckin questions into a mic, but if you cant phrase them in a way that makes me sit up and listen i get to yell at you to get off the fuckin stage
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bad news for videogames if they have to rise to the level of heat to be good
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