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The Last of Us : Part I

KnackChap

By KnackChap,
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Kumar123 Mentor

Kumar123

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21 hours ago, RV1709 said:

 

Do you...actually believe this?

Imma copy paste a write up I had written while discussing The Last of Us with a friend. Don't want to have a long discussion on this because I don't have the energy or time, so don't bother replying for that. Spoilers for TLOU1 and TLOU2 ahead.

 

Spoiler

I don't think anyone was offended by Joel's death. Ellie being playable and Joel dying in the second game were things almost all of us anticipated since we knew how dangerous the world of The Last of Us was from the first game. What people were hurt by was how his death happened. Brutally beaten to death like a dog by the daughter of some NPC from the original game. Yes, you could see it as ballsy writing, but when you look at the history of the development of *The Last of Us*, the motivation behind this becomes questionable.
 

Basically, during the development of the first game, even though the writing of the game was a collaborative process by both Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann, Bruce had the final say in everything since he was the game's director and the more senior developer. For example, The Last of Us was originally going to be about Tess chasing Joel and Ellie across the country for revenge. Bruce deemed this idea to be too unrealistic and dark, and changed it to what we got. Neil had said after the release of the first game that he had a tendency to go too dark and it was the team that reined him in.

Then after Bruce left and Neil became the headman for the sequel, he brought back his original idea of chasing someone across the post apocalyptic country for revenge and went really dark. So, it makes you wonder how much of the brutality of Joel's death was to strengthen the narrative and how much of it was Neil not caring about a character that was not completely his and him wanting to go as dark and gory as possible whenever he can.

I actually could look past this but what I can't forgive are the retcons. Mainly, the one involving the final chapter of the original game.

In the first game, the Fireflies sedate Ellie and prep her for a surgery that'll kill her, without her consent. Whether she would have agreed to this or not doesn't matter as they didn't even ask her if she was okay with it and also because from the previous conversations between Ellie and Joel, it was clear that she had planned to go back with Joel after helping out the fireflies. Not to mention the fact that the hospital setup fireflies had wasn't up to the mark and the possibility of them developing a vaccine wasn't strong.

Let's look at this from Joel's perspective. He lost his partner Tess, slowly opened up to Ellie and developed a father-daughter bond with her that helped him reconcile himself to overcoming the loss of his daughter Sarah, and completed the impossible task of getting Ellie across the post apocalyptic country to the fireflies, while nearly killing himself in the process.

And what does he get? The fireflies tell him that they wouldn't let him see Ellie and that they're going to kill her. They also ask him to leave and don't let him take his bag, effectively sending him to his death. They were basically killing his 'daughter' and him. So, Joel did what we all wanted him to do, kill these motherf**kers and get Ellie back. How does this remotely make Joel a bad guy, especially in the world of The Last of Us, where there are often no good or bad people, just survivors? I don't think his actions were questionable and morally grey like some people say. He did the right thing.

In the end, we see that Joel doesn't regret his actions and has his own justifications for it. We also get Ellie's ambiguous "Okay" in the end, which according to many people including Ellie's voice actress Ashley Johnson, meant she had seen through Joel's bullshit but was fine with what happened.

What do we get in the second game? Apparently, Joel was a horrible murderer and Ellie had naively believed his lie. The whole narrative of the game relies on this assumption which is basically a retcon. They even changed Joel's design to make him look like he's constantly weighed down by guilt, essentially making him a different character.


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This is what I had the biggest problem with and the reason I just can't see the game as the canonical sequel to the first game.

Edited by Kumar123
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Kumar123

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2 hours ago, CarbonCore said:

Hidden the whole post. Use a fking common sense before dropping spoiler bombs like that.

 

BC this thread just continues to deliver.

Yeah, my bad. Should have spoiler tagged Part 2 spoilers at least.

Let me know if anyone wants to read it. I'll post it again with spoiler tags.

Edited by Kumar123
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Kumar123

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3 minutes ago, Vaibhavp said:

 

No spoilers there. Just a 1.40 min clip.

I mean, the definition of spoilers vary from person to person. For some people, that might just mean the main plot points and there are people like me who like to go into games completely blind and experience everything for the first time while playing.

Edited by Kumar123
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