Can we talk about the ending of TLOU? (spoilers)

Me and a friend just got done playing what I deem is one of the best dam exclusives ever...... Right up until the very end.

Anyone else feel this way?

Oh, to those doubters I finished it on Hard mode.

I think the anti-climax was refreshing. Was more thought provoking.

I don't think the ending was necessarily supposed to leave you feeling good, because at the end you're not really a hero

Adam sessler had an interesting talk about the ending, I'll see if I can find it

Well, its not on the same lines as the ending to ME3 but it still gave me a case of gamer blueballs.

Great ending. I was more than satisfied.

Not gonna post a picture of my trophy though.

Found it

Skip to about 28:30 to hear them start to talk about the ending

I actually liked the ending a lot. It felt true/believable.

I actually really enjoyed the ending, it was not what I expected from the medium, at all.

You could make the argument that Joel is actually the villain of the game. He's a mass murderer that probably dooms the human race, no matter how sincere his motivations were.

Also, yeah, incredible game. At some point I'll replay it on Hard. I watched a friend do a Survivor playthrough and I'm not sure I'm up for that.

You played a SP, narrative driven game with a friend?

Weird.

And give the trophy back unless you beat every part yourself, casual.

I was playing, he was watching.

There's a lot to be spoken about. It's lead on A LOT to show joel is just an all around survivor and a shitty person.

It's mentioned a bunch of times. When tess is bit and she says "Joel, We're shitty people" Or when tommy says he has nightmares from all those years of being on the road with joel

Ellie is dropped into Joels lap and it's like time un-pauses. All those years he was left without a daughter and he has to kinda learn how to be a father and not just a survivor anymore, a protector.

Joel realizes the world he lives in regardless of people and infected are not a pretty place and throughout the year together Joel learned to essentially learn to care for someone other than himself again, essentially a surrogate daughter.

Regards to the ending I think he makes a decision based on what he lost during the infection, a lot could've happened in those 20 years and we know so little. From beginning to end Joel starts as a shitty person and ends as a shitty person and didn't wanna lose someone else close to him (IMO)

As someone said the Anti-Climax is great. It's smart and to the point and shows the characterization of this man's time and decisions in the apocalypse. It raises one question though, is he being selfless or selfish? Is he saving Ellie for his own redemption? or is he giving her the life Sarah never had?

I'm at a lost for words at the moment, we're still sat here arguing about it.

I thought the ending was great. The part where you go into the surgery room I thought, "Ok, they're gonna do the typical cliche thing and give you choices. Either you do the good thing and stand down and let them kill her or you do the evil thing and kill everyone" and I think that would have been a cop out. Throughout the game you know Joel is a bad man and that he's a broken man but you don't realize how much of a monster he is and how crazy he is until the ending. He's basically using Ellie to replace his daughter and would rather sacrifice humanity's last chance than lose another daughter.

You mean the final mission ?

Or the ending cinematic ?

Because I think they were both great. Ellie and Joel start off not liking each other very much, but they are stuck together. They grow closer together though, through the events of the game and at the end Ellie rescues Joel and Joel does the same thing. He doesn't even want to save humanity if that means killing Ellie. That is how attached he got to her.

Beautiful game, beautiful ending.

I disagree. He has done a lot of bad things, like his brother says in the game.

But I disagree that he is 'crazy' or 'bad' in the end for saving Ellie. So what if saving Ellie means dooming humanity ? It's pretty clear what humanity has become when playing through the game and Ellie was more worth saving than anyone.

Also, killing Ellie was certain. Killing her providing a cure was uncertain. It could be they found a cure, or it could also be they killed her and found no cure.

Crap, now I want to play through TLOU again

The Last Of Us was never straightforward, it wasn't black and white. The ending was perfect IMO it fits the theme.

How is he not bad? He implies that he was a hunter and his brother still has nightmares about the things they used to do. Tess says, "Guess what, we're shitty people Joel. Its been that way for a long time." Throughout the entire game Joel is a bad person and he didn't save Ellie for her, he saved her for him. His motive was purely selfish.

Also, I never said Ellie was the cure, I said he sacrificed humanity's last chance. You're gonna tell me living in the world they live in now with no hope is better than maybe giving humanity a chance to fight the infection and one day return to normal? Not only that, he kills a God damn brain surgeon. How many of those do you think there are left? He could have left him alive in case they find someone else some day.

Although, I think Joel makes it pretty obvious that he thinks the Fireflies' cause is a load of crap. And based on much of the world you see, it is hard to believe that it would be able to return to normal

Honestly, I think the worst thing he does is at the very end when he lies to Ellie. Of course then we can question if we think Ellie knows he's lying

Maybe not normal but it would give people hope and a way to fight the infection. It would be a better life than what they have now which is basically just waiting to die a horrible death.

The ending was meant to give the players room to digest everything they experienced. Spark a debate into all the events in the game and potray what life could really be like in a not so hopeful world. It did just that cause everyone seem to be talking about it

You're apparently the gaming police now? Interesting. Your name is pretty ironic too given that you just labeled someone a casual.

I think Ellie knows that Joel is lying....

We don't know that they could of made a cure.

Yea, I think so

We dont know that they couldn't. Like I said, it was a chance.

Yeah, that was the impression I got. She's a smart girl.

I watched that vid that Lostrib posted and I agree. You have to spin your own yarn to keep yourself sane in that sort of world.

Even if you hadn't, who cares? I played through GoW2 the first time with a friend. Switching off at times. We still had fun, got the story and finished the game. Why do some people take playing games so seriously?

Oh man i had a long ass conversation with my friends about the games ending i mean seriously it was one whole week of us typing one to another in a WhatsApp group message and each shared his and her own thoughts about it so as i wrote to my friends what i think about the ending is as follows:

The ending was pretty much how i felt it needed to end.. while a lot of my friends thought what Joel did was extremely selfish i personally think what he did was right because Ellie is someone who still has her humanity she did more helpful things to Joel and to others than any other human was able to do in the game ( at least the ones they encountered ) have you seen how bad she felt when she saw humans being treated awfully? or how happy she got when she saw beautiful area's or animals around walking peacefully? this girl unlike those who survived still has her humanity she cared and had the need to help out.. even though she wanted to sacrifice herself that doctor recording Joel found before the game ended proved that what Ellie had wasnt 100% the cure for humanity so what if she couldnt help out make the cure after her death? that means a pure human died for nothing! so Ellie deserved to live, to live so she can help other humans with her humanity and effect others to be like her.. i think what Joel had in mind that Ellie was worth living than dying for the terrible humans that remained.

she can help people while she's alive even more right now than dying for an un-sure cure but that was my opinion on the ending but i know other people have other thoughts about it and thats exactly what i think why Naughty Gods ended it like that to make people think and wonder for years and years and thats my friends what a great game is, a game that keep you thinking about it for so long and heck i still wonder what would Ellie do if she finds out what Joel did, i personally think she'd need to thank him but i know others would say she needs to completely stop trusting him.

To be honest I loved the ending, one of my favourite endings in a game. It really makes you think, is Joel just a selfish bastard after all?

To Joel a cure would of meant nothing to him if he didn't have someone special to share the world with, someone as important as Ellie. He already lost his daughter, and on the other hand there was no guarantee Ellie's sacrifice would of found a cure, and to him her life was more important than anything else. That bond and relationship was so strong between them it was unbreakable, after the ending you think to yourself, is Joel just a selfish bastard for not wanting a cure? But than you look at the bigger picture. Just epic.

It's a great ending with some absolutely incredible facial animations. I won't say it's where I expected the story to end up but it was unique. I only wish it wasn't so linear.

@finalstar2007: I don't always agree with you but what you wrote there does strike a cord with me. I'm siding more with you about the ending. I feel that Joel sees Ellie as a daughter now and his father instincts are kicking in.

And Joel doesn't want to sacrifice someone he cares for for a chance.

I may have thought he was a jackass at first, perhaps for good reasons. But I was totally on Joels side in the last mission.

You say it's for his own selfish reasons he saved Ellie, because he already lost a daughter. But I say he did it for her, he got to know her during the course of the game and he had grown fond of her. He thinks her life is worth way more than that of any one else a possible cure could've saved. You can call that bad and crazy but I totally agree with Joel.

The last bit was a joke so dislodge your panties from whatever crevice they have crawled into.

I do find playing a SP game with someone else to be odd.

TLOU is such a mindblowingly awesome game, it really puts the rest to shame. I remember when I played it when I was in the marines... The office was filled with 10 people watching me play through the story, everyone was so excited to find out what happened next. Then I passed the game on to like 40 people. TLOU was literally like a cougar on a football team.

Throughout the entire game I built a father-daughter relationship with Ellie (despite only being 6 years older than her) she was like my little girl and kept on thinking you better not die, you better no die.. Then she didn't die and I kind of felt that she should have. I would most likely shed some manly tears a la The Lion King, but I think it would be necessary. Now that both of them are alive it makes me want a continuation of the story, with Joel and Ellie, but despite the quality of Naughty Gods game history I doubt they'll be able to create a sequel of the same quality...

If he did it for her then he wouldn't have lied to her about what happened. Even he knows he's in the wrong.

Well he was selfish, but the bigger question would be "so what?"

He made the choice to save Ellie because he can't stand to lose another daughter. He chose her life over the lives of others, and we always knew that from the beginning (he drives past a family in need at the start of the game). You could make the case that he willingly disregarded Ellie's wishes, but the counter would be A) she's a child (and I don't think it's made clear if she understands the operation will kill her) and B) we find out at the end that Ellie has an awful case of survivor's guilt.

He makes a rather human decision, which I think may bother some--especially at the end where you are forced to kill the brain surgeon on top of a ton of Fireflies who are trying to help humanity. At the end, you are not a video game hero, there is no saving the world, there's no way out--you can't have the girl and the cure. And I think he makes a choice many fathers would. I doubt a lot of people would be willing to sacrifice the life of someone they care about even if it was for the betterment of others

Well, don't parents sometimes have to lie to their children?

Yea, about whether or not Santa is real, not about dooming humanity to save your life. No matter what way you look at it, Joel is the bad guy in this story. He's just as bad as all the hunters he's killed along the way, maybe worse. I understand his decision but it doesn't make everything he did ok.

greatest ending to the greatest game ever made.

and to all the so-called martyrs out there and they're greater good mentality...even Neil Druckman said, when asked the question by IGN, "would you sacrifice your daughter to save mankind?"

Druckmann's reply..."I'd kill every last one of you mfers before my kid."

Stuff we do in life isn't always ok though.

But... if he acted completely selfish than he would've let them kill Ellie. Because finding a cure would've provided a better life for him.

But I mean. Sure, that may have been selfish of him to make the choice for Ellie, but in the end he does it for her, like you said as a parent. Even if he dies so many years later, he would still want to see Ellie survive. That in turn, is very non-selfish or very parent like of him.

he did it for himself and for her. So it's both selfish and not selfish in a way if you catch my drift :p

No it wouldn't have. He would have lost another daughter which probably would have drove him to suicide in the condition he's in.

I do like how the game is so brutal and there are horrible things seen and done in the game, but at the end it feels like the worst thing Joel does in the whole game is when he lies to ellie

The end was meant to make you feel conflicted. That's what made it thought provoking. The idea that, perhaps, your actions were not really in the best interest of humanity is something that should resonate with you. Being human is as much about how you react to situations given your own experiences and ambitions as it is this cookie-cutter concept of trying to be the noble hero.

It went to a very interesting concept of making you ask yourself if you even were the hero in the story. If Joel had just fucked off or come from a different town, the whole world could be a much different place.. At the cost of a little innocent girl, that is.

Kind of reminds me of the ending of Spec Ops: The Line as well

@mems_1224: you're not a parent so you haven't a clue.