I'm glad they didn't have her kill Abby. It had more impact that she didn't. If she'd killed Abby, it would have felt cheap and with less of a point. As it stands, the ending feels like Ellie completed what she REALLY wanted to achieve, and killing Abby never gave off that feeling.
@Poodger: I wouldn't say it's odd at all. They have hardware they created, want to sell that hardware, and created a critically acclaimed game. I am sure they managed to sell a decent number of VR hardware specifically cause of the game.
Fantastic. Beneath a Steel Sky is one of the greatest PC games ever made, so it's great to see a sequel, even if it's over two and a half decades late.
Thanks for this list, I haven't seen many of these. Your top 2 are definitely my top 2, and Seven Samurai is my favorite film of all time. Even after all these decades, it is still a very watchable movie that remains entertaining.
@hitemhigh: Joel killed every scientist who got in his way. He killed the only person who could have found a cure from Ellie. The question at the end of the game was always is the world worth sacrificing for one person.
@nilsdoen: It's understandable why he does it, but it still doesn't make it the right choice. It's a moral quandary that has been told over and over and over for as long as stories have been around, sacrifice for the greater good. But that really isn't the point either. No one ever comes right out and says that Joel was evil for what he did. Yes, Abby murders him, but it's never stated that she was in the right for doing so. The moral ambiguity of everyone's choices is kind of the point though. Joel was wrong, Abby was wrong, Ellie is wrong, and none of that really seems to matter because the world is what it is and this is how everyone acts.
I see people as viewing this in one way, with Naughty Dog having created it in another. There's a good article on another site that covers a lot of how unconventional the game is and why it doesn't jive with a lot of people, and while I disagree with some of it, it also makes a lot of good points. We say these things, stuff like what's written here, because TLOU2 takes on an unusual way to tell a story as a game. We could fault it for trying to be something it's not, if this were a movie or a book I don't think it would get thrashed like it has, but because we're playing it, it comes across as flawed to the point people hate it and it's not what they wanted.
Firstly, I don't think that either character is a villain or hero. There are certainly terrible people in this world, but neither Ellie nor Abby are outright good guy or bad guy. That kind of thinking comes from a lack of experience with these characters that we're simply not getting. In the world of TLOU, there is little to cling to. What people do have to cling to is maybe one or two others they can truly rely on. Sure, the beginning of the game paints a rosy picture of Ellie and Joel's life, but I hardly buy it. We've seen enough post-apocalyptic fiction to understand just how fragile communities are in a state of that world. While Ellie appears to have these connections to people like Dina, Jesse, and Tommy, it's fairly evident that Ellie really only has Joel. That's what makes it so painful when she learns about what he did in Colorado. You also can be sure she's not going to keep her word that they're through. Reconciliation seems inevitable. So naturally, when they take the one thing in the world Ellie has to hold on to, she's going to lash out irrationally. What else is she going to do? Go on with her life and try to forget about it? She needs catharsis. We don't have to like it. We don't have to agree with it. And Ellie certainly isn't right. But this is also not a world where our understanding of right and wrong exist as we see it. It's a violent world where revenge is likely happening in other stories beyond those of the characters we know. The fact that we play as Ellie taking her revenge is what makes it seem so off putting. We don't want her to do it, but we cannot stop her because that is the story being told. It forces us into a first person perspective where something like a book or movie would have us as outside observers, where we don't necessarily have to like or agree with the person we're following, but then we can deal with the inevitable outcome. But in the shoes of the person we're following, especially when we've already been through one story with them where things seemed at least hopeful, being forced to play as the character as they devolve into a mindless hunter for revenge is deeply unsettling and unlikable.
Abby, however, is not much better. Yes, we are sympathetic to her plight. But if we're going to declare that Ellie is wrong, Abby is no more right. She traveled hundreds of miles away to kill a man she spent years looking for. That is a less bloody, but similar quest to Ellie's in how mindless and narrowly focused it is. Was it absolutely necessary for her to go kill Joel? Not at all. Joel certainly deserved punishment, but she was determined to kill him as her dad. That is little more than revenge and not so much justice. Pure revenge does not often equate to justice.
Second, the structure of the story makes sense in the kind of story that Naughty Dog wants to tell. It's the format that muddies it up. Because of our unique perspective of the game, we're witness to a story that is traditional in another medium. As a story purely told, without gameplay or the first person perspective or the attachment we have to these characters as a result of the combined gameplay and perspective, it's not unlike other stories told. The gotcha moments are less out of pure surprise and more out of better understanding. We have an initial idea of what is going on and, yes, it does constantly realign our thinking, but that's the point. If we'd had all the information at the outset of the game, we would instantly craft our own ideas of what to think: "Oh, Ellie knew what Joel did and got revenge anyway? Why? Why is she being so stupid?" Instead of giving us the opportunity to make up our mind about the game early on, we're forced throughout to reevaluate what we understand about these characters. Are they bad? Are they good? Is what they're doing right or justified? It's far more nuanced than that, but at the end, the understanding should be that this is the world they live in and this is what life is now. The things they have and the things most valuable to them are easily broken, and that in turn easily breaks them. Both Abbie and Ellie have little in life to rely on and when that's taken, they both go on a quest of revenge, the only thing left to them. It obviously leaves them with little to nothing and it's completely self-destructive, but they live in a world that is fairly desolate and where nearly everyone gets by on a thread.
Now that I've had more time to digest the game, I find it to be a fascinating experiment in video game storytelling. It does something unusual that obviously didn't jive with people. But I also think a lot of people maybe get it wrong or don't really understand it.
@elementalweapon: Spoilers in a spoiler review?! You don't say? Maybe don't read the spoiler review if you don't want to read spoilers in the comments.
I'm baffled by people's response. They're more worried about the minority of false accusations and people's privacy than the platforms being a gateway for these people to continue their behavior. I know that if it were my company, I'd be investigating every allegation and cracking down. The majority of streamers are not abusing their position. Those that are should not be coddled or slapped on the wrist. It should be reinforced that using their popularity and power as streamers cannot be used as a platform to use and abuse fans.
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