Last Of Us

[Underseer]

I don't play much video games any more, and when I do it's not anything that requires good reflexes, and definitely not zombie games. Definitely not zombie games ever.

I became interested in Last of Us because everyone compares the movie Logan to it. I'll never play the game myself, but thankfully I found this series of reaction videos that allowed me to get the story as well as the emotional context from gameplay.

Holy crap, what an intense, emotional ride. Amazing story, and the comparisons between the game and the movie Logan are more than fair, but I mean that as a compliment to both the game and the movie.

If you are like me and don't expect to ever play the game, then go ahead and watch this video series, which is twenty videos, about a half hour each.

The ending is really fucked up and horrible, which fits the movie.

Show

Holy shit! Joel doomed all of humanity to save Ellie's life, then lied to Ellie about it! That is seriously fucked up.

 

[prideandfall]

yep... not really a lot to add to that but yeah there is a reason that the last of us is considered one of (if not the) greatest video games of the modern age, if not of all time.

it's one of the only games that over the years i've had multiple girlfriends want to sit and watch me play it all the way through.

 

[ZiprHead]

I've never been much of a gamer. Haven't completed a video game since Quake. I just get bored by them very quickly and considering some of them can cost fifty bucks, I'm just not going to throw away that kind of money.

However

That game looks AWESOME! Makes me want to go out and get a system just to play it.

 

[Underseer]

This is an interesting hour-long discussion of the themes of the story, and I have to say that this explanation of the ending makes a lot of sense. It's just shocking because as gamers, we are used to avatar characters that are good and heroic or at least justified and heroic, while Joel is emotionally broken. However much of a badass he is in combat, he never really healed from his various emotional wounds.

 

[Underseer]

I've never been much of a gamer. Haven't completed a video game since Quake. I just get bored by them very quickly and considering some of them can cost fifty bucks, I'm just not going to throw away that kind of money.

However

That game looks AWESOME! Makes me want to go out and get a system just to play it.

The original was released for the PS3 and a remaster was made for the PS4, which just updated the graphics.

 

[Deepak]

Show

Holy shit! Joel doomed all of humanity to save Ellie's life, then lied to Ellie about it! That is seriously fucked up.

He did nothing of the sort. The monkey bite doctor in Utah was on the verge of a breakthrough until it ended up being a bust, and likely they would have vivisected the girl with similar results. More to the point, simply creating a vaccine for the infection wouldn't magically remake society so that you don't have roving bands of cannibals, authoritarian enclaves, and at-all-costs rebels. Once you get the hang of how to deal with them the infected are actually the least problematic opponents in the game to face, and the same is true of the lived-experience in the fictional world (fuck that humvee). Tommy's project in Wyoming represented the ability to rebuild a functioning society, with people working for a common cause, and they didn't really face much of an issue with the infected.

Ellie passing on her immunity onto her offspring is no less likely than any potential cure that the Fireflies might have cooked up, and while Ellie could have left Joel in Utah to save herself she didn't. He wasn't going to do that to her.

 

[Underseer]

Show

Holy shit! Joel doomed all of humanity to save Ellie's life, then lied to Ellie about it! That is seriously fucked up.

He did nothing of the sort. The monkey bite doctor in Utah was on the verge of a breakthrough until it ended up being a bust, and likely they would have vivisected the girl with similar results. More to the point, simply creating a vaccine for the infection wouldn't magically remake society so that you don't have roving bands of cannibals, authoritarian enclaves, and at-all-costs rebels. Once you get the hang of how to deal with them the infected are actually the least problematic opponents in the game to face, and the same is true of the lived-experience in the fictional world (fuck that humvee). Tommy's project in Wyoming represented the ability to rebuild a functioning society, with people working for a common cause, and they didn't really face much of an issue with the infected.

Ellie passing on her immunity onto her offspring is no less likely than any potential cure that the Fireflies might have cooked up, and while Ellie could have left Joel in Utah to save herself she didn't. He wasn't going to do that to her.

Ok

Show

Yes, the recording at the university revealed that the same researches had twelve other test subjects that were immune like Ellie, so Joel wasn't lying about that part. We don't know for certain if killing Ellie would save humanity, but we also don't know that it would not have saved humanity.

If there was even a chance that leaving Ellie in the hands of those researchers could end the zombie problem, then the moral choice was to let them try.

Oh, and all those other problems you mention are consequences of the existence of that fungal infection. A vaccine would not make those problems disappear overnight, but it's a required first step if you want to end things like that.

So Joel wasn't lying about the fact that other immune test subjects once existed, but he was lying to Ellie by implying that leaving her in Salt Lake could not have helped with the infection problem, and from earlier dialog, it is reasonable to think that had the choice been hers, she would have allowed those doctors to kill her.

Marlene was stupid for giving Joel a chance to choose (by telling him what was going on before the surgery was started), but not letting Ellie choose her own fate.

Oh, and killing doctors in a post-apocalyptic world was a really terrible thing to do all by itself. I doubt there are any medical schools left.

 

[Deepak]

He did nothing of the sort. The monkey bite doctor in Utah was on the verge of a breakthrough until it ended up being a bust, and likely they would have vivisected the girl with similar results. More to the point, simply creating a vaccine for the infection wouldn't magically remake society so that you don't have roving bands of cannibals, authoritarian enclaves, and at-all-costs rebels. Once you get the hang of how to deal with them the infected are actually the least problematic opponents in the game to face, and the same is true of the lived-experience in the fictional world (fuck that humvee). Tommy's project in Wyoming represented the ability to rebuild a functioning society, with people working for a common cause, and they didn't really face much of an issue with the infected.

Ellie passing on her immunity onto her offspring is no less likely than any potential cure that the Fireflies might have cooked up, and while Ellie could have left Joel in Utah to save herself she didn't. He wasn't going to do that to her.

Ok

Show

Yes, the recording at the university revealed that the same researches had twelve other test subjects that were immune like Ellie, so Joel wasn't lying about that part. We don't know for certain if killing Ellie would save humanity, but we also don't know that it would not have saved humanity.

If there was even a chance that leaving Ellie in the hands of those researchers could end the zombie problem, then the moral choice was to let them try.

Oh, and all those other problems you mention are consequences of the existence of that fungal infection. A vaccine would not make those problems disappear overnight, but it's a required first step if you want to end things like that.

So Joel wasn't lying about the fact that other immune test subjects once existed, but he was lying to Ellie by implying that leaving her in Salt Lake could not have helped with the infection problem, and from earlier dialog, it is reasonable to think that had the choice been hers, she would have allowed those doctors to kill her.

Marlene was stupid for giving Joel a chance to choose (by telling him what was going on before the surgery was started), but not letting Ellie choose her own fate.

Oh, and killing doctors in a post-apocalyptic world was a really terrible thing to do all by itself. I doubt there are any medical schools left.

I won't go point by point, but the two things that stick out are (1) she didn't get to make that choice, nor were the Fireflies going to give it to her (she wanted to learn to play the guitar after it was all over), and the preview for the sequel certainly don't make it seem like she had a deathwish. I'm sure it will address this specifically, since she knew at the end of the first game that Joel was lying.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPNiIeKMHyg[/YOUTUBE]

(2) The setting, based on the vehicles, guns, and architecture didn't seem like it was in the far off future, and one would expect they would have tried standard therapies like anti-fungal agents and immune modulators. With that in mind, not only would they have to solve the issue of making an anti-fungal vaccine (something which we don't actually know much about today) but they would also have to have it work against this specific strain of cordyceps. No minor task for fully funded research institutions today let alone a rag-tag group of wanna-be scientists. The likelihood of her immunity being heritable would be much higher - and I don't think the moral choice is as simple as you're making it out to be. And without informed consent, the moral calculus certainly weighs against it.

 

[Underseer]

Warning: not using spoiler tags anymore.

Yes, Marlene did not give her a choice, and yes, that was very wrong of her, but I'm sure you noticed that everyone in this game is emotionally damaged and/or desperate in some way. I don't doubt that Marlene believed her call was completely justified.

Yes, Ellie was expecting to learn how to swim and play guitar after this was all over, but that doesn't mean she would have said no had Marlene asked. Joel gave her the option of giving up and going home earlier, remember? She quite specifically chose to risk both herself and Joel to try and find a cure for humanity. It is not unreasonable to think that there is a good chance she might have said yes to the procedure.

Furthermore, we know from the expansion that she is probably suffering from survivor's guilt for not dying when her best friend and almost lover did, and possibly blames herself. That would certainly contribute to the possibility of her saying yes to the procedure.

There was another Easter egg from earlier in the game (don't recall the details) that suggested that the scientists would be more likely to get a cure from Ellie than the previous 12 subjects. I agree that her immunity is likely heritable, and am shocked that after 12 test subjects, no one thought to find out if offspring inherited immunity.

If that is the case that the immunity is inheritable, then that means that somewhere out in the world are a fair number of people who are surviving and successfully producing offspring, making everything that happened moot.

I do however think that the possibility of inheritability provides the motivation for the sequel. My own pet theory is that Ellie had children and the Fireflies experimented on them, hence her murderous rage.

 

[Deepak]

I do however think that the possibility of inheritability provides the motivation for the sequel. My own pet theory is that Ellie had children and the Fireflies experimented on them, hence her murderous rage.

Perhaps, though my take is that it won't center on the Fireflies. I'm thinking that there was a raid on Tommy's group, and she's getting retribution, which is I'll admit speculative. Back to the matter of the cure, though, we know that she knows Joel lied - that was evident immediately in the ending of the first game. And at this point she would have had the autonomy to go back to the Fireflies if she really believed that the procedure would have been beneficial to society and was willing to give up her life for experimentation.

 

[Underseer]

I do however think that the possibility of inheritability provides the motivation for the sequel. My own pet theory is that Ellie had children and the Fireflies experimented on them, hence her murderous rage.

Perhaps, though my take is that it won't center on the Fireflies. I'm thinking that there was a raid on Tommy's group, and she's getting retribution, which is I'll admit speculative. Back to the matter of the cure, though, we know that she knows Joel lied - that was evident immediately in the ending of the first game. And at this point she would have had the autonomy to go back to the Fireflies if she really believed that the procedure would have been beneficial to society and was willing to give up her life for experimentation.

Bottom line: Joel was no more willing to give her the choice than Marlene was.

 

[Deepak]

Perhaps, though my take is that it won't center on the Fireflies. I'm thinking that there was a raid on Tommy's group, and she's getting retribution, which is I'll admit speculative. Back to the matter of the cure, though, we know that she knows Joel lied - that was evident immediately in the ending of the first game. And at this point she would have had the autonomy to go back to the Fireflies if she really believed that the procedure would have been beneficial to society and was willing to give up her life for experimentation.

Bottom line: Joel was no more willing to give her the choice than Marlene was.

Again - I don't think I can agree with that. Marlene definitely was not going to give her the choice. We'd need to know more of the events after the ending to determine whether Joel would have or not. You can say his actions were selfish, and I don't totally disagree, but I don't think he would have prevented her from going after the fact. If you think that his not telling her in the truck is not giving her the choice, I'd say that he knew they'd kill her to get at Joel.

 

[Underseer]

If he were willing to give her the choice, I don't think he would not have lied to her like that.

 

[Deepak]

If he were willing to give her the choice, I don't think he would not have lied to her like that.

Well we know he lied, and we also know that she knows he lied. The question would be would he prevent her from going, and that's what I have a hard time believing. In the preview for the next game it doesn't seem like he's limiting her autonomy. Given the choice, I think he would have prevented her from having to go through the dark times he did, but his question of whether she's "really going to go through with this" made it seem like he isn't interested in demanding that she do what he says.

Most of the Joel criticisms seem to stem from him using Ellie as a proxy for Sarah, and his selfish desire for his newfound 'daughter' to help him regain part of his lost humanity. I don't disagree with that, actually. But given that, I think his desire would be that she doesn't have to live through the parts of his life that he regrets - and if he was adamant in not giving her a choice I don't think he would have posed that question to her.

The thing I liked about this game was that it presented realistic interactions and personalities, and not so much black & white good versus evil - and the motivations you're presenting seems too simplistic for how things actually played out. He is a flawed character, no doubt, but not so flawed.

 

[Underseer]

If you look at the things that happened to Joel or that Joel lived through prior to meeting Ellie, he watched an awful lot of people die for the greater good. It's not hard to imagine that Joel would risk dooming humanity just so he can have a surrogate daughter just because he's sick of sacrifices for the greater good. Is it really so much of a stretch that he would try to take the choice away from Ellie with a lie?

 

[Deepak]

But it's not a question of whether he would lie or not - it's established that he did. It also seemed pretty clear that Ellie knew he lied