In reality, Its not Black and White

[Goat]

So i read in these discussions someone saying abby was evil and he couldnt get himself to like Abby in spite of how the author tried to portray her looking human and i say that its too bad and such people lack imagination. im going to repeat part of what i wrote in that thread here.

So for me, i ended up on Abby's side by the end of the game and its a logical conversion for me. First of all, Joel wasn't saving his daughter like i have read many people say. he was saving some girl he traveled half way across the country with..yea they bonded in the process but that wasn't his daughter. at least not at that point. Abby was avenging her actual father.

Second, the circumstance that lead to Joel killing abby's father was not warranted to me. yea he held a knife at him but he didnt charge at him with it. Joel killed everyone including the nurses. Now lets talk about what abby's father was trying to do. SAVE HUMANITY. if you live in such a world were a sickness is ravaging thru the entire world and you get an opportunity to put a stop to it, to find a cure, a first time ever getting this close to ending the suffering of mankind. If YOU lived in that world, wouldnt you want a cure to be found? you would probably see Ellie as collateral damage which happens all the time in war. I get that she didnt give consent to die. True. But we now know from part two that even Eliie would have gladly given up her life to find the cure. But not only that it was very selfish of Joel to talke that option away from humanity. I am sure you would feel that way if you lived in that world. Imagine being on the verge of finding a cure and someone just takes it away. its easier to look at the story from outside and feel sorry for Joel but if you lived in that world you wouldnt appreciate what he did.

To me, Joel had it coming. he had killed many people including marlene that he couldnt possibly discount as murder. They were all trying to cure humanity. He was trying to selfishly keep a relationship with a girl had had barely know for a few weeks.

Ironically, Abby was the heterosexual in this game, not that there is anything wrong with being gay but there is alot of people who hate this game due to the LGBT content and these usually are the same people ( not always) that hate Abby for physique and cite it as a reason to hate the game. Well, Ellie was gay even in part 1 and almost no one complains about part 1 including these people that hate on Abby

[Goat]

im curious how you guys feel about this

[Mitcheeta]

I like Ellie more, I feel like her plot is the emotional backbone of the game. The game did successfully make me like Abby and maybe even prefer her campaign but Ellie just feels synonymous with the TLOU IP; playing as her just feels right, when I'm playing as Abby it's like I have to constantly remind myself I'm playing TLOU. And it's weird to say but I prefer Ellie's character model.

Deep dive: It was kind of jarring switching to Abby and all my upgrades are reset, it feels manipulative that they gave her such an interesting campaign with beautiful soundtracks meanwhile Ellie's campaign on recollection looks sort of just a edgyfest. Lev/Yara/Owen were really compelling characters with their own motivations meanwhile Dina personality is she just really likes Ellie, and as much as I like Jesse he's just "cool nice guy", and Tommy was given scraps.

and my feelings are kind of muddled even if I loved the game so much and think it's the best thing I've played in years.

[Viper]

Joel was

[Goat]

joel was what? the bad guy?

[halbermensch999]

He sort of snapped, I don't think he's a bad guy overall.

[GOJIRA]

The universe of TLoU in general has blurred lines regarding good/bad.

Joel was a smuggler, helped entire criminal organizations, factions and terrorists rise and fall by smuggling explosives, weapons, food etc. Just so he himself could reap the benefits and bypassing checkpoints or hold some sort of say regarding curfew etc.

He (brutally) murdered innocent people and entire faction(s) all on his own for egoistic reasons and obviously at some points for survival, obviously.

If TLoU never gave us the POV of Joel/Ellie and instead someone from the opposite side, we would've ended up hating Joel/Ellie just as much.

[Vox Maximus]

Originally posted by Goat:

joel was what? the bad guy?

Yes, he had doomed the humanity.

[PONPOKO]

Originally posted by Goat:

He was trying to selfishly keep a relationship with a girl had had barely know for a few weeks.

A few weeks? They went through Summer → Fall → Winter → Spring together. The time we spend with them is not even 1% of the time they would have spent on their actual journey across America. The things they experienced also made it so they'd have a stronger bond than most real parents have with their own child.

[Bird_Dog]

What? Joel was a selfish man who was quick to use violence to get what he wanted?
I played both games and I would never have guessed if you hadn't pointed it out to me.

On a less snarky note, yeah Joel was acting purely selfish. He always did when the going got tough. That started in the Prologue of the first game.
You are wrong about two points tough: First, by the time they arrived in Seatle, Joel did see Ellie as his adoptive daughter.
Losing Sarah broke him. And losing Ellie would have destroyed him.
So, while most of us won't condone his actions, they were at least understandable.

The second thing: Joel did not doom humanity. Humanity doesn't need that selfish git's help to be doomed.
The firefleys were clutching at straws when they belived they could make a cure or vaccine out of Eliie's brain. They had minimal equipment and expertise. The chance of succeding were remote. And even if they managed to develop the vaccine, how would they have mass-produced and shipped it? Would others even have belived and trusted them? A bunch of terrorists? If you think there's too many anti-vaxxers now, wait what a generation of social collaps and being bullied by anyone with a gun will do...
And even if others had belived them, there would have been a good chance that FEDRA and other factions would have fought over controlling it and destoryed it in the process out of incompetence or spite.
There are valid reasons why killing Ellie was not worth it.
Those reasons just didn't matter to Joel.

As for Abby revenge-killing him: Her motivation and action were understandable and even justified to a point.
Drawing the kiling out, slowly torturing him to death just to vent her anger? That was a step too far.
Abby is neither worse nor better than many other a-holes that populate the TLoU world.

[Vince]

When people discuss this, most of them are hostage to their own primitive emotions. It's simple: If TLOU1 wasn't about Joel and Ellie but about Daddy and Abby, absolutely EVERYONE would root for Abby in TLOU2.

Imagine you play as her dad in TLOU1, helping his daughter grow into a strong young woman who can fend for herself. You grow to love her caring, animal loving doctor dad, and you grow to love Abby. Then, at the end of TLOU1, a strange man butchers everyone you've grown to care for in the game, including Dad.

Every gamer and their dog would HATE that strange man (Joel) as much as Abby does, and they couldn't wait to enact their revenge.

That thought experiment alone paints the perfect picture here: Abby is the good one.

[TritonWolf]

I always took the games theme and underlying message as "we are all the bad guy to someone else and to truly be good is to move on and forgive."

Both Ellie and Abby are bad guys and have both done terrible things, same with Joel . I also took it as that for game design reasons too, you get to have Abby and Ellie as protagonists while the other switches to be the antagonist.

Just my opinion and everyone has the right to feel what they want about the game.

[The Grin]

There is no good or bad. Literally all characters are morally GREY.
They all have problems in this " zombie - infection - scav rats" Apocalypse and they all get violent in order to survive, no matter the motivations.

All characters can be forgiven or blamed to a certain extent and based on certain actions.

Some go too far, some not enough, some make terrible mistakes without the willingness to do them actually etc.... and this leads to everyone being mixed in a massive Pooh pot where they fight for survival.

And here I read everywhere on the forums " This one is good, the other one is bad" "NO this one is bad and the other one has always been good"... ridiculous fan clubs....

[cha0tic]

There weren't any "bad" guys or "good" guys in this franchise just people trying to survive. Even in the first game they tried to nail this into your head because even the Hunters you were killing had lore about how they were oppressed and toppled their oppressors only to become the same thing they conquered but worse. The main difference between characters and factions was their moral compasses. How far were they willing to sacrifice their humanity to survive?

The game is literally called "The last of us" for a reason.

[mark1971]

The whole narrative of The Last of Us is like an anti-hero drama. And I hope, at one point, it will continue with another part.

In narrative form, I like the protagonists it provides.

Joel, as a character, is "capable of acting" (functional). He's someone who does what needs to be done. Plus, he's obviously traumatized by the death of his daughter. An experience like this changes a person, especially the way she died.

From a psychological perspective, he had "changes in character." And the social decay did the rest.

One could also say about Joel, "You reap what you sow," or that's karma. He did bad things, but he also has done good ones, like the others too. And that's what I see; no one of them is really bad or good. In a pure form.

That's a didactic play.

The themes are omnipresent. Loss, love and hate. I appreciate that the campaign of vengeance is falling apart at the end. I'm looking at it, and I like that, like in reality, I don't have to choose a side.

[Vince]

It's funny albeit slightly annoying to see users pretend to be profound saying "Everyone is morally GREY and of story!". Ever heard of SHADES of grey? That nobody is perfect doesn't mean everyone is equally imperfect.

In other words: "Everyone is morally grey" isn't the end all be all argument you guys think it is. I'd argue Abby is a much lighter shade of grey than Ellie is, and Joel is a lighter shade of grey than Ellie is. Yes, I'd argue Ellie is the darkest of them all. Why? Quite simply because she understood why Abby enacted her revenge on Joel and it was because of an act she was almost equally horrified by. And yet, that didn't stop her from going on a murder spree. And while Abby let Ellie live TWICE, Ellie wanted to kill her twice. That Ellie FINALLY saw reason and coincidently saved Abby in her hunt for revenge, hardly counts when weighing all the blood she had spilled.