Fun game until they make you play as an evil character

[Me Lance]

There is nothing fun about playing Abby at any point in the game. It's frustrating to be forced to play as someone who is not the main character and who is evil to their core.

[J4MESOX4D]

All the characters are evil pretty much because that's the direction the writers have taken it although they did their very best to paint torturer Abby as some saviour and her team as dog-loving people full of regret but doing their bit for mankind.

Exploring the consequences of Joel's actions were a perfectly good angle to take but by the end of the game you'll just end up hating everyone. Too much time is spent with irrelevant characters and trying to make bad people look good. One of the most destructive narratives I have ever seen.

[Milkdust]

Postat inițial de Vox Maximus:

Postat inițial de Milkdust:

So you didn't get Neil Druckmann's super-deep message that Abby may not be as evil as you think?

It's a very nuanced message. As subtle as a sledgehammer. Requiring the sort of storytelling deft and sophistication that only a genius like Druckmann could pull off. If his amateurish emotional manipulations and on-the-nose writing didn't work for you...well it must have gone over your head or something.

Abby wasn't evil at all. People who see the world in two colors are not going to understand a thing.

Your alternative is seeing the world is no colors at all. Which is consistent with Druckmann's writing: No sophistication. No nuance. Only nihilism.

[halbermensch999]

Postat inițial de Milkdust:

Postat inițial de Vox Maximus:

Abby wasn't evil at all. People who see the world in two colors are not going to understand a thing.

Your alternative is seeing the world is no colors at all. Which is consistent with Druckmann's writing: No sophistication. No nuance. Only nihilism.

Plenty of colors in the life Dina offered Ellie.
Owen also was looking for something better
Abby and Lev left to go elsewhere as well
You might miss these things on your own

And obviously Druckmann takes into account how loss can damage people, PTDS as well.. which is why we see many of them acting so destructively. That's not a lack of sophistication. We know that losing his daughter was the worst thing that ever has happened to Joel
We know it was the worst thing to happen to Abby as well, losing her father
We know it was awful for Ellie to lose Joel even though their relationship was not perfect

[EDesrock]

If TLOU1 had been about Jerry's (Abby's father) struggles to raise a child in this harsh environment and the father-daughter bond that they had developed, we'd have the same people, calling Abby "evil", frothing at the mouth for revenge against the POS (Joel) that murdered him in cold blood while he was literally trying to save the world.
This thread (and others like it) outline a fundamental problem with society. Too many adults view everything as black and white, and have a "good guys" vs "bad guys", "mah team better than ur team" mentality.
Edit* - I can "empathise" with someone, on a first playthrough. If you haven't figured out who Abby is by the time you start playing her story, it could make you feel negatively at having to play as her. I was more talking about the people who've finished the game and are still on the "Abby and co. = bad guys" "Joel, Ellie and co. = good guys" train.

[Mitcheeta]

Postat inițial de Milkdust:

Postat inițial de Vox Maximus:

Abby wasn't evil at all. People who see the world in two colors are not going to understand a thing.

Your alternative is seeing the world is no colors at all. Which is consistent with Druckmann's writing: No sophistication. No nuance. Only nihilism.

That would be the case if Abby slit Lev’s throat because he’s a Scar, or Ellie goes on a rampage because she just loves killing. But the games are riddled with human expressions throughout

[halbermensch999]

Postat inițial de Mitcheeta:

Postat inițial de Milkdust:

Your alternative is seeing the world is no colors at all. Which is consistent with Druckmann's writing: No sophistication. No nuance. Only nihilism.

That would be the case if Abby slit Lev’s throat because he’s a Scar, or Ellie goes on a rampage because she just loves killing. But the games are riddled with human expressions throughout

Exactly. Neither Owen or Mel reacted with instantly wanting to shoot the scars either. They weren't bad people.
Abby realised that Owen was right, she didn't believe in the cause anymore either..

[Dear next of kin...]

Postat inițial de cha0tic:

It is a matter of perspective because literally every faction is wrong in the game but thought they were in the right. You had Fedra who were US Military remnants trying to maintain martial law thinking they did the right thing. You had Fireflies who had a noble cause of finding a cure but were doing it at any cost and hated any opposition. You had WLF thinking they were doing the right thing by killing Seraphites for being "savages" and you had the Seraphites being wrong for thinking everyone else different than them were sinners and deserved to die because they blamed technology on the downfall of the world.

Oh I have no problem with the idea that all these groups have their own justifications and they're all bad. But you don't have people out here trying to defend Fedra or the WLF, or Seraphites by saying they're actually the good guys and the people they killed deserved it. What you do have out here is people saying the Fireflies are actually the heroes, and I'm here to remind them, the Fireflies were acting like date rapists.

[Dear next of kin...]

Postat inițial de Mitcheeta:

I don’t think it’s a fair comparison, putting women into reproductive camps? Or David the cannibal? The fireflies are trying to make a vaccine to save the world and Ellie’s perspective is more important than ours, and she wanted it to happen.

Although I don’t think your perspective is necessarily wrong, just like the people that think Joel is the villain. But to me the game was trying to do this morally ambiguous thing, the world vs one life. And that’s kind of what made the ending of TLOU1 so special and generated some of the best most interesting vidya discussion (also really enhanced Joel’s character and was the perfect ending to his character arc).

The thing is, it's not the world vs one life. If you look around, you find out they've tried the procedure multiple times before and failed each time, they knew it probably wouldn't work.

If there is an overarching theme of The Last of Us 1, it's about the relationship between Father and Daughter. You start the game playing as Joel's daughter, you have extremely parental talks with Ellie all throughout the game, and for a section, you play as Ellie protecting and taking care of Joel.
Do you really think that the section where the father finds out the person his daughter has trusted with her life has drugged her and is about to take advantage of her in a way she will never recover from has no real world allegory, and that it wasn't done on purpose?

[mrocco]

Yeah, I get what they were trying to do. But I didn't care. Never cared about her. Hate played my way through her chapters. Had no interest in her characters side. Wanted her to die the whole time. Was sad she didn't.
I beat the first one 7x times on multiple platforms. Loved it every time. Played the 2nd when it released on PS4 and never again until now. Trying again with an open mind about what it is. But we'll see.

[Mitcheeta]

Postat inițial de Dear next of kin...:

The thing is, it's not the world vs one life. If you look around, you find out they've tried the procedure multiple times before and failed each time, they knew it probably wouldn't work.

I have seen this misconception before back in the day, if I'm remembering right it's from the Surgeon's Recorder collectable.

April 28th. Marlene was right. The girl's infection is like nothing I've ever seen. The cause of her immunity is uncertain. As we've seen in all past cases, the antigenic titers of the patient's Cordyceps remain high in both the serum and the cerebrospinal fluid. Blood cultures taken from the patient rapidly grow Cordyceps in fungal-media in the lab... however white blood cell lines, including percentages and absolute-counts, are completely normal. There is no elevation of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and an MRI of the brain shows no evidence of fungal-growth in the limbic regions, which would normally accompany the prodrome of aggression in infected patients.

We must find a way to replicate this state under laboratory conditions. We're about to hit a milestone in human history equal to the discovery of penicillin. After years of wandering in circles, we're about to come home, make a difference, and bring the human race back into control of its own destiny. All of our sacrifices and the hundreds of men and women who've bled for this cause, or worse, will not be in vain.

Just the phrase "As we've seen in all past cases" set some people off.

Do you really think that the section where the father finds out the person his daughter has trusted with her life has drugged her and is about to take advantage of her in a way she will never recover from has no real world allegory, and that it wasn't done on purpose?

No I don't, it's way less of an interesting story for both the narrative and Joel's character. The reason why the scene is so impactful is because Joel chooses Ellie over the world, which is the perfect ending to his arc and narrative flow that started with Sarah's Epilogue. I regret bursting bubbles because I know that interpretation comes from a place of love for Joel's character, and the desire to scrub away his scrutiny.