mrkiscool2 wrote: » The death makes no sense though. You can kill Joel off in far other ways than just massively betraying his character from the first. He didn't trust anyone, let alone trust them that quickly. I was annoyed at the scene rather than shocked.
Penn wrote: » He didn't trust anyone... 4 years ago. In the first game he was a smuggler, someone who would have to constantly be on their guard for fear of being betrayed. Someone who spent years betraying others too (he talked about how he also set traps for people etc). But he spent the last 4 years in a new town, meeting new people, becoming part of the community, helping them, being helped by them, and learning to trust people. I think some notes show how new people would regularly come into their town and become part of the community. For all he knew Abby's group were just travelling in search of supplies or to find a new community He trusted Abby in as much as he saved her life and then her group saved his when they were under attack. All him and Tommy said were their first names, no reason not to (because the odds that they'd know who he was or what he did, or be specifically looking for him were incredibly small). It was a mistake that obviously cost him everything, but 4 years on from the first game, it's not so egregious a mistake as to be reckless, careless or out of character.
The Raging Bile Duct wrote: » :rolleyes:
mrkiscool2 wrote: » Such reply, much insight. OMG. Wow. Literally just chopped a little bit out of my reply, where I even said at the end I liked Abby and she was an interesting character. Doesn't take away from ND using basic manipilative emotional scenes to try and get you to sympathise with Abby. Like Ellie killing her dog. Fair enough if you thought that was good or it worked for you. It didn't. I don't even blame Abby for killing Joel. He killed her father, makes sense.
Leroy42 wrote: » Saw the Angry Joe review, you should have given it more than 5 minutes. He does a pretty fair job, if over the top at times but then he is Angry Joe and not cold tenchical Joe! Critical Drinker did a review as well and both had the same critique, that the Joel death and Abby story could have been written in a much different, and in their opinion, better way. Now it is easy to come up with a broad idea, but they would find as they developed it that it ran it problems just as any path would. I do think that it would have been better to start off much earlier playing as Abby. Introduce us back to Ellie and Joel in Jackson, but then go back to Abby at the hospital and her finding her dad. Then play out the dual roles, switching between mainly Abby and then Ellie as Abby moves towards Jackson and we see Ellie in her new life around Jackson trying to deal with the increasing infected threat (migrating horde was mentioned a few times) whilst dealing with the lie that Joel told. So Joel and Ellie are on patrol, Ellie comes across Abby and brings her back to a lookout. She tells Abby about their previous adventures and Abby works out who Joel is. Replace the theatre scene of Jesse/Tommy with a similar one with Abby and Joel. Abby wounds, but doesn't kill Ellie but kills Joel, and Ellie witnesses it. Now Ellie has the grief of Joel's death, and the knowledge that it was her that brought Abby into contact with him and by being so open so gave it away. She hates herself and seeks revenge of Abby to rid herself of the sense of guilt and loss. Her first stop is back to the hospital where she finds links between the doc and Abby, she learns that Joel didn't just take her away but brutally killed all he met. That would start to give us more insight into Abby and her desire to kill Joel. In the meantime Abby has returned to WLF but found that without the drive to get revenge she no longer cares so this fight. Saves Lev and Yara whilst on some mission and then decides to walk away. Wherin Ellie tracks her down to Santa Barbara and boom. Lev kills Dina, Ellie kills Lev, and we are down to the two girls. But as they are in the midst of fighting each other, they get captured by the Rattlers, tortured, forced to fight off against infected. A chance to escape arrives, but it requires both of them to save each other at different times. It looks like they will survive but as they appear free Ellie cannot let Abby go. Leaving Abby for dead on the beach she takes the boat and heads off. Abby is recaptured by the Rattlers and last scene is Ellie looking back at the beach as Abby screams at being captured. Fade to black.
Leroy42 wrote: » But so what that they used manipilative emotional scenes to try and get you to sympathise with Abby. They did exactly the same in TLOU. Imagine if they hadn't started with the death of his daughter. We only see Joel from the start of the mission with Tess. Now the guy is just a thug. Of course there is manipulation.
johnny_ultimate wrote: » I consciously know Pixar are actively, aggressively tugging my heartstrings in every way possible in the final act of Toy Story 3 - but you’d better believe it’s working.
BruteStock wrote: » There's no evidence to support he idea that Joel went soft or eventually lost all of his survival instincts. To me , thats clutching at straws and making excuses for bad writing. Its stated that traders came through , but to think Joel and the camp just let then wade in willy-nilly is laughable. They obviously had a security procedure if they routinely had patrols out on watch to guard settlement. They also had strategically placed look-out posts surrounding the area , again for security. Joel was part of the patrol himself , tasked with protecting the settlement.... where Ellie lived. Its not in any way consistent to his character to believe he'd him to slowly take Ellie's safety for granted over time. . He was untrustworthy of others even before the world went down the tube. There's no reason to believe that after all he'd been through and after all the enemies he made , that he decided to let his guard down believing there was no chance people may came back for either him or Ellie??. Yeah , thats a tough sell!
The Raging Bile Duct wrote: » I think it's an extremely cheap shot to say someone's easily duped just because they liked an aspect of a story that you didn't like and the 'go you' at the end just comes off as snide and arseholey.
mrkiscool2 wrote: » I claim that they got duped as the see Abby as better than Ellie which makes no sense. When Abby gets her revenge, she goes back, life goes on until Ellie comes from her, not a care. Ellie loses everything when she tries to get revenge but she is the bad character? It doesn't make sense to me. Its either both Ellie and Abby are assholes for what they did or they are both justified. If you think its one way or another some level of the manipulation in the game has made you come to that opinion so...yeah, they got duped.
Penn wrote: » I think overall, they're both assholes and they're both justified. They both have a fairly equal and justifiable desire for revenge. They're both assholes in how they go about it. The key difference for me though is Abby's revenge is more direct. She only wants Joel. She lets Ellie and Tommy live even with Ellie swearing revenge. After Ellie & Tommy kill more of her friends including the guy she loved, she still lets Ellie and Dina live in order to end it (and Tommy since it's not sure if she knew she hadn't killed him). Abby's purpose changes, she's willing to move past the anger and revenge to start a new life. Ellie gets her new life, but she can't move on. She leaves it to hunt Abby down and even seeing what Abby has been put through by the Rattlers, still tries to kill her. I don't think there's much between them, but there's enough for me to shake off that connection to Ellie and Joel from the first game and see things from the alternate perspective. Joel and Ellie took everything from Abby. Abby took almost everything from Ellie. It was Abby who was able to move past that first though, while it took longer for Ellie to get there. I don't think it's because Ellie is worse than Abby, like I said in a previous post I think part of what drove Ellie to the lengths she did was the fact she never got to make things right with Joel, so it's partially her own regret and self-anger at not forgiving Joel before he died. No duping or emotional manipulation involved. Stuff like Alice the dog helps feed into Abby's character but it's also not based on it. Likewise Ellie killing Mel without knowing she was pregnant whereas Abby was ready to kill Dina despite knowing she was pregnant, it's all just to show perspective, because Abby wouldn't have known Ellie didn't know Mel was pregnant when she killed her. Like I said, they're both assholes, but they're both also justified.
mrkiscool2 wrote: » Broadly agree with this and do think it is a good take on the situation. However, Ellie went after everyone as most of that group was there for Joel's murder and facilitated in it honestly so can see why Ellie went on a murder spree.
Bigmac1euro wrote: » Just finished my first run on the hardest difficulty. Did anyone find the game a little easy in a sense? I had plenty of health ammo items etc throughout the game even though it was on survival. They even give you listen ability on survival mode. Which they didn’t in the first game. I thought the story was brilliant. I’m not let down at all. I feel it reflects how sometimes in reality not everything is perfect.
al87987 wrote: » https://youtu.be/nnRCbqmWobw Just wanted to finally put to bed the ignorant narrative that Joel wouldn't reveal his name so easy and that they betrayed his character from the first game. Tommy reveals their names to Abby about the 4 minute mark after calling Abby 'girl' for a while. Joel also screams Tommy's name several times when they're trying to move the ski lift when under attack so Abby knows the names are genuine. Then when they get to the lodge, Joel states he won't unsaddle his horse as he's not sticking around, as soon as the blizzard is over, he's outta there, again showing his lack of trust of newbies. Abby already knows its Joel however so the jig is up well before he introduces himself in front of the group. I've got no problem with criticism of the game but this is not one of them and just demonstrates peoples lack of attention to detail. Also had to laugh at whoever said i am being duped and emotionally manipulated, it's just great storytelling and it's a bit sad that some people's tribalism won't ever let them see it.
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