The Last of Us 2 - SPOILERS!!!

The MGS2 comparison doesn't work for me. Most playing that game at the time kinda knew or had a suspicion that Iroquois Pliskin was Snake and it provided a great moment in gaming when he eventually revealed himself. Every aspect of Kojima's vision dovetailed beautifully at that point. It was a thoughtful and intricately crafted twist , unlike Joel's contrived death played for shock value.

MGS2 was also a complex and extremely intelligent piece of postmodern art. Its themes and ideas are too highfalutin and thought- provoking to be brought to film. But if TLOU2 was a movie , it would be Revenge 2019 - a basic revenge tale devoid of any depth or substance.

I think this game actually has a bit more in common with Snake Eater in terms of the main character getting destroyed early by somebody they thought was on their side. The difference here is that its almost a tear shedding moment when the player begins to understand the reasons and motive as to why The Boss betrayed them.
Crafting a story that asks the player/viewer to understand the antagonists POV takes a degree of skill , nuance and even compassion. Druckmann clearly did not have it.
But comparing his effort to Snake Eater is a tad unfair as that game is a work of genius and is arguably the greatest game ever made.

Leroy42 wrote: »

But after playing the game we know exactly why Abby acted like that. SHe and her friends traveling across the country to find Joel. The man who killed her father, plenty of their friends and colleagues, and denied the world the chance for a cure.

Him saving her would not be seen as some redeeming feature, simply a piece of luck. Mercy killing? She hated the man. Despised him, had years of pent up hatred, disgust and saw him as possibly the worst person in the world, certainly someone to blame for what is going on. Add to that the fight between the Scars and WLF, which is really only still going because the world is still the way it is and you can fully understand Abby's reasoning.

You don't have to agree but surely you can sympathize, particularly given the world they live in? How is it any different that sympathizing with Joel because he lost his daughter? Joel made the decision to save Ellie purely because of that heartbreak, he killed multiple fireflies and possibly condemned the world to forever stay in the way it is with the infected. Yet you struggle to understand why Abby would kill him?

Ellie is harder to understand. She hated Joel for the decision he made, yet when Abby killed him, and she knows very well the killing he had done in his past, all she can think of is revenge. But it seems it is more revenge because she didn't get to make her piece with Joel rather than Joel actually being killed. She mentions at one that that if the infected got Abby it wouldn't be justice, want she meant was it wouldn't be justice on her terms.

Abby did what she had to do. But she was never going to be redeemable for how he did it. That was the point.

Penn wrote: »

I disagree. Seeing her backstory I think it's very easy to sympathise with her, and again her desire for revenge against Joel completely matches Ellie's desire for revenge against Abby. Joel not only killed her father, but her whole way of life too because the Fireflies pretty much disbanded after that. She lost everything she knew, everything she had (except Owen), and also a decent chance at finding some sort of vaccine for the virus. Joel took.... everything.

There was a valid reason why Joel killed her father... from Joel's persective. Abby even walks in when her father is being asked if he'd sacrifice her if it meant finding a cure and it's implied he would, as difficult as it would be. But she doesn't love him any less because of it because she knows too it would be the right thing to do. Joel did the wrong thing. The right thing for him, but not for everyone else. There's nothing he could have or would have said to Abby that would have changed anything.

So from the start of Abby's section, it's hard to sympathise with her. But as you progress with her I think it becomes a lot easier to sypathise with her than with Ellie. She lets Ellie and Tommy live after killing Joel even though Ellie is swearing revenge. Abby is willing to give up her love for Owen so he can be with Mel. The repeated use of her running down the hospital corridor showing how her mentality changes from trauma (her father's death), to a desire to help others (Yara and Lev), to finding inner peace (her father being alive in the room). Her willingness to go against the Wolves to help Yara and Lev, including facing her biggest fears. Letting Ellie and Dina (and Tommy, unclear if she knew she hadn't killed him) live even after Ellie killed all her friends and the man she loved. Becoming like a sister to Lev who lost his entire family and forming a bond with him similar to how Joel bonded with Ellie.

By the end, seeing her strung up like that, trying to save and get away with Lev and not wanting to fight Ellie... I'd struggle to not have sympathy for her. I let her up twice in the final fight because I didn't want to finish her off as Ellie (without knowing Ellie would end up letting her go).

It's perspective. We see Abby as the antagonist from the start because we see her through Ellie's eyes, and she kills Joel without mercy. But she did nothing worse than Joel did in TLOU1 or Ellie does in the first half of the game. The only difference is, we liked Joel.

That outlook is predicated purely on the belief that Joel did the wrong thing for saving Ellie. I feel Jerry was wrong for wanting to crack Ellie's skull open for a vaccine that may or may not have made any difference. Abby father was going to murder a kid in cold blood. A decision like that can never be the right one.
Most people feel Joel made the right choice.
Jeremy Jahns gives his opinion on why Joel did the right thing.

https://youtu.be/sMSlH802M34?t=556

Penn wrote: »

I agree in a way that it's unlikely simply operating on Ellie would have produced a miracle vaccine. But it was the best and only way they could get closer to getting a vaccine. I'd disagree that it counts as "murdering a kid in cold blood" though. It was clearly a decision they struggled with, didn't know until she got there that that's what they would have to do (having x-rayed her), and there was no other way. Marlene takes the responsibility for that decision as leader of the Fireflies and being a friend of Ellie's mother. The doctor wouldn't have done it without Marlene giving the okay. It was a necessity.

But all of that wasn't really Joel's decision to make. He had no idea if they'd be able to make the vaccine. He saved Ellie but for as much selfish reasons as anything else. Both trying to replace what he lost with his daughter, and not wanting to lose Ellie. And as we saw in this game, it's not what Ellie wanted. She didn't know it would have resulted in her death, but she would have agreed to it had she known. Yes, maybe Marlene and the doctor should have given Ellie that choice, but it wasn't Joel's choice either. He also killed Abby's father who was the main doctor leading the research into trying to find a cure, hence why the Fireflies disbanded after his death, because they had no-one else.

I get your point, but I just think it's not definitive either way and that's the point. There is moral ambiguity in all these decisions, and in all these different perspectives. That can give these different opinions on which characters can be seen as sympathetic or antagonistic, or both. Like I said, every time I played TLOU1, every doctor in that surgery died. But I think it's also easy to see why Abby is absolutely justified in wanting to kill Joel and make it painful once you see what she lost because of it.

Just a few more things to consider.

Joel terminated Jerry , but he didn't terminate any hope for humanity to find a vaccine. The potential to extract some form of sample from Ellie's head still exists , and now that Ellie is older , she can make the choice for herself if presented with the same situation.

Joel saved Ellie from a decision that was not for one man to make. The way Jerry begged for Marlene's approval suggests it wasn't a hard decision for him to make either. He acted irrationally , spontaneously and without compassion. He wanted to move ahead with the surgery without telling Joel as he knew it wasn't his decision to make.

He wouldn't have done the procedure on his own daughter which is why Marlene called him out on it.

Plus , there would be a very short window of opportunity to administer a vaccine to newly infected before they are too far gone. Once that fungal starts growing on the host its game over. And who is the vaccine going to be given to? The country is entirely split up into different factions all in conflict with each other.
It would have been a different story if there was still some semblance of structure left in he world , then Ellies sacrifice would not have been in vain , as the combined efforts of all remaining medical personal could come together to develop a vaccine.
Thats not the world of TLOU. Joel was basically handing Ellie over to a group of bandits who had a surgeon along them. Anybody would have pulled her out of that situation without thinking twice.

This is why the fandom has been split down the middle. Most feel Joel didn't deserve to be butchered for what he done , so to expect the player to reconcile or sympathise with Abby was never going to happen. Druckmann wanted to revolutionise the way players feel about a games antagonist , but there just wan't enough substance to Abby and her character wasn't deep enough to elicit affection towards her.
Abby doesn't try to understand Joel or show him any sympathy. She doesn't stop to consider that her father might have been wrong for trying to kill Ellie behind Joel's back. She doesn't care that Joel was saving the life of a young girl.
She was still obviously going to kill Joel , but if the goal was to eventually get the player to question their hate towards her , her character had to be fleshed out a little more and her line of dialogue had to be more meaningful than - Joel.Miller Guess. You don't get to rush this old man.

All opinions at the end of the day. Its a testament to how good the first game ended that people still have such strong opinions on Joel's decision. I don't think the sequel left players with the same type of moral conundrum to mull over for years to come.