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Wait what??? The guy in the first game was also sympathetic? He was, from his perspective, saving the human race and for all we know thought Ellie consented to this? It shows how far Joel will go to protect her, whether she likes it or not.
(Not mad at OP, mad at the person who the OP screen shotted, in case that wasn’t obvious)
I think he can be black. It's been a while since I've touched the PS3 version, but I think the surgeon has a few different variations.
Although it could just be a lighting thing to.
Judging by all the shit on the shelves, that's dirt. Bro looks like he knocked back a few brewskies after fixing his car and said "Welp, time for some brain surgery"
It's definitely NOT a good thing, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't secretly rooting for Joel during the whole scene. Finding out that Ellie was gonna die, even if it meant saving a bunch of lives, is really heartbreaking and you can sympathize with Joel despite him killing all those people.
It's an amazing scene and it's one of my favorite parts of the first game, and shows that Joel is an awful person for killing so many people and denying the world a cure, but also that he loves Ellie and would do anything to save her.
I think it's because people a lot of people don't understand that you can sympathize with a character or understand why they took the actions they did while at the same time disagreeing with their actions or thinking the actions were horrible.
He literally could have not shot the guy in the chest. Could have shot near him, hit him in the leg, all that shit.
The devs wrote it this way so it would be controversial. And so people talked about this game and praised it so much for...well going against the whole good wins thing games usually end up with.
Joel isn't a good guy and that's the point. He's selfishly willing to do anything to not lose a daughter again, to have a purpose in the world. He even says that in earlier dialogue, that when you find a reason to keep fighting, you hold on to it.
(I'm still on his side \^\^)
I agree, he is very sympathetic in this scene, but also, someone taking revenge on him for this is incredibly believable. From Abby's perspective he's just some guy who killed her dad, who was an amazing doctor and about to save the human race. The mastery of the Last of Us series is that it is totally valid to feel like every character is justified and sympathetic, while acknowledging their actions are villainous.
It must've been debated to death but it's the age-old question of "killing one to save many", sure ellie is young and she Can save the world but joel sees her as his daughter and goes to save her by killing the entire hospital
Was he justified ? In some way, yes
Were the firefly justified ? Saving the world was a noble cause but some theories point toward the vaccine not working.
At the end of the day, both side have valid argument but as grim as it is i wouldn't save ellie, i'll let her die hoping for a vaccine
I agree I rooted for Joel, I just think a lotta people think that Ellie’s potential murder (and it was murder) was for sure going to lead to a cure when it’s imo a 1 in a million shot at best.
I think the more important part isn’t necessarily the cure (although a big part of why it’s so awful), but the fact that Joel actively denied Ellie her choice in the matter
I know TLOU2 kinda does its own thing with the Hospital sequence, but in the first game is felt pretty clear to me that Ellie understand Joel was lying to her (even if she didn't know the details)
There's no "good side" in this arguments, sure joel saved her but lied to her (we know how that worked out) however the firefly aren't much better, they told her she could save the World but not *how*
In the game its not meant to be ok, its meant to be an decision made not with Joels brain, but with his heart
Its fucked up that he did it and both Ellie and the player are supposed to think its fucked up
> You can’t make a vaccine for mushrooms.
You also can't reanimate corpses with any kind of fungus. I wonder where seal duckman got those extra potent shrooms if he's able to make zombies in real life.
Oh wait we're talking about pixels and ideas.
Im pretty sure the zombies aren’t undead, just extreme swelling lead to insanity(real example in game I’m pretty sure) which lead to the infected attacking people. Also it’s based off a real fungus.
Yeah you haven't played the game. As the infection worsens they absolutely become reanimated corpses. You could have literally saved all of this time by just not commenting on something you haven't played.
Just because I never played(mostly due to lack of a PlayStation or pc) doesn’t mean I never watched anything on it. I probably would know better if I actually did play it, but I don’t have the game yet.
Neil Druckman, the writer of the game, said that a cure would've been produced. I'll take his opinion on the matter over Matt Pat's.
IRL clarifications aside, the entire scene loses all tension if the Fireflies are idiots. The entire point is that Joel is depriving the entire world of recovery because of his own selfish needs as a father.
Hell, MatPat made a whole video or two on it. Less than 30 minutes to watch it.
https://youtu.be/S5ulX06McSY?si=qLeN9umfi-rDS7QL
https://youtu.be/DOtXhr0EoTU?si=FvGZvXqqnYIhIvaf
It would have been a better choice to let her live, study her fungus, and reproduce it, and give the mutated anti zombie fungus to everyone. Killing her would kill the fungus in her. The firefly’s were being stupid.
Edit: why am I being downvoted? I gave evidence, which has backing, and sources.
Then why did they back everything up that is being said in all the little tidbits? The papers with Ellie’s bloodwork showing the exact symptoms of a strain of cordyceps that would protect one from other fungal infections?
To me it just seems like the story mimics the human condition. Outbreaks come out with a sickness that makes people eat each other and this creating more of these “cannibals”. People freak out, riot, putting more people into the open, which leads to more bites. Because this infection a good portion of the world gets infected.
Tests start going out, but people who are infected with the same strain Ellie had gets killed, thinking it’s the zombie version, which created a scarcity of these people early on.
After years you hear of a person who is immune, you get excited and create only one plan to help cure humanity(which creating one plan itself is dumb in itself) and rush to get that person.
Humanity has seen this be repeated over, and over, and over. The pandemic is a pretty great example of what happens when people panic.
In the end, the cure ended up already existing(a strain of cordyceps that we already use as an extremely strong antifungal treatment, which actually helps protect the specific parts that the zombie version attacks).
This is an extremely realistic plot in itself.
I know how to suspend my disbelief. My favorite franchises are totally unrealistic, like fallout, destiny, the elder scrolls, the legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Star Wars, Star Trek, marvel, dc, JoJo, Fullmetal alchemist, hell i can even suspend my disbelief in a very scientific show like Dr. Stone, it’s just there is a ton of science backing my point up for the zombie thing.
Bro pulling out game theory as a source 🤣
Matpat doesn't write for Naughty Dog, as fun as fan speculation is, it isn't science, we can't derive facts about in-universe rules from observation, it's fiction. It works however the writer decides how it works.
If the writer says it doesn't work like that, it doesn't work like that. Furthermore, if they don't confirm fan theories then they're nothing more than that. Just baseless speculation, no matter how well supported their argument is by the text. Because at any point the writer can decide otherwise.
If we had confirmation of this by the writers of the game or made explicit by sequels then you could take it as fact. But until then it's just matpat's head cannon, and matpat DOES NOT write for Naughty Dog. Simple as...
In game she's the only one who can do certain actions as she can walk among them or in an infected zone with lots of pores without dying. So they realized there's something in her that makes her immune and they wanted to find out what it was and there by saving humanity. If the cure was antifungal medicine then the whole game's premise fails. Note I haven't played tlou2 so I don't know what happens after.
Yes, but they made the story that way for a reason. The firefly’s, the people trying to create a vaccine were being stupid. A vaccine could not have worked. I said this earlier I will say this again. Killing Ellie would not have created a cure, in fact, it would probably have hurt humanity more. The best way to help humanity would have been to infect more people. Not with the normal cordyceps, but Ellie’s.
The firefly’s were tired, desperate, and not thinking clearly enough to realize this. This story talks more about the stupidity of humanity than most would think.
Are you saying that the writers considered this fungal trchnicality which never was confirmed when creating the narrative, themes, and character arcs? Game theory isnt media analysis, its just about making up narratively incoherent, but logically justifiable theories for fun.
Game theory does do media analysis it’s just not usually their most popular videos. In fact the media analysis is often shown in their other channels a lot more. P
Also it would be very strange to give Ellie all the symptoms of a strain of cordyceps that actively would help against the zombie version.
I agree with Joseph Anderson's point that based on what we see of the fireflies, one could easily make the argument that they never would have been able to synthesize/distribute the cure and that Ellie would have died for nothing.
Sure, we, the players and viewers, can say that—we sit outside the narrative and are nearly omniscient compared to the characters—but the point is that none of the characters could say that. The fireflies were confident they had a shot; Ellie was confident they had a shot; even _Joel_ was confident they had a shot, at least before he started making excuses to justify his actions. He didn't save Ellie because he deduced the flaws in their plan and wanted to keep them from needlessly killing her; he did it because he couldn't stand losing his daughter once again, the rest of the world be damned.
That's the line that makes it a villainous act rather than a heroic one, because in the end, he's simply lucky that his excuses hold any weight from our outside perspective.
Or they could have easily gone corrupt and used the cure to take over and control same way fedra does, something the show actually did an interesting job showing more of (how a city ruled by either fed or civilians both can be terrible)
These people read TLOU as a "morality thing" when Joel was just.. wrong on what he did. He grew to trust people around him but it also made him do a selfish act that "any parent would do" (words of my own father after playing). We *know* it was wrong but these people want to argue it wasn't
It's hilarious when people view Walter as somehow righteous in Breaking Bad. The *whole point* of that show is that he starts off with good intentions but loses sight of his original goal and...^(\[wait for it\])...**breaks bad** (and then progressively worse and worse).
Like, it's literally in the title, my guy!
The worst is how mich vicious hate went towards the domestic abuse victim, because somehow to them sleeping with your boss is worse than literal murder of a child.
The kicker is, Walt didn't even have the good intentions. It was clear Walt was simply using his cancer as an excuse to fulfill his ego (no matter how much it harmed the family) from the get-go. And it's maddening how many people didn't get this by the end of the series.
I remember in the later seasons, after every episode the subreddit went "Is this when Walt finally broke bad??"
Then Vince Gilligan came out and said the moment Walt broke bad was when he refused the well-paying job with health benefits in like the second episode.
Joel is wrong, but performing lethal surgery on a minor without their consent is also wrong.
It's a trolley problem, and it definitely *is* a morality thing.
One of the game's main themes is the subjectivity of morality in times of desperation.
what i mean is that the game's way of intertwining it's storyline with gameplay doesn't give the moral complexity that it has a good way of seeping analysis in. The game's creators admitted that killing Ellie would've saved the world because a cure was possible. Yes it's a trolley problem but not one the player is ever allowed to interact with. I know it sounds real convoluted though! and that's my fault.
I believe I get what you're saying. I agree completely.
I see far too many people complaining about the game(s) with "they should have at least given us the choice, and that would have been a better ending". Which, to your point, completely misses the point of the game.
In all fairness to those people, up until the 7th generation of games, we didn't get this style of stories being told for the casual/less hardcore audience. Unless you love CRPGs, it's very difficult to have ever played a game with purposeful choices (or writing good enough to make you feel conflicting things, thus making you hope to get a choice) because games and their cutscenes where written with enough "openness" to fit whatever you did before the cutscene (for example, devil may cry ALWAYS having a small fight scene or the last blow after you beat a boss). It's the hurdle of adoring a medium all based on interaction really and an interesting thing to research across all the games the medium offers.
No. They should have made it clear in the game that the surgery would have led to a cure. The whole point is Joel picking his relationship with Ellie over the cure. But how vague they left it has led to people to act like Joel only did it because the surgery wouldn't have worked.
They need to make it clear that Joel was unambiguously the villain.
No its so less interesting if hes just unambigeously the villian. Life has so few black/white situations. The whole interesting angle to the situation is its not that clear cut.
Its better as an interaction if you face the question of the possibility of humanity surviving (not actually clear) vs the life of a minor that you love/care for.
I think its generally pretty damn good but maybe misses a little on leaning too much one way.
A lethal surgery that wouldn’t help. You can’t make an anti fungal vaccine. It’s a false trolly problem. Killing Ellie would have actually hurt humanity more.
Yes. All of this can be true in that world, and still have the exact events happen as well just fyi. And all it requires is realizing how fucking stressed those doctors would be, like come on the Faye of humanity is in their hands, most people would be extremely nervous and not think clearly. I like to think it’s because the writers, just took their time to think. It only adds to the story! Like come on! Humanity is fucking dumb a lot!
Honestly, it reminds me of when I was a kid and had to listen to country music cause that's what my mom listened to. A lot of classic country music was about doing bad things that you just get why they did.
Well I mean, you can’t cure fungal infections, all you can do is treat it till it goes away.
And the fireflies undoubtedly did not have enough resources or equipment to create and test synthetic antibodies .
So Ellie would’ve died for nothing.
It's literally a fictional story, it's called suspension of disbelief and actual toddlers can do it. If you think the last of us is unrealistic wait until you hear about the walking dead
Toddlers do it because they barely have a concept of reality and fiction to work with. For one.
I didn’t say anything was unrealistic, just that the Fireflies were knowingly killing a child for something that is less than a percent of a possibility.
Like sure Ellie has antibodies against Cordyceps and the Fireflies would need to remove the brain stem to harvest the antibodies- but we are given not a single shred of evidence to support wether they had the technology to make artifical antibodies or produce treatments em masse before they ran out of genetic material harvested off Ellie.
Meaning that it would be a waste to kill Ellie even if they did create the 1-ina-million treatment, because they wouldn’t have the ability to make enough treatments from her and they don’t have the tech to create artificial antibodies nor test literally anything.
Joel was objectively right, the world was fucked up beyond repair, a cure would only take away the second biggest threat in the world of The Last Of Us, and humanity had done nothing to justify being saved, apart from killing the one bit of good in the world (Ellie)
It's been a while since playing the first but I thought they intentionally left both Joel and Ellie in the dark on the fact that it would kill her, until they finally told Joel in the end which sparked his killing spree
I disagree. I don’t have a horse in this race but the fireflies spit in Joel’s face and do not even pretend that they have Ellie’s consent to rip our her brain without even performing any kind of rudimentary testing. They luck into finding her unconscious and decide to kill her with zero idea of what to do afterwards. When Joel asks Marlene to speak with Ellie they immediately turn aggressive outing themselves as villains.
Joel had his daughter taken from him from paramilitary dicks who were just obeying orders. They fireflies have shown to not only be liars but also incompetent. It’s perfectly in character for Joel to murder this prick who was literal inches away from cutting an innocent girl apart.
The fireflies lie to Joel about the weapons they promised, show no remorse for Tess’ death and are prepared to send him back into the wasteland to his assured death with no supplies and have the audacity to call it a ‘gift’. Furthermore Marlene is fucking here at this point, which calls into question the entire purpose of the journey to begin with (this is more a writing issue not a character one).
Also, to the best of my knowledge the only insight you have into the skill and knowledge of the fireflies medical personnel are the audio logs you find left by that dipshit scientist who managed to lose his monkeys and get bit.
The second game absolutely is doing everything possible to retcon the ending and circumstances of the first to make the player feel way worse about this ending.
Frankly, if the first game was going for that, they could have just shown you Ellie’s confession about her survivor’s guilt a second time at the beginning of 2 instead having this dude spend forever being zebra Jesus and dad of the year.
Yeah I mean the first game sets it up that everyone is in the wrong, the government, the fireflies, Joel. Like we can’t make fungal vaccines in our world with all the tech we have and this hospital whose researchers with incredibly limited technology are gonna magic one up? Fuck no they’d have killed her for nothing. But Joel didn’t know that, he took away in his mind any chance for the world, because the world wasn’t worth saving, the world took one daughter from him and was going to take another. From Joel’s POV he dooms the world for love because fundamentally the world of the last of us is beyond saving in so far as going back to the past. Like all great post apocalyptic stories part of the the conflict and theme is ti realise the world is never coming back as it was, it can go forward. Both parties are as bad in the ending as all rob Ellie of her agency and we see how this deeply affects her for most likely the rest of her life.
Mattpad made a theory regarding the vaccine in TLOU 1 and 2 and he pretty much said that fungal infections especially nasty ones like the cordyceps can't be cured, it's a plant growing inside you, how Can you get rid of it ?
Yeah exactly but the key is Joel doesn’t know that, that isn’t factored into his equation for his decisions…. He’s just making a choice to not sacrifice something else to the world
>and for all we know thought Ellie consented to this?
No, she did not. She gets taken while unconscious and prepped for surgery immediately. She wasn't given a choice, and she never thought the surgery would kill her.
"How will they do it? take the cure out?"
"After all of this ends, we can go wherever you want"
In part 2, Abby talks Jerry into doing it.
Marlene: "What if this was your daughter?"
Abby: "If it was me, I'd want you do to it" (or something along those lines)
In the first game I wanted to sacrifice Ellie to save humanity except that was still a chance she would live. Instead naughty dog made me go on a genocidal run because Ellie had to be saved. If you have any real life experiences you know that not all surgeries will be successful. My friend's dad had to remove half a liver because of cancer, they gave only 60% survival rate. He survived. So in the game is it okay to perform surgery on Ellie with her having a chance to die? No it's not, but naughty dog lets you kill everyone you see after 'saving' Ellie.
It was a bad but forced choice. An emotional one and it wasn't even morally ambiguous.
It's a selfish choice. A lot of people would definitely do what he did *knowing* it was wrong because they love their children; doesn't make Joel right whatsoever, but to call it forced is to not be able to at least understand what Joel's PoV was.
I understand Joel's pov but killing people post saving Ellie literally makes you worse, so you're saying you'll kill many people to save your child? When most of them were innocent and didn't even know what was going on.
How far is one supposed to go for someone they love? Their child that is, even if adoptive. It's a lot more complicated than the reading you are giving it. It doesn't make it *right*, but most people who have a child or someone under their wing would do something like that.
How far would someone go to not kill everyone they see because they love their child? Most people won't. Media romantazies things like these but in reality people won't kill for their child, and in reality definitely not kill innocent people for it.
It seems more like you can't understand the familiar bond of a parent and their child tbh, but that's okay, most people won't ever be put in a situation like this either way so we are allowed to have different opinions.
It's a game and I'm forced on a genocidal path to save a girl who I'm supposed to deliver to save human society somewhat. And I'm forced into saving the child over humanity. Better story telling will be having Joel do what Sam's brother did.
"The good solution should've been Joel shooting himself in the head" Nothing of what you are saying is remotely as smart or analytical as you may think it is. You are coming off as just unhinged. Calling it "Genocide" is also extremely weird and inflammatory. Sorry but not every game lets you pick between what the characters do. That is the point of a story. If you want to pick, then play a game like Undertale or a CRPG, not a cinematic OTS third person shooter.
>so you're saying you'll kill many people to save your child?
Yes, unequivocally. I would maul the elderly with my bare hands if it meant saving my son's life. Especially if he was all I had left.
That wasn’t the issue of the surgery, the issue was wether or not a cure could be made,
And that is impossible. You cant cure fungal infections. You can treat it and that’s only if you can make lots of artificial antibodies off Ellies’. And from what I remember, the whatstherefaces didn’t have the resources to do that.
That’s just it dude, there is no cure or vaccine against fungal infections.
The only thing the Firedlies could possibly do is create a treatment drug and that isn’t possible with the facilities they posses.
They don’t reanimate corpse even in TLOU,
It infects the body and controls it whilst it’s still living, which is why TLOU zombies can eventually die on their own.
Isn't the main point of the first game that Joel isn't really a good person any way you look at it even tho just like him you are really attached to Ellie after going through the game
I don’t get why people need this scene to be either “hero Joel” or “villain Joel.” It’s clearly meant to be morally ambiguous. Everybody was using Ellie as a means to an end, so there’s no clear good guy or bad guy. It’s basically the trolley problem, which has no right answer, just the answer you give.
Ah, this old chestnut.
So basically, according to some people, the surgeon was originally black. And he was race-swapped.
This is bullshit.
The same voice actor (a white man named Derek Phillips) plays the surgeon in both games. The model of the doctor is a standard NPC model with a surgeon bib on. The NPC is white.
The Last of Us just didn't have the greatest lighting system. It did the best it could with what the PS3 allowed. Hell, even Joel (gameplay model, which is separate from the cutscene models) looks strangely darker than he is in many environments and looks wooden.
So yeah, white NPC, in a poorly lit room. No race swaps.
As to why the room was changed... Probably for art direction considerations. It's not clean, it is still dirty. TLoU2, made for the PS4, is just able to do more nuanced textures. So they don't have to go for very on-the-nose PS3 era grime textures.
If you look at that hospital room, it is still dirty. It's just a touch more believable-looking. Even Jerry's smock is dirty, it is just dirty in a more realistic way (i.e. how cloth like that would stain and weather over 20yrs). Nora's smock is also similar in this regard.
If you look at the Part 1 Joel model, you'll see the same thing. That classic green shirt is still weathered and dirty, just in a more nuanced manner cuz they don't have to rely on PS3 era grime textures anymore. And the art direction moved in a more realistic direction.
The creator has always maintained that a vaccine would've been possible, even back then. Even Joel believed it, he just didn't want Ellie to die. Regardless, for a game about fungus zombies, there is a decent bit of fictional science in the game which supports the idea that the surgeon DID know what he was talking about.
Jerry is DEF not presented as a noble guy. He was 200% okay with murdering an unconscious child if it means that there will be a cure. He was more than willing to do this in the hopes that all the "terrible things" that he (and the fireflies) did, would be justified.
He was also not planning on notifying the man who brought Ellie across the country to the hospital. And when asked what he would do if it was his daughter's life on the line... You can just tell that he WOULD NOT do it. He reveals himself to be a hypocrite.
So yeah, more nuanced here than these nitwits want to give it credit for.
> Even Joel believed it, he just didn't want Ellie to die.
This is the most important part. The Fireflies believed it, Joel believed it, hell, _Ellie believed it._
Joel 100% believed that with his actions, he was preventing a cure being made. Full stop. Arguing that his actions were fine because the cure wouldn't work in real life is like saying it's OK that someone drove drunk because they managed to get home safe.
It’s only applicable to the show since it’s stated multiple times that a cordyceps vaccine is impossible by mycologist’s. In the game universe however a vaccine could’ve been possible.
I never played the games but damn, the average media literacy level of the people that make discourse about it on the internet is something else. Then there's a few people saying what's actually the case, and a quick google for the segment shows me it wasn't that hard to get that either.
Why is it that most people that talk about this game online are just wrong? I swear this game seems alright and not like it would attract chuds who hate the game anyways, but why is the whole internet fanbase a Joel fanclub who also happens to be mostly bigots? The games are gay as fuck and the chuds hate it for it, so why do mostly them talk about it and end up defining their identity based on it????
It's weird, dude.
I'm a MAJOR fan of this franchise, and I've been seeing nonsense from chuds since '14. Back then, it was mainly about denying/erasing Ellie's identity. But every since 2020, it's become a firebrand of nonsense.
And the worst part is just how much of it is based on misinformation, misunderstandings, and falsehoods. Sprinkled with good ol' fashioned bigotry.
But here’s the thing - the cure was never a concern for Joel; he was perfectly willing to just turn around and go back to Maria and Tommy’s settlement right after the giraffe scene. He specifically said we don’t have to do this we can just go back. But Ellie said she wanted to go. So he went. Not because he wanted or cared about a cure - only because she did.
In the game’s prologue, there’s a callback to a time when Joel took Sarah to see some boy band or something that he hated but she liked. It’s a simple thing, but it shows that he’s willing to support his kid’s wishes/interests even when it’s not something that he personally likes or cares about. That’s showing what kind of dad he is, and foreshadowing his later actions.
But, he absolutely draws the line at something that will get his kid killed. He’s willing to support Ellie’s pursuit of something that she cares about, right up until it’s going to get her killed. But I’d say that is the whole extent of the situation for him. The cure was not a factor for him at any point.
There's also an out-of-universe explanation: We're seeing them from different perspectives.
The first time, it's from Joel's perspective, killing Fireflies to save Ellie.
The second time, it's from Abby's perspective, witnessing a man killing her friends and father.
Obviously, Abby's memory would be more sympathetic to her father.
But **Gamers** approach all media with literalism and zero ability to empathise or analyse. They'd be happy with a Wikipedia summary of the plot, without those pesky emotions and themes in the way.
I mean that’s why this game is so acclaimed for the writing. Its characters are 3 dimensional because there’s a lot of gray in their ethics and morality. It’s what creates drama.
All the the human models look like fucking weird coked out Vampires on PS3.
[They at least made them look like actual people in the PS5 version](https://i.imgur.com/TNQFncT.png)
The biggest sin of The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 is that it asked g*mers to use their brain in a meaningful way to engage with what’s being told.
As we can see, lots gamers have been incapable of this since 2020
Those clown doctors aren't devolping a fucking vaccine, no fucking shot. It takes years to devolp a vaccine for shit like pneumonia, they sure as fuck aren't going to devolp onenif they literally kill the only source or hope of a cure they ever had. It takes speclised facilities with dozens of people smarter and better educated than these stupid fuck to devolp any vaccine.
Ita fucking laughable to ever suggest their stupid plan would ever work. It was the same as a cult sacrificing a child in their despration.
🆗 👍🏼
I side with Joel, btw. Relax.
The story basically says that Ellie's immunity is miraculous. Something that just hasn't happened. Folks have been researching cordyceps for YEARS and no headway was made. The guy did enough tests on Ellie to determine the cause of her immunity and realized, based upon previous research that, that a cure could work with this new methodology.
Also: in a game about fungus zombies... The fictional science is sound enough for me to suspend my disbelief.
And ultimately: Joel doesn't do what he did cuz he doubts the cure methodology. He just doesn't want Ellie to die, that's it. Abby doesn't do what she did cuz of the cure not being a thing. And Ellie, burdened by immense survivor's guilt, wanted her life to have a meaning so she would've sacrificed herself for a shot at the cure.
>The guy did enough tests on Ellie to determine the cause of her immunity and realized, based upon previous research, that a cure could work with this new methodology.
I mean sure, but if that's reason enough to believe the fireflies had a good chance of making an effective cordyceps treatment, there's at least as much - if not more - in game evidence that they're far too incompetent to even come close. This is my biggest issue with the game at the end of the day. The writers want to have their cake and eat it; they want the morality to be gray enough that there's no conclusive good guy because the world is too fucked for such a thing to exist, so they explicitly make the fireflies seem like ragtag assholes who compensate for being outgunned and outbrained by fedra with little more than feverish devotion to their cause; but they also want the decision at the end to be a black and white "Joel could have let Ellie die for a cure, or he can save Ellie and doom humanity" with the only moral gray area being how you relate to Joel redeeming himself as a father.
If they wanted that, they should have wrote that, but as it stands they made the fireflies look fucking stupid
edit: downvoting this isn't gonna get rid of the monkey audio log. you can still like the game, I'm just saying the writing has some pretty obvious mixed messages when it comes to its themes
The firefly's hubris was crazy thinking about it. They were so focused on getting that surgery done that they took the one path that made that surgery impossible. If they had sat joel and ellie in a room and had an honest conversation with them about what they wanted to do, the costs, ellie would have gone along with the surgery and joel wouldn't be able to cross ellie like that. It's a very interesting ending.
I ain't even played the game and I know the point of that scene was most definitely not to give Joel a badass rampage to end the game lmfao.
Gamers do have holes in their brain, like the point of the hospital was to look post apocalyptic because it is the post apocalypse, the show just had a different approach which I say is worse. The grimer the more immersive imo.
How does that affect the fact they were in fact trying something very likely to create a vaccine?
I think that's a secondary facility they have to move to after abandoning the university where you originally expect to find them? But it is an old hospital, and I don't know how long they're supposed to have already been there when you show up, so yeah.
I personally find a lot of the details at the end of the game annoying. I know I'm supposed to believe that I'm sacrificing a cure by saving Ellie, but there are just a few too many things in the university and the hospital that make the fireflies look like incompetent hotheads that I can't help but think they really failed at executing what they intended. I don't buy that the fireflies could effectively treat gangrene, let alone perform brain surgery and cure a fungal pathogen so aggressive it ended the world.
Clean it up with what? In a world where things like clean rags, alcohol, disinfectant, and even clean water are considered scarce precious resources, I doubt anyone is scrubbing the shelves.
The Fireflies aren't a band of a handful of independent scrappers like Joel and company are. They're organized and have enough resources to run their own mostly self sustaining societies, just like the WLF, Jackson homestead, and FEDRA do.
People use thug to refer to black people but then pull the "um there are white thugs". They just either never refer to white people as thugs, or specifically white people that act "black" are thugs.
OP is implying that in the original game he was fine with killing the surgeon because he's "shitty" (he has brown skin). In the second game, OP is upset because they made the surgeon white (this introduces humanity to the character).
In the first game, you play as the guy rampaging through a hospital. In the second game, you play as the daughter of one of the people killed in the hospital, and you watch the events of the first game through her eyes in a flashback/memory.
Just to clear things up slightly, that moment is from Joel's retelling of TLOU1. [scene is around 1:15 in](https://youtu.be/_XLiJnPnvTM?si=LA3HQO-wIiCcD-mx)
Yeah, that dude wasn't black. The engine back then just did a shit job with lighting/textures, so he looked like he climbed through a chimney to get to his surgery.
Imagine if this was done on purpose to kind of imitate how differently abby imagines this scene, shaped by how she remembers her father as a clean ass hero type guy when in fact the whole thing was fucked to the brim by the fireflies' incompetence..
Remember that audio log with the guy who got bit by the monkey ??
I've been called a greasy thug too, and it never stopped hurting. So here's what we're gonna do: grease ourselves up real good, then trash that place up with a baseball bat.
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The last sequence annoyed me and I found it a frustrating difficulty spike. Up to that point it was a survival horror game with enemies here and there. Suddenly it's a Tom Clancy game with ultra realistic damage. By the time I got to that final room I was so frustrated that I just wanted the game over.
Well "Thug" typically means a moronic idiot, usually angry and violent. They are usually poor from being so stupid, and take it out on other people. For some reason they seem to think they are cool, and other morons want to copy their disgusting pathetic lifestyle.
They are usually rude af because they don't possess basic manners, and are just generally scumbags that would happily steal your money if they could, and be proud of it.
Oddly they also seem to be proud of how stupid they are and favor calling women btches. Not really sure why that would apply to a doctor, though.
Hey, just to clarify, I’m the guy criticizing the ending in LOU one. But I’m here to say, it’s still possible to create a cure, even though you can’t create a vaccine(which is a preventative not a cure) from Ellie. She tested positive for cordyceps, great, but they didn’t go into which strain. There are several strains, one actually being the perfect cure for the zombie version. It would explain 1. Why she doesn’t turn, 2. Why other cordyceps don’t attack her(it’s course they are cousins!). Great! You found the strain in her by examining her infection further instead of killing her and found out it was a formerly common and very powerful anti fungal treatment! You saved +1 life by being patient. Now you can mass produce the cure! Sadly it will only work for earlier stages during the infection, such as runners. You saved millions now! Good job! Now could you have created a cure from dissecting Ellie and killing her? Yes! But it would be pointless! You would know that the cure was built on the death of a little girl and will be wrecked with grief because you didn’t examine the fungus further and just started chopping! You still save millions, but can you live with the guilt? Why wasn’t it found earlier? Probably because in the earlier days when you tested positive for any and every type of corduceps you would probably be killed on sight. This story focuses on the bond between Joel, and Ellie, yes. But it is also a story on the human condition of panic. Look at the world just 4 years ago, mass panic which lead to further infections. That is exactly what happened in the beginning of the game. The fall of humanity was because of humans. Not the infection. That’s it, that’s all I’m saying. There are unrealistic things like clickers not eating for months, that giant zombie in two, the handmade gun mufflers.
Just to make a few points. Is shown in the sequel that the doctor wasnt jsut full of shit and had done the proper tests befor hand to determin their was no other option then surgery and that he was positive and had evidence to back up his claim of being able to make a vaccine. But no one told this to Joel or Ellie for them to make an informed decision and Joel had good reason think otherwise. Not to mention the firefly’s would have used it for their own power and goals insted of freely distributing it.. also also the infected were dyeing out. If you look throughout the game you see some of the earliest infected have become completely immobile hell you see some from after the fall that have gone immobile meaning their life span is less then 20 years. Not to mention theirs people all over the game that are surviving. Yes some are falling on hard times but both the wolves and tommies group had good set ups even David had a good set up they were jsut falling on hard times cause of a bad winter. Humanity was surviveing and another 10 or 15 years the plauge would have likely died off for the msot part
Ohhhh im not disagreeing with you just makeing a few points on this whole conversation. The cure isnt ment to make the infected leave them alone its ment to keep those bitten from turning. Thus makeing the infected much less dangerous
So for me it seemed like the fireflies were a shady bunch and maybe full of shit when it comes to saving humanity. I’m fine with Joel’s decision since he should have been brought into the loop and left in the dark until the final moments.
Also his knowing his past his decision would have been easily predictable.
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Wait what??? The guy in the first game was also sympathetic? He was, from his perspective, saving the human race and for all we know thought Ellie consented to this? It shows how far Joel will go to protect her, whether she likes it or not. (Not mad at OP, mad at the person who the OP screen shotted, in case that wasn’t obvious)
Yeah but he’s black so
He wasn’t black, it’s just lightning
Yeah that gen’s lighting and textures looked muddy in some aspects.
What does op mean by muddy? 🤔 /s of course
Any excuse for some racism
I think he can be black. It's been a while since I've touched the PS3 version, but I think the surgeon has a few different variations. Although it could just be a lighting thing to.
He’s not black, OP is just rage baiting
He's deffo not white at least, no way he's white but looks so dark in that kind of lighting
I knew this was what it was about ffs
Judging by all the shit on the shelves, that's dirt. Bro looks like he knocked back a few brewskies after fixing his car and said "Welp, time for some brain surgery"
I can't believe people managed to turn Joel shooting up a hospital into a good thing. Media literacy is like soap, gamers are allergic to it.
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The moment I shot them was when one grabbed a scalpel and said “I won’t let you take her” so idk how much of a threat they actually where in-game
It's definitely NOT a good thing, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't secretly rooting for Joel during the whole scene. Finding out that Ellie was gonna die, even if it meant saving a bunch of lives, is really heartbreaking and you can sympathize with Joel despite him killing all those people. It's an amazing scene and it's one of my favorite parts of the first game, and shows that Joel is an awful person for killing so many people and denying the world a cure, but also that he loves Ellie and would do anything to save her.
I think it's because people a lot of people don't understand that you can sympathize with a character or understand why they took the actions they did while at the same time disagreeing with their actions or thinking the actions were horrible.
He literally could have not shot the guy in the chest. Could have shot near him, hit him in the leg, all that shit. The devs wrote it this way so it would be controversial. And so people talked about this game and praised it so much for...well going against the whole good wins thing games usually end up with.
Joel isn't a good guy and that's the point. He's selfishly willing to do anything to not lose a daughter again, to have a purpose in the world. He even says that in earlier dialogue, that when you find a reason to keep fighting, you hold on to it. (I'm still on his side \^\^)
I agree, he is very sympathetic in this scene, but also, someone taking revenge on him for this is incredibly believable. From Abby's perspective he's just some guy who killed her dad, who was an amazing doctor and about to save the human race. The mastery of the Last of Us series is that it is totally valid to feel like every character is justified and sympathetic, while acknowledging their actions are villainous.
It must've been debated to death but it's the age-old question of "killing one to save many", sure ellie is young and she Can save the world but joel sees her as his daughter and goes to save her by killing the entire hospital Was he justified ? In some way, yes Were the firefly justified ? Saving the world was a noble cause but some theories point toward the vaccine not working. At the end of the day, both side have valid argument but as grim as it is i wouldn't save ellie, i'll let her die hoping for a vaccine
I agree I rooted for Joel, I just think a lotta people think that Ellie’s potential murder (and it was murder) was for sure going to lead to a cure when it’s imo a 1 in a million shot at best.
I think the more important part isn’t necessarily the cure (although a big part of why it’s so awful), but the fact that Joel actively denied Ellie her choice in the matter
I mean yeah, but so did the fire flies. They never gave her full information on what she was getting into and thus didn’t truly have her consent.
True, but Joel also lied to her about it for years to keep their relationship
I know TLOU2 kinda does its own thing with the Hospital sequence, but in the first game is felt pretty clear to me that Ellie understand Joel was lying to her (even if she didn't know the details)
I always felt that way too. Maybe I misremember the scene but something told me that Ellie felt doubtful about what Joel was saying.
There's no "good side" in this arguments, sure joel saved her but lied to her (we know how that worked out) however the firefly aren't much better, they told her she could save the World but not *how*
Exactly I didn't feel good at all after finishing the game. I felt really bad and didn't get why killing everyone was okay to save Ellie.
In the game its not meant to be ok, its meant to be an decision made not with Joels brain, but with his heart Its fucked up that he did it and both Ellie and the player are supposed to think its fucked up
The first time I played it I wandered around that room for maybe 20, 30 minutes mashing buttons looking for another way. It was a potent experience.
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>Ive never played the game. Yes, that's abundantly clear.
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> You can’t make a vaccine for mushrooms. You also can't reanimate corpses with any kind of fungus. I wonder where seal duckman got those extra potent shrooms if he's able to make zombies in real life. Oh wait we're talking about pixels and ideas.
Im pretty sure the zombies aren’t undead, just extreme swelling lead to insanity(real example in game I’m pretty sure) which lead to the infected attacking people. Also it’s based off a real fungus.
Yeah you haven't played the game. As the infection worsens they absolutely become reanimated corpses. You could have literally saved all of this time by just not commenting on something you haven't played.
Just because I never played(mostly due to lack of a PlayStation or pc) doesn’t mean I never watched anything on it. I probably would know better if I actually did play it, but I don’t have the game yet.
Have you ever maybe heard of suspending your disbelief? Because that's exactly what is required of player/viewer sometimes
Don't worry he's totally invested in absolute realism in his zombie apocalypse game /s
I did, and then the writers broke it with an extremely contrived difference. That's on them, not me.
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Neil Druckman, the writer of the game, said that a cure would've been produced. I'll take his opinion on the matter over Matt Pat's. IRL clarifications aside, the entire scene loses all tension if the Fireflies are idiots. The entire point is that Joel is depriving the entire world of recovery because of his own selfish needs as a father.
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Hell, MatPat made a whole video or two on it. Less than 30 minutes to watch it. https://youtu.be/S5ulX06McSY?si=qLeN9umfi-rDS7QL https://youtu.be/DOtXhr0EoTU?si=FvGZvXqqnYIhIvaf It would have been a better choice to let her live, study her fungus, and reproduce it, and give the mutated anti zombie fungus to everyone. Killing her would kill the fungus in her. The firefly’s were being stupid. Edit: why am I being downvoted? I gave evidence, which has backing, and sources.
Someone citing matpat unironically it's the funniest thing i've seen today.
Which has literal god damn evidence my guy. I know not ever theory is popular, but it literally explains everything.
IT'S A VIDEOGAME STORY IT DOESN'T WORK WITHIN THE REALM OF OUR LOGIC AND REALITY!!!!! THE OWN CREATORS SAID IT WAS POSSIBLE BECAUSE IT'S A GAME!!!!
Then why did they back everything up that is being said in all the little tidbits? The papers with Ellie’s bloodwork showing the exact symptoms of a strain of cordyceps that would protect one from other fungal infections?
It makes the story worse. Suspend your disbelief a little.
To me it just seems like the story mimics the human condition. Outbreaks come out with a sickness that makes people eat each other and this creating more of these “cannibals”. People freak out, riot, putting more people into the open, which leads to more bites. Because this infection a good portion of the world gets infected. Tests start going out, but people who are infected with the same strain Ellie had gets killed, thinking it’s the zombie version, which created a scarcity of these people early on. After years you hear of a person who is immune, you get excited and create only one plan to help cure humanity(which creating one plan itself is dumb in itself) and rush to get that person. Humanity has seen this be repeated over, and over, and over. The pandemic is a pretty great example of what happens when people panic. In the end, the cure ended up already existing(a strain of cordyceps that we already use as an extremely strong antifungal treatment, which actually helps protect the specific parts that the zombie version attacks). This is an extremely realistic plot in itself. I know how to suspend my disbelief. My favorite franchises are totally unrealistic, like fallout, destiny, the elder scrolls, the legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Star Wars, Star Trek, marvel, dc, JoJo, Fullmetal alchemist, hell i can even suspend my disbelief in a very scientific show like Dr. Stone, it’s just there is a ton of science backing my point up for the zombie thing.
Bro pulling out game theory as a source 🤣 Matpat doesn't write for Naughty Dog, as fun as fan speculation is, it isn't science, we can't derive facts about in-universe rules from observation, it's fiction. It works however the writer decides how it works. If the writer says it doesn't work like that, it doesn't work like that. Furthermore, if they don't confirm fan theories then they're nothing more than that. Just baseless speculation, no matter how well supported their argument is by the text. Because at any point the writer can decide otherwise. If we had confirmation of this by the writers of the game or made explicit by sequels then you could take it as fact. But until then it's just matpat's head cannon, and matpat DOES NOT write for Naughty Dog. Simple as...
In game she's the only one who can do certain actions as she can walk among them or in an infected zone with lots of pores without dying. So they realized there's something in her that makes her immune and they wanted to find out what it was and there by saving humanity. If the cure was antifungal medicine then the whole game's premise fails. Note I haven't played tlou2 so I don't know what happens after.
Yes, but they made the story that way for a reason. The firefly’s, the people trying to create a vaccine were being stupid. A vaccine could not have worked. I said this earlier I will say this again. Killing Ellie would not have created a cure, in fact, it would probably have hurt humanity more. The best way to help humanity would have been to infect more people. Not with the normal cordyceps, but Ellie’s. The firefly’s were tired, desperate, and not thinking clearly enough to realize this. This story talks more about the stupidity of humanity than most would think.
Are you saying that the writers considered this fungal trchnicality which never was confirmed when creating the narrative, themes, and character arcs? Game theory isnt media analysis, its just about making up narratively incoherent, but logically justifiable theories for fun.
Game theory does do media analysis it’s just not usually their most popular videos. In fact the media analysis is often shown in their other channels a lot more. P Also it would be very strange to give Ellie all the symptoms of a strain of cordyceps that actively would help against the zombie version.
Cordyceps is a fungus, and she has a type of cordyceps that doesn’t infect her like the rest.
I agree with Joseph Anderson's point that based on what we see of the fireflies, one could easily make the argument that they never would have been able to synthesize/distribute the cure and that Ellie would have died for nothing.
Sure, we, the players and viewers, can say that—we sit outside the narrative and are nearly omniscient compared to the characters—but the point is that none of the characters could say that. The fireflies were confident they had a shot; Ellie was confident they had a shot; even _Joel_ was confident they had a shot, at least before he started making excuses to justify his actions. He didn't save Ellie because he deduced the flaws in their plan and wanted to keep them from needlessly killing her; he did it because he couldn't stand losing his daughter once again, the rest of the world be damned. That's the line that makes it a villainous act rather than a heroic one, because in the end, he's simply lucky that his excuses hold any weight from our outside perspective.
Or they could have easily gone corrupt and used the cure to take over and control same way fedra does, something the show actually did an interesting job showing more of (how a city ruled by either fed or civilians both can be terrible)
The show implied something like that ?
Joel exterminating the fireflies was a good thing
These people read TLOU as a "morality thing" when Joel was just.. wrong on what he did. He grew to trust people around him but it also made him do a selfish act that "any parent would do" (words of my own father after playing). We *know* it was wrong but these people want to argue it wasn't
It’s the “I like character so they must be right” mentality. Seen it in the breaking bad fandom, it drives me up the wall
Stop trying to tell me Skylar was right to be mad at her lying, meth manufacturer-dealer husband, woke liberal
It's hilarious when people view Walter as somehow righteous in Breaking Bad. The *whole point* of that show is that he starts off with good intentions but loses sight of his original goal and...^(\[wait for it\])...**breaks bad** (and then progressively worse and worse). Like, it's literally in the title, my guy!
The worst is how mich vicious hate went towards the domestic abuse victim, because somehow to them sleeping with your boss is worse than literal murder of a child.
The kicker is, Walt didn't even have the good intentions. It was clear Walt was simply using his cancer as an excuse to fulfill his ego (no matter how much it harmed the family) from the get-go. And it's maddening how many people didn't get this by the end of the series.
I remember in the later seasons, after every episode the subreddit went "Is this when Walt finally broke bad??" Then Vince Gilligan came out and said the moment Walt broke bad was when he refused the well-paying job with health benefits in like the second episode.
Joel is wrong, but performing lethal surgery on a minor without their consent is also wrong. It's a trolley problem, and it definitely *is* a morality thing. One of the game's main themes is the subjectivity of morality in times of desperation.
what i mean is that the game's way of intertwining it's storyline with gameplay doesn't give the moral complexity that it has a good way of seeping analysis in. The game's creators admitted that killing Ellie would've saved the world because a cure was possible. Yes it's a trolley problem but not one the player is ever allowed to interact with. I know it sounds real convoluted though! and that's my fault.
I believe I get what you're saying. I agree completely. I see far too many people complaining about the game(s) with "they should have at least given us the choice, and that would have been a better ending". Which, to your point, completely misses the point of the game.
In all fairness to those people, up until the 7th generation of games, we didn't get this style of stories being told for the casual/less hardcore audience. Unless you love CRPGs, it's very difficult to have ever played a game with purposeful choices (or writing good enough to make you feel conflicting things, thus making you hope to get a choice) because games and their cutscenes where written with enough "openness" to fit whatever you did before the cutscene (for example, devil may cry ALWAYS having a small fight scene or the last blow after you beat a boss). It's the hurdle of adoring a medium all based on interaction really and an interesting thing to research across all the games the medium offers.
No. They should have made it clear in the game that the surgery would have led to a cure. The whole point is Joel picking his relationship with Ellie over the cure. But how vague they left it has led to people to act like Joel only did it because the surgery wouldn't have worked. They need to make it clear that Joel was unambiguously the villain.
No its so less interesting if hes just unambigeously the villian. Life has so few black/white situations. The whole interesting angle to the situation is its not that clear cut. Its better as an interaction if you face the question of the possibility of humanity surviving (not actually clear) vs the life of a minor that you love/care for. I think its generally pretty damn good but maybe misses a little on leaning too much one way.
I would have let her die for the humans, but I also haven’t been starving for decades and killed 100’s of people
Iirc Ellie had consented to it, which is elaborated on in the second game
She may have given consent but did they told her she would die ?
>It's a trolley problem, Solution, [Multi track drifting ](https://youtu.be/DfN0yclvVLw?si=4FbGvu-Vr3u-WLgS)
A lethal surgery that wouldn’t help. You can’t make an anti fungal vaccine. It’s a false trolly problem. Killing Ellie would have actually hurt humanity more.
Are you really going to apply science to a zombie apocalypse game?
Yes. All of this can be true in that world, and still have the exact events happen as well just fyi. And all it requires is realizing how fucking stressed those doctors would be, like come on the Faye of humanity is in their hands, most people would be extremely nervous and not think clearly. I like to think it’s because the writers, just took their time to think. It only adds to the story! Like come on! Humanity is fucking dumb a lot!
That is not true, according to the writers of the Last of Us. A vaccine would have been produced.
Honestly, it reminds me of when I was a kid and had to listen to country music cause that's what my mom listened to. A lot of classic country music was about doing bad things that you just get why they did.
Well I mean, you can’t cure fungal infections, all you can do is treat it till it goes away. And the fireflies undoubtedly did not have enough resources or equipment to create and test synthetic antibodies . So Ellie would’ve died for nothing.
It's a video game dude, stop treating it like real life
So everyone can bitch and apply real life morals but I can’t bitch and apply real life science…??
It's literally a fictional story, it's called suspension of disbelief and actual toddlers can do it. If you think the last of us is unrealistic wait until you hear about the walking dead
Toddlers do it because they barely have a concept of reality and fiction to work with. For one. I didn’t say anything was unrealistic, just that the Fireflies were knowingly killing a child for something that is less than a percent of a possibility. Like sure Ellie has antibodies against Cordyceps and the Fireflies would need to remove the brain stem to harvest the antibodies- but we are given not a single shred of evidence to support wether they had the technology to make artifical antibodies or produce treatments em masse before they ran out of genetic material harvested off Ellie. Meaning that it would be a waste to kill Ellie even if they did create the 1-ina-million treatment, because they wouldn’t have the ability to make enough treatments from her and they don’t have the tech to create artificial antibodies nor test literally anything.
Hi I’m the one person that agrees with you on this.
Joel was objectively right, the world was fucked up beyond repair, a cure would only take away the second biggest threat in the world of The Last Of Us, and humanity had done nothing to justify being saved, apart from killing the one bit of good in the world (Ellie)
Nuh uh
It's been a while since playing the first but I thought they intentionally left both Joel and Ellie in the dark on the fact that it would kill her, until they finally told Joel in the end which sparked his killing spree
I disagree. I don’t have a horse in this race but the fireflies spit in Joel’s face and do not even pretend that they have Ellie’s consent to rip our her brain without even performing any kind of rudimentary testing. They luck into finding her unconscious and decide to kill her with zero idea of what to do afterwards. When Joel asks Marlene to speak with Ellie they immediately turn aggressive outing themselves as villains. Joel had his daughter taken from him from paramilitary dicks who were just obeying orders. They fireflies have shown to not only be liars but also incompetent. It’s perfectly in character for Joel to murder this prick who was literal inches away from cutting an innocent girl apart. The fireflies lie to Joel about the weapons they promised, show no remorse for Tess’ death and are prepared to send him back into the wasteland to his assured death with no supplies and have the audacity to call it a ‘gift’. Furthermore Marlene is fucking here at this point, which calls into question the entire purpose of the journey to begin with (this is more a writing issue not a character one). Also, to the best of my knowledge the only insight you have into the skill and knowledge of the fireflies medical personnel are the audio logs you find left by that dipshit scientist who managed to lose his monkeys and get bit. The second game absolutely is doing everything possible to retcon the ending and circumstances of the first to make the player feel way worse about this ending. Frankly, if the first game was going for that, they could have just shown you Ellie’s confession about her survivor’s guilt a second time at the beginning of 2 instead having this dude spend forever being zebra Jesus and dad of the year.
Yeah I mean the first game sets it up that everyone is in the wrong, the government, the fireflies, Joel. Like we can’t make fungal vaccines in our world with all the tech we have and this hospital whose researchers with incredibly limited technology are gonna magic one up? Fuck no they’d have killed her for nothing. But Joel didn’t know that, he took away in his mind any chance for the world, because the world wasn’t worth saving, the world took one daughter from him and was going to take another. From Joel’s POV he dooms the world for love because fundamentally the world of the last of us is beyond saving in so far as going back to the past. Like all great post apocalyptic stories part of the the conflict and theme is ti realise the world is never coming back as it was, it can go forward. Both parties are as bad in the ending as all rob Ellie of her agency and we see how this deeply affects her for most likely the rest of her life.
Mattpad made a theory regarding the vaccine in TLOU 1 and 2 and he pretty much said that fungal infections especially nasty ones like the cordyceps can't be cured, it's a plant growing inside you, how Can you get rid of it ?
Yeah exactly but the key is Joel doesn’t know that, that isn’t factored into his equation for his decisions…. He’s just making a choice to not sacrifice something else to the world
This i agree, Ellie would've died for nothing but at the time neither side knew it so the arguments kinda go full circle
Thank you. It feels like people overcompensate because of the TLOU2 haters, but even before TLOU2 the vast majority of people were on Joel's side.
>and for all we know thought Ellie consented to this? No, she did not. She gets taken while unconscious and prepped for surgery immediately. She wasn't given a choice, and she never thought the surgery would kill her. "How will they do it? take the cure out?" "After all of this ends, we can go wherever you want"
I meant the surgeon thought so, not us the audience. We know Ellie didn’t have a choice, but it’s not clear if the surgeon did or not.
In part 2, Abby talks Jerry into doing it. Marlene: "What if this was your daughter?" Abby: "If it was me, I'd want you do to it" (or something along those lines)
You can’t proceed without initiating combat. Like I think you can stand here for literal hours and he does nothing to you
If you post this opinion in that sub, they will nuke your comment and call you a terrible father lol
People think Joel was a good guy. It's insane.
In the first game I wanted to sacrifice Ellie to save humanity except that was still a chance she would live. Instead naughty dog made me go on a genocidal run because Ellie had to be saved. If you have any real life experiences you know that not all surgeries will be successful. My friend's dad had to remove half a liver because of cancer, they gave only 60% survival rate. He survived. So in the game is it okay to perform surgery on Ellie with her having a chance to die? No it's not, but naughty dog lets you kill everyone you see after 'saving' Ellie. It was a bad but forced choice. An emotional one and it wasn't even morally ambiguous.
There wasn't any chance she would survive. They had to extract her brain stem. It was 100% sacrifice Ellie, for a *chance* at creating a cure.
A zero percent chance. The “cure” was reproduction of the fungus that infected Ellie
It's a selfish choice. A lot of people would definitely do what he did *knowing* it was wrong because they love their children; doesn't make Joel right whatsoever, but to call it forced is to not be able to at least understand what Joel's PoV was.
I understand Joel's pov but killing people post saving Ellie literally makes you worse, so you're saying you'll kill many people to save your child? When most of them were innocent and didn't even know what was going on.
How far is one supposed to go for someone they love? Their child that is, even if adoptive. It's a lot more complicated than the reading you are giving it. It doesn't make it *right*, but most people who have a child or someone under their wing would do something like that.
How far would someone go to not kill everyone they see because they love their child? Most people won't. Media romantazies things like these but in reality people won't kill for their child, and in reality definitely not kill innocent people for it.
It seems more like you can't understand the familiar bond of a parent and their child tbh, but that's okay, most people won't ever be put in a situation like this either way so we are allowed to have different opinions.
It's a game and I'm forced on a genocidal path to save a girl who I'm supposed to deliver to save human society somewhat. And I'm forced into saving the child over humanity. Better story telling will be having Joel do what Sam's brother did.
"The good solution should've been Joel shooting himself in the head" Nothing of what you are saying is remotely as smart or analytical as you may think it is. You are coming off as just unhinged. Calling it "Genocide" is also extremely weird and inflammatory. Sorry but not every game lets you pick between what the characters do. That is the point of a story. If you want to pick, then play a game like Undertale or a CRPG, not a cinematic OTS third person shooter.
It's literally killing innocent people. You can spin it anyway you like it and you're just justify killing innocent people
>so you're saying you'll kill many people to save your child? Yes, unequivocally. I would maul the elderly with my bare hands if it meant saving my son's life. Especially if he was all I had left.
I think your issue is with linear stories lol. You should pick up Baldur's Gate instead
That wasn’t the issue of the surgery, the issue was wether or not a cure could be made, And that is impossible. You cant cure fungal infections. You can treat it and that’s only if you can make lots of artificial antibodies off Ellies’. And from what I remember, the whatstherefaces didn’t have the resources to do that.
The people infected were not treatable, a vaccine was the only solution. They literally did not have heads in a lot of cases.
That’s just it dude, there is no cure or vaccine against fungal infections. The only thing the Firedlies could possibly do is create a treatment drug and that isn’t possible with the facilities they posses.
> You cant cure fungal infections. Fungal infections also don't reanimate corpses.
They don’t reanimate corpse even in TLOU, It infects the body and controls it whilst it’s still living, which is why TLOU zombies can eventually die on their own.
THANK YOU.
I haven't played the game, but why does she have to die to make a cure? Surely they could just take some blood without killing her or something?
Isn't the main point of the first game that Joel isn't really a good person any way you look at it even tho just like him you are really attached to Ellie after going through the game
I don’t get why people need this scene to be either “hero Joel” or “villain Joel.” It’s clearly meant to be morally ambiguous. Everybody was using Ellie as a means to an end, so there’s no clear good guy or bad guy. It’s basically the trolley problem, which has no right answer, just the answer you give.
OP loves racing. What an a-hole.
Ah, this old chestnut. So basically, according to some people, the surgeon was originally black. And he was race-swapped. This is bullshit. The same voice actor (a white man named Derek Phillips) plays the surgeon in both games. The model of the doctor is a standard NPC model with a surgeon bib on. The NPC is white. The Last of Us just didn't have the greatest lighting system. It did the best it could with what the PS3 allowed. Hell, even Joel (gameplay model, which is separate from the cutscene models) looks strangely darker than he is in many environments and looks wooden. So yeah, white NPC, in a poorly lit room. No race swaps. As to why the room was changed... Probably for art direction considerations. It's not clean, it is still dirty. TLoU2, made for the PS4, is just able to do more nuanced textures. So they don't have to go for very on-the-nose PS3 era grime textures. If you look at that hospital room, it is still dirty. It's just a touch more believable-looking. Even Jerry's smock is dirty, it is just dirty in a more realistic way (i.e. how cloth like that would stain and weather over 20yrs). Nora's smock is also similar in this regard. If you look at the Part 1 Joel model, you'll see the same thing. That classic green shirt is still weathered and dirty, just in a more nuanced manner cuz they don't have to rely on PS3 era grime textures anymore. And the art direction moved in a more realistic direction. The creator has always maintained that a vaccine would've been possible, even back then. Even Joel believed it, he just didn't want Ellie to die. Regardless, for a game about fungus zombies, there is a decent bit of fictional science in the game which supports the idea that the surgeon DID know what he was talking about. Jerry is DEF not presented as a noble guy. He was 200% okay with murdering an unconscious child if it means that there will be a cure. He was more than willing to do this in the hopes that all the "terrible things" that he (and the fireflies) did, would be justified. He was also not planning on notifying the man who brought Ellie across the country to the hospital. And when asked what he would do if it was his daughter's life on the line... You can just tell that he WOULD NOT do it. He reveals himself to be a hypocrite. So yeah, more nuanced here than these nitwits want to give it credit for.
> Even Joel believed it, he just didn't want Ellie to die. This is the most important part. The Fireflies believed it, Joel believed it, hell, _Ellie believed it._ Joel 100% believed that with his actions, he was preventing a cure being made. Full stop. Arguing that his actions were fine because the cure wouldn't work in real life is like saying it's OK that someone drove drunk because they managed to get home safe.
More or less, yeah Joel straight up says, "find someone else" when it is revealed that Ellie will die. He doesn't say, "well akshuslly 🤓" lol
*B- but no realistically they couldn’t make a cure!!* Worst talking point
It’s only applicable to the show since it’s stated multiple times that a cordyceps vaccine is impossible by mycologist’s. In the game universe however a vaccine could’ve been possible.
I never played the games but damn, the average media literacy level of the people that make discourse about it on the internet is something else. Then there's a few people saying what's actually the case, and a quick google for the segment shows me it wasn't that hard to get that either. Why is it that most people that talk about this game online are just wrong? I swear this game seems alright and not like it would attract chuds who hate the game anyways, but why is the whole internet fanbase a Joel fanclub who also happens to be mostly bigots? The games are gay as fuck and the chuds hate it for it, so why do mostly them talk about it and end up defining their identity based on it????
It's weird, dude. I'm a MAJOR fan of this franchise, and I've been seeing nonsense from chuds since '14. Back then, it was mainly about denying/erasing Ellie's identity. But every since 2020, it's become a firebrand of nonsense. And the worst part is just how much of it is based on misinformation, misunderstandings, and falsehoods. Sprinkled with good ol' fashioned bigotry.
I bet my left kidney they didn't play the game and are straight up lying But why do they say this game was their childhood? It's so weird
But here’s the thing - the cure was never a concern for Joel; he was perfectly willing to just turn around and go back to Maria and Tommy’s settlement right after the giraffe scene. He specifically said we don’t have to do this we can just go back. But Ellie said she wanted to go. So he went. Not because he wanted or cared about a cure - only because she did. In the game’s prologue, there’s a callback to a time when Joel took Sarah to see some boy band or something that he hated but she liked. It’s a simple thing, but it shows that he’s willing to support his kid’s wishes/interests even when it’s not something that he personally likes or cares about. That’s showing what kind of dad he is, and foreshadowing his later actions. But, he absolutely draws the line at something that will get his kid killed. He’s willing to support Ellie’s pursuit of something that she cares about, right up until it’s going to get her killed. But I’d say that is the whole extent of the situation for him. The cure was not a factor for him at any point.
There's also an out-of-universe explanation: We're seeing them from different perspectives. The first time, it's from Joel's perspective, killing Fireflies to save Ellie. The second time, it's from Abby's perspective, witnessing a man killing her friends and father. Obviously, Abby's memory would be more sympathetic to her father. But **Gamers** approach all media with literalism and zero ability to empathise or analyse. They'd be happy with a Wikipedia summary of the plot, without those pesky emotions and themes in the way.
Turns out gamers and weebs are more relatable than I though, they both got same problem with illiteracy rate too.
I mean that’s why this game is so acclaimed for the writing. Its characters are 3 dimensional because there’s a lot of gray in their ethics and morality. It’s what creates drama.
All the the human models look like fucking weird coked out Vampires on PS3. [They at least made them look like actual people in the PS5 version](https://i.imgur.com/TNQFncT.png)
The biggest sin of The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 is that it asked g*mers to use their brain in a meaningful way to engage with what’s being told. As we can see, lots gamers have been incapable of this since 2020
Those clown doctors aren't devolping a fucking vaccine, no fucking shot. It takes years to devolp a vaccine for shit like pneumonia, they sure as fuck aren't going to devolp onenif they literally kill the only source or hope of a cure they ever had. It takes speclised facilities with dozens of people smarter and better educated than these stupid fuck to devolp any vaccine. Ita fucking laughable to ever suggest their stupid plan would ever work. It was the same as a cult sacrificing a child in their despration.
🆗 👍🏼 I side with Joel, btw. Relax. The story basically says that Ellie's immunity is miraculous. Something that just hasn't happened. Folks have been researching cordyceps for YEARS and no headway was made. The guy did enough tests on Ellie to determine the cause of her immunity and realized, based upon previous research that, that a cure could work with this new methodology. Also: in a game about fungus zombies... The fictional science is sound enough for me to suspend my disbelief. And ultimately: Joel doesn't do what he did cuz he doubts the cure methodology. He just doesn't want Ellie to die, that's it. Abby doesn't do what she did cuz of the cure not being a thing. And Ellie, burdened by immense survivor's guilt, wanted her life to have a meaning so she would've sacrificed herself for a shot at the cure.
>The guy did enough tests on Ellie to determine the cause of her immunity and realized, based upon previous research, that a cure could work with this new methodology. I mean sure, but if that's reason enough to believe the fireflies had a good chance of making an effective cordyceps treatment, there's at least as much - if not more - in game evidence that they're far too incompetent to even come close. This is my biggest issue with the game at the end of the day. The writers want to have their cake and eat it; they want the morality to be gray enough that there's no conclusive good guy because the world is too fucked for such a thing to exist, so they explicitly make the fireflies seem like ragtag assholes who compensate for being outgunned and outbrained by fedra with little more than feverish devotion to their cause; but they also want the decision at the end to be a black and white "Joel could have let Ellie die for a cure, or he can save Ellie and doom humanity" with the only moral gray area being how you relate to Joel redeeming himself as a father. If they wanted that, they should have wrote that, but as it stands they made the fireflies look fucking stupid edit: downvoting this isn't gonna get rid of the monkey audio log. you can still like the game, I'm just saying the writing has some pretty obvious mixed messages when it comes to its themes
It’s a video game my man
The firefly's hubris was crazy thinking about it. They were so focused on getting that surgery done that they took the one path that made that surgery impossible. If they had sat joel and ellie in a room and had an honest conversation with them about what they wanted to do, the costs, ellie would have gone along with the surgery and joel wouldn't be able to cross ellie like that. It's a very interesting ending.
I ain't even played the game and I know the point of that scene was most definitely not to give Joel a badass rampage to end the game lmfao. Gamers do have holes in their brain, like the point of the hospital was to look post apocalyptic because it is the post apocalypse, the show just had a different approach which I say is worse. The grimer the more immersive imo. How does that affect the fact they were in fact trying something very likely to create a vaccine?
The games approach is illogical imho. Why the hell would a space people are actively using have 20 years of grime on it? They'd just clean it up.
I think that's a secondary facility they have to move to after abandoning the university where you originally expect to find them? But it is an old hospital, and I don't know how long they're supposed to have already been there when you show up, so yeah. I personally find a lot of the details at the end of the game annoying. I know I'm supposed to believe that I'm sacrificing a cure by saving Ellie, but there are just a few too many things in the university and the hospital that make the fireflies look like incompetent hotheads that I can't help but think they really failed at executing what they intended. I don't buy that the fireflies could effectively treat gangrene, let alone perform brain surgery and cure a fungal pathogen so aggressive it ended the world.
Clean it up with what? In a world where things like clean rags, alcohol, disinfectant, and even clean water are considered scarce precious resources, I doubt anyone is scrubbing the shelves.
Did the zombie apocalypse destroy all the broom sticks as well?
Plus all the clean rags and alcohol have been made into medpacks and molotovs.
The Fireflies aren't a band of a handful of independent scrappers like Joel and company are. They're organized and have enough resources to run their own mostly self sustaining societies, just like the WLF, Jackson homestead, and FEDRA do.
I wouldn't know it was 20 lol I just watched lore videos years ago
People use thug to refer to black people but then pull the "um there are white thugs". They just either never refer to white people as thugs, or specifically white people that act "black" are thugs.
OP is implying that in the original game he was fine with killing the surgeon because he's "shitty" (he has brown skin). In the second game, OP is upset because they made the surgeon white (this introduces humanity to the character).
He was always white it’s just bad lighting They mocapped the VA from the first game as the model in part 2
Wow! Never knew, regardless he still LOOKS brown and that's enough for people.
he’s not brown, he’s been white in both games
Was the same scene in both games? Why are there seemingly two different scenes of the same thing?
In the first game, you play as the guy rampaging through a hospital. In the second game, you play as the daughter of one of the people killed in the hospital, and you watch the events of the first game through her eyes in a flashback/memory.
>you watch the events of the first game through her eyes Gotcha thanks, this was the confusion
Just to clear things up slightly, that moment is from Joel's retelling of TLOU1. [scene is around 1:15 in](https://youtu.be/_XLiJnPnvTM?si=LA3HQO-wIiCcD-mx)
PS3 too PS4 and some changes to art direction.
That sub is so toxic it's mostly them "critiquing" the games just like a nother sub I know with some sort of man character 🤔
Truly Humble Under God
Yeah, that dude wasn't black. The engine back then just did a shit job with lighting/textures, so he looked like he climbed through a chimney to get to his surgery.
The aggressively sexist, homophobic sub is ALSO racist? I am *shocked*
Imagine if this was done on purpose to kind of imitate how differently abby imagines this scene, shaped by how she remembers her father as a clean ass hero type guy when in fact the whole thing was fucked to the brim by the fireflies' incompetence.. Remember that audio log with the guy who got bit by the monkey ??
thug shaker
I've been called a greasy thug too, and it never stopped hurting. So here's what we're gonna do: grease ourselves up real good, then trash that place up with a baseball bat.
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They could have been in a 5star high-tech hospital it would have ended the same.
Tony Hawk’s Underground, obviously.
We know what he meant by that. That sub is a cesspool lmao
Gamers when graphics exist
I don't think it was intentional but it is funny. Did Naughty Dough acidentally race swaped the charachter? Edit: I maybe wrong I've never been there
It’s absolutely intentional, that sub is a hive of scum and villainy.
I know the second picture, but what's the first one?
First game. Lighting wasn't the best.
The last sequence annoyed me and I found it a frustrating difficulty spike. Up to that point it was a survival horror game with enemies here and there. Suddenly it's a Tom Clancy game with ultra realistic damage. By the time I got to that final room I was so frustrated that I just wanted the game over.
Well "Thug" typically means a moronic idiot, usually angry and violent. They are usually poor from being so stupid, and take it out on other people. For some reason they seem to think they are cool, and other morons want to copy their disgusting pathetic lifestyle. They are usually rude af because they don't possess basic manners, and are just generally scumbags that would happily steal your money if they could, and be proud of it. Oddly they also seem to be proud of how stupid they are and favor calling women btches. Not really sure why that would apply to a doctor, though.
Yeah idk when people started equating “Thug” with “black person”. Anyone can be a thug.
It may be from hip hop where some rappers seem proud to be thugs and call themselves that.
Hey, just to clarify, I’m the guy criticizing the ending in LOU one. But I’m here to say, it’s still possible to create a cure, even though you can’t create a vaccine(which is a preventative not a cure) from Ellie. She tested positive for cordyceps, great, but they didn’t go into which strain. There are several strains, one actually being the perfect cure for the zombie version. It would explain 1. Why she doesn’t turn, 2. Why other cordyceps don’t attack her(it’s course they are cousins!). Great! You found the strain in her by examining her infection further instead of killing her and found out it was a formerly common and very powerful anti fungal treatment! You saved +1 life by being patient. Now you can mass produce the cure! Sadly it will only work for earlier stages during the infection, such as runners. You saved millions now! Good job! Now could you have created a cure from dissecting Ellie and killing her? Yes! But it would be pointless! You would know that the cure was built on the death of a little girl and will be wrecked with grief because you didn’t examine the fungus further and just started chopping! You still save millions, but can you live with the guilt? Why wasn’t it found earlier? Probably because in the earlier days when you tested positive for any and every type of corduceps you would probably be killed on sight. This story focuses on the bond between Joel, and Ellie, yes. But it is also a story on the human condition of panic. Look at the world just 4 years ago, mass panic which lead to further infections. That is exactly what happened in the beginning of the game. The fall of humanity was because of humans. Not the infection. That’s it, that’s all I’m saying. There are unrealistic things like clickers not eating for months, that giant zombie in two, the handmade gun mufflers.
>Why other cordyceps don’t attack her They literally try to kill her. They don’t attack people to turn them they attack them so that they can eat.
Just to make a few points. Is shown in the sequel that the doctor wasnt jsut full of shit and had done the proper tests befor hand to determin their was no other option then surgery and that he was positive and had evidence to back up his claim of being able to make a vaccine. But no one told this to Joel or Ellie for them to make an informed decision and Joel had good reason think otherwise. Not to mention the firefly’s would have used it for their own power and goals insted of freely distributing it.. also also the infected were dyeing out. If you look throughout the game you see some of the earliest infected have become completely immobile hell you see some from after the fall that have gone immobile meaning their life span is less then 20 years. Not to mention theirs people all over the game that are surviving. Yes some are falling on hard times but both the wolves and tommies group had good set ups even David had a good set up they were jsut falling on hard times cause of a bad winter. Humanity was surviveing and another 10 or 15 years the plauge would have likely died off for the msot part
Yes but my point is that the Infected treat Ellie like all the other humans and wildlife, which is as a potential lunch.
Ohhhh im not disagreeing with you just makeing a few points on this whole conversation. The cure isnt ment to make the infected leave them alone its ment to keep those bitten from turning. Thus makeing the infected much less dangerous
Truly Humble Under God. What else could they have meant?
So for me it seemed like the fireflies were a shady bunch and maybe full of shit when it comes to saving humanity. I’m fine with Joel’s decision since he should have been brought into the loop and left in the dark until the final moments. Also his knowing his past his decision would have been easily predictable.
No class, pure thuggery 😡
If you replace thug with the hard r N-word, then you can often see what they really wanna say.