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Forums - Sony Discussion - (SPOILER ALERT) Free discussion of TLOU2 with story included

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How do you rate TLOU2 story

1 8 14.55%
 
2 1 1.82%
 
3 5 9.09%
 
4 3 5.45%
 
5 5 9.09%
 
6 7 12.73%
 
7 4 7.27%
 
8 4 7.27%
 
9 7 12.73%
 
10 11 20.00%
 
Total:55
John2290 said:

Can anyone tell me how long Abbys section is? I'm getting really bored but I wanna see the ending in my own playthrough. 

Spoiler!
Is each day as long as Ellies or do they compress them? More flashbacks? Less? None? I've just caught up to Owen. How long do I roughly have left? Going at almost full pace now ignoring collectibles. 

Considering the trophy for collectibles have you collecting one thing in the first half and another in the other i would suppose Abby is half the play.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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Bonzinga said:
Mordred11 said:

     So to you, Abby killing Joel was a flaw because Abby should've had second thoughts about doing it after Joel saved her, but Ellie not killing Abby at the end is also a major flaw, after Abby let Ellie live (tommy and dina too) TWICE.

     Sounds to me like you're a little biased as to "how people work" when it comes to joel and abby.

     Abby spent 4 years of her life tracking down Joel, a man who killed her father, a father that seemingly never did anything to hurt anyone who didn't deserve it ( unlike the long list of innocent people Joel kills ). During this time, she never allows herself to be happy, not even giving a chance to her relationship with Owen, someone she KNOWS she loves. All she can think about is Joel and how he killed her father, who was just trying to do good. She finally finds him and goes to Jackson WITH her friends. For them to do that in their situation, they risked their lives for her. Do you honestly believe that, just because Joel was "nice" to her for a moment, she should just change her mind and tell her friends they risked their lives coming there for nothing? That's an ironic expectation for someone who complains about "characters wasting their time".

     After Joel's death, Abby and Ellie are even. Even Ellie knows that, but pain is blinding her judgement. She ends up killing almost all of Abby's friends, but Abby still lets her and Dina go, because even Abby was having a hard time dealing with what she did to Joel. After all, she tried saving Yara and Lev as a way to redeem herself for that.

     After all the innocent people Ellie kills (including a pregnant woman), she is still blinded by pain and continues to seek revenge until she finds Abby in a state that was arguably worse than death. That, combined with the fact Abby let her live twice ( plus a pregnant Dina ), and combined with ALL of the innocent people Ellie kills throughout the game, almost convinces Ellie to just let Abby be on her way with Lev. But then she looks at her own blood and is once again reminded by the pain of losing Joel. Once again she is blinded by that pain and quickly decides to kill Abby there and then. Abby doesn't even want to fight and she is physically weakened to an extreme extent, so it's almost like an execution, rather than a fight.

     A moment away from drowning her, Ellie realizes she will not feel better by killing her. She realizes she has to do what Abby did, and that is to redeem herself for her acts of revenge. Only then she could still have a hope of ever feeling happy and content with herself as a person again. So she lets Abby and Lev go for that very purpose. You cannot honestly have played the entire game and tell me that it would've been "good" for Ellie and her mental state to kill Abby at the end.

     I am baffled by the people who state that " the characters just wasted their time". Ellie finally learned how to cope with Joel's death and be her better self, instead of her worst. Abby found her light in the darkness that surrounded her for 4 years, in Lev. THAT is a how humans CAN work, there is no standard for that because every person and every situation differs from one another. It's almost childish to expect someone to deal with pain and loss the same way you would.

I am definilty not saying Joel shouldnt die. Abby has every reason to put him away, thats by far and large not the issue here.

The issue was how it was implemented. Joel is a survivor, he shows this in the first game, yet now he just all of a sudden lets his gaurd down.. characters like these need better send offs, there was no fight, no courage, just a stupid move of Joel trusting strangers.

There needs to be character build up to Abby, there was none, and that scene set the mood for the entire game. Majority still didnt like playing Abby or thinks her motives were earnt. 

Personslly, I dont agree with Ellie letting her go, maybe if Abby only killed her friends but she personally watched what she did to her father figure and why this story needed to end her. The game felt hollow at the end, like it needed some resolve. That is an opinion of ours.

Ellie had just tortured a woman to death and killed another one that was pregnant. I think at this point Ellie (finally) understood that these were people just like her, that had suffered just like her, and that most of their suffering had been because of her. And these people actually had spared her life before.

In my opinion, she should have realized that way before getting to this point. She had already gone way too far.



John2290 said:

Can anyone tell me how long Abbys section is? I'm getting really bored but I wanna see the ending in my own playthrough. 

Spoiler!
Is each day as long as Ellies or do they compress them? More flashbacks? Less? None? I've just caught up to Owen. How long do I roughly have left? Going at almost full pace now ignoring collectibles. 

I didn't keep track of time when I playing as her but I think it was roughly 10 hours total for her section. I think you've still got a long way to go.

Spoiler!
Have you rescued the two scar characters yet.


John2290 said:
DonFerrari said:

Considering the trophy for collectibles have you collecting one thing in the first half and another in the other i would suppose Abby is half the play.

I really hope not. 

A game like this cant be 30 hour long. 15-20 hours maximum is the sweet spot, specially when combat is so repetitive.



taus90 said:
Bonzinga said:

I am definilty not saying Joel shouldnt die. Abby has every reason to put him away, thats by far and large not the issue here.

The issue was how it was implemented. Joel is a survivor, he shows this in the first game, yet now he just all of a sudden lets his gaurd down.. characters like these need better send offs, there was no fight, no courage, just a stupid move of Joel trusting strangers.

There needs to be character build up to Abby, there was none, and that scene set the mood for the entire game. Majority still didnt like playing Abby or thinks her motives were earnt. 

Personslly, I dont agree with Ellie letting her go, maybe if Abby only killed her friends but she personally watched what she did to her father figure and why this story needed to end her. The game felt hollow at the end, like it needed some resolve. That is an opinion of ours.

Just to add to bozinga 

Joel was morally corrupt in the first game and ellie was his chance of regaining what was lost.. yes in greater scheme of things that's selfish and wrong but that was the cruz of the last of us.. which took almost 10hrs to show why you shouldn't feel bad about joels decision.

If in first game Joel's action was handled in similar way as Abby's.. Starting of killing the doctors and ruining every chance society to rebuild itself.. we wouldnt have considered last of US as masterpiece.

The problem with TloU2 is neil druckmann and Shanon woodward got complacent and probably thought hey lets break the rule of story telling, which is 3 act structure.. setup, Confrontation and conclusion, in that order, but instead we got 

Confrontation - Joels death was the conflict but falls flat due to no setup of why he deserved to die, rest alone in that manner..

Setup- Abby was directly thrown into confrontation, (no character setup or situation setup)

Conclusion - this entire thing got lost when writer didn't know who's story deserved conclusion.. what players should feel towards Abby.

it would have been a much better story if we started playing as Abby recruiting the team on quest to finding joel. and show why she hated joel so much and it was not just because of her father but there were many things joel and we as a player did in the first game that would deconstruct joel in our mind.. and then setup a confrontation with abby, we as a player fighting as joel along with tommy to give player the sense that joels death was our doing. and then from that we would have had ellie's journey on revenge and the conclusion which we got would have made much more sense..

P.S Scars was pointless to the story..

I have a really hard time taking these criticisms seriously. 
@bozinga - I don't understand the whole "Joel suddenly became stupid" argument. Abby liked and was thankful to Joel. They weren't luring him into a trap- It's nothing like the first game with the scavenger in the street. That scavenger was a "bait". Conversely, Abby wasn't baiting Joel. she actually was about to die. So to Joel, there wouldn't be any reason for suspicion. He just saved her life. I don't see 'this person might turn around and kill me' to be a logical forethought. Perhaps he should have been more cautious, but consider this: Had joel been any other person, he wouldn't have been killed. Logically, the only real argument you can make is that it was stupid to say his own name. However, we've seen in almost any movie or literature on survival, going from difficult conditions to comfortable (living in a town that grew to hundreds within 4 years and are all friends) tends to make people let their guard down. You're entitled to think that Joel's stupidity was just a poorly written plot device, but it's definitely up for debate and you're point is not as singularly convincing as you seem to think. 

Furthermore, the whole setup-confrontation-conclusion argument you brought up hinges on you accurately identifying the story elements. You say that the story is all backwards and mixed up and doesn't make sense. But there are hundreds, if not thousands of revenge stories that are written with a similar type of setup.
-In Kill Bill, you have no idea who Bill is and why he killed the bride or why she wants revenge.
-In The Gladiator, Maximus is an actual war hero and is given heirship to Rome by the terminally ill emperor whose son then kills Maximus' whole family in a bid to steal the throne.
-In Hanna, you have no idea why the government comes and tries to kill her father. all you know is hanna goes bonkers and starts killing everyone. 
-In OldBoy, the story starts of with the lead being kidnapped and tortured and we have no idea why until things play out and you find out the main dude is actually a huge PoS.
-Do I even need to bring up Darth Vader in star Wars being Luke's father? Does anyone really need to see Anakin's life story before I can understand why Vader is so insistent on capturing Luke? 

You say that we need to see Abby's story before we see her kill Joel, but do we really? We PLAYED the first game. We know how bad Joel is. For all I care, the first game IS Abby's exposition. 

Joel is a villain- Despite bonding with him, or liking him, or even agreeing with his actions. Joel is a villain.
When Ellie asks how Joel knew about the trap he responds, "I've been on both sides". He's trapped and killed innocent people EVEN BEFORE he ever meets Ellie.  Regardless of making ends meet or surviving, we also see his moral failures towards the end, wherein Joel offers just go back home and Ellie replies,
"
if I don't go through with this, then everything we've done.. everyone we've lost...it's all for nothing"
Joel then kills the entire hospital, the resistance, Marlene, and condemns humanity. Joel betrays and dishonors everyone you met in the game, all bc he wants to keep Ellie to himself.

TLOU is great game specifically due to how the narrative induces compassion for Joel's journey.... If you honestly need more exposition to understand Abby's motives at that part of the game, then I'm afraid to say that it's pretty obvious why. You didn't understand the last of us

Playing through it myself, I was also surprised that Abby was out for revenge. I wrongly assumed that since she was kind of normal and I had been playing as her, she would be a good guy. What's more interesting is that even now, I can't think of a reason to say Abby was wrong to kill Joel. AFAIK, Abby's story begins 4 years earlier when Joel kills her father. AFAIK, Abby could actually be the hero of her own story, climaxing with her killing the target of her vengeance. If you think about it, Ellie's journey in TLOU2 is Abby's exposition. Abby is just Ellie from the future, if you understand my meaning. The difference being that Abby didn't spare her target and Ellie does. 

The way you described how the story should have been written, we should have played out an entire story of Abby's revenge and then played out Ellie's revenge. Honestly, I can't think of anything more tedious or boring than having to play out the same plot twice.

Last edited by theprof00 - on 24 June 2020

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theprof00 said:
taus90 said:

Just to add to bozinga 

Joel was morally corrupt in the first game and ellie was his chance of regaining what was lost.. yes in greater scheme of things that's selfish and wrong but that was the cruz of the last of us.. which took almost 10hrs to show why you shouldn't feel bad about joels decision.

If in first game Joel's action was handled in similar way as Abby's.. Starting of killing the doctors and ruining every chance society to rebuild itself.. we wouldnt have considered last of US as masterpiece.

The problem with TloU2 is neil druckmann and Shanon woodward got complacent and probably thought hey lets break the rule of story telling, which is 3 act structure.. setup, Confrontation and conclusion, in that order, but instead we got 

Confrontation - Joels death was the conflict but falls flat due to no setup of why he deserved to die, rest alone in that manner..

Setup- Abby was directly thrown into confrontation, (no character setup or situation setup)

Conclusion - this entire thing got lost when writer didn't know who's story deserved conclusion.. what players should feel towards Abby.

it would have been a much better story if we started playing as Abby recruiting the team on quest to finding joel. and show why she hated joel so much and it was not just because of her father but there were many things joel and we as a player did in the first game that would deconstruct joel in our mind.. and then setup a confrontation with abby, we as a player fighting as joel along with tommy to give player the sense that joels death was our doing. and then from that we would have had ellie's journey on revenge and the conclusion which we got would have made much more sense..

P.S Scars was pointless to the story..

I have a really hard time taking these criticisms seriously. 
@bozinga - I don't understand the whole "Joel suddenly became stupid" argument. Abby liked and was thankful to Joel. They weren't luring him into a trap- It's nothing like the first game with the scavenger in the street. That scavenger was a "bait". Conversely, Abby wasn't baiting Joel. she actually was about to die. So to Joel, there wouldn't be any reason for suspicion. He just saved her life. I don't see 'this person might turn around and kill me' to be a logical forethought. Perhaps he should have been more cautious, but consider this: Had joel been any other person, he wouldn't have been killed. Logically, the only real argument you can make is that it was stupid to say his own name. However, we've seen in almost any movie or literature on survival, going from difficult conditions to comfortable (living in a town that grew to hundreds within 4 years and are all friends) tends to make people let their guard down. You're entitled to think that Joel's stupidity was just a poorly written plot device, but it's definitely up for debate and you're point is not as singularly convincing as you seem to think. 

Furthermore, the whole setup-confrontation-conclusion argument you brought up hinges on you accurately identifying the story elements. You say that the story is all backwards and mixed up and doesn't make sense. But there are hundreds, if not thousands of revenge stories that are written with a similar type of setup.
-In Kill Bill, you have no idea who Bill is and why he killed the bride or why she wants revenge.
-In The Gladiator, Maximus is an actual war hero and is given heirship to Rome by the terminally ill emperor whose son then kills Maximus' whole family in a bid to steal the throne.
-In Hanna, you have no idea why the government comes and tries to kill her father. all you know is hanna goes bonkers and starts killing everyone. 
-In OldBoy, the story starts of with the lead being kidnapped and tortured and we have no idea why until things play out and you find out the main dude is actually a huge PoS.
-Do I even need to bring up Darth Vader in star Wars being Luke's father? Does anyone really need to see Anakin's life story before I can understand why Vader is so insistent on capturing Luke? 

You say that we need to see Abby's story before we see her kill Joel, but do we really? We PLAYED the first game. We know how bad Joel is. For all I care, the first game IS Abby's exposition. 

Joel is a villain- Despite bonding with him, or liking him, or even agreeing with his actions. Joel is a villain.
When Ellie asks how Joel knew about the trap he responds, "I've been on both sides". He's trapped and killed innocent people EVEN BEFORE he ever meets Ellie.  Regardless of making ends meet or surviving, we also see his moral failures towards the end, wherein Joel offers just go back home and Ellie replies,
"
if I don't go through with this, then everything we've done.. everyone we've lost...it's all for nothing"
Joel then kills the entire hospital, the resistance, Marlene, and condemns humanity. Joel betrays and dishonors everyone you met in the game, all bc he wants to keep Ellie to himself.

TLOU is great game specifically due to how the narrative induces compassion for Joel's journey.... If you honestly need more exposition to understand Abby's motives at that part of the game, then I'm afraid to say that it's pretty obvious why. You didn't understand the last of us

Playing through it myself, I was also surprised that Abby was out for revenge. I wrongly assumed that since she was kind of normal and I had been playing as her, she would be a good guy. What's more interesting is that even now, I can't think of a reason to say Abby was wrong to kill Joel. AFAIK, Abby's story begins 4 years earlier when Joel kills her father. AFAIK, Abby could actually be the hero of her own story, climaxing with her killing the target of her vengeance. If you think about it, Ellie's journey in TLOU2 is Abby's exposition. Abby is just Ellie from the future, if you understand my meaning. The difference being that Abby didn't spare her target and Ellie does. 

The way you described how the story should have been written, we should have played out an entire story of Abby's revenge and then played out Ellie's revenge. Honestly, I can't think of anything more tedious or boring than having to play out the same plot twice.

I don`t think Joel is a villain or a hero, all he done after losing sarah and meeting Ellie was to keep living, killed to live. And the kills he done after Ellie was to keep her safe. Very simple and understandable.

Killing to keep alive and for revenge is different stuff, but yes I totally understand Abby killing him even without seeing flashback. Even Ellie say it would be impossible to know which group Abby was because Joel had so many enemies.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari said:

I don`t think Joel is a villain or a hero, all he done after losing sarah and meeting Ellie was to keep living, killed to live. And the kills he done after Ellie was to keep her safe. Very simple and understandable.

Killing to keep alive and for revenge is different stuff, but yes I totally understand Abby killing him even without seeing flashback. Even Ellie say it would be impossible to know which group Abby was because Joel had so many enemies.

Without getting into details, I'd just recommend checking out this tvtropes link on villain protagonists. I think you'll find it hard to disagree. He embodies all the characteristics of a villain, and at best is typified as a sociopathic hero who crosses the line into full villain upon killing Marlene.



theprof00 said:
DonFerrari said:

I don`t think Joel is a villain or a hero, all he done after losing sarah and meeting Ellie was to keep living, killed to live. And the kills he done after Ellie was to keep her safe. Very simple and understandable.

Killing to keep alive and for revenge is different stuff, but yes I totally understand Abby killing him even without seeing flashback. Even Ellie say it would be impossible to know which group Abby was because Joel had so many enemies.

Without getting into details, I'd just recommend checking out this tvtropes link on villain protagonists. I think you'll find it hard to disagree. He embodies all the characteristics of a villain, and at best is typified as a sociopathic hero who crosses the line into full villain upon killing Marlene.

I would say that at the hospital he wasn't at his best mental state and he also knew that if anyone was left alive that knew about Ellie she was going to be hunt. And sure after all the kill he done in the past he wouldn't have issue killing a few more.

Anyway even criminals have loved ones and can act kind. And he being able to sympatize and have real care and love eliminates him being a sociopath.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

It's dropped to a 94 on metacritic



Bonzinga said:
Mordred11 said:

     So to you, Abby killing Joel was a flaw because Abby should've had second thoughts about doing it after Joel saved her, but Ellie not killing Abby at the end is also a major flaw, after Abby let Ellie live (tommy and dina too) TWICE.

     Sounds to me like you're a little biased as to "how people work" when it comes to joel and abby.

     Abby spent 4 years of her life tracking down Joel, a man who killed her father, a father that seemingly never did anything to hurt anyone who didn't deserve it ( unlike the long list of innocent people Joel kills ). During this time, she never allows herself to be happy, not even giving a chance to her relationship with Owen, someone she KNOWS she loves. All she can think about is Joel and how he killed her father, who was just trying to do good. She finally finds him and goes to Jackson WITH her friends. For them to do that in their situation, they risked their lives for her. Do you honestly believe that, just because Joel was "nice" to her for a moment, she should just change her mind and tell her friends they risked their lives coming there for nothing? That's an ironic expectation for someone who complains about "characters wasting their time".

     After Joel's death, Abby and Ellie are even. Even Ellie knows that, but pain is blinding her judgement. She ends up killing almost all of Abby's friends, but Abby still lets her and Dina go, because even Abby was having a hard time dealing with what she did to Joel. After all, she tried saving Yara and Lev as a way to redeem herself for that.

     After all the innocent people Ellie kills (including a pregnant woman), she is still blinded by pain and continues to seek revenge until she finds Abby in a state that was arguably worse than death. That, combined with the fact Abby let her live twice ( plus a pregnant Dina ), and combined with ALL of the innocent people Ellie kills throughout the game, almost convinces Ellie to just let Abby be on her way with Lev. But then she looks at her own blood and is once again reminded by the pain of losing Joel. Once again she is blinded by that pain and quickly decides to kill Abby there and then. Abby doesn't even want to fight and she is physically weakened to an extreme extent, so it's almost like an execution, rather than a fight.

     A moment away from drowning her, Ellie realizes she will not feel better by killing her. She realizes she has to do what Abby did, and that is to redeem herself for her acts of revenge. Only then she could still have a hope of ever feeling happy and content with herself as a person again. So she lets Abby and Lev go for that very purpose. You cannot honestly have played the entire game and tell me that it would've been "good" for Ellie and her mental state to kill Abby at the end.

     I am baffled by the people who state that " the characters just wasted their time". Ellie finally learned how to cope with Joel's death and be her better self, instead of her worst. Abby found her light in the darkness that surrounded her for 4 years, in Lev. THAT is a how humans CAN work, there is no standard for that because every person and every situation differs from one another. It's almost childish to expect someone to deal with pain and loss the same way you would.

I am definilty not saying Joel shouldnt die. Abby has every reason to put him away, thats by far and large not the issue here.

The issue was how it was implemented. Joel is a survivor, he shows this in the first game, yet now he just all of a sudden lets his gaurd down.. characters like these need better send offs, there was no fight, no courage, just a stupid move of Joel trusting strangers.

There needs to be character build up to Abby, there was none, and that scene set the mood for the entire game. Majority still didnt like playing Abby or thinks her motives were earnt. 

Personslly, I dont agree with Ellie letting her go, maybe if Abby only killed her friends but she personally watched what she did to her father figure and why this story needed to end her. The game felt hollow at the end, like it needed some resolve. That is an opinion of ours.

How someone would even ignore this at this point is beyond me. They either forgot how the first game was or did a speedrun on the first game just to play this. Tommy was also being a really stupid fuck here. It's like both of them suffered a senior moment right there.

Also, Jim Sterling's review also described another thing I hate about this game. It's the total disconnect of the gameplay to its narrative. It wants you to feel bad about killing people but it gives you no choice at all. Despite being an unfinished game MGS5 did it better.

Last edited by iron_megalith - on 24 June 2020