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JBP
Feb 16, 2017

You've got to know, to understand,
Baby, take me by my hand,
I'll lead you to the promised land.
I killed everyone in Abby's path, no exceptions.

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BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?

punk rebel ecks posted:

He basically argues that with Ellie they took the "Last Jedi Approach" (he doesn't actually say this) in which they completely ignore her character arc of the previous game of her disliking violence to fit this game's themes.

It's funny because neither this game or that movie do that

bobjr
Oct 16, 2012

Roose is loose.
🐓🐓🐓✊🪧

Ellie does resolve to only go after Abby, and ignoring gameplay her friend tend to be already dead or openly provoke her into killing them.

punk rebel ecks
Dec 11, 2010

A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

It's funny because neither this game or that movie do that

He says that Ellie in TLOU1 hated violence. Throughout the game she gradually had to use violence in order to save Joel but it ends up deeply disturbing her as she dislikes killing. She's always been the more pacifist voice compared to Joel. So her just straight up murdering everyone for revenge is very against her character.

Pulcinella
Feb 15, 2019

bobjr posted:

Ellie does resolve to only go after Abby, and ignoring gameplay her friend tend to be already dead or openly provoke her into killing them.

The way it’s animated, Owen practically falls onto Ellie’s gun. That one is basically, entirely his fault.

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?

punk rebel ecks posted:

He says that Ellie in TLOU1 hated violence. Throughout the game she gradually had to use violence in order to save Joel but it ends up deeply disturbing her as she dislikes killing. She's always been the more pacifist voice compared to Joel. So her just straight up murdering everyone for revenge is very against her character.

I'm sorry but this is such a lazy argument.

She's a child in the first game who begins in relative peace and has never seen the outside world. She ends up taking lives in her journey Joel and is understandably horrified by it. We also see her becoming more competent defending herself and hunting etc on her own. She kills David's men and is understandably traumatised by it.

Then in the second game, she's older, her understanding of the world and what's necessary has been shaped by Joel, and she's loving angry. The two contexts are clearly different.

I would also argue, Ellie is clearly shellshocked by her own actions including after killing Nora, particularly after killing Mel, and even towards the end of the game knowing she needs to stop (and eventually does, choosing not to kill Abby!) but is stricken with PTSD and obsession.

e: think of values you had or comfort level you had with various tasks, or motivation five years ago, or how about when you were an actual child, are you the exact same person? Characters not being static is a GOOD thing

It's also not really clear to me whether Ellie actually intended to kill all the people she's getting information from, since they all erupt in the person trying to escape/attacking her etc., I don't think she really knows the answer or has a plan. The Mel/Owen kill scene is clearly her trying to be like Joel and Tommy but being in over her head

BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jun 30, 2020

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

punk rebel ecks posted:

He says that Ellie in TLOU1 hated violence. Throughout the game she gradually had to use violence in order to save Joel but it ends up deeply disturbing her as she dislikes killing. She's always been the more pacifist voice compared to Joel. So her just straight up murdering everyone for revenge is very against her character.

Ellie didn’t really give two shits about violence in the first game though. She asked for a gun multiple times before actually having one, blew a dude’s head open more or less without hesitation, and offed like dozens of people before the game was over. She also pulped David’s head with a machete, Sling Blade style. And that doesn’t include Left Behind!

It affected her, for sure, but I feel like anyone who went into the sequel thinking of Ellie as some kind of untarnished cherub is...for lack of a better word, really stupid.

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

I would also argue, Ellie is clearly shellshocked by her own actions including after killing Nora, particularly after killing Mel, and even towards the end of the game knowing she needs to stop (and eventually does, choosing not to kill Abby!) but is stricken with PTSD and obsession.

This however I’m totally on board with. Ellie was born six years after the outbreak, violence is what she knows from the start, but it doesn’t help, even on a personal level.

Dewgy fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jun 30, 2020

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Pulcinella posted:

The way it’s animated, Owen practically falls onto Ellie’s gun.

Just like Owen's recapping of how he accidentally killed Danny. The parallels in this game, man.

Anyway, these threads are good so I curse it with tons of bad takes to remind everyone that it could be much worse in here than it is

Mostly the comment section than the video itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnmnpWWTrnY


Dewgy posted:

Ellie didn’t really give two shits about violence in the first game though. She asked for a gun multiple times before actually having one, blew a dude’s head open more or less without hesitation, and offed like dozens of people before the game was over. She also pulped David’s head with a machete, Sling Blade style. And that doesn’t include Left Behind!

It affected her, for sure, but I feel like anyone who went into the sequel thinking of Ellie as some kind of untarnished cherub is...for lack of a better word, really stupid.

Yeah, the initial ones at the start kinda freaked her out; the soldiers that ambush her Joel and Tess, the guy that nearly drowned Joel and pushed him to give her a rifle soon afterwards, and then she wasn't really fazed by anything aside from a "Jesus, Joel" after you kill someone until David because that's the most brutal she's had to be to kill someone and also everything to do with that situation was extremely uncomfortable.

Happy_Misanthrope
Aug 3, 2007

"I wanted to kill you, go to your funeral, and anyone who showed up to mourn you, I wanted to kill them too."

punk rebel ecks posted:

#2 Scars is just plain evil. They are basically the Khmer Rouge. And the game makes it clear that Abby and others dislike them because they don't "stay on their island".
Well yes because we never got to play 10 hours as one

Fellatio del Toro
Mar 21, 2009

lol I looked up the book Abby is reading at the start of her segment and OF COURSE its by the loving Game of Thrones dipshit writer

Fellatio del Toro
Mar 21, 2009

anyways just finished this game

expertly crafted with a huge budget, clearly worked on by a lot of talented people; I enjoyed many parts of it

but I loved the first game specifically because of its ambiguous ending and this one is loving hellbent on rehashing that poo poo and making sure not an ounce of ambiguity remains and boy does that suck

punk rebel ecks
Dec 11, 2010

A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Happy_Misanthrope posted:

Well yes because we never got to play 10 hours as one

True, but we also assist two recruits, although they are defectors and kids.

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

Fellatio del Toro posted:

lol I looked up the book Abby is reading at the start of her segment and OF COURSE its by the loving Game of Thrones dipshit writer

Who, GRRM? Star of the Coen Bros classic movie Fargo?

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?

Fellatio del Toro posted:

lol I looked up the book Abby is reading at the start of her segment and OF COURSE its by the loving Game of Thrones dipshit writer

That book is apparently quite good, and expressly was an inspiration for the first game according to Straley.

Benioff has written other good things like the 25th Hour too.

The hate those two guys get is honestly absurd and such a lame circlejerk bandwagon. I did not love the last season of Game of Thrones and like many agree the show fundamentally changed once they got ahead of the books. Nevertheless adaptation is still a skill and they did a great job for several seasons - some of the best scenes in the show in the early seasons are scenes that are not in the books.

Fans of franchise media tend to just be completely hyperbolic to the point of abusive when they disagree with the choices of people that create their products, see Druckmann, Rian Johnson, D&D etc all of whom have received death threats.

BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jun 30, 2020

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?
https://youtu.be/pDLNb7lECR4 This podcast (Druckmann with Reggie Fils-Aime) fantastic.
He confirms Israel-Palestine was the catalyst inspiration for the story specifically seeing Israelis be lynched when he was young and being angry and then getting older and seeing the event from a different perspective. (at about 10:30)

BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jun 30, 2020

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

bobjr posted:

Ellie does resolve to only go after Abby, and ignoring gameplay her friend tend to be already dead or openly provoke her into killing them.
'Ignoring gameplay' is a pretty big caveat. In the first game you could make some argument that you're killing to survive, or save humanity, or save someone you care about from people who want to do them harm. These aren't necessarily good things to do, but there is at least some moral ambiguity to them and they come from a relatable place. Whereas killing hundreds of largely unrelated people in a selfish quest for revenge or torturing someone to death in front of their loved one is obviously and inarguably monstrous.

Irony Be My Shield
Jul 29, 2012

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

He confirms Israel-Palestine was the catalyst inspiration for the story specifically seeing Israelis be lynched when he was young and being angry and then getting older and seeing the event from a different perspective. (at about 10:30)

punk rebel ecks posted:

#2 Scars is just plain evil. They are basically the Khmer Rouge. And the game makes it clear that Abby and others dislike them because they don't "stay on their island".
This seems pretty bad to me, especially with the upthread argument that the scars seem to be based on Muslims

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?

Irony Be My Shield posted:

This seems pretty bad to me, especially with the upthread argument that the scars seem to be based on Muslims

I don't think it's meant to a perfectly literal allegory. The point Neil Druckmann makes is that he wanted to make a story where you went from complete anger to empathy (which he had) which he succeeded at

E: He even prefaces it before he says it, like he doesn't want to be reductive to real world conflict with the comparison but is admitting his attitude to that even inspired some themes of the game

To the extent that the Scars might be 'based on' Muslims... as I mentioned earlier in the thread, half my family is Muslim. I don't think Druckmann hates Islam. I don't even think the Scars come across that poorly, their desire to move to a simpler way of living rather than repeat the "Old World" and some of their values discussed are compelling. The violence they commit upon the WLF is awful, but it seems like they kind of just want to hang around their island and the surrounding area but have been caught in a cycle of violence with the WLF

What is super horrifying is their regressive attitudes of child marrying, bigotry and torturing those that try to leave but, this is how religious regimes are in a lot of the world and

BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Jun 30, 2020

Phylodox
Mar 30, 2006



College Slice

Happy_Misanthrope posted:

Well yes because we never got to play 10 hours as one

Not yet, at least. Gotta wait for that DLC.

punk rebel ecks
Dec 11, 2010

A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.
Druckmann not bring up Palestine issues more in the interview has me concerned, but I didn't equate that Scars were Muslims at all. They seemed like a Jim Jones meets the Church.

The Neal!
Sep 3, 2004

HAY GUYZ! I want to be a director
I beat this game last night and now I'm looking at a lot of takes on YouTube and one thing that blows me away constantly is the people cheering for Ellie to kill Abby in the last scene and then being mad that she doesn't.

I get the take that the game can be annoying in that the player has learned the lesson that maybe this violence isn't helping anyone long before Ellie does (That didn't really take too much away from the game experience for me because I recognised that it wasn't my story but Ellie's and she's reached total psychopath levels by the end. I get why people might have rolled eyes at Ellie's terminator like single mindedness though). That whole "Ellie should have killed Abby, Joel deserved better than this!" just seems baffling to me. By the end of the game I absolutely didn't want to kill Abby and I thought it would be weird that anyone would still want the game to end that way, I mean even if not for Abby's sake at least Lev's. Lev's like the only character left by the end of the game that might be considered a decent person.

Gameplaywise it was fun to go all out at the end like the first game but I did think the entire Rattler thing was an unnecessary extra, feels like the story beats that followed might have been better done during the showdown at the cinema.

I thought the game was pretty great though, I'm glad we got to revisit that world and those characters again.

Rabid Snake
Aug 6, 2004



Still in day 3 in Seattle of ellie. Does it seem out of character of ellie to leave Jessie for revenge on Abbie? I thought we were gonna get tommy and bounce? Dina is pregnant it doesn’t seem like the ellie I would know who would do this, especially when it was the fireflys who went after Joel.

bobjr
Oct 16, 2012

Roose is loose.
🐓🐓🐓✊🪧

I think part of it was it being right there, and Ellie using getting Tommy as an excuse to keep going and not just leave then.

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


The Neal! posted:

I beat this game last night and now I'm looking at a lot of takes on YouTube and one thing that blows me away constantly is the people cheering for Ellie to kill Abby in the last scene and then being mad that she doesn't.

I get the take that the game can be annoying in that the player has learned the lesson that maybe this violence isn't helping anyone long before Ellie does (That didn't really take too much away from the game experience for me because I recognised that it wasn't my story but Ellie's and she's reached total psychopath levels by the end. I get why people might have rolled eyes at Ellie's terminator like single mindedness though). That whole "Ellie should have killed Abby, Joel deserved better than this!" just seems baffling to me. By the end of the game I absolutely didn't want to kill Abby and I thought it would be weird that anyone would still want the game to end that way, I mean even if not for Abby's sake at least Lev's. Lev's like the only character left by the end of the game that might be considered a decent person.

Gameplaywise it was fun to go all out at the end like the first game but I did think the entire Rattler thing was an unnecessary extra, feels like the story beats that followed might have been better done during the showdown at the cinema.

I thought the game was pretty great though, I'm glad we got to revisit that world and those characters again.

Because the game's manipulation to try and get you to like Abby is really blatant and some people react to that by hating Abby. I am one of them. She feels like a writer's pet character, so special and wholesome and just look at how dirty Ellie is, she's bad, she shoots the dog Abby petted. It's just so hilariously one sided and obvious. Also the game ignores that what Abby did to Joel is way more hosed up than what Joel did and she gets off scott free morally for that one.

But basically it's entirely because as players, Abby sucks.

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

Eimi posted:

Also the game ignores that what Abby did to Joel is way more hosed up than what Joel did and she gets off scott free morally for that one.

I’m sorry, fuckin what

Indecisive
May 6, 2007


Joel was a fuckin monster, and he made Ellie into a monster, he 100% deserved what happened. Like if you want to argue that he changed later in life you can debate that but they deliberately put his thing early in the game before showing how he maybe softened up, because it's generally understood that game 1 joel is a huge piece of poo poo

Happy_Misanthrope
Aug 3, 2007

"I wanted to kill you, go to your funeral, and anyone who showed up to mourn you, I wanted to kill them too."

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

I don't think it's meant to a perfectly literal allegory. The point Neil Druckmann makes is that he wanted to make a story where you went from complete anger to empathy (which he had) which he succeeded at
That's likely part of the reason I didn't find the concept compelling - I didn't have complete rage at Joel dying. When it happened, my first thought "Ah. Probably fireflies, on account of Joel murdering them and potentially throwing away humanity's best hope. Yeah guess I'd be pretty ticked". I thought the lack of any pause with Abby after Joel just saved her life perhaps wasn't the most believable reaction, but as she intervenes to prevent Ellie and Tommy from being killed it was apparent she had a very specific and personal reason for killing Joel.

There might have been the potential for feeling...something, if we spent more time with Joel perhaps, but it happens so soon (and further de-escalated by briefly playing as Abby in the opening tutorial missions), there was absolutely no revelation for me. It was "ok, this is where they're gonna go with this I guess. Oh well?"

Eimi
Nov 23, 2013

I will never log offshut up.


Dewgy posted:

I’m sorry, fuckin what

Beating a man to death in front of his brother and daughter makes her far worse than Joel.

As for what he does to the Fireflies, honestly he did nothing wrong. The Fireflies are fuckups whose response to seeing a man and young girl, who they should've been told to look out for, is to knock out Joel when he's trying to resuscitate her. And then he's told that as a reward for doing what they couldn't and bringing Ellie cross country his reward is that they steal all his stuff and graciously don't shoot him. gently caress the Fireflies.

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

Eimi posted:

Beating a man to death in front of his brother and daughter makes her far worse than Joel.

Joel tortured a guard to death with gut shots, mowed through an entire security team, stabbed a surgeon in the neck, likely blew away two other doctors, and murdered Marlene, who was the only other living person Ellie was even remotely close to.

I’m not anti-Joel by any means, gently caress the Fireflies, but if you think what Abby did was “far worse” then you must not have been paying attention.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Am I the only one who gets that Joel was zombie apocalypse Punisher and not like end of the world hero like The Book of Eli or something?

Like, dotted throughout TLoU1 is him admitting that he was pulling the same stunts as a lot of the hunters you're fighting, I.E. Pittsburgh, all the people in the Boston QZ that know who him and Tess are all do not want to be on their bad side.

And this is like, very soon after Sarah died and he adopted this methodology. So this has been him for like what, 10+ years of being a scumbag monster of a human being to keep him and Tommy alive? Because he split and joined the Fireflies after watching that for long enough but I don't have an exact timeline for all the events.

But we didn't play him being the villain for 17 hours sadly, so all of that got swept under the rug and no one thinks he's commited an atrocity in his life, everything he's done has been justified from beginning to end. From breaking Robert's arm to carving a second mouth out of the doctor's mouth at the end of the game.

Abby's been in the WLF for what, 4 years and that's somehow too obscene to come back from?

Hopefully someone can take this and make a decent pots out of it, I don't really think critically about games that often or play a lot of things with a lot of non-forced moral ambiguity beyond the lazy hot takes of 'that man had a family' that people like to throw out about everything so I don't know how to word poo poo well.

RareAcumen fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jul 1, 2020

The Neal!
Sep 3, 2004

HAY GUYZ! I want to be a director

Eimi posted:

Because the game's manipulation to try and get you to like Abby is really blatant and some people react to that by hating Abby. I am one of them. She feels like a writer's pet character, so special and wholesome and just look at how dirty Ellie is, she's bad, she shoots the dog Abby petted. It's just so hilariously one sided and obvious. Also the game ignores that what Abby did to Joel is way more hosed up than what Joel did and she gets off scott free morally for that one.

But basically it's entirely because as players, Abby sucks.

I don't know if it's manipulation for the game to tell Abby's side of the story. She has people she loves and cares about just like Ellie and Joel did, she also does some pretty horrific stuff, just like Ellie and Joel did. If anything I'd say it was less game manipulation and more a fair treatment of everyone. Since we see them all do the same stuff, murdering and torturing people who have people that love them. I don't think it's one sided. Abby's redemption arc, so to speak, doesn't even really kick off until Yara and Lev show up.

I understand some people hate Abby because she killed their game dad but I really wonder if a part of it is that it's easier for gamers to hate Abby so much because she doesn't fit the body archetype of what a woman in a game is allowed to look like.

Morally she doesn't get off scott free either, the torture and how that makes her feel is pretty explicitly stated to be her main motivation for trying to help Yara and Lev, she's absolutely trying to make up for the fact that she's done something unforgivable. If you wanted her punished in the game for it she also had her friends all brutally murdered, was enslaved and crucified and then forced to face one of her victims and be beaten to a pulp/almost drowned. All this horrible stuff that happens to her stems from what she did to Joel. She really doesn't get off scott free morally or literally for what she did.

lurker2006
Jul 30, 2019

RareAcumen posted:

everything he's done has been justified from beginning to end.
I don't think anyone's saying that, at least not here. I think what people take issue with is what he's specifically being punished for. If you didn't buy into the utilitarian scenario of a child sacrifice for a cure, Abby's revenge will come off as undeservedly self-righteous.

RareAcumen posted:

carving a second mouth out of the doctor's mouth at the end of the game
The guy threatened Joel with the scalpel he was about to carve open Ellie's head with, he wasn't a grazing giraffe.

lurker2006 fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jul 1, 2020

In It For The Tank
Feb 17, 2011

But I've yet to figure out a better way to spend my time.

RareAcumen posted:

Abby's been in the WLF for what, 4 years and that's somehow too obscene to come back from?

I think an important distinction between Joel and Abby is their motivations for commiting violence. Joel and Abby both kill a lot of people. However, Joel is primarily motivated by self-interest and survival, whereas Abby is motivated by hatred and vengeance.

Joel ruthlessly murders a ton of people but he takes no pleasure in it. He resorts to violence simply because it is the most expedient way to propser in TLOU's world. He's learned the hard way that violence is inevitable and necessary (whether he is correct is a different matter).

The vibe I get is that Joel was a hunter for many years who preyed on innocent people untill Tess reined him in and taught him that the threat of violence is often sufficient to achieve his goals, hence why he is her enforcer at the start of the first game. Therefore, Joel is dispassionate and "rational" with his violence, in the sense that he won't gently caress with you unless you gently caress with him first (see: Robert). He murders and tortures for a reason, even if the reason is as shallow as "he had information I wanted to know and he wasn't talking fast enough" or, in his hunter days, "he had supplies I need". It's horrible but there's a twisted logic to it no doubt informed by twenty years of living in a post-apocalyptic world.

Ignoring how one could argue that Joel was acting in self-defense or that the vaccine is a pipedream, killing the Fireflies in the hospital had a specific purpose: to save Ellie, who has become a fundamental and necessary part of his life. He tortures Ethan with the groinshots and slaughters the Fireflies because he needs to find Dr. Doolittle before he cuts Ellie open. There is a method to Joel's madness; he is not doing it simply because he likes it.

Abby, on the other hand, wants to hurt people. I won't go so far as to say she enjoys it but I think it is evident that she kills to satisfy her lust for revenge (whooooo). That's the only reason I can think of why the Salt Lake crew would join up with WLF, a private army eternally warring with a dehumanized enemy over territory that the Salt Lake crew have no connection to (as Owen says). Essentially, she and her friends are soldiers of fortune who joined the first PMC that would offer them security and the opportunity to kill people. WLF clearly has non-military personnel among their ranks but Abby and all her friends chose to be soldiers. They're enthusiastic about it too: Abby is "Isaac's top Scar killer", and she admits she'd like to torture Scars on Day One after the ambush as payback for what she endured. So, unlike Joel, there's a sadism to her character: she tortures for the sake of torture, she murders for the sake of murder.

So, Joel and Abby both murder a fuckton of people but it's like comparing a professional criminal who murders when it is expedient to a war criminal who indulges in violence and murders for sport (or pleasure, or to sate her need for vengeance, or however you wish to characterize it). Neither are good people and they're both despicable but there's something especially heinous about the latter.

Side note: this is also why I don't buy into the idea that Abby redeemed herself. She saved Lev, yes, and learns that revenge ain't all it's cracked up to be and it won't allow her to properly process her dad's death. That's great! However, her first instinct is to return to the Fireflies, who are themselves a paramilitary group (read: terrorists) that "assasinate soldiers and blow up military checkpoints". So basically, she just traded one gun for another.

And you can't even say she is joining out of any kind of high-minded ideal like she believes the purported mission statement of the Fireflies (to restore the world to how it used to be) because she voluntarily leaves Ellie behind - twice - after learning that she is the immune woman that is the alleged key to creating a vaccine that will allow the Fireflies to accomplish their goal. Granted, the second time Abby was not in any state to subdue Ellie but you'd think she'd say something when she got to Catalina Island that the literal miracle that they have been looking for for twenty years is right under their noses in Santa Barbara*.

*Disclaimer: I'm not American, I don't know the geographic relationship between these places. However, I'd say the Fireflies still had a good shot at picking up Ellie while she was injured and alone in California. Then again, Abby knows where Ellie lives, so I suppose there's no rush; she can rat out Ellie whenever she feels like it. Still a wasted opportunity though. I bet the Fireflies are going to be pissed that they'll need to go all the way to Wyoming.

am0kgonzo
Jun 18, 2010

In It For The Tank posted:

I think an important distinction between Joel and Abby is their motivations for commiting violence. Joel and Abby both kill a lot of people. However, Joel is primarily motivated by self-interest and survival, whereas Abby is motivated by hatred and vengeance.

Joel ruthlessly murders a ton of people but he takes no pleasure in it. He resorts to violence simply because it is the most expedient way to propser in TLOU's world. He's learned the hard way that violence is inevitable and necessary (whether he is correct is a different matter).

The vibe I get is that Joel was a hunter for many years who preyed on innocent people untill Tess reined him in and taught him that the threat of violence is often sufficient to achieve his goals, hence why he is her enforcer at the start of the first game. Therefore, Joel is dispassionate and "rational" with his violence, in the sense that he won't gently caress with you unless you gently caress with him first (see: Robert). He murders and tortures for a reason, even if the reason is as shallow as "he had information I wanted to know and he wasn't talking fast enough" or, in his hunter days, "he had supplies I need". It's horrible but there's a twisted logic to it no doubt informed by twenty years of living in a post-apocalyptic world.

Ignoring how one could argue that Joel was acting in self-defense or that the vaccine is a pipedream, killing the Fireflies in the hospital had a specific purpose: to save Ellie, who has become a fundamental and necessary part of his life. He tortures Ethan with the groinshots and slaughters the Fireflies because he needs to find Dr. Doolittle before he cuts Ellie open. There is a method to Joel's madness; he is not doing it simply because he likes it.

Abby, on the other hand, wants to hurt people. I won't go so far as to say she enjoys it but I think it is evident that she kills to satisfy her lust for revenge (whooooo). That's the only reason I can think of why the Salt Lake crew would join up with WLF, a private army eternally warring with a dehumanized enemy over territory that the Salt Lake crew have no connection to (as Owen says). Essentially, she and her friends are soldiers of fortune who joined the first PMC that would offer them security and the opportunity to kill people. WLF clearly has non-military personnel among their ranks but Abby and all her friends chose to be soldiers. They're enthusiastic about it too: Abby is "Isaac's top Scar killer", and she admits she'd like to torture Scars on Day One after the ambush as payback for what she endured. So, unlike Joel, there's a sadism to her character: she tortures for the sake of torture, she murders for the sake of murder.

So, Joel and Abby both murder a fuckton of people but it's like comparing a professional criminal who murders when it is expedient to a war criminal who indulges in violence and murders for sport (or pleasure, or to sate her need for vengeance, or however you wish to characterize it). Neither are good people and they're both despicable but there's something especially heinous about the latter.

Side note: this is also why I don't buy into the idea that Abby redeemed herself. She saved Lev, yes, and learns that revenge ain't all it's cracked up to be and it won't allow her to properly process her dad's death. That's great! However, her first instinct is to return to the Fireflies, who are themselves a paramilitary group (read: terrorists) that "assasinate soldiers and blow up military checkpoints". So basically, she just traded one gun for another.

And you can't even say she is joining out of any kind of high-minded ideal like she believes the purported mission statement of the Fireflies (to restore the world to how it used to be) because she voluntarily leaves Ellie behind - twice - after learning that she is the immune woman that is the alleged key to creating a vaccine that will allow the Fireflies to accomplish their goal. Granted, the second time Abby was not in any state to subdue Ellie but you'd think she'd say something when she got to Catalina Island that the literal miracle that they have been looking for for twenty years is right under their noses in Santa Barbara*.

*Disclaimer: I'm not American, I don't know the geographic relationship between these places. However, I'd say the Fireflies still had a good shot at picking up Ellie while she was injured and alone in California. Then again, Abby knows where Ellie lives, so I suppose there's no rush; she can rat out Ellie whenever she feels like it. Still a wasted opportunity though. I bet the Fireflies are going to be pissed that they'll need to go all the way to Wyoming.

:yeah:

DC Murderverse
Nov 10, 2016

"Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

punk rebel ecks posted:

They seemed like a Jim Jones meets the Church.

that's just Jim Jones homes

am0kgonzo
Jun 18, 2010
also owen gets his pregnant girlfriend killed because he's real dumb

Anti-Hero
Feb 26, 2004
Was that actually the fireflies that Abby linked up with on the radio in Santa Barbara? I got the distinct impression it was the Rattlers setting a honey pot. Didn’t the radio Fireflies and Rattlers both refer to the same landmark? Something about a dome shaped building.

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

Anti-Hero posted:

Was that actually the fireflies that Abby linked up with on the radio in Santa Barbara? I got the distinct impression it was the Rattlers setting a honey pot. Didn’t the radio Fireflies and Rattlers both refer to the same landmark? Something about a dome shaped building.

The building shape was wierd but the fireflies on the radio were legit, why they asked about who was boss

Necrothatcher
Mar 26, 2005




Anti-Hero posted:

Was that actually the fireflies that Abby linked up with on the radio in Santa Barbara? I got the distinct impression it was the Rattlers setting a honey pot. Didn’t the radio Fireflies and Rattlers both refer to the same landmark? Something about a dome shaped building.

Check the title screen after you finished the game. They're different buildings.

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stev
Jan 22, 2013

Please be excited.



Necrothatcher posted:

Check the title screen after you finished the game. They're different buildings.

:aaa: It hadn't even occurred to me that it wasn't a trap.


Now that's a good capper for the story.

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