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Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


It's also not delight, it's spite that's fueling that response.

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Quantum of Phallus
Dec 27, 2010

Ellie: writes bad poetry
Abby: jacked as poo poo

I know who I'm siding with

acksplode
May 17, 2004



I like them both :)

Lazy Savior
Feb 10, 2004
shit... i don't know...

morallyobjected posted:

if you go "gently caress Ellie" without also going "gently caress Abby" by the end of the game, then idk what to tell you.

"she let you live" is not a compelling argument when the precedent of both was her murdering your dad/friend and beating/injuring others.

Abby's terrible deeds are mostly frontloaded so maybe she just gets a pass from people because you play as her on the back end, but both of them are complex people who have done terrible poo poo for revenge (and in Abby's case, with the Scars, for little reason other than because she's committed herself to belonging somewhere while she waits out her revenge fantasy)


Joel killed Abby's Dad, Marlene and many other fireflies, destroying the community she was a part of and within the narrative of the story preventing a cure for the cordyceps from being created. Any crime Abby committed was met and exceeded by Joel's crimes against Abby, and I think it's our own bias as players of TLOU 1 that we don't see Abby actions as partially to perhaps fully justified.

I probably wouldn't say "gently caress ___" to either of them, but Abby is far ahead of Ellie morally. Her original revenge was targeted specifically at Joel, and she did not opt to kill Tommy or Ellie even though it was obviously possible that they might seek revenge, because it was seen as crossing a moral line. What moral line did Ellie stop at, at any point during the game? When did Ellie put herself on the line to save another's life, as Abby did many times during her campaign. During the theater confrontation, I have a hard time blaming Abby too much since her mini rampage fits inside the last bit of Ellie/Tommy's much larger rampage, much more deadly rampage across the city. These people killed the last few people she knew from SLC. And didn't even Dina also come to Seattle for the express purpose to kill or help kill Abby's crew? She's hardly an innocent bystander, and spent the moments before being knocked out trying to stab Abby to death. Abby refuses multiple opportunities to finish off Ellie's friends even when incentivized to do it. I don't think she gets a "pass" from anyone, is hated far worse than the severity of her actual actions compared to Ellie/Tommy. Ellie tends to get the pass, if any passes are given, for reasons that are understandable since we played her during the first game and the story is structured to show her path of vengeance as seeming necessary.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
Abby doesn’t automatically get some kind of moral high ground, considering she’s been mercing scars for the last 3-4 years in Seattle. She is a component of military regime that seeks to essentially enact a pogrom on a religious community, not because of their beliefs, but simply resources. She operating as an imperialist jackboot up until she tortures and murders an old man. Those are all true statements, regardless of what the old man did. She could have just slit Joel’s throat and been out of there before Ellie could have arrived.

It is SPECIFICALLY Abby’s cruelty that sparks the events of the story.

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



i love/hate them both. :emo:

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



Coffee And Pie posted:

The whole point of the game is that Joel, Ellie, and Abbie are on very similar grounds morally

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



mcbexx posted:

ACTSHUALLY, if you look at Seattle Day 1-3 Abby, you'll notice that she has a lot of spots on her shoulders and upper arms, which could be indicative of steroid use ("steroid acne"). She does not have those spots in the flashback to the Aquarium. She's been juicing.
:goonsay:

I am almost positive says she's on something during one of the early incidental dialogues at the stadium or the ??aquarium?? I have no idea what that is because I had subtitles turned off. I dunno, maybe I misheard. Can anyone confirm or deny?

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?
Subverted expectations are good

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Subverted expectations are good

depends on how well it's written

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



Quantum of Phallus posted:

"Ellie isn't actually bad" is the "Joel wasn't actually bad" take of TLOU2

yes, and?

Cocoa Ninja
Mar 3, 2007
I think you can endlessly try to rank the morality of the characters, but it gets away from the thrust of the experience, which was to feel empathy moment-to-moment based on your character's perspective. You can't be wrong if you're reacting intensely to what happened.

Not to say you can't have a debate about other issues, just that for me it feels divorced from what was really special about actually playing the game.

Did anyone watch Uncut Gems? The ending with Ellie saying, "I can't let you leave" reminded me of Sandler betting everything on KG at the end, when you're practically screaming at the screen, DON'T DO IT!!!

morallyobjected
Nov 3, 2012

Arist posted:

Why should she? How would that make the scene better?

I'm just saying you're rationalising Abby's reaction by having her ignore the circumstances surrounding it, which you also said we shouldn't do for Ellie.

Lazy Savior posted:

Joel killed Abby's Dad, Marlene and many other fireflies, destroying the community she was a part of and within the narrative of the story preventing a cure for the cordyceps from being created. Any crime Abby committed was met and exceeded by Joel's crimes against Abby, and I think it's our own bias as players of TLOU 1 that we don't see Abby actions as partially to perhaps fully justified.

I probably wouldn't say "gently caress ___" to either of them, but Abby is far ahead of Ellie morally. Her original revenge was targeted specifically at Joel, and she did not opt to kill Tommy or Ellie even though it was obviously possible that they might seek revenge, because it was seen as crossing a moral line. What moral line did Ellie stop at, at any point during the game? When did Ellie put herself on the line to save another's life, as Abby did many times during her campaign. During the theater confrontation, I have a hard time blaming Abby too much since her mini rampage fits inside the last bit of Ellie/Tommy's much larger rampage, much more deadly rampage across the city. These people killed the last few people she knew from SLC. And didn't even Dina also come to Seattle for the express purpose to kill or help kill Abby's crew? She's hardly an innocent bystander, and spent the moments before being knocked out trying to stab Abby to death. Abby refuses multiple opportunities to finish off Ellie's friends even when incentivized to do it. I don't think she gets a "pass" from anyone, is hated far worse than the severity of her actual actions compared to Ellie/Tommy. Ellie tends to get the pass, if any passes are given, for reasons that are understandable since we played her during the first game and the story is structured to show her path of vengeance as seeming necessary.


I don't think you can write off Joel's actions in the first one because honestly gently caress the Fireflies. Joel and Ellie traveled halfway across the country to get to them and the first thing they did was rifle butt Joel in the head while he was trying to perform CPR on a child. then they drugged Ellie to keep her unconscious, robbing her of informed consent, and told Joel to gently caress off or they'd shoot him.

Abby's own father even knows he'd never make that choice and wouldn't even admit it out loud when Marlene called him on it, and Abby's anger about the cure is probably negligible at best--it's her friends who cared about that--she just cares that he killed her dad.

the point is that there's no "ahead" in terms of morality. they're both sympathetic characters who have done abjectly terrible things. it probably comes down to just which one you like more

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


morallyobjected posted:

I'm just saying you're rationalising Abby's reaction by having her ignore the circumstances surrounding it, which you also said we shouldn't do for Ellie.

The entire point of that scene is that the two characters are wholly ignorant of the circumstances of the other, dude. Abby almost kills Dina because she doesn't know how Mel died. We do, because we are the audience, so we have the benefit of that information. Maybe she wouldn't care about the exact circumstances, but we can't know that because it's not actually in the game.

This entire "Abby and Ellie are morally equal" line of thought would be loving stupid even if the point was actually to make you think about that, which it isn't.

Arist fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Aug 4, 2020

morallyobjected
Nov 3, 2012

Arist posted:

The entire point of that scene is that the two characters are wholly ignorant of the circumstances of the other, dude. Abby almost kills Dina because she doesn't know how Mel died. We do, because we are the audience, so we have the benefit of that information. Maybe she wouldn't care about the exact circumstances, but we can't know that because it's not actually in the game.

This entire "Abby and Ellie are morally equal" line of thought would be loving stupid even if the point was actually to make you think about that, which it isn't.

I'm aware of that. it sounded like you weren't, but if I misinterpreted what you said, then I'll own it.

Quantum of Phallus
Dec 27, 2010


3 is gonna have to start with Joel and Ellie kicking a lil' old lady to death just to hammer it home

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


I wouldn't fault anyone for judging Ellies final decisions, but the criticism of her killing Mel and Owen is insanely lame because she clearly wasn't set on killing them before owen grabbed the gun and Mel tried to stab her. And even if she was going to kill them it was a dumb move that guaranteed their deaths and Ellie had no idea she was pregnant until it was too late

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Arist posted:

This entire "Abby and Ellie are morally equal" line of thought would be loving stupid even if the point was actually to make you think about that, which it isn't.

Yeah, even if you include Joel in the mix, no one's morally equal still. Ellie didn't spend a year or two waging a war on another faction like Abby and Abby hasn't been doing heinous poo poo like Joel was when the outbreak first began. Or I assume that she wasn't. We know the Fireflies were pretty poo poo from secondhand experience but I don't really have a good idea of all of their sins.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
WLF is pretty intentionally coded as “a great place to live and work and grow in a beautiful, ethnically diverse, post-apocalyptic utopia with many modern conveniences!” up until Abby Day 3 and you realize “oh you’re a authoritarian military regime and you are BLATANTLY committing war crimes against women and children”.

When Owen is first starting to *crack**ping* you hear it in his voice when he says “I’ve killed a looooooot of scars...”

The WLF are not good people, and I agree that ultimately none of the main characters in TLoU2 come off as particularly human or moral, they are all intensely traumatized people who have responded to a world where violence in the only answer.

Also 2nding that understating the infected in this game is hugely to its benefit and makes the infected segments way cooler than the first game.

ShakeZula
Jun 17, 2003

Nobody move and nobody gets hurt.

I'd argue that the first impressions you get of the WLF (assuming you read the notes and stuff you find in Seattle as Ellie) paint them as the cruel authoritarians they are. Even the people who backed them against FEDRA initially came to realize that they were just as bad or worse. Presumably the ones who are having a great time in the stadium are the ones who are fully bought in (like Abby and Manny) or people like Mel who just kind of go along with it for safety and aren't really on-board.

Pook Good Mook
Aug 6, 2013


ENFORCE THE UNITED STATES DRESS CODE AT ALL COSTS!

This message paid for by the Men's Wearhouse& Jos A Bank Lobbying Group

ShakeZula posted:

I'd argue that the first impressions you get of the WLF (assuming you read the notes and stuff you find in Seattle as Ellie) paint them as the cruel authoritarians they are. Even the people who backed them against FEDRA initially came to realize that they were just as bad or worse. Presumably the ones who are having a great time in the stadium are the ones who are fully bought in (like Abby and Manny) or people like Mel who just kind of go along with it for safety and aren't really on-board.

Ya I don't understand anyone who can sympathize with them. At least with the Bandits in Pittsburgh it was clear that their entire existence was robbing and murdering travelers and they didn't really create a society. The WLF are ostensibly "civilizers" but shoot any and all travelers on sight and are engaged in a war explicitly premised on genocide and land annexation.

Lazy Savior
Feb 10, 2004
shit... i don't know...

Bust Rodd posted:

Abby doesn’t automatically get some kind of moral high ground, considering she’s been mercing scars for the last 3-4 years in Seattle. She is a component of military regime that seeks to essentially enact a pogrom on a religious community, not because of their beliefs, but simply resources. She operating as an imperialist jackboot up until she tortures and murders an old man. Those are all true statements, regardless of what the old man did. She could have just slit Joel’s throat and been out of there before Ellie could have arrived.

It is SPECIFICALLY Abby’s cruelty that sparks the events of the story.


I mean, she doesn't automatically get high ground. I don't think any of the characters are heroes or anything, but Abby occasionally decides to show mercy or put her life in danger to help others, mostly Lev and Yara who she did not need to help. Did Ellie ever do anything like this? I can only remember her destroying herself through her own brutality and sacrificing everyone around her. This is a consequence of where each of these characters is during the events of the game, but one is more selfish than the other just based on the choices they make.

I also think this portrayal of the WLF v Seraphite conflict is a bit of a stretch. Isaac invades the seraphite island because he sees them as an existential threat. Considering you encounter plenty of seraphite lynch squads throughout Seattle I don't see a reason to assume this is a lie. I think "pogrom" is an odd word choice here when there is no hint that this is based ethnicity and you yourself said it wasn't about beliefs. I think it is meant to be presently simply as a parallel to the Abby/Ellie relationship as a cycle of violence that continues to escalate and feed itself until absolute destruction.

I also think "tortures and murders an old man" is also a weird way to describe the events between Abby and Joel. I mean it is technically true, but if we said that Ellie "murders an old man and leader of a community" in tlou1 (in reference to David), I'd say you'd be burying the lede even if those events technically occured. In the story as presented, Joel killed many fireflies. He also prevents the vaccine from being developed in effect killing many, many more people. He also kills Abby's dad. She is not killing a random old man, in fact with Tommy we see she does not kill random men. She killed the specific man, that to her perspective, committed all these crimes, sparing others. A better person than Abby would probably have simply killed Joel, but Ellie or anyone else happening upon the chalet (which she had no reason to think Joel would be at) at that specific time during that specific snow storm seems like a miracle, overshadowed of course by the divine intervention of plot contrivance that is Abby blundering into Joel/Tommy in the first place.

I think Abby's mercy sparks the events of the story. Once at the Chalet and again at the theater. If she had simply done the Joel thing of killing all the loose ends she would have made it back to Seattle clean. Perhaps if she knew Ellie, she would know that the mercy she showed would only exacerbate the guilt Ellie feels about living when so many die around her, but then we would have a very short game.

Anti-Hero
Feb 26, 2004

Pook Good Mook posted:

Ya I don't understand anyone who can sympathize with them. At least with the Bandits in Pittsburgh it was clear that their entire existence was robbing and murdering travelers and they didn't really create a society. The WLF are ostensibly "civilizers" but shoot any and all travelers on sight and are engaged in a war explicitly premised on genocide and land annexation.

Isn't that "shoot on sight" order recently enacted? At some point you'd think the WLF wasn't that way or they wouldn't have much for recruitment.

Pook Good Mook
Aug 6, 2013


ENFORCE THE UNITED STATES DRESS CODE AT ALL COSTS!

This message paid for by the Men's Wearhouse& Jos A Bank Lobbying Group

Anti-Hero posted:

Isn't that "shoot on sight" order recently enacted? At some point you'd think the WLF wasn't that way or they wouldn't have much for recruitment.

Well for one, letters and banners indicate that the Wolf utilized forced resettlement on people who weren't even their supporters or involved in the uprising against FEDRA and then shot anyone who didn't want to move. For another, a shoot on sight order anytime is never really a good sign. It's not like Scars wore anything other than their leather dusters.

Anti-Hero
Feb 26, 2004

Pook Good Mook posted:

Well for one, letters and banners indicate that the Wolf utilized forced resettlement on people who weren't even their supporters or involved in the uprising against FEDRA and then shot anyone who didn't want to move. For another, a shoot on sight order anytime is never really a good sign. It's not like Scars wore anything other than their leather dusters.

Yeah no doubt. The WLF are not good and reading the notes during Ellie's playthrough is pretty unambiguous there.

The progression from FEDRA -> WLF is pretty much "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

fake edit: Why is it that some games come up with new names for real world US agencies? FEDRA is analogous to FEMA, and the latter name is used with impunity in, for example, Deus Ex Human Revolution.

Anti-Hero fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Aug 4, 2020

Cocoa Ninja
Mar 3, 2007

Anti-Hero posted:

fake edit: Why is it that some games come up with new names for real world US agencies? FEDRA is analogous to FEMA, and the latter name is used with impunity in, for example, Deus Ex Human Revolution.

I’d guess because there are nutters out there who believe FEMA is a fascist plot to take over the US and they didn’t want to seem like they were endorsing those people.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

Lazy Savior posted:

Good and smart words

I think a lot of Abby's kindness and mercy comes from a somewhat performative place. Her interactions with Owen and Mel lead her down a very beautiful place of self-discovery, but I feel like the game takes pains to show you that this isn't something she would have really considered on her own without provocation. When Abby is depicted as doing the right thing, it's either right after being made to feel really guilty about something else she did, or it's Lev literally calling her out to her face.

Meanwhile Ellie has turned in to a fullblown Seattle Chainsaw Massacre but I would argue that Ellie never feels like she has to prove anything to anyone (except to Joel, that she DOESNT NEED HIM TO TAKE CARE OF HER)

But you do have a good point that she does let Tommy go and it's objectively correct to kill all 3 of them if you don't want trouble. Also it's clear that Abby's other friend is a pretty hostile person and there are probably lots of other ways it plays out with a lot more people dead. I guess they really didn't expect Ellie to be a walking natural disaster.

Jesus Christ I love this game

veni veni veni
Jun 5, 2005


Are people forgetting that Ellie ultimately let Abby go or something? I mean, she straight up saved the lives of both her, Lev and dozens of other slaves in Santa Barbara even if she didn't do it in a way that made you feel good

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


People are minimizing the purpose and effect of Abby's arc right now in bizarre ways

Again, this conversation is so beside the point that it's absurd to even have it

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

Cocoa Ninja posted:

I’d guess because there are nutters out there who believe FEMA is a fascist plot to take over the US and they didn’t want to seem like they were endorsing those people.

Also by using a fictional agency they don’t have to worry about accuracy or realism.

Quantum of Phallus
Dec 27, 2010

veni veni veni posted:

Are people forgetting that Ellie ultimately let Abby go or something?

Where do you think she was going at the end

morallyobjected
Nov 3, 2012

Quantum of Phallus posted:

Where do you think she was going at the end

I can't tell if you think Ellie was going after Abby again when she left the farm, but that would be a dumb take

Lazy Savior
Feb 10, 2004
shit... i don't know...
I only bring up the points that I do because I think Abby's arc and story tend to get minimized.

I think that she is a flawed character with a lot of terrible mistakes in her past and present, but that her motivations for taking up golf are understandable in the context of the story and she undergoes true growth as a person and character. Abby in Santa Barbara pre-ambush is the most heartwarming part of the game with strong tlou1 vibes that the game leans into (Abby has a revolver and shotgun Joel style, Lev has converse sneakers, etc). During my first playthrough, I disliked Abby up to and including the fight versus Ellie, and I tried a bunch of different ways to lose the fight. I didn't come around to liking Abby until specifically Santa Barbara, when I saw that she really had moved on from Seattle. It was especially a contrast from playing Ellie's farm scenes and seeing her stagnation emotionally/mentally and how she handled her departure from Dina.

Playing the game through again on survivor+ really changed the way I thought about the story and my reaction to the events. This is always true for intricate storylines, but I felt like my reaction on the second playthrough was closer to what ND were intending me to feel all along, that they really wanted me to feel worse about killing Abby's friends and that I should have trouble picking a side during the theater confrontation. I had to dissect why I had problems connecting with Abby during the first playthrough. I won't retread ground here since I have already discussed some of this earlier in the thread, but I think she tends to get short shrift in peoples eyes and that it actually detracts from the experience of the game. If she can be reduced to just a jackboot genocidal paramilitary that tortures and murders indiscriminately, then maybe Ellie really SHOULD have just drowned her on the beach. I think she's more complicated than that and that the game is more interesting when we look carefully at the choices she makes and the changes we see as the game goes on.

Not that anyone in this thread is this extreme, but seeing streamers' reactions at the end of the game braying for Abby's blood is very strange to me, almost surreal. I know these people tend to be total CHUDs and willfully unsympathetic, but I wonder what it would be like to be at the end of Last of Us 1 having never formed a bond with Ellie, wondering why he rescues her and doesn't just collect the guns from Marlene(which were the whole point of escorting her!). Part of the experience of these games is buying into the emotional context of the characters, and I don't think Abby is nearly as irresistible in tlou2 as Ellie is in tlou1.

Nail Rat
Dec 29, 2000

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!!

Lazy Savior posted:


I mean, she doesn't automatically get high ground. I don't think any of the characters are heroes or anything, but Abby occasionally decides to show mercy or put her life in danger to help others, mostly Lev and Yara who she did not need to help. Did Ellie ever do anything like this? I can only remember her destroying herself through her own brutality and sacrificing everyone around her. This is a consequence of where each of these characters is during the events of the game, but one is more selfish than the other just based on the choices they make.


Wrong game but Ellie wants to help Sam and Henry while Joel wants to just leave them by themselves. Also she does end up showing mercy to Abby. It could be argued Ellie's mercy is more pure because Abby's only comes at Lev's insistence, and comes with a veiled threat "don't let me see you again."

morallyobjected
Nov 3, 2012

Nail Rat posted:

Wrong game but Ellie wants to help Sam and Henry while Joel wants to just leave them by themselves. Also she does end up showing mercy to Abby. It could be argued Ellie's mercy is more pure because Abby's only comes at Lev's insistence, and comes with a veiled threat "don't let me see you again."

also literally everyone in Seattle that Ellie sees wants to kill her on sight. she never had the chance of "get captured by one group alive to be imprisoned together with people and form a mutual alliance to escape" because she never got caught. if Abby hadn't been captured, she wouldn't have had that either. I think someone else mentioned it, but past the initial escape, she only goes back for Lev and Yara because of her guilt about Owen/Joel and needing to do something to feel better about herself, so it's not like she's purely altruistic.

which is not to say that I think she's a terrible person with no redeeming qualities, but the point of the game is that no one is "good" or "better" in this universe. they each have their own perspectives from which you can argue that they're doing the "right" thing, but that ends up being really lovely for a bunch of other people.

I don't think anyone here actively hates Abby or anything (unlike the weirdos busy trying to "prove" she could never be as jacked as she is). there's just a weird amount of anti-Ellie sentiment that seems to gloss over the fact that Abby has done things that are just as terrible, so it's pointing out the inconsistency.

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



Lazy Savior posted:

I only bring up the points that I do because I think Abby's arc and story tend to get minimized.

I think that she is a flawed character with a lot of terrible mistakes in her past and present, but that her motivations for taking up golf are understandable in the context of the story and she undergoes true growth as a person and character. Abby in Santa Barbara pre-ambush is the most heartwarming part of the game with strong tlou1 vibes that the game leans into (Abby has a revolver and shotgun Joel style, Lev has converse sneakers, etc). During my first playthrough, I disliked Abby up to and including the fight versus Ellie, and I tried a bunch of different ways to lose the fight. I didn't come around to liking Abby until specifically Santa Barbara, when I saw that she really had moved on from Seattle. It was especially a contrast from playing Ellie's farm scenes and seeing her stagnation emotionally/mentally and how she handled her departure from Dina.

Playing the game through again on survivor+ really changed the way I thought about the story and my reaction to the events. This is always true for intricate storylines, but I felt like my reaction on the second playthrough was closer to what ND were intending me to feel all along, that they really wanted me to feel worse about killing Abby's friends and that I should have trouble picking a side during the theater confrontation. I had to dissect why I had problems connecting with Abby during the first playthrough. I won't retread ground here since I have already discussed some of this earlier in the thread, but I think she tends to get short shrift in peoples eyes and that it actually detracts from the experience of the game. If she can be reduced to just a jackboot genocidal paramilitary that tortures and murders indiscriminately, then maybe Ellie really SHOULD have just drowned her on the beach. I think she's more complicated than that and that the game is more interesting when we look carefully at the choices she makes and the changes we see as the game goes on.

Not that anyone in this thread is this extreme, but seeing streamers' reactions at the end of the game braying for Abby's blood is very strange to me, almost surreal. I know these people tend to be total CHUDs and willfully unsympathetic, but I wonder what it would be like to be at the end of Last of Us 1 having never formed a bond with Ellie, wondering why he rescues her and doesn't just collect the guns from Marlene(which were the whole point of escorting her!). Part of the experience of these games is buying into the emotional context of the characters, and I don't think Abby is nearly as irresistible in tlou2 as Ellie is in tlou1.


Great post.

Lazy Savior
Feb 10, 2004
shit... i don't know...

Nail Rat posted:

Wrong game but Ellie wants to help Sam and Henry while Joel wants to just leave them by themselves. Also she does end up showing mercy to Abby. It could be argued Ellie's mercy is more pure because Abby's only comes at Lev's insistence, and comes with a veiled threat "don't let me see you again."

I should have specified I was referring to events in this game. Ellie is kinder in tlou1 and the trauma of that game is why we see Ellie act so mercilessly through tlou2. Perhaps you could argue that Ellies forgiveness is more pure, but I'm more inclined to think the opposite. Lev doesn't really insist, he just says Abby's name and she snaps out of it, realizing what she's about to do and finding it in herself to stop. The veiled threat means little weighed against all the blood and mayhem Ellie inflicted. She didn't even finish off Ellie or Tommy for the second time. The restraint displayed is frankly reckless based on what we've seen in the game so far.

As for Ellie's mercy, I think she was just no longer able to maintain the hate that had driven her. Nothing about Lev or Abby inspires her to stop, it was her memory of Joel that prevented her from finishing the job. I don't think it was about Abby at all at that point, she just finally moved past Joel's death to remember his life. The sparing of Abby was incidental, like the freeing of the slaves a few minutes earlier, done without forethought or intention.

That said, the ending is not explicit so I think the interpretation that she decided to give Abby her life back is a valid one so I suppose I could be mistaken on this one.

Cocoa Ninja
Mar 3, 2007

morallyobjected posted:

also I think someone else mentioned it, but past the initial escape, she only goes back for Lev and Yara because of her guilt about Owen/Joel and needing to do something to feel better about herself, so it's not like she's purely altruistic.


By this standard how could she ever redeem herself?

Doing a good thing because she feels bad about other things is only selfish in a philosophical sense, similar to the idea that charity is only valuable if you get absolutely no pleasure from it.

It feels to me like it fits the definition of altruism perfectly well.

Lazy Savior
Feb 10, 2004
shit... i don't know...

morallyobjected posted:

also literally everyone in Seattle that Ellie sees wants to kill her on sight. she never had the chance of "get captured by one group alive to be imprisoned together with people and form a mutual alliance to escape" because she never got caught. if Abby hadn't been captured, she wouldn't have had that either. I think someone else mentioned it, but past the initial escape, she only goes back for Lev and Yara because of her guilt about Owen/Joel and needing to do something to feel better about herself, so it's not like she's purely altruistic.


I mean, Lev and Yara replace her father in the recurring dream she has of his death. I think we're being shown visually that the part of her that obsessed over her fathers death has given way to concern for the kids clinging to life. After day 2, she is greeted by her father alive and smiling and wakes peacefully for the first time in the game. Joel does not come up in any way in any of these dreams. I don't think she has any guilt about Joel, or at least never expresses it. I think she's more embarrassed than guilty about loving Owen. I think there's even a reading of the events that indicate she still has feelings for him (her initial desire to go AWOL to find him, the posthumous letter she writes to him Ellie finds in her boat, etc.)

morallyobjected posted:


I don't think anyone here actively hates Abby or anything (unlike the weirdos busy trying to "prove" she could never be as jacked as she is). there's just a weird amount of anti-Ellie sentiment that seems to gloss over the fact that Abby has done things that are just as terrible, so it's pointing out the inconsistency.


I don't necessarily think I would be anti-Ellie (and to be clear I never felt bad about killing WLFs or any of the non-Owen/Mel members of Abby's crew since they shoot you on sight/try to knife you without exception), but I do think by the end of the game we are meant to understand that Ellie has taken this too far, long past what makes sense. Ellie and Abby are roughly even by the end of Seattle, enough so that it could plausibly end there, but by Santa Barbara we as players should be questioning Ellie's motivations. Abby refuses to fight at first and Ellie has to hold a knife to Lev's throat to get her to fight back, which is stomach turning when you see it. The fight is brutal and ugly and I think it should feel like Ellie is crossing a line or at least riding one.

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ShakeZula
Jun 17, 2003

Nobody move and nobody gets hurt.

Lazy Savior posted:

I should have specified I was referring to events in this game. Ellie is kinder in tlou1 and the trauma of that game is why we see Ellie act so mercilessly through tlou2. Perhaps you could argue that Ellies forgiveness is more pure, but I'm more inclined to think the opposite. Lev doesn't really insist, he just says Abby's name and she snaps out of it, realizing what she's about to do and finding it in herself to stop. The veiled threat means little weighed against all the blood and mayhem Ellie inflicted. She didn't even finish off Ellie or Tommy for the second time. The restraint displayed is frankly reckless based on what we've seen in the game so far.

I don't really give her any credit for sparing Tommy a second time- she shoots him in the head while he's prone on the ground, the fact that he survives that (and the trip back to Jackson) is frankly a miracle. And I guess Lev doesn't force her to stop or anything, but I didn't get the sense that she "snapped out" of anything either - it really came across more like a "*sigh*fine" kind of situation where she realized he'd look at her the same way Owen and Mel had after Jackson and decided it wasn't worth it.

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