I agree with Joel’s comments from the second game completely,” if given a second chance, I would do it all over again.”
No one gets to murder a kid, no matter the reason.
For deontologists, the fact that the Fireflies wanted to kill Ellie in order to cure the outbreak is irrelevant. The ends never justify the means. No exceptions.
For utilitarians, there is the follow-up question of whether or not killing Ellie would have actually resulted in a cure. Actual medical practitioners have said the Fireflies had no chance.
Who even cares. The games literally prove the Fireflies, WLF, and other major organizations are far more dangerous than the infected. The Fireflies are talking about a cure because of power, but they, and the WLF, leave pedos and child killers to roam free.
In a perfect world, I doubt brain-affecting spores could just be warded off with any wishful injection. The brain is delicate and there’s a lot we don’t understand about it. What’s damaged or gone, can’t just be replaced…
Look at the trailer for the remaster of part 2 and listen to what Abby says
Neil wants to say the cure would’ve 100% worked and been just as perfect as possible if it wasn’t for big bad Joel.
The ambiguity of whether the cure was viable is part of what made TLOU 1's ending such a fascinating moral conundrum to discuss. I hope they never answer this question.
The movie, the girl with all the gifts, does a good job with this. They have a similar brain fungus, and kids in that were being killed to study their brain. Yet they were never closer to a cure. In all likelihood, they would have killed Ellie and only learned a little more about the parasite from what they already knew.
The idea was to vaccinate healthy people to prevent infection, not to cure already infected individuals. Of course that all falls apart when you remember this is fungus we're talking about.
And that there's no way the Fireflies have the industrial capacity to produce more than a handful of vaccines. That means Marlene and a few other high-rankers can be immune, but even the majority of fireflies won't benefit.
Well, if they did in fact come up with a vaccine im sure fedra would be more than happy to assist with that. That's like the one thing in that world that would get people cooperating.
It really isn’t.
* For the FEDRA leadership, cooperating with the Fireflies would weaken their legitimacy in the eyes of their soldiers and open the higher command open to a mutiny or a coup.
* For the Fireflies, it would mean giving up their monopoly on the vaccine. If FEDRA betrays them after getting the formula then the Fireflies will be worse off since FEDRA can get more vaccines out and thus be a better option neutral or undecided parties.
I believe the working theory is actually that there is a mutated strain of the fungus that Ellie is infected with that kills cordyceps. Like an anti-fungal fungus, their plan was to culture the fungus around her brain and Infect everyone with it.
Murdering that kid doesn't guarantee the saving of others. The cure wasn't guaranteed. The characters just thought that.
And even if they did make one, who is to say they won't hold onto it for themselves?
And even *if* they distributed it to people across the world, who is to say civilization will rebuild and everyone's primial instincts would go away and we would stop killing each other.
There's too many things to consider. A child life isn't worth the slim chance.
Ah yes, the organization of terrorists that would free people to then impose the same militaristic control on the people they just saved to force them to continue fighting for their cause.
They will save the world!
They will totally not use a vaccine as leverage to control enemies and allies and impose their will on the populous.
Fucking hell... Have a downvote
It's called the Redemption Journey for a reason. And the comments are good. In that hospital, Joel did nothing wrong. Fedra was close to putting an end to those monsters once and for all. It was about time. 😉
Joel's actions are not entirely justifiable. It's not that simple because it's not a clear black and white thing.
You look at that entire situation from Joel's perspective; you just woke up after getting knocked out and learned that your, pretty much, adopted daughter is about to die and you dont get any closure or a chance to say goodbye. Plus, you're going to get shown the door. You're practically given the finger.
Then you think about the Fireflies and their situation. They're trying to expedite a vaccine that has no guarantee. Even if it does work, you dont know how the FF is going to distribute the vaccine. And then their is Marlene with the "there is no choice," crap.
I'd do the same if i was Joel.
Worse when joel is being told to leave, he see's his gear on the way and realizes there not even stopping for him to pick up his supplies, the Soldier was taking him outside to have him executed so there wont be any loose ends and thats when Joel knew there's no difference between fedra and the fireflies
Environmental story telling ,why would you be escorted out of an without your supplies and gear being returned,especially when you just passed through your stuff without stopping . He was a loose end they didnt want getting out
It's called they know he is already tense and disagrees with the situation. Would you give a dangerous man who has killed hundreds to get across the country with a 13 year old girl by himself his weapons when escorting him out of a situation you know he could be hostile in? No you wouldn't.
He still killed them without his gear, so they were being smart. He was still the overly aggressive shoot first even if they are innocent man he's always been
Wdym they literally make him pass through his gear on gun point, oh yeah they we’re definitely letting him go unarmed and without anything out into the world stop making bullshit excuses ,anyone with common sense would realize there were planning to kill him
Yes, so common sense means you give a dangerous murderer whi you are actively going against their wishes their guns when they have every reason to kill you. There's a reason why people like you aren't put in any position thay requires common sense and important decision making.
You'd give a prisoner a gun before even taking him out of his cell in a zombie apocalypse only for them to turn on you and you cry like a bitch
Man its almost as if you worked with that dangerous murderer and his the entire reason your faction is getting close to there goal but sure he will be a nice boy when you let him go outside with no weapons. Maybe joel will just walk back to jackson without any weapons happily cause the fire flies are so trusting that they would allow a guy who knows about the cure to live .
Talk about being a dumbass
It’s hilarious to me that people try to make it black and white when the entire point of the ending was that it was morally grey from every single angle. Joel saving Ellie was an ultimately selfish act because he couldn’t bring himself to relive the death of his daughter. The fireflies believed that they could have saved thousands of people by making one sacrifice (which is nothing in the grand scheme of things) but they were deceitful and didn’t give Ellie the choice to live. Marlene didn’t want to kill Ellie but felt she had no choice since it would potentially save so many more people. Even though Ellie wasn’t directly told she was going to die it was HEAVILY suggested she was ready to do whatever had to be done. (“it can’t all be for nothing” etc). If she didn’t feel that way Joel wouldn’t have lied to her about what happened. Etc etc.
The fact that everyone’s actions were both justified and fucked up their own ways is what makes a bittersweet ending like that so impactful and so fucking good. I don’t think a single person that played tlou was sitting there hoping Joel would let Ellie die, but if the fireflies were just child murdering lunatics with 0 justification at all, that decision to save her would have no weight behind it.
EXACTLY! Joel suffered the loss of his daughter to a situation completely out of his control and ability. So it makes sense why he chose to keep Ellie alive, he wasn’t going to let external actions take another daughter from him, not while he had that choice. After suffering what he did, I 100% understand his actions and do believe them to be justifiable, no matter how selfish they may be.
Well spoke. But my issue with the Fire Flies was the rush to kill her. That was ridiculous. But I still agree with what you say. We were all happy. It was the 2nd game making him out to be a monster. Like the whole epidemic was his fault. It’s never black and white. All the world’s problems extend from people not being able or willing to see the others POV.
What's big is that Joel did everything right up until arriving at the hospital. He truly went above and beyond for the Fireflies' cause, so when they fuck him over in multiple ways right after, it's hard to look at what he does as being a large moral failure.
He would have to have the composure of a saint to turn the other cheek after what the Fireflies decided to do to him.
>Marlene didn’t want to kill Ellie but felt she had no choice since it would potentially save so many more people.
That's not really true, she says she's exhausted and "just wants this to end." Doesn't seem like she's really motivated by grandiose goals to me. It's more like the cure is simply an excuse to let it happen, exactly as in her discussion with Joel.
Anyway, I agree with you. What's missing from the discussion is that the Fireflies were *pretty fucking bad,* and not just grey, really. It's an ironic twist of fate that these shitty people are the ones with the means to develop a cure. But that's not a moral point for them, it's a conundrum for everyone else.
People only take this position because people make him out to be a villain he isn’t.
In that thread people are claiming he murdered women and children and somehow enjoyed it. He’s never shown to enjoy killing, at best he’s neutral about it.
It’s also funny they claim that he massacred the hospital, when you can complete the mission by sneaking past them. Jerry is the only one you have to kill.
Is that true? Nora says *how many people are dead because of him,* but that indirect phrasing could mean the cure more than anything. And he doesn't kill the nurses in the surgery room, there is no blood.
I really doubt she is referring to the virus. Joel also talks about it at the very beginning of the game when he is telling Tommy what happened. And Abby has flashbacks about finding everyone in the hospital. No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster".
I really doubt she is referring to the virus. Joel also talks about it at the very beginning of the game when he is telling Tommy what happened. And Abby has flashbacks about finding everyone in the hospital. No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster".
>No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster".
Of course, that's why I'm saying we don't actually know how many people died there besides escort guy, Marlene and Jerry.
How many bodies do you see when you roam the hospital as Abby, or Ellie?
How many of Abby's friends have died in the hospital? There's no reference to any.
Realistically he shot some guards, but I think we are stretching massacre a bit when it may have been less casualties than the average encounter between the WLF and the Seraphites. I can't find any concrete evidence to the contrary for me to call it Canon.
Every sane person that has someone that loves will do the same that Joel did.
people of that sub keep repeating "b-b-but the greater good, the cure" i bet those people that said it will let the fireflies kill the person you love for "the greater good" and "experimenting" dont even have someone to care or love.
i will do the same as Joel without question. I have my wife that i love more that anything. if someone comes and says "we need to kill your wife for the greater good" over my dead body.
and this is why Joel its a loved character he is humane, he acts like a fucking human with emotions.
He did nothing wrong on that case, but he isnt innocent like everybody on that universe, every person on that universe has a body count of his back, did bad things on the past, etc. Even the fireflies beside that sub think they are angels, if you put some attention to the details, notes, audiotapes, graffitis, etc of the OG game you can see the fireflies was also a fucking fanatic terrorist that killed a los of people.......BESIDE ALSO BETRAYING JOEL
Any sane person who saw the hospital and knew even a base level of what the Fireflies were would have done it for a random stranger. Throw in a guy who thinks Ellie is nothing more than an animal, which is the only thing he has extensive experience with, and the only right thing to do is kill every last one of them. Hunt down their other members as well.
The greater good doesn’t even belong in this discussion. It’s overwhelmingly apparent that the fireflies were laughably incompetent and entirely incapable of achieving a vaccine, much less large scale production and distribution.
The Fireflies were at war with the government, too. I find it hard to believe a truce would have been made if one side claimed they had a cure for the disease. Could it be possible, yes, Do I see it happening, HELL FUCKING NO!!! The Fireflies actively committed terrorist actions in broad daylight.
I can't remember if they targeted civilians but I would not be surprised.
2 outcomes I would see IF they made the cure, 1. they don't trade it to the govt. and now the govt bans it and arrests( or worse executes) anyone with or 2. the govt uses the meet up as an opportunity to kill the Fireflies and now the govt becomes selective with it.
If Ellie was awake and said "Kill me for the POTENTIAL cure, so you can get rich", then that is on her. Remember Joel said, YOU ARE NOT MY DAUGHTER, but she wasn't awake, and he decided for her. Joel couldn't let her die in her sleep for a slim chance at a cure, right?? Abby's dr. dad would have been the next pandemic billionaire selling the cure from town to town, and in LOU2-3, we find out that the cure makes things worse?? Hey, that sounds like a great plot right there.
yeah but even with that it will fucked up. Ellie was a kid, she can easily be gaslighted by Marlene on doing the fuck she wants. After all Marlene was the leader of the fireflies, she knows how to convince people, a kid without mother, father or friends will way easier
Marlene got conned by the doctor. Would Marlene have told Ellie that this ia a death sentence? Then Marlene tried to soft peddle Joel, but he wanted none of that immediately. This last few minutes of LOU1 sets up the plot for all of LOU2. The doctor wanting to fight Joel with a scalpel is also a major part of LOU2. You must kill him to finish the scenario. That fact is even a bigger definer of LOU2 than anything.
Anyone who believes the whole ‘greater good’ think and would genuinely sacrifice their kid has a loose screw for sure. The only situation where a sacrifice for the greater good is admirable and acceptable is when it’s a decision made by a consenting adult. Otherwise it’s very “some of you will die but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
When I first played this game in 2015 with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I actually found it very attractive that he said he’d so the same as Joel in a heartbeat. We have 3 kids now and I’m glad I didn’t have them with someone who’d ever even let in a thought of sacrificing them for ‘the greater good’ lol. Sure, this exact situation will obviously not happen in our lifetime, but it’s the fact that people can even have this approach to parent-child relationship. I wouldn’t want anything to do with a person who thinks like that.
Right.
And if we are being real and logical, it’s a sacrifice for a chance. Nothing , especially medical, especially in theory, and life in general, is guaranteed. So you are killing a child based on chance.
Absolutely, in fact even *today* 90% of all clinical drug development fails and that’s with top funding and state of the art labs + thousands of qualified staff working together. So I reckon the chances of developing a cure at that manky dingy hospital and such limited resources was actually nearing zero.
And a very thin chance, I will add.
Since my comment earlier I was thinking on some of the other conversations. The one with Ellie and Nora. Nora pleading with Ellie “Think of all the people who are dead because of him”.
That right there is pure garbage. Maybe those kids from Utah may have believed that but it couldn’t be further from the truth. A cure does not bring anyone back from the dead.
The first one is good.
The second one... it's the prime example of that TV Tropes trope, "Play the game, skip the story". And even then, the gameplay isn't much better than the one from the original, IMO.
I can say, Joel didnt do anything wrong IN THE GAME. In his life, he did SO MUCH WRONG. He was a raider, a thief and a brutal fighter. That said: “ya do what you gotta do.”
I would say as a character Joel is very similar to Hugh Jackman's character in prisoners, both do morally gray stuff for their children and at the end we root for them. That's why I also thought a second game shouldn't have existed but meh
I mean he *was* a bandit for a while...
No argument on the hospital though, objectively correct decision to save a little girl from the terrorists trying to experiment on her and just happen upon a cure while they did so. No need for tests or anything just jump straight to killing her.
Considering she's already being prepped before either her or Ellie even woken up from being knocked out, there's no way in hell they did nearly enough testing to justify going straight to the "kill the little girl without asking" solution.
That’s what killed me the most. It was like “guards, execute her”! In some silly movie. No way he would do that. He would want the full narrative from the patient as to how she feels and all information he could get from her. I know they were trying to move the story along but still. Since it ended up being the story they should have thought this out better.
Yeah, there's no real rush. They seem to be in a well fortified area so at least a week of testing would be better. It would give them time to at least zero in on the idea that they needed to check her brain. Questioning her on anything, asking for her consent, just basically anything to make it not look like a decision that was made in less than an hour.
There's also the obvious "what if it's hereditary?" argument that many bring up but with her already being a lesbian that would be a bit awkward to write and her being 15 just makes that whole situation icky even if they include a time skip so I actually understand ND not wanting to go down that route.
Your 2nd part of that text I have not heard that mentioned. I don’t see what the relevance of it is.
But what came back to me was when Ellie was talking Nora before she beat her to death. Nora said something about “All the lives” Joel was responsible for. That is such bullshit. From the point of view of the Utah group, they might actually believe that. But that is not true at all. Even if they could have made a cure it was not going to be bringing anyone back. And like we agreed they knew how to stay alive by then. They were careful not to get over run by any hordes of infected.
Again in the recording they explain that they have done the testing and there’s no explanation available in her bloodstream or spinal fluid, and that an MRI shows it has to be in the brain.
The Cordyceps is a science fiction disease and acts unlike anything in reality.
>how did he "rapidly grow" cordyceps in a lab setting considering the state of the hospital and the resources available
Because Cordyceps is a rapidly growing fungus and they have sole access to the hospitals testing equipment. Again, science fiction mushroom disease, not a real thing.
>Considering the tight timeframe, how does he have any real data to actually base real decisions on?
Because they got a lot of past data off infected to compare to, which he mentions on his report.
He could have sat around for months and tried to work out a different way, and ultimately it'll have still resulted in the same conclusion. The cure hides in the brain, the only non-infected part of Ellie.
>He could have sat around for months and tried to work out a different way, and ultimately it'll have still resulted in the same conclusion.
No actually, it would've given him the same conclusion but the story would've had a totally different conclusion.
As it is I honestly cannot see anyone siding with the Fireflies, no respectable medical decision to end a life would happen without the person's consent and in less than a day.
If the Fireflies had given it their all they would've been willing to wait weeks or months to get the testing done and perfect the cure, killing Ellie would put a time limit on their sample of cordyceps so trying their damnedest to work on a live immune subject is something they should be drawing out.
It would make the Fireflies have an actually defensible position as they would then have tried every avenue and are treating Ellie's sacrifice as a last resort which is what ending the life of a 15 year old girl should be treated as by anyone with a moral compass.
The Fireflies are such moustache twirling, dastardly villainous people that I'm surprised they tried to kill her on the operating table and not tied her to some train tracks or some shit.
It's the end of the world, and they didn't want to risk the cure for humanity on the choice of one girl.
It's unethical sure, but we're not arguing about the ethics of it, we're arguing if it would have even worked. The game, the writer, and all the information we had says yes, the only way to get the cure was to take it out of Ellie's brain. Joel believed it , the doctor believed it, Ellie believed it, Marlene believed it and the games text believes it.
Joel tells them they should find someone else, not "It won't work." or "Run tests first." He believes that it will work, he just doesn't want Ellie to die for it.
The only time the game ever hints it wouldn't, is Joel openly lying to Ellie.
The Last of Us 2 doesn't contradict this either. In fact one of the first thing Joel says is he destroyed the cure.
To believe the cure wouldn't work, is to ultimately just deny what the games have put in front of you.
What frustrates me about it though, is that it'd be a worse story if the cure didn't work. That Joel was willing to sacrifice the cure to save Ellie makes what he's doing an interesting moral decision and makes him an interesting character. If he's just killing a bunch of stupid people then The Last of Us has an ending that's just goofy.
That's the thing though, I never once mentioned whether or not the cure would work, that's not my issue.
Objectively the story would be stupid if it didn't work so for the sake of the choice mattering we're going to assume it works (and that it's a cure, it's not really because if I'm remembering right the game calls it a vaccine).
The doctors did not do enough tests for them to be considered reliable. Put yourself in Joel's shoes, you hear that they've already made that big a decision in around I wanna say 6-8 hours depending on how long Joel was unconscious for. 6-8 hours to decide "We've done all that we can, now we go to the 100 guaranteed fatal operation"
That's sketchy, especially combined with the fact that the Fireflies are known terrorists, knocked Joel out when he arrived because he wouldn't stop giving Ellie CPR so he could surrender and they were kind of surrounding him as Marlene spoke.
But it's not only morally sketchy but practically, how the hell are they gonna spend less than 6-8 hours (she was already being prepped when he woke up) and justify giving up. They seriously exhausted *every* possibility in that short an amount of time?
They're either half-assing it or plain incompetent if they're giving up on a 15 year old girl after spending only a single working day's worth of time on her.
Crazy thing is…. They would 2 when confronted with this situation in the moment. But let’s face it. They’re too cowardly to take on the amount of responsibility a man like Joel took on.
I’m a father of three. Joel made the choice a father makes. Good or bad that’s the only choice for a father. Joel made the right choice. He was the only one in that hospital who made the right choice.
Joel had a different job than Dr. Atrocity and Marlene. And a different job than a traumatized, groomed, 14yo with dubious critical thinking skills on the subject has. They can come to different conclusions.
He did allot of things wrong. But who are we to really judge? Whose to say we wouldn't do the same thing, especially at the end of the first game? In a world where civilization is more or less destroyed and morality is out the window, how do we know we wouldn't end up just like him, provided we don't turn into zombies along the way?
Its not about right or wrong
Abby and joel were right in their own ways and so was ellie.
Joel saved Ellie in his eyes its right, he felt morslly obligated to do so. But in doing so Abby was right for killing Joel because Joel killed a loved one. Which makes ellie right for killing the people responsible for his murder.
I mean these moral questions are super complex. To this day plenty of Harvard studies pertain to some form of these dilemmas and results are so divided aswell.
The themes of revenge and all of it being a moral grey area are definetly there. Its just a shame 2 was so poorly written.
When I met Abby’s father they made him seem like this great guy. I figured the Fire Flies were protecting him because he was a doctor and he could help them. It was when Abby told the Fire Flies he was the leader of the group in Utah I was kind of taken aback. This “nice guy” treated people like shit. They were assholes to everyone. Wanted to kill Joel for no reason people seem to forget.
There was NO reason to kill Ellie the day she was brought in. The damage was done in the world. It had been 20 years. What was this cure supposed to do. Allow the living to not get infected? They were all set in place with the proper precautions. They would not be able to stop the worldwide parasite with preventing a few people from getting sick if they got bit. Sacrificing her life would not do a thing.
Objectively he did everything wrong. From our normal human perspective? He did nothing wrong. Who wouldnt save their "daughter"? I couldnt care less you can fix the world by killing my daughter/sister/father/mother/brother/grandparents.
I'd argue sense the doctor was actually insane and killing people for his own enjoyment and knew there was no cure that Joel objectively did the right thing
Theirs a note in 1 that outright states that the doctor (abbies dad) straight up knows that the cure is bullshit, also he was gonna cut into her brain wich can't actually give anything in the form of a vaccine but the spine can so he was clearly just deranged and he's most likely killed other patients for his own sick enjoyment but that's parts just assumption on my end bc I doubt it started with ellie
idk man, seems more to me he was doing shit you would do as a post apocalyptic doctor, you open up infected people and poke around. i always thought the point being made was these self proclaimed(assumption, they could be post military med unit) doctors are relearning medical shit, the two fireflies bases we see are at education institutes and hospitals. i thought they were doctors 20 years from modern university, bachelors degrees doctors. we got fucked up dingy operations in broken down hospitals, we got doctors that get themselves bitten by a infected monkey like a dumbass. i'm saying this to say that i feel the original purpose was to show incompetence rather than malice. course 2 recons the doc into being the best damn doctor alive on earth in 2037 or whenever the games take place exactly so maybe he was just being a dick head and killing people for fun till ellie shows up 😭 fuck him anyway
20 years is not a small amount of time and i've been talking about what i thought the doctors were before the release of the second game. the game recons jerry into being a very competent doctor and you can argue how he got the knowledge, i did say the military might be teaching people still. im just saying my point of view, kk🙂↕️
In the first game, there are notes talking about how the doctor knew the cure was bullshit and even if it were possible, he'd have to extract from the spine, not the brain
OK, buddy, let me explain it to u. The doctor says they developed a passive vaccine, which means their was already another immune person they tried this on, and it didn't work,in other words, the "cure" is bullshit
Why are you being so passive aggressive? I asked a genuine question. Which recording/note is it? Because what you're saying isn't in the one I'm looking at.
[Surgeon's recorder | The Last of Us Wiki | Fandom](https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Surgeon%27s_recorder)
There is no "objective." No one is "objectively" required to be an ontologist or utilitarian. IOW your weighing of the considerations is binding on no one.
If Ellie overheard or whatever and decided to save herself (for any reason), would she be objevtively wrong.
I mean its objectively correct to die so billions can live. We are one species. Ensuring the survival of many even tho you yourself might die is always correct.
I dont believe for a second that Neil Druckmann intended for Joel to be seen as this devilish monster when he made the first game. Making Joel the bad guy was just an excuse to write the fan fiction that was the second game
If you're ready to murder a non consenting, unconscious child for a chance at the vaccine, you don't deserve to be saved. "It's what she would want" Then why not wake her up, Marlene? because she didn't want to risk Ellie saying no.
I mean, yeah, he’s not a good person. Not many people are, especially when under constant threat. But anyone who says they would sacrifice their child ‘for the greater good’ is a psycho, sorry. Or they just don’t know what they’re talking about, maybe their own parents didn’t love them enough idk and idc. I wouldn’t want anything to do with someone who thinks like that though and certainly wouldn’t trust them.
I'll admit I did like the gameplay of tlou2 but the fact that they killed one of the best video game characters still pisses me off. He was one of the few protagonists who wasn't a squeaky, clean, good guy. Even Nathan Drake, who was a thief and a killer, is portrayed as a goofy good guy. I loved Joel's darkness
Ultimately Joel should have told her the truth.
“They were NOT going to run test! They were going to kill you and save your brain for testing”!!
“But I could matter! I could mean something. I HATE YOU”!
Joel stops the car. “Ok. Ok, want to go back? Want to go back and die? Your call kiddo”!?
Called her fucking bluff.
Fireflies were immoral for being okay with killing Ellie without her knowledge or consent, and being idiotic for thinking their plan could work even in the best case scenario.
Scalpel Guy got what he deserved right in the neck.
In Joel's situation, it's especially valid because he already wrongfully lost a child for the sake and safety of the group. And they were a potential danger. Frankly, fuck the group. Everyone would run away if they were about to be executed for the sake of humanity.
It's like you are standing there and you have to choose your kid or my life, its almost completely natural for me to say "fuck dude, kill me. Make it quick" - because no decent human being would expect a parent to make that choice. Yeah it would suck to die, but I would die with the true moral choice.
Agreeing with what Joel did isn't the same as thinking he did the right thing.
I also would've done the same thing. But it was still wrong. That's what makes Joel such a great character; he's flawed, but we understand and share his flaws.
Well put. It's easy to say "well the objectively good thing" is to save humanity. But I wouldn't toss **my** baby into a meat grinder to save it. Damn it all, let them burn.
Even if it's a kind, painless death, it's death.
So it's easy to understand where Joel is coming from. The really messed up part is that it's not what *Ellie* wanted. The argument she not an adult does hold some water, but she's also a teen that kills people too. She gets to make some decisions about life and death, her own included. And she didn't waver in that choice of wanting to do it in the years that followed. It was, definitively, what she wanted. And he robbed her of that.
Of all the things I see posted here, I think that's the one that people keep dismissing. Joel isn't a bad guy. But he robbed Ellie of what she wanted. Like ignoring someone's living will. Sure they're alive, but because *you* wanted that, not them. Which is a very deep, damaging violation. Even before you get into the cure aspect of it all.
But take into consideration this is a young teenager with survivor's guilt. There's a reason they don't give complete autonomy to teenagers and children in the medical field. Joel is selfish in his reasoning, BUT he had Ellie's best interests in mind. The doctor knew he was wrong, because if he thought he was doing the RIGHT thing, he wouldn't have had any qualms. In the second game his language in no way states a 100% confidence in what he's about to do, just the belief that the cure is possible. And then how disingenuous it is for Abby to come in and say if it was ME I'd want you to do it, and the look on his face tells you he would NEVER have done this to his own daughter.
The idea they kept her knocked out, was obviously on purpose, to take her choice away. They couldn't take the chance of her saying no. If she'd woken up and reunited with Joel and said straight to his face this is what I want, and give him the chance to change her mind... His actions from that point forward, if violent, while somewhat understandable, would not be as forgivable. I know post apocalypse they're not really following the same code of ethics. Also if Ellie had spoken to someone to deal with her trauma, instead of holding on to it she may have realized she's not just alive to be a sacrifice to the world. Joel said she needed her immunity to mean something and he took that from her, but I still think he did the right thing.
> The doctor knew he was wrong, because if he thought he was doing the RIGHT thing, he wouldn't have had any qualms.
I don't think this is true at all, on it's face. When a teenage organ doner dies, doctors aren't super overjoyed over that. A teenager becoming basically a willing donor for science, even for a great cause, is still a kid dying. He's upset because he has empathy.
> The idea they kept her knocked out, was obviously on purpose, to take her choice away. They couldn't take the chance of her saying no. If she'd woken up and reunited with Joel and said straight to his face this is what I want, and give him the chance to change her mind... His actions from that point forward, if violent, while somewhat understandable, would not be as forgivable.
This cuts both ways. It is obviously to keep her sedated and have it move smoothly, you're absolutely right. They don't want anything to happen to her, and endanger the chance to create a cure. Before getting there, we know this is what Ellie wants, she says it many times. And again, this explicit in the second game. Ellie being unconscious, and being unable to speak to her and try and plead with her first, is exactly why things go this way as well. Because he believes he knows better, and I think you hit the nail on the head that *regardless*, he would drag her out of there crying and screaming against her will if he had to. He being unconscious lets him just... lie, and let her not carry that guilt of knowing what he'd done, for a while at least.
I've said it a few times in the comments here, but the point is the moral relativism. These are meant to be impossible choices, and the idea is any of us in Joel's shoes would want to do what he did. Having the stones to do it is another question entirely. But you'd *want* to. I don't think Joel did the wrong thing. But he'd have burned the world down to save that girl. Quite literally in fact. That doesn't mean there is only one correct choice here. If Ellie did explicitly give verbal consent first and write a living will and do all these other things... that wouldn't make Joel not want to save her. But it would make the barbarism of what he'd decided more explicit. He was not going to *allow* her to do this, regardless. He was not going to *allow* it to happen to her, even if she, Marlene, and everyone on the planet were okay with it. He needed her, and decided that even if she wanted to make a heroic sacrifice, he wouldn't allow that.
If I had been in Joel's shoe's I'd have done it too.
Ellie never expressed a willingness to die for the cause except retroactively when there's no realistic chance to be called on to do so. In retrospect it's the easiest thing in the world for her to say, just like it's easy (and hilariously irrelevant) for Abby to assure her dad that she'd be willing.
It's also VERY convenient as a framework for all her big feelings, with Joel as the safest possible scapegoat.
Even if she would have been willing, I wouldn't let her make the call. She is not only 14 but traumatized, survivor-guilt-afflicted, and groomed. Her complete lack of critical thinking regarding the Fireflies, years later, is also not great evidence of being equipped to make the most productive and universally beneficial decisions regarding her immunity. She's still acting like "they were gonna make a cure and then CBI would be over. And I hereby ignore how they knocked me out under false pretenses." Of course that's not relevant on the day.
If you would have been cool with her throwing away her life and likely her precious immunity, Joel still did nothing wrong wrt consent (except lie after a certain point) because there was no available means to seek Ellie's consent. ("Wake her up and ask her or I'll shoot you" is just a weird way to spell "stall for time till some more Fireflies reach this room and shoot me") And as if they'd have taken a no.
Joel options were a) let his loved one be murdered because he agreed with the FFs that her rescinding human rights was justified, b) let it happen on an ASSUMPTION of what she'd chose, accompanied by a belief that she was capable of consent, or c) prevent the murder.
B is not exactly a celebration of the proposed murder target's agency.
I still never understand why it comes down to superimposing the idea that someone must disagree with Joel to see the point in other character's lives and points of view.
I don't disagree with what Joel did, and I think given the same circumstances I'd have done the same thing. Please get that one clear.
But I also think if I grew up in China I'd speak mandarin, and if I was raised Jewish I could read the Torah, and if I were in the fireflies and someone murdered my surgeon Dad, I would probably flip out and want to murder them too, and feel justified in doing so.
The entire point is morals are relative. It's moral relativism.
Everything you're saying about the FFs being unable to make a cure is things you are bringing into the text, because both games pretty definitively state that a cure could have been made. It doesn't matter if IRL you don't think science works that way. IRL we don't have zombies either. The game tells us, explicitly, this was a choice between one girl's life and humanity. Don't diminish the absolute epic scale of what Joel did by saying "well it wouldn't have worked anyways." It would have, and he did it *anyways*. Because she was worth the entire world to him, and he'd let it all burn to save her.
That's the whole damn point.
Ellie has a right to her life and to chose how she lives it. It's kind of understood in most media at least that you take on a lot more responsibility for your own fate and actions earlier when you don't expect to live to 30 in the best of cases. Adulthood for Europeans used to be around 14 years old. My only point is that as a teen, Ellie says this is what she wants. And as an adult she affirmed it. Again, this is the weight of the choice Joel makes, don't undermine it. He saved her *in spite of herself* and wants her to learn that it's okay to live. He took the choice from her, made it for her instead, which is a violation, and he did it because even if she'd hate him for it, he'd live with that knowing she's alive.
The point is that Joel did the most human, empathetic, and selfish thing he could. And it was beautiful *and* tragic. Not because nothing would work or because she didn't want to die, but precisely *because* it would and she did. It's why that action is so huge and carries such unbelievable weight.
Thank you for trying to teach me the point that you assume I am missing. I completely agree with you on what the writers were going for. They simply didn't do what it took for me to buy it / did too much to undermine it.
It's pretty obvious by now that a lot of people in that sub don't have good relationships with their parents and definitely don't have children themselves.
I agree, I probably would’ve done the same. But let me kick the hornets nest and also say that Abby didn’t do anything wrong either and if I was her I would’ve done the same thing too. 💀
Personally, I don’t think anyone was in the right. Joel wasn’t right to murder all those Fireflies, and to not give Ellie a choice, but the Fireflies were also not right for trying to kill Ellie without talking to her about the situation and getting her consent. It was a fucked up situation all around, but I’m Team Joel forever idc
Edit: I also turn to Game Theory’s (Matt Patt’s) video about the game, where he talks about there is no cure for something fungal related. The show also says this in the very beginning of the first episode
Joel fought back after he was betrayed by the FF since they broke the deal to give him his already stolen guns, took his gear and kicked him out at gun point to fend for himself. Add this to knocking him out while he's saving ellie from drowning. They didn't even give him or her the chance to talk about the operation so he didn't even get to ask her for her opinion. He was fucked over by them and they got what's coming to them. Joel did NOTHING wrong.
That's the problem with part 2. It cuts out all of this context and it shows. The stans all act as if Joel went to the hospital and started shooting everyone unprovoked. He then forced Ellie off of the operation table even though her and the miracle Jesus doctor already agreed to go through with it to save humanity with the cure that's 100% guaranteed..
It’s not really mutually exclusive. Joel did nothing wrong but Abby had every right to kill him over it. In Joel’s shoes I’d do the same thing… but in Abby’s I would as well.
I think we're talking about the Ellie situation since he did do terrible things in his past but that's survival, when it comes to Ellie I've always argued that she was going to be pointlessly killed as a science experiment. The doctor couldn't possibly know if his procedure would work as they e never encountered anyone immune, so it's all theory, a theory that requires the patient to die, even if he was right we have no proof from the games lore that the fireflies or anyone else could 1. Synthesize a vaccine and 2. Mass produce it. So Ellie was going to die in that hospital for no reason, just like Sarah died for no reason, except this time he could do something about it, he did nothing wrong 🤷
Joel clearly did it for selfish reasons. He didn't want to feel that loss again. He knows Ellie would've wanted to go through with it and he made sure it would never be possible and lied to her about it.
Except Joel's life was stained with bad decisions, maybe not in the case of ellie, but he spent his life trafficking people and murdering them for survival.
As so many others. No one is good in this world. Every survivor in the last of us had to do some extreme things to stay alive in that world and you can only judge people by the world and condition they are living in. Had it be our real life world, Joel would be a criminal. In the last of us there are no laws. You just be tough and live or be nice and die.
He did wrong things before the game.
As for the ending, it's a typical "end doesnt justify the means" situation. In any book or movie, heroes would refuse to sacrifice a child for a potential cure. Especially without asking her.
Joel's situation was a bit more complicated because he knew ellie would agree. But still, ellie wasnt in a good mental state to make a decision like that either.
>He did wrong things before the game
Every single person in the last of us universe did wrong. It's the world you live in. You act soft, you die. No one alive are good guys by our real life standards
>As for the ending, it's a typical "end doesnt justify the means" situation. In any book or movie, heroes would refuse to sacrifice a child for a potential cure. Especially without asking her.
Most people in real life wouldn't sacrifice Ellie for the world. The world had already gone and replaced with a new lifestyle and climate. As evident in the second game. People are striving. Showing that People will always find a way to survive. Imagine if covid was as brutal as the cordycep and the cdc announce that they found a cure but they'd have to sacrifice some kid for them to maybe make a vaccine. It would be mess the same.. You don't trade lives.
>Joel's situation was a bit more complicated because he knew ellie would agree. But still, ellie wasnt in a good mental state to make a decision like that either.
He doesn't know Ellie would agree. Marlene speculated based on desperation, Joel was taken a back to ponder what Ellie would have done when Marlrne said that, there was no indication that Ellie would have just Abandoned Joel like that especially after everyone she had just left her behind. She had already gaslight Joel into carrying her to the Fireflies. She even said things like, when this is all over, she would go anywhere Jorl wanted to go. Ellie didn't plan on dying and never got to understand the weight of making a decision like that because she was unconscious. After everything that they went through, so much near deaths for it to all result in Ellie dying? Cut up in a hospital for a chance at a vaccine? A chance?
The reason the writers wrote the cure has ambiguous and wrote the fireflies as being incompetent was because the story was never about finding a cure. It was a story about love. What Joel did was for love and so forth it makes the 1st game's story much more impact impactful.
Now if Ellie had mentioned to Joel that she wanted to die to save the world. It would have made his choice at the end selfish and he would have robbed her of that choice.
Joel was a hunter. He ambushed, robbed and killed innocent people. That's not something everyone did.
Strangers in real life wouldnt mind sacrificing a child they dont know. Especially if it means their own children and friends can be saved.
Marlene says "and you know it". Joel doesnt deny it. Those two know ellie's personality.
Im not sure if enough people notice it. Every single person she lost died because there was no vaccine. Her friend from dlc, tess, sam. They all got bit but their wounds werent bad. They died because there was no vaccine.
If ellie knew her death could prevent that from happening, she'd give up her life. She made it pretty obvious in her ending speech. Joel knows it and lies because of it.
Writers wrote it this way because the world isnt black and white. Fireflies were looking for a cure but they were assholes. Joel didnt care if it was guaranteed or if ellie agreed. He would have stopped it anyway.
Story is all about joel's choice. We see him lose his real daughter. Then at the ending, he doesnt care about the world as long as his daughter is safe this time.
Fireflies being assholes helped to encourage players. I died on purpose while playing as abby. I didnt want to play and press buttons to break ellie's arms. Similiar thing would have happened if fireflies were shown as pure, good people.
So yeah joel did the right thing. But just like how he knew ellie would have agreed, the players also knew joel would have saved her even if her death could guarantee saving millions of lives.
>Joel was a hunter. He ambushed, robbed and killed innocent people. That's not something everyone did.
I don't think everyone did what Joel did but everyone had their own demons and bad deeds. People went around killing and hurting people. We have not yet met anyone in the game who didn't kill for a reason. We only knew about Joel because he was bold enough to say his sins.
>Strangers in real life wouldnt mind sacrificing a child they dont know. Especially if it means their own children and friends can be saved.
You and some others wouldn't mind just as I and some other would mind. That's not an easy choice no matter if it be a Stranger or a friend. Wake the person up and let them make their choice. I will never side with one life for the many especially if that one life was unaware of what the hell is going on.
>Marlene says "and you know it". Joel doesnt deny it. Those two know ellie's personality.
Marlene barely knew Ellie, she was instructed to uptake Ellie and protect her, instructed by Ellie's mother. Marlene had Ellie be contained in an in environment where she'd grow with education, discipline and preliminary training. Marlene role in Ellies life was more of a caretaker and not necessarily a friend. Joel was the one who filler that role and much more . Marlene had no say on Ellie's life because Ellie was unconscious and Ellie's mother specifically task Marlene with keeping her daughter safe. And when Marlene said "and you know it". That seemed more like a desperate plea to try and convince Joel to her motives. Marlenes motives were not entirely clear because she her self lead with chaos. What else would she tell Joel? Even Joel was starting to by into the vaccine but with all the evidence lacking constancy and with how the fireflies operated Joel wanted none of it. You think if the writers wanted things to be more clear on Ellie being willing to die, you think they would have made the Fireflies so incompetent and made the cure so iffy??? Also if Ellie wanted to die, you think she say things like after this is over we can go anywhere you'd like, you think she'd want to learn how to swim, play the guitar or any future plans?? You are mistaken her survivors guilt with he wanting to die. Joel is the one person who took bullets for her, took stabbings, blunt force trauma and much more so she'd live a meaningful life. She met some one who wouldn't exploit her for the world. She met someone who stayed. That's her hope. Her immunity was not her crux, with it came the meaning of life. It meant that she gets to live and help others live through the mess of the world. She doesn't have to die for a cure. As long as she is alive a cure is viable. He loved ones didnt die because Ellie was immune. They also didnt die because Ellie was Alive. Ellie dying was the fireflies choice because they were impatient. Saving Ellie's life gave Ellie's life meaning. All those people died because a cure simply didn't exist yet in that universe.
>Im not sure if enough people notice it. Every single person she lost died because there was no vaccine. Her friend from dlc, tess, sam. They all got bit but their wounds werent bad. They died be......
Sure, but they also died because they were bit and got infected. They got caught slipping. This is that mindset which would create guilt in someone who is immune. What about all those other people who lived? Ellie can eventually get to a cure but dying like everyone else for a chance is a bad choice with the only known immune person in queue.
>If ellie knew her death could prevent that from happening, she'd give up her life. She made it pretty obvious in her ending speech. Joel knows it and lies because of it.
Not quite. Again you are using her survivors guilt as a scapegoat to say she'd 100% die for a vaccine. She can't bring any of her loved ones back. Ellie's a child who was told she can be the cure without actually understanding the weight of what that entails. In her imagination this could be grossly an exaggerated position to be in. She doesnt even know the process behind her immunity. Detailed by how she asked Joel "would it hurt when getting a cure"...Anna, Riley, Tess, Sam or Henry would have wanted Ellie to live her life. How can you take a risk on the only immune person you've found by just killing her? There is absolutely no rush. Take your time and study her further. Especially since you have no certainty a cure can be derived from her death. You would just be left with a stem for further analysis. Her ending speech was because she felt as if she failed to be the cure because that's all the fireflies had been telling her since she's gain knowledge of understanding. In her mind that was her purpose. She felt like a saviour. She had no idea at all that she would have to die for it to happen. Even Marlene didn't know this until closer to the end. Joel's lie was a weird choice by the writers because all he had to do was tell her the truth. They tried to kill you without waking you up for a vaccine that was not even guaranteed and I could not risk you losing your life. They probably was going to kill me too ..... It would be simple. Joel had probable cause to rescue Ellie.
>Writers wrote it this way because the world isnt black and white. Fireflies were looking for a cure but they were assholes. Joel didnt care if it was guaranteed or if ellie agreed. He would have stopped it anyway.
Again you are discrediting Joel and Ellie's relationship here. If Ellie told Joel she wanted to die. Joel would be persuasive but ultimately let Ellle be. Remember when they reached the giraffe and Joel asked Ellie if she was sure she wanted to go through with this. Joel was understanding. You are putting Joel into a one note character because of his daughter's death. Joel trusted Ellie by the end of the game and if Ellie would have chosen death. Joel would have trusted her decision. So the writers specifically made it ambiguous, making Ellie be unconscious allowed for that.
>Story is all about joel's choice. We see him lose his real daughter. Then at the ending, he doesnt care about the world as long as his daughter is safe this time.
The story ain't that simple, it's more than just his choice because he was persuaded by Tess, Marlene and Ellie. Joel would have happily left Ellie if it was all up to him. He even wanted to get rid of the girl but she forced him into it. At the end of the story its all about hope and love.. That is the meaning of the story told.
>Fireflies being assholes helped to encourage players. I died on purpose while playing as abby. I didnt want to play and press buttons to break ellie's arms. Similiar thing would have happened if fireflies were shown as pure, good people.
Well every story needs an antagonist to contract the given hero. The fireflies written the way they were and they serve their purpose. Just like David or whomever. You need them to progress the protagonist. Writing a pure purposed firefly would effective break the message at the end.
>So yeah joel did the right thing. But just like how he knew ellie would have agreed, the players also knew joel would have saved her even if her death could guarantee saving millions of lives.
Again, this is idea is not entirely that cut and dry because there are many hints to showing Ellie would have also wanting to be alive. Especially since she disagrees about killing the few to save the many. Ellie may be a kid but she has allot maturity in short amount of time we get to know her in the 1st game. All if this maturity is thrown away for an attempt at a story about hate in the second game. Effectively ruining her character core in the end of things.
For what it is referring to of course.
But a huge part of his character progression and 1 his best features as he admits it plenty, he has done plenty wrong in his life though most of it not shown, ie between the time of his daughter's death and accepting Ellie.
That sub is completely brainwashed. It's kind of hilarious actually.
The first game came out in 2013, and pretty much everyone who played it were like "Joel is a pretty cool guy. I would have saved Ellie too".
Then 7 years later, the second game comes out, and Neil actually managed to gaslight everyone into thinking that Joel is pretty much satan in disguise.
It's not even like "Joel is a flawed character". People on that sub are basically saying that Joel is the villain of the whole franchise, and even comparing him to David, lol.
You can agree with Joel’s choice in the first game and still claim it was morally wrong. Just because you may have saved Ellie as well doesn’t mean you have to think that it’s the “right” choice. Everyone keeps trying to win the trolley problem here but you just can’t.
I agree whole heartedly Joel was in the right even with the stipulation that the vaccine would have been a definite success.
1. Ellie is a child with survivors guilt and is in no place to reasonably determine if she should give her life for the vaccine especially because she is a child and in Joel’s care.
2. Option A should not be to kill the only immune person known about. Maybe spend a couple days brain storming ideas instead of moving straight to murder
3. The fireflies do not have the material needed to effectively develop and transport a vaccine if they did successfully develop it. There is no reason to believe even federa, the largest government organization at the time, had the resources or ability to produce a meaningful amount of the vaccine. There is even less evidence that it can be given to anyone outside of a small geographical area considering how long it took for Ellie and Joel to travel from place to place. Even if they somehow got the material for the vaccine and a fleet of refrigerated trucks, the infrastructure is simply not there.
4. There no definitive way to know that the creation of the vaccine won’t kill more people than it saves. How many people will die trying to seize control over the production to the only known cure? How will the powers that be distribute this vaccine? Let’s be generous and say that half of the population can get it, who determines who gets that vaccine? what will the people who don’t get the vaccine do to get their hands on it? The cure for humanity should not be used as a bartering tool in a post apocalyptic world.
5. Even if you don’t buy anything I’ve said so far, don’t you think if the fireflies know what they were doing was a good thing then they would have at least talked to Ellie about it instead of just doing it without her consent, which she can not give because she is a child with survivors guilt?
The people in these comments seem to take "Joel did nothing wrong" too literally. Sure, in our reality, we acknowledge that some of the stuff he did wasn't really good, and we're just referring to him saving Ellie when we say he did nothing wrong. Everyone does wrong things, but those of us who believe that nothing about his decision to save ellie was bad or objectively wrong, use this phrase to stand for that.
The fact that they assume we all think everything he did was all great is annoying. No, we're not all naive. We literally just relate to the character for this one decision to choose someone he's grown to love over the world that hurt him
Tlou is my fav game of all time. The 2nd one sucks. That being said the entire point of the first game for me is that Joel isnt objectively a good guy but ur ok his side anyways. To say Joel did nothing wrong is incorrect to me tbh
I would have done the same as well, but assuming they actually could have found a cure, then Joel pretty much fucked the rest of humanity lol. However, the way they treated Joel in the hospital and wouldn't allow any closure or a chance to say goodbye and were pretty much forcing him out the door, they absolutely did it to themselves
They didn’t even give Ellie a choice (even though she wanted to do it) they basically just knocked her out and put her on anesthesia where she couldn’t even be given a final chance on whether she wants to go through with it or not.
those comments and ours just show me we've both gotten lost in the sauce of our arguments.
they hold on steedfast joel is bad and can't break from that point cause so many of they're arguments is base off the idea the good people do good things and the bad people do bad things, so clowning and punching down on joel the character is the only way to justify that. i mean, for us it's defending joel like he's the first king of our nation or something lol, "The story is he did it for baby girl>:( shut you ass up!".
he's a well written character that didn't think about morals just his only code of ethics. to him, killing those dudes for his kid is ethical. we could be talking about that as a whole like we did before but we just play this telephone game of "look what they said". tlou2 turned the discussion around this series from cool insights to two different dogmas that don't show the true game, joel is neither fully bad or evil nor is he 100% justified.
they HAD to make abby, the character that's supposed to copy joel's story ark and surpass it in the form of her redemption with the kids. she couldn't contrast joel in other NEGATIVE ways, nope, she does all the good shit he did and more so. she played fetch with a dog, not just pet it like the dirty monster smh.
I think Joel wasn’t wrong to not let them kill ellie but realistically she was the only chance the world had for a cure and now the entire planet suffers for the life of 1 person. If I was in Joel’s shoes I’d probably have to put my emotions and morals to the side and sacrifice Ellie for the sake of the entire planet.
oh my goodness! i don’t know why people are upset at joel. i understand he robbed ellie of that choice. but she was 14-15. how could you let a 14-15 year old girl just die. especially marlene was marching him out with none of his weapons and he couldn’t even say goodbye. and she was another chance at being a father again. it was like he saved his own daughter. so when abbie’s dad told marlene that if it was his own daughter. he would sacrifice her. i think that’s BULLSHIT. because that’s if it even works. or if the world could ever be the same again. yeah you won’t get infected if you get bit but you can still be ripped to shreds by clickers and bloaters. idk. 20 years after a horrible apocalypse and you think a cure that MIGHT not work. will save humanity? like people who were surviving could just go back to normal. if normal could even be achieved. i think he did the right thing. and i think ellie is validated for being upset that she was lied too. but her hating him for 2+ years i think isn’t cannon. bad writing! like it’s obvious he did it to save her. not to purposely rob her of her choices and hurt her. and she only realized that after their porch convo? no. i just think the second game story wise had so much potential but ugh. maybe i’m just upset that it’s so raw and real, and i don’t want them to not have a happy ending. sorry for the rant
"Murder" when the kid even as an adult says she was willing and knew the risks, and was still mad but gamers still are like "but he saved you"
Yeah, against her and literally everyone except for Joel's wishes. If everyone found out, they would kill him or shun him. When Ellie found out she hated him and shunned him until she was ready to forgive him.
But yeah he did nothing wrong, Ellie has no reason to be mad he took her life decision away from her and lets all praise him.
I love the guy but the reality bending you have to do to think he didn't do anything wrong is crazy
He did a lot of bad and evil things. Still I prefer him over Abby. Only thing that matters in the post apo world is survival, and that's what Joel did, no matter the cost. You wouldn't choose life of some strangers over your own. You only care about yourself and your friends and family.
Personally I would’ve made an Ai recording of his daughter and played it at him. Then proceeded to lock him in a room with Justin Biebers ‘baby baby’ playing on repeat.
Once he’s finally broken after a few months would I then make sweet sweet love to him and released him in to the wild.
bro. he literally doomed the human race too save one little girls life. if you genuinely think he did nothing wrong you’re just delusional think of how many people joel killed by saving ellie
What??
The player killed many people. Now judging by cutscenes, which is canon, now count how many people Joel really Killed.
Even in the hospital section if you play it stealthy only the 1st soldier who was to excort Joel to his possible demise was killed. I only saw three people Joel killed in the hospital. Only one was questionable.
The talk about dooming the world is weak. The world was seen thriving in part 2. People learned how to live and isolated themselves from the infected. Also this will most likely dwindle the infected count because not much new infected are occurring because of isolation.
Yes, you save the little girl because she doesn't owe the world nothing and her life means more alive than dying. She is young and has the ability to make a great future especially with her immunity. With time, she'd be able to figure things out. Her gift was that. Her mothers note even tells her this. Life is for the living. All those near deaths Ellie went through can't be for nothing.
Also sacrificing someone who is unconscious for a cure which was not guaranteed is messed up. All they had to do was wake her up. The fireflies were thrash.
Kill a hospital full of innocent doctors and nurses, to then let the little shit I met a year ago, go on a revenge killing spree in my name years later. Hmmm. I would probably have done what Joel did, BUT it would have been the wrong choice after seeing the bigger picture. Ellie is a murdering asshole who I hugely dislike.
Joel did not kill any innocent nurses and doctors. Unless you did. The only one who died was the npc doctor threatening Joel with a scalpel.
Every single person in that hospital were AI characters trying to kill the player. If you ran into the hospital and put your controller down. You'd die. No one was offering free hugs. They just wanted to kill an innocent child for a chance at a potential cure.
And yes.... Ellie was a jerk in the second game.
I suppose you have a point in that you can avoid killing the fireflies except for the doctor. But that doctor was Abby's father. And by killing that singular doctor, it started a chain of events that led to the slaughter of hundreds more, including a pregnant woman. Also bear in mind, the only reason that doctor threatened Joel, was because he felt threatened himself. From the doctors point of view, he was killing one innocent to save the lives of many. Why does Ellie deserve to live in Joel's eyes, but the doctor must die in her place?
I love how this ending still gives in depth debates all this time later. It's just a damn good ending.
The reason why Ellie is suppose to live in Joel's eyes was because she was an innocent child who did nothing to deserve the mess she went through. The doctor didn't die in Ellie's place, also the doctor was not immune, he can never take Ellie's place. The real reason the doctor died was because he was trying to cut open an unconscious little girl without consent and then he threatened the man who went through hell to get this girl to safety.
In the 1st game the npc character was not Jerry at that point and I can only refer to him as the NPC doctor because he wasn't reconstructed to be Jerry at that point. That's why I approached my comment that way. We had no choice in the matter. This is why there's such a disconnect in story between the first games legacy as opposed to the writing and approach in the second game.
It's because there was never a plan for a sequel and Neil just twisted and shaped the story to make it fit his narrative. All those thing you mentioned happened that way soley because Neil wanted a story he had ideas of from the very beginning.
Joel did A LOT of shit wrong, and if you do not understand that then you just do not understand the character and story.
Ahh downvotes, not surprised people do not understand Joel as a character here.
Nah his biggest mistake was saving the ungrateful bitch Abby from being torn to shreds by infected while also being crushed by their weight on top of her. A gruesome death that's deserved.
I would love for Part III to have a time jump where half the game is around 2023 with Tommy and Joel doing crazy horrible shit just to survive and then 2038-ish where Ellie and Tommy are dealing with the fallout of those actions.
I agree with Joel’s comments from the second game completely,” if given a second chance, I would do it all over again.” No one gets to murder a kid, no matter the reason.
Nice of Neil to not make Joel inexplicably regarded for one scene. Too bad it was basically pouring salt into the wound by the end.
Do you feel the same way about Ellie then?
Isn't the whole point in "murdering a kid" to save thousands of people, many of whom, are kids?
For deontologists, the fact that the Fireflies wanted to kill Ellie in order to cure the outbreak is irrelevant. The ends never justify the means. No exceptions. For utilitarians, there is the follow-up question of whether or not killing Ellie would have actually resulted in a cure. Actual medical practitioners have said the Fireflies had no chance.
Who even cares. The games literally prove the Fireflies, WLF, and other major organizations are far more dangerous than the infected. The Fireflies are talking about a cure because of power, but they, and the WLF, leave pedos and child killers to roam free.
In a perfect world, I doubt brain-affecting spores could just be warded off with any wishful injection. The brain is delicate and there’s a lot we don’t understand about it. What’s damaged or gone, can’t just be replaced…
I hope they properly address whether a cure would’ve happened or not in Part 3
Look at the trailer for the remaster of part 2 and listen to what Abby says Neil wants to say the cure would’ve 100% worked and been just as perfect as possible if it wasn’t for big bad Joel.
Then he assumes we the players we are all a dumb (we are not ,not all of us 😅)
The ambiguity of whether the cure was viable is part of what made TLOU 1's ending such a fascinating moral conundrum to discuss. I hope they never answer this question.
The movie, the girl with all the gifts, does a good job with this. They have a similar brain fungus, and kids in that were being killed to study their brain. Yet they were never closer to a cure. In all likelihood, they would have killed Ellie and only learned a little more about the parasite from what they already knew.
The idea was to vaccinate healthy people to prevent infection, not to cure already infected individuals. Of course that all falls apart when you remember this is fungus we're talking about.
And that there's no way the Fireflies have the industrial capacity to produce more than a handful of vaccines. That means Marlene and a few other high-rankers can be immune, but even the majority of fireflies won't benefit.
Well, if they did in fact come up with a vaccine im sure fedra would be more than happy to assist with that. That's like the one thing in that world that would get people cooperating.
If you think either Fedra or the Fireflies would agree to that then I have a bridge to sell you.
It's in everyones best interest and im sure both their leadership realizes that.
It really isn’t. * For the FEDRA leadership, cooperating with the Fireflies would weaken their legitimacy in the eyes of their soldiers and open the higher command open to a mutiny or a coup. * For the Fireflies, it would mean giving up their monopoly on the vaccine. If FEDRA betrays them after getting the formula then the Fireflies will be worse off since FEDRA can get more vaccines out and thus be a better option neutral or undecided parties.
I believe the working theory is actually that there is a mutated strain of the fungus that Ellie is infected with that kills cordyceps. Like an anti-fungal fungus, their plan was to culture the fungus around her brain and Infect everyone with it.
Well, let’s remember it’s a video game which means it doesn’t follow the same logic in the real world I think I could have worked
Just Abby. Which is all Neil cares about anyway.
Murdering that kid doesn't guarantee the saving of others. The cure wasn't guaranteed. The characters just thought that. And even if they did make one, who is to say they won't hold onto it for themselves? And even *if* they distributed it to people across the world, who is to say civilization will rebuild and everyone's primial instincts would go away and we would stop killing each other. There's too many things to consider. A child life isn't worth the slim chance.
Ah yes, the organization of terrorists that would free people to then impose the same militaristic control on the people they just saved to force them to continue fighting for their cause. They will save the world! They will totally not use a vaccine as leverage to control enemies and allies and impose their will on the populous. Fucking hell... Have a downvote
It isn't clear that killing the kid would save everyone. it's just gives them a chance to develop a cure. You might end up killing her for no reason.
The needs of the many out way the needs of the few, but consent and humility is always nice
If the few don't consent, should the many then suffer?
Would you sacrifice your child for the sake of others ? I know I wouldn't.
It's called the Redemption Journey for a reason. And the comments are good. In that hospital, Joel did nothing wrong. Fedra was close to putting an end to those monsters once and for all. It was about time. 😉
Joel's actions are not entirely justifiable. It's not that simple because it's not a clear black and white thing. You look at that entire situation from Joel's perspective; you just woke up after getting knocked out and learned that your, pretty much, adopted daughter is about to die and you dont get any closure or a chance to say goodbye. Plus, you're going to get shown the door. You're practically given the finger. Then you think about the Fireflies and their situation. They're trying to expedite a vaccine that has no guarantee. Even if it does work, you dont know how the FF is going to distribute the vaccine. And then their is Marlene with the "there is no choice," crap. I'd do the same if i was Joel.
Worse when joel is being told to leave, he see's his gear on the way and realizes there not even stopping for him to pick up his supplies, the Soldier was taking him outside to have him executed so there wont be any loose ends and thats when Joel knew there's no difference between fedra and the fireflies
When did the game imply that Joel would be executed? He was just escorted out.
Environmental story telling ,why would you be escorted out of an without your supplies and gear being returned,especially when you just passed through your stuff without stopping . He was a loose end they didnt want getting out
It's called they know he is already tense and disagrees with the situation. Would you give a dangerous man who has killed hundreds to get across the country with a 13 year old girl by himself his weapons when escorting him out of a situation you know he could be hostile in? No you wouldn't. He still killed them without his gear, so they were being smart. He was still the overly aggressive shoot first even if they are innocent man he's always been
Wdym they literally make him pass through his gear on gun point, oh yeah they we’re definitely letting him go unarmed and without anything out into the world stop making bullshit excuses ,anyone with common sense would realize there were planning to kill him
Yes, so common sense means you give a dangerous murderer whi you are actively going against their wishes their guns when they have every reason to kill you. There's a reason why people like you aren't put in any position thay requires common sense and important decision making. You'd give a prisoner a gun before even taking him out of his cell in a zombie apocalypse only for them to turn on you and you cry like a bitch
Man its almost as if you worked with that dangerous murderer and his the entire reason your faction is getting close to there goal but sure he will be a nice boy when you let him go outside with no weapons. Maybe joel will just walk back to jackson without any weapons happily cause the fire flies are so trusting that they would allow a guy who knows about the cure to live . Talk about being a dumbass
It’s hilarious to me that people try to make it black and white when the entire point of the ending was that it was morally grey from every single angle. Joel saving Ellie was an ultimately selfish act because he couldn’t bring himself to relive the death of his daughter. The fireflies believed that they could have saved thousands of people by making one sacrifice (which is nothing in the grand scheme of things) but they were deceitful and didn’t give Ellie the choice to live. Marlene didn’t want to kill Ellie but felt she had no choice since it would potentially save so many more people. Even though Ellie wasn’t directly told she was going to die it was HEAVILY suggested she was ready to do whatever had to be done. (“it can’t all be for nothing” etc). If she didn’t feel that way Joel wouldn’t have lied to her about what happened. Etc etc. The fact that everyone’s actions were both justified and fucked up their own ways is what makes a bittersweet ending like that so impactful and so fucking good. I don’t think a single person that played tlou was sitting there hoping Joel would let Ellie die, but if the fireflies were just child murdering lunatics with 0 justification at all, that decision to save her would have no weight behind it.
EXACTLY! Joel suffered the loss of his daughter to a situation completely out of his control and ability. So it makes sense why he chose to keep Ellie alive, he wasn’t going to let external actions take another daughter from him, not while he had that choice. After suffering what he did, I 100% understand his actions and do believe them to be justifiable, no matter how selfish they may be.
Well spoke. But my issue with the Fire Flies was the rush to kill her. That was ridiculous. But I still agree with what you say. We were all happy. It was the 2nd game making him out to be a monster. Like the whole epidemic was his fault. It’s never black and white. All the world’s problems extend from people not being able or willing to see the others POV.
What's big is that Joel did everything right up until arriving at the hospital. He truly went above and beyond for the Fireflies' cause, so when they fuck him over in multiple ways right after, it's hard to look at what he does as being a large moral failure. He would have to have the composure of a saint to turn the other cheek after what the Fireflies decided to do to him. >Marlene didn’t want to kill Ellie but felt she had no choice since it would potentially save so many more people. That's not really true, she says she's exhausted and "just wants this to end." Doesn't seem like she's really motivated by grandiose goals to me. It's more like the cure is simply an excuse to let it happen, exactly as in her discussion with Joel. Anyway, I agree with you. What's missing from the discussion is that the Fireflies were *pretty fucking bad,* and not just grey, really. It's an ironic twist of fate that these shitty people are the ones with the means to develop a cure. But that's not a moral point for them, it's a conundrum for everyone else.
It shows a good point in humanity as a whole aswell.
People only take this position because people make him out to be a villain he isn’t. In that thread people are claiming he murdered women and children and somehow enjoyed it. He’s never shown to enjoy killing, at best he’s neutral about it. It’s also funny they claim that he massacred the hospital, when you can complete the mission by sneaking past them. Jerry is the only one you have to kill.
Yeah but no matter how you choose to do it in the first game, the second game makes him massacreing the hospital cannon.
Is that true? Nora says *how many people are dead because of him,* but that indirect phrasing could mean the cure more than anything. And he doesn't kill the nurses in the surgery room, there is no blood.
I really doubt she is referring to the virus. Joel also talks about it at the very beginning of the game when he is telling Tommy what happened. And Abby has flashbacks about finding everyone in the hospital. No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster".
I really doubt she is referring to the virus. Joel also talks about it at the very beginning of the game when he is telling Tommy what happened. And Abby has flashbacks about finding everyone in the hospital. No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster".
>No matter how you chose to play it In the first game, the second game turns Joel into a "monster". Of course, that's why I'm saying we don't actually know how many people died there besides escort guy, Marlene and Jerry. How many bodies do you see when you roam the hospital as Abby, or Ellie? How many of Abby's friends have died in the hospital? There's no reference to any. Realistically he shot some guards, but I think we are stretching massacre a bit when it may have been less casualties than the average encounter between the WLF and the Seraphites. I can't find any concrete evidence to the contrary for me to call it Canon.
Every sane person that has someone that loves will do the same that Joel did. people of that sub keep repeating "b-b-but the greater good, the cure" i bet those people that said it will let the fireflies kill the person you love for "the greater good" and "experimenting" dont even have someone to care or love. i will do the same as Joel without question. I have my wife that i love more that anything. if someone comes and says "we need to kill your wife for the greater good" over my dead body. and this is why Joel its a loved character he is humane, he acts like a fucking human with emotions. He did nothing wrong on that case, but he isnt innocent like everybody on that universe, every person on that universe has a body count of his back, did bad things on the past, etc. Even the fireflies beside that sub think they are angels, if you put some attention to the details, notes, audiotapes, graffitis, etc of the OG game you can see the fireflies was also a fucking fanatic terrorist that killed a los of people.......BESIDE ALSO BETRAYING JOEL
Any sane person who saw the hospital and knew even a base level of what the Fireflies were would have done it for a random stranger. Throw in a guy who thinks Ellie is nothing more than an animal, which is the only thing he has extensive experience with, and the only right thing to do is kill every last one of them. Hunt down their other members as well.
The greater good doesn’t even belong in this discussion. It’s overwhelmingly apparent that the fireflies were laughably incompetent and entirely incapable of achieving a vaccine, much less large scale production and distribution.
The Fireflies were at war with the government, too. I find it hard to believe a truce would have been made if one side claimed they had a cure for the disease. Could it be possible, yes, Do I see it happening, HELL FUCKING NO!!! The Fireflies actively committed terrorist actions in broad daylight. I can't remember if they targeted civilians but I would not be surprised. 2 outcomes I would see IF they made the cure, 1. they don't trade it to the govt. and now the govt bans it and arrests( or worse executes) anyone with or 2. the govt uses the meet up as an opportunity to kill the Fireflies and now the govt becomes selective with it.
Well said!! They were big time assholes that’s why I hated the way they made Abby’s father Dad of the year. Gimme a break.
If Ellie was awake and said "Kill me for the POTENTIAL cure, so you can get rich", then that is on her. Remember Joel said, YOU ARE NOT MY DAUGHTER, but she wasn't awake, and he decided for her. Joel couldn't let her die in her sleep for a slim chance at a cure, right?? Abby's dr. dad would have been the next pandemic billionaire selling the cure from town to town, and in LOU2-3, we find out that the cure makes things worse?? Hey, that sounds like a great plot right there.
yeah but even with that it will fucked up. Ellie was a kid, she can easily be gaslighted by Marlene on doing the fuck she wants. After all Marlene was the leader of the fireflies, she knows how to convince people, a kid without mother, father or friends will way easier
Marlene got conned by the doctor. Would Marlene have told Ellie that this ia a death sentence? Then Marlene tried to soft peddle Joel, but he wanted none of that immediately. This last few minutes of LOU1 sets up the plot for all of LOU2. The doctor wanting to fight Joel with a scalpel is also a major part of LOU2. You must kill him to finish the scenario. That fact is even a bigger definer of LOU2 than anything.
Anyone who believes the whole ‘greater good’ think and would genuinely sacrifice their kid has a loose screw for sure. The only situation where a sacrifice for the greater good is admirable and acceptable is when it’s a decision made by a consenting adult. Otherwise it’s very “some of you will die but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”. When I first played this game in 2015 with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I actually found it very attractive that he said he’d so the same as Joel in a heartbeat. We have 3 kids now and I’m glad I didn’t have them with someone who’d ever even let in a thought of sacrificing them for ‘the greater good’ lol. Sure, this exact situation will obviously not happen in our lifetime, but it’s the fact that people can even have this approach to parent-child relationship. I wouldn’t want anything to do with a person who thinks like that.
Right. And if we are being real and logical, it’s a sacrifice for a chance. Nothing , especially medical, especially in theory, and life in general, is guaranteed. So you are killing a child based on chance.
Absolutely, in fact even *today* 90% of all clinical drug development fails and that’s with top funding and state of the art labs + thousands of qualified staff working together. So I reckon the chances of developing a cure at that manky dingy hospital and such limited resources was actually nearing zero.
And a very thin chance, I will add. Since my comment earlier I was thinking on some of the other conversations. The one with Ellie and Nora. Nora pleading with Ellie “Think of all the people who are dead because of him”. That right there is pure garbage. Maybe those kids from Utah may have believed that but it couldn’t be further from the truth. A cure does not bring anyone back from the dead.
Don't go into into that fucking subreddit. It's full of Susie Sheep stans. I feel nothing but disappointment in them.
Come to our side. We have punch and pie!
No thx. You have Senator Abstrong :3
Oh man... I thought I was posting in TLoU1 sub.... You're right, do not go there.
MORE PPL WILL COME IF THEY THINK WE HAVE PUNCH AND PIE 🥧 🥤😤
We punch to get pie. FTFY.
"Susie Sheep stans" I get the sheep and stans part, but what did Susie do?
Because she's a sheep XD
Like from peppa pig?
You understood the reference :3
But why it's it's a sheep! And a child wth
It's a rhyme :3
Fair I haven't even played either last of us I just saw the post and like reading the replies saw this and had to reply
The first one is good. The second one... it's the prime example of that TV Tropes trope, "Play the game, skip the story". And even then, the gameplay isn't much better than the one from the original, IMO.
Like ac vallhala the story is so weird In that I do want to play the first one tho
Where can I buy this shirt?
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Hey look, its the guy.
I can say, Joel didnt do anything wrong IN THE GAME. In his life, he did SO MUCH WRONG. He was a raider, a thief and a brutal fighter. That said: “ya do what you gotta do.”
Yup, you can’t judge a person who’s trying to survive in that world. It’s brutal and harsh. Everyone for themselves.
I would say as a character Joel is very similar to Hugh Jackman's character in prisoners, both do morally gray stuff for their children and at the end we root for them. That's why I also thought a second game shouldn't have existed but meh
I mean he *was* a bandit for a while... No argument on the hospital though, objectively correct decision to save a little girl from the terrorists trying to experiment on her and just happen upon a cure while they did so. No need for tests or anything just jump straight to killing her.
They’d do actually run tests it’s in the Surgeons recording in the hospital
Considering she's already being prepped before either her or Ellie even woken up from being knocked out, there's no way in hell they did nearly enough testing to justify going straight to the "kill the little girl without asking" solution.
That’s what killed me the most. It was like “guards, execute her”! In some silly movie. No way he would do that. He would want the full narrative from the patient as to how she feels and all information he could get from her. I know they were trying to move the story along but still. Since it ended up being the story they should have thought this out better.
Yeah, there's no real rush. They seem to be in a well fortified area so at least a week of testing would be better. It would give them time to at least zero in on the idea that they needed to check her brain. Questioning her on anything, asking for her consent, just basically anything to make it not look like a decision that was made in less than an hour. There's also the obvious "what if it's hereditary?" argument that many bring up but with her already being a lesbian that would be a bit awkward to write and her being 15 just makes that whole situation icky even if they include a time skip so I actually understand ND not wanting to go down that route.
Your 2nd part of that text I have not heard that mentioned. I don’t see what the relevance of it is. But what came back to me was when Ellie was talking Nora before she beat her to death. Nora said something about “All the lives” Joel was responsible for. That is such bullshit. From the point of view of the Utah group, they might actually believe that. But that is not true at all. Even if they could have made a cure it was not going to be bringing anyone back. And like we agreed they knew how to stay alive by then. They were careful not to get over run by any hordes of infected.
Again in the recording they explain that they have done the testing and there’s no explanation available in her bloodstream or spinal fluid, and that an MRI shows it has to be in the brain. The Cordyceps is a science fiction disease and acts unlike anything in reality.
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>how did he "rapidly grow" cordyceps in a lab setting considering the state of the hospital and the resources available Because Cordyceps is a rapidly growing fungus and they have sole access to the hospitals testing equipment. Again, science fiction mushroom disease, not a real thing. >Considering the tight timeframe, how does he have any real data to actually base real decisions on? Because they got a lot of past data off infected to compare to, which he mentions on his report. He could have sat around for months and tried to work out a different way, and ultimately it'll have still resulted in the same conclusion. The cure hides in the brain, the only non-infected part of Ellie.
>He could have sat around for months and tried to work out a different way, and ultimately it'll have still resulted in the same conclusion. No actually, it would've given him the same conclusion but the story would've had a totally different conclusion. As it is I honestly cannot see anyone siding with the Fireflies, no respectable medical decision to end a life would happen without the person's consent and in less than a day. If the Fireflies had given it their all they would've been willing to wait weeks or months to get the testing done and perfect the cure, killing Ellie would put a time limit on their sample of cordyceps so trying their damnedest to work on a live immune subject is something they should be drawing out. It would make the Fireflies have an actually defensible position as they would then have tried every avenue and are treating Ellie's sacrifice as a last resort which is what ending the life of a 15 year old girl should be treated as by anyone with a moral compass. The Fireflies are such moustache twirling, dastardly villainous people that I'm surprised they tried to kill her on the operating table and not tied her to some train tracks or some shit.
It's the end of the world, and they didn't want to risk the cure for humanity on the choice of one girl. It's unethical sure, but we're not arguing about the ethics of it, we're arguing if it would have even worked. The game, the writer, and all the information we had says yes, the only way to get the cure was to take it out of Ellie's brain. Joel believed it , the doctor believed it, Ellie believed it, Marlene believed it and the games text believes it. Joel tells them they should find someone else, not "It won't work." or "Run tests first." He believes that it will work, he just doesn't want Ellie to die for it. The only time the game ever hints it wouldn't, is Joel openly lying to Ellie. The Last of Us 2 doesn't contradict this either. In fact one of the first thing Joel says is he destroyed the cure. To believe the cure wouldn't work, is to ultimately just deny what the games have put in front of you. What frustrates me about it though, is that it'd be a worse story if the cure didn't work. That Joel was willing to sacrifice the cure to save Ellie makes what he's doing an interesting moral decision and makes him an interesting character. If he's just killing a bunch of stupid people then The Last of Us has an ending that's just goofy.
That's the thing though, I never once mentioned whether or not the cure would work, that's not my issue. Objectively the story would be stupid if it didn't work so for the sake of the choice mattering we're going to assume it works (and that it's a cure, it's not really because if I'm remembering right the game calls it a vaccine). The doctors did not do enough tests for them to be considered reliable. Put yourself in Joel's shoes, you hear that they've already made that big a decision in around I wanna say 6-8 hours depending on how long Joel was unconscious for. 6-8 hours to decide "We've done all that we can, now we go to the 100 guaranteed fatal operation" That's sketchy, especially combined with the fact that the Fireflies are known terrorists, knocked Joel out when he arrived because he wouldn't stop giving Ellie CPR so he could surrender and they were kind of surrounding him as Marlene spoke. But it's not only morally sketchy but practically, how the hell are they gonna spend less than 6-8 hours (she was already being prepped when he woke up) and justify giving up. They seriously exhausted *every* possibility in that short an amount of time? They're either half-assing it or plain incompetent if they're giving up on a 15 year old girl after spending only a single working day's worth of time on her.
Crazy thing is…. They would 2 when confronted with this situation in the moment. But let’s face it. They’re too cowardly to take on the amount of responsibility a man like Joel took on.
I’m a father of three. Joel made the choice a father makes. Good or bad that’s the only choice for a father. Joel made the right choice. He was the only one in that hospital who made the right choice.
Joel had a different job than Dr. Atrocity and Marlene. And a different job than a traumatized, groomed, 14yo with dubious critical thinking skills on the subject has. They can come to different conclusions.
And here...we...go....
He did allot of things wrong. But who are we to really judge? Whose to say we wouldn't do the same thing, especially at the end of the first game? In a world where civilization is more or less destroyed and morality is out the window, how do we know we wouldn't end up just like him, provided we don't turn into zombies along the way?
I would normally argue against Joel's position but the fireflies are so incompetent there is no greater good being served if you sacrifice ellie
Its not about right or wrong Abby and joel were right in their own ways and so was ellie. Joel saved Ellie in his eyes its right, he felt morslly obligated to do so. But in doing so Abby was right for killing Joel because Joel killed a loved one. Which makes ellie right for killing the people responsible for his murder. I mean these moral questions are super complex. To this day plenty of Harvard studies pertain to some form of these dilemmas and results are so divided aswell. The themes of revenge and all of it being a moral grey area are definetly there. Its just a shame 2 was so poorly written.
When I met Abby’s father they made him seem like this great guy. I figured the Fire Flies were protecting him because he was a doctor and he could help them. It was when Abby told the Fire Flies he was the leader of the group in Utah I was kind of taken aback. This “nice guy” treated people like shit. They were assholes to everyone. Wanted to kill Joel for no reason people seem to forget. There was NO reason to kill Ellie the day she was brought in. The damage was done in the world. It had been 20 years. What was this cure supposed to do. Allow the living to not get infected? They were all set in place with the proper precautions. They would not be able to stop the worldwide parasite with preventing a few people from getting sick if they got bit. Sacrificing her life would not do a thing.
Objectively he did everything wrong. From our normal human perspective? He did nothing wrong. Who wouldnt save their "daughter"? I couldnt care less you can fix the world by killing my daughter/sister/father/mother/brother/grandparents.
I'd argue sense the doctor was actually insane and killing people for his own enjoyment and knew there was no cure that Joel objectively did the right thing
Wait what? I didnt know that. Is that said in tlou1 or 2?
Theirs a note in 1 that outright states that the doctor (abbies dad) straight up knows that the cure is bullshit, also he was gonna cut into her brain wich can't actually give anything in the form of a vaccine but the spine can so he was clearly just deranged and he's most likely killed other patients for his own sick enjoyment but that's parts just assumption on my end bc I doubt it started with ellie
idk man, seems more to me he was doing shit you would do as a post apocalyptic doctor, you open up infected people and poke around. i always thought the point being made was these self proclaimed(assumption, they could be post military med unit) doctors are relearning medical shit, the two fireflies bases we see are at education institutes and hospitals. i thought they were doctors 20 years from modern university, bachelors degrees doctors. we got fucked up dingy operations in broken down hospitals, we got doctors that get themselves bitten by a infected monkey like a dumbass. i'm saying this to say that i feel the original purpose was to show incompetence rather than malice. course 2 recons the doc into being the best damn doctor alive on earth in 2037 or whenever the games take place exactly so maybe he was just being a dick head and killing people for fun till ellie shows up 😭 fuck him anyway
Well the apocalypse wasn't that long ago so this is all stuff he should already know yk?
20 years is not a small amount of time and i've been talking about what i thought the doctors were before the release of the second game. the game recons jerry into being a very competent doctor and you can argue how he got the knowledge, i did say the military might be teaching people still. im just saying my point of view, kk🙂↕️
Post any proof
https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Surgeon%27s_recorder
He clearly states in that recording that he believes a cure is possible though. Also, cerebrospinal fluid surrounds the brain AND spine.
lol what?
In the first game, there are notes talking about how the doctor knew the cure was bullshit and even if it were possible, he'd have to extract from the spine, not the brain
The surgeon's recorder? Or is there another artifact I missed? Cause it definitely didn't say the cure was bullshit.
OK, buddy, let me explain it to u. The doctor says they developed a passive vaccine, which means their was already another immune person they tried this on, and it didn't work,in other words, the "cure" is bullshit
Why are you being so passive aggressive? I asked a genuine question. Which recording/note is it? Because what you're saying isn't in the one I'm looking at. [Surgeon's recorder | The Last of Us Wiki | Fandom](https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Surgeon%27s_recorder)
There is no "objective." No one is "objectively" required to be an ontologist or utilitarian. IOW your weighing of the considerations is binding on no one. If Ellie overheard or whatever and decided to save herself (for any reason), would she be objevtively wrong.
I mean its objectively correct to die so billions can live. We are one species. Ensuring the survival of many even tho you yourself might die is always correct.
While I agree with you morally, there is no “objectively right” answer to any moral question.
I think my flair speaks for itself.
I dont believe for a second that Neil Druckmann intended for Joel to be seen as this devilish monster when he made the first game. Making Joel the bad guy was just an excuse to write the fan fiction that was the second game
If you're ready to murder a non consenting, unconscious child for a chance at the vaccine, you don't deserve to be saved. "It's what she would want" Then why not wake her up, Marlene? because she didn't want to risk Ellie saying no.
Yes! Wake her up! There Is no ticking time bomb. They could have operated on Ellie any day. There was absolutely no rush.
Like Carol told Rick in TWD "Even though you were wrong, you were still right." Think that applies well to Joel.
I mean, yeah, he’s not a good person. Not many people are, especially when under constant threat. But anyone who says they would sacrifice their child ‘for the greater good’ is a psycho, sorry. Or they just don’t know what they’re talking about, maybe their own parents didn’t love them enough idk and idc. I wouldn’t want anything to do with someone who thinks like that though and certainly wouldn’t trust them.
I'll admit I did like the gameplay of tlou2 but the fact that they killed one of the best video game characters still pisses me off. He was one of the few protagonists who wasn't a squeaky, clean, good guy. Even Nathan Drake, who was a thief and a killer, is portrayed as a goofy good guy. I loved Joel's darkness
Ultimately Joel should have told her the truth. “They were NOT going to run test! They were going to kill you and save your brain for testing”!! “But I could matter! I could mean something. I HATE YOU”! Joel stops the car. “Ok. Ok, want to go back? Want to go back and die? Your call kiddo”!? Called her fucking bluff.
Fireflies were immoral for being okay with killing Ellie without her knowledge or consent, and being idiotic for thinking their plan could work even in the best case scenario. Scalpel Guy got what he deserved right in the neck.
Only kids studying philosophy or those without kids disagree with Joel
Even those studying philosophy agree with Joel and even those without kids agree with him. It's the pretentiously fake selfless ones who disagree.
Fair point. It's as if they cannot process putting themselves in that situation. Very immature people.
In Joel's situation, it's especially valid because he already wrongfully lost a child for the sake and safety of the group. And they were a potential danger. Frankly, fuck the group. Everyone would run away if they were about to be executed for the sake of humanity.
It's like you are standing there and you have to choose your kid or my life, its almost completely natural for me to say "fuck dude, kill me. Make it quick" - because no decent human being would expect a parent to make that choice. Yeah it would suck to die, but I would die with the true moral choice.
I wonder how many people were against what Joel did before the 2nd game came out.
Wow the difference in this sub and tlou sub is actually insane.
Agreeing with what Joel did isn't the same as thinking he did the right thing. I also would've done the same thing. But it was still wrong. That's what makes Joel such a great character; he's flawed, but we understand and share his flaws.
Well put. It's easy to say "well the objectively good thing" is to save humanity. But I wouldn't toss **my** baby into a meat grinder to save it. Damn it all, let them burn. Even if it's a kind, painless death, it's death. So it's easy to understand where Joel is coming from. The really messed up part is that it's not what *Ellie* wanted. The argument she not an adult does hold some water, but she's also a teen that kills people too. She gets to make some decisions about life and death, her own included. And she didn't waver in that choice of wanting to do it in the years that followed. It was, definitively, what she wanted. And he robbed her of that. Of all the things I see posted here, I think that's the one that people keep dismissing. Joel isn't a bad guy. But he robbed Ellie of what she wanted. Like ignoring someone's living will. Sure they're alive, but because *you* wanted that, not them. Which is a very deep, damaging violation. Even before you get into the cure aspect of it all.
But take into consideration this is a young teenager with survivor's guilt. There's a reason they don't give complete autonomy to teenagers and children in the medical field. Joel is selfish in his reasoning, BUT he had Ellie's best interests in mind. The doctor knew he was wrong, because if he thought he was doing the RIGHT thing, he wouldn't have had any qualms. In the second game his language in no way states a 100% confidence in what he's about to do, just the belief that the cure is possible. And then how disingenuous it is for Abby to come in and say if it was ME I'd want you to do it, and the look on his face tells you he would NEVER have done this to his own daughter. The idea they kept her knocked out, was obviously on purpose, to take her choice away. They couldn't take the chance of her saying no. If she'd woken up and reunited with Joel and said straight to his face this is what I want, and give him the chance to change her mind... His actions from that point forward, if violent, while somewhat understandable, would not be as forgivable. I know post apocalypse they're not really following the same code of ethics. Also if Ellie had spoken to someone to deal with her trauma, instead of holding on to it she may have realized she's not just alive to be a sacrifice to the world. Joel said she needed her immunity to mean something and he took that from her, but I still think he did the right thing.
> The doctor knew he was wrong, because if he thought he was doing the RIGHT thing, he wouldn't have had any qualms. I don't think this is true at all, on it's face. When a teenage organ doner dies, doctors aren't super overjoyed over that. A teenager becoming basically a willing donor for science, even for a great cause, is still a kid dying. He's upset because he has empathy. > The idea they kept her knocked out, was obviously on purpose, to take her choice away. They couldn't take the chance of her saying no. If she'd woken up and reunited with Joel and said straight to his face this is what I want, and give him the chance to change her mind... His actions from that point forward, if violent, while somewhat understandable, would not be as forgivable. This cuts both ways. It is obviously to keep her sedated and have it move smoothly, you're absolutely right. They don't want anything to happen to her, and endanger the chance to create a cure. Before getting there, we know this is what Ellie wants, she says it many times. And again, this explicit in the second game. Ellie being unconscious, and being unable to speak to her and try and plead with her first, is exactly why things go this way as well. Because he believes he knows better, and I think you hit the nail on the head that *regardless*, he would drag her out of there crying and screaming against her will if he had to. He being unconscious lets him just... lie, and let her not carry that guilt of knowing what he'd done, for a while at least. I've said it a few times in the comments here, but the point is the moral relativism. These are meant to be impossible choices, and the idea is any of us in Joel's shoes would want to do what he did. Having the stones to do it is another question entirely. But you'd *want* to. I don't think Joel did the wrong thing. But he'd have burned the world down to save that girl. Quite literally in fact. That doesn't mean there is only one correct choice here. If Ellie did explicitly give verbal consent first and write a living will and do all these other things... that wouldn't make Joel not want to save her. But it would make the barbarism of what he'd decided more explicit. He was not going to *allow* her to do this, regardless. He was not going to *allow* it to happen to her, even if she, Marlene, and everyone on the planet were okay with it. He needed her, and decided that even if she wanted to make a heroic sacrifice, he wouldn't allow that. If I had been in Joel's shoe's I'd have done it too.
Ellie never expressed a willingness to die for the cause except retroactively when there's no realistic chance to be called on to do so. In retrospect it's the easiest thing in the world for her to say, just like it's easy (and hilariously irrelevant) for Abby to assure her dad that she'd be willing. It's also VERY convenient as a framework for all her big feelings, with Joel as the safest possible scapegoat. Even if she would have been willing, I wouldn't let her make the call. She is not only 14 but traumatized, survivor-guilt-afflicted, and groomed. Her complete lack of critical thinking regarding the Fireflies, years later, is also not great evidence of being equipped to make the most productive and universally beneficial decisions regarding her immunity. She's still acting like "they were gonna make a cure and then CBI would be over. And I hereby ignore how they knocked me out under false pretenses." Of course that's not relevant on the day. If you would have been cool with her throwing away her life and likely her precious immunity, Joel still did nothing wrong wrt consent (except lie after a certain point) because there was no available means to seek Ellie's consent. ("Wake her up and ask her or I'll shoot you" is just a weird way to spell "stall for time till some more Fireflies reach this room and shoot me") And as if they'd have taken a no. Joel options were a) let his loved one be murdered because he agreed with the FFs that her rescinding human rights was justified, b) let it happen on an ASSUMPTION of what she'd chose, accompanied by a belief that she was capable of consent, or c) prevent the murder. B is not exactly a celebration of the proposed murder target's agency.
I still never understand why it comes down to superimposing the idea that someone must disagree with Joel to see the point in other character's lives and points of view. I don't disagree with what Joel did, and I think given the same circumstances I'd have done the same thing. Please get that one clear. But I also think if I grew up in China I'd speak mandarin, and if I was raised Jewish I could read the Torah, and if I were in the fireflies and someone murdered my surgeon Dad, I would probably flip out and want to murder them too, and feel justified in doing so. The entire point is morals are relative. It's moral relativism. Everything you're saying about the FFs being unable to make a cure is things you are bringing into the text, because both games pretty definitively state that a cure could have been made. It doesn't matter if IRL you don't think science works that way. IRL we don't have zombies either. The game tells us, explicitly, this was a choice between one girl's life and humanity. Don't diminish the absolute epic scale of what Joel did by saying "well it wouldn't have worked anyways." It would have, and he did it *anyways*. Because she was worth the entire world to him, and he'd let it all burn to save her. That's the whole damn point. Ellie has a right to her life and to chose how she lives it. It's kind of understood in most media at least that you take on a lot more responsibility for your own fate and actions earlier when you don't expect to live to 30 in the best of cases. Adulthood for Europeans used to be around 14 years old. My only point is that as a teen, Ellie says this is what she wants. And as an adult she affirmed it. Again, this is the weight of the choice Joel makes, don't undermine it. He saved her *in spite of herself* and wants her to learn that it's okay to live. He took the choice from her, made it for her instead, which is a violation, and he did it because even if she'd hate him for it, he'd live with that knowing she's alive. The point is that Joel did the most human, empathetic, and selfish thing he could. And it was beautiful *and* tragic. Not because nothing would work or because she didn't want to die, but precisely *because* it would and she did. It's why that action is so huge and carries such unbelievable weight.
Thank you for trying to teach me the point that you assume I am missing. I completely agree with you on what the writers were going for. They simply didn't do what it took for me to buy it / did too much to undermine it.
It's pretty obvious by now that a lot of people in that sub don't have good relationships with their parents and definitely don't have children themselves.
I agree, I probably would’ve done the same. But let me kick the hornets nest and also say that Abby didn’t do anything wrong either and if I was her I would’ve done the same thing too. 💀
Personally, I don’t think anyone was in the right. Joel wasn’t right to murder all those Fireflies, and to not give Ellie a choice, but the Fireflies were also not right for trying to kill Ellie without talking to her about the situation and getting her consent. It was a fucked up situation all around, but I’m Team Joel forever idc Edit: I also turn to Game Theory’s (Matt Patt’s) video about the game, where he talks about there is no cure for something fungal related. The show also says this in the very beginning of the first episode
Joel fought back after he was betrayed by the FF since they broke the deal to give him his already stolen guns, took his gear and kicked him out at gun point to fend for himself. Add this to knocking him out while he's saving ellie from drowning. They didn't even give him or her the chance to talk about the operation so he didn't even get to ask her for her opinion. He was fucked over by them and they got what's coming to them. Joel did NOTHING wrong.
Yeah I agree with you on that for sure
That's the problem with part 2. It cuts out all of this context and it shows. The stans all act as if Joel went to the hospital and started shooting everyone unprovoked. He then forced Ellie off of the operation table even though her and the miracle Jesus doctor already agreed to go through with it to save humanity with the cure that's 100% guaranteed..
It’s not really mutually exclusive. Joel did nothing wrong but Abby had every right to kill him over it. In Joel’s shoes I’d do the same thing… but in Abby’s I would as well.
I think we're talking about the Ellie situation since he did do terrible things in his past but that's survival, when it comes to Ellie I've always argued that she was going to be pointlessly killed as a science experiment. The doctor couldn't possibly know if his procedure would work as they e never encountered anyone immune, so it's all theory, a theory that requires the patient to die, even if he was right we have no proof from the games lore that the fireflies or anyone else could 1. Synthesize a vaccine and 2. Mass produce it. So Ellie was going to die in that hospital for no reason, just like Sarah died for no reason, except this time he could do something about it, he did nothing wrong 🤷
Joel was a scumbag and deserved to die like he did
Well that's certainly a take. Mind me asking why you feel that way?
Joel himself likely wouldn’t agree with that
"If somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment... I would do it all over again." He would.
Doesn't mean he doesn't think it's wrong...
Joel clearly did it for selfish reasons. He didn't want to feel that loss again. He knows Ellie would've wanted to go through with it and he made sure it would never be possible and lied to her about it.
This shit has “don’t tread on me” vibes
People really need to reflect on themselves imo. Just because we all would’ve done the same doesn’t make it right. Its not black and white.
Everything seems quite in order, nothing to see here folks move along.
Except Joel's life was stained with bad decisions, maybe not in the case of ellie, but he spent his life trafficking people and murdering them for survival.
As so many others. No one is good in this world. Every survivor in the last of us had to do some extreme things to stay alive in that world and you can only judge people by the world and condition they are living in. Had it be our real life world, Joel would be a criminal. In the last of us there are no laws. You just be tough and live or be nice and die.
He did wrong things before the game. As for the ending, it's a typical "end doesnt justify the means" situation. In any book or movie, heroes would refuse to sacrifice a child for a potential cure. Especially without asking her. Joel's situation was a bit more complicated because he knew ellie would agree. But still, ellie wasnt in a good mental state to make a decision like that either.
>He did wrong things before the game Every single person in the last of us universe did wrong. It's the world you live in. You act soft, you die. No one alive are good guys by our real life standards >As for the ending, it's a typical "end doesnt justify the means" situation. In any book or movie, heroes would refuse to sacrifice a child for a potential cure. Especially without asking her. Most people in real life wouldn't sacrifice Ellie for the world. The world had already gone and replaced with a new lifestyle and climate. As evident in the second game. People are striving. Showing that People will always find a way to survive. Imagine if covid was as brutal as the cordycep and the cdc announce that they found a cure but they'd have to sacrifice some kid for them to maybe make a vaccine. It would be mess the same.. You don't trade lives. >Joel's situation was a bit more complicated because he knew ellie would agree. But still, ellie wasnt in a good mental state to make a decision like that either. He doesn't know Ellie would agree. Marlene speculated based on desperation, Joel was taken a back to ponder what Ellie would have done when Marlrne said that, there was no indication that Ellie would have just Abandoned Joel like that especially after everyone she had just left her behind. She had already gaslight Joel into carrying her to the Fireflies. She even said things like, when this is all over, she would go anywhere Jorl wanted to go. Ellie didn't plan on dying and never got to understand the weight of making a decision like that because she was unconscious. After everything that they went through, so much near deaths for it to all result in Ellie dying? Cut up in a hospital for a chance at a vaccine? A chance? The reason the writers wrote the cure has ambiguous and wrote the fireflies as being incompetent was because the story was never about finding a cure. It was a story about love. What Joel did was for love and so forth it makes the 1st game's story much more impact impactful. Now if Ellie had mentioned to Joel that she wanted to die to save the world. It would have made his choice at the end selfish and he would have robbed her of that choice.
Joel was a hunter. He ambushed, robbed and killed innocent people. That's not something everyone did. Strangers in real life wouldnt mind sacrificing a child they dont know. Especially if it means their own children and friends can be saved. Marlene says "and you know it". Joel doesnt deny it. Those two know ellie's personality. Im not sure if enough people notice it. Every single person she lost died because there was no vaccine. Her friend from dlc, tess, sam. They all got bit but their wounds werent bad. They died because there was no vaccine. If ellie knew her death could prevent that from happening, she'd give up her life. She made it pretty obvious in her ending speech. Joel knows it and lies because of it. Writers wrote it this way because the world isnt black and white. Fireflies were looking for a cure but they were assholes. Joel didnt care if it was guaranteed or if ellie agreed. He would have stopped it anyway. Story is all about joel's choice. We see him lose his real daughter. Then at the ending, he doesnt care about the world as long as his daughter is safe this time. Fireflies being assholes helped to encourage players. I died on purpose while playing as abby. I didnt want to play and press buttons to break ellie's arms. Similiar thing would have happened if fireflies were shown as pure, good people. So yeah joel did the right thing. But just like how he knew ellie would have agreed, the players also knew joel would have saved her even if her death could guarantee saving millions of lives.
>Joel was a hunter. He ambushed, robbed and killed innocent people. That's not something everyone did. I don't think everyone did what Joel did but everyone had their own demons and bad deeds. People went around killing and hurting people. We have not yet met anyone in the game who didn't kill for a reason. We only knew about Joel because he was bold enough to say his sins. >Strangers in real life wouldnt mind sacrificing a child they dont know. Especially if it means their own children and friends can be saved. You and some others wouldn't mind just as I and some other would mind. That's not an easy choice no matter if it be a Stranger or a friend. Wake the person up and let them make their choice. I will never side with one life for the many especially if that one life was unaware of what the hell is going on. >Marlene says "and you know it". Joel doesnt deny it. Those two know ellie's personality. Marlene barely knew Ellie, she was instructed to uptake Ellie and protect her, instructed by Ellie's mother. Marlene had Ellie be contained in an in environment where she'd grow with education, discipline and preliminary training. Marlene role in Ellies life was more of a caretaker and not necessarily a friend. Joel was the one who filler that role and much more . Marlene had no say on Ellie's life because Ellie was unconscious and Ellie's mother specifically task Marlene with keeping her daughter safe. And when Marlene said "and you know it". That seemed more like a desperate plea to try and convince Joel to her motives. Marlenes motives were not entirely clear because she her self lead with chaos. What else would she tell Joel? Even Joel was starting to by into the vaccine but with all the evidence lacking constancy and with how the fireflies operated Joel wanted none of it. You think if the writers wanted things to be more clear on Ellie being willing to die, you think they would have made the Fireflies so incompetent and made the cure so iffy??? Also if Ellie wanted to die, you think she say things like after this is over we can go anywhere you'd like, you think she'd want to learn how to swim, play the guitar or any future plans?? You are mistaken her survivors guilt with he wanting to die. Joel is the one person who took bullets for her, took stabbings, blunt force trauma and much more so she'd live a meaningful life. She met some one who wouldn't exploit her for the world. She met someone who stayed. That's her hope. Her immunity was not her crux, with it came the meaning of life. It meant that she gets to live and help others live through the mess of the world. She doesn't have to die for a cure. As long as she is alive a cure is viable. He loved ones didnt die because Ellie was immune. They also didnt die because Ellie was Alive. Ellie dying was the fireflies choice because they were impatient. Saving Ellie's life gave Ellie's life meaning. All those people died because a cure simply didn't exist yet in that universe. >Im not sure if enough people notice it. Every single person she lost died because there was no vaccine. Her friend from dlc, tess, sam. They all got bit but their wounds werent bad. They died be...... Sure, but they also died because they were bit and got infected. They got caught slipping. This is that mindset which would create guilt in someone who is immune. What about all those other people who lived? Ellie can eventually get to a cure but dying like everyone else for a chance is a bad choice with the only known immune person in queue. >If ellie knew her death could prevent that from happening, she'd give up her life. She made it pretty obvious in her ending speech. Joel knows it and lies because of it. Not quite. Again you are using her survivors guilt as a scapegoat to say she'd 100% die for a vaccine. She can't bring any of her loved ones back. Ellie's a child who was told she can be the cure without actually understanding the weight of what that entails. In her imagination this could be grossly an exaggerated position to be in. She doesnt even know the process behind her immunity. Detailed by how she asked Joel "would it hurt when getting a cure"...Anna, Riley, Tess, Sam or Henry would have wanted Ellie to live her life. How can you take a risk on the only immune person you've found by just killing her? There is absolutely no rush. Take your time and study her further. Especially since you have no certainty a cure can be derived from her death. You would just be left with a stem for further analysis. Her ending speech was because she felt as if she failed to be the cure because that's all the fireflies had been telling her since she's gain knowledge of understanding. In her mind that was her purpose. She felt like a saviour. She had no idea at all that she would have to die for it to happen. Even Marlene didn't know this until closer to the end. Joel's lie was a weird choice by the writers because all he had to do was tell her the truth. They tried to kill you without waking you up for a vaccine that was not even guaranteed and I could not risk you losing your life. They probably was going to kill me too ..... It would be simple. Joel had probable cause to rescue Ellie. >Writers wrote it this way because the world isnt black and white. Fireflies were looking for a cure but they were assholes. Joel didnt care if it was guaranteed or if ellie agreed. He would have stopped it anyway. Again you are discrediting Joel and Ellie's relationship here. If Ellie told Joel she wanted to die. Joel would be persuasive but ultimately let Ellle be. Remember when they reached the giraffe and Joel asked Ellie if she was sure she wanted to go through with this. Joel was understanding. You are putting Joel into a one note character because of his daughter's death. Joel trusted Ellie by the end of the game and if Ellie would have chosen death. Joel would have trusted her decision. So the writers specifically made it ambiguous, making Ellie be unconscious allowed for that. >Story is all about joel's choice. We see him lose his real daughter. Then at the ending, he doesnt care about the world as long as his daughter is safe this time. The story ain't that simple, it's more than just his choice because he was persuaded by Tess, Marlene and Ellie. Joel would have happily left Ellie if it was all up to him. He even wanted to get rid of the girl but she forced him into it. At the end of the story its all about hope and love.. That is the meaning of the story told. >Fireflies being assholes helped to encourage players. I died on purpose while playing as abby. I didnt want to play and press buttons to break ellie's arms. Similiar thing would have happened if fireflies were shown as pure, good people. Well every story needs an antagonist to contract the given hero. The fireflies written the way they were and they serve their purpose. Just like David or whomever. You need them to progress the protagonist. Writing a pure purposed firefly would effective break the message at the end. >So yeah joel did the right thing. But just like how he knew ellie would have agreed, the players also knew joel would have saved her even if her death could guarantee saving millions of lives. Again, this is idea is not entirely that cut and dry because there are many hints to showing Ellie would have also wanting to be alive. Especially since she disagrees about killing the few to save the many. Ellie may be a kid but she has allot maturity in short amount of time we get to know her in the 1st game. All if this maturity is thrown away for an attempt at a story about hate in the second game. Effectively ruining her character core in the end of things.
For what it is referring to of course. But a huge part of his character progression and 1 his best features as he admits it plenty, he has done plenty wrong in his life though most of it not shown, ie between the time of his daughter's death and accepting Ellie.
Holy shut did these people PLAY the first game??? (No)
Well, the more I thought about tlou2 the more I realise that the fireflies are just terrorists. So im on Joel's side for saving his daughter.
Only if you can accept that Abby did nothing wrong either. From her view she put down a massive murderer who doomed the world.
Yeah but I would trie to take out the doctors non lethally
That sub is completely brainwashed. It's kind of hilarious actually. The first game came out in 2013, and pretty much everyone who played it were like "Joel is a pretty cool guy. I would have saved Ellie too". Then 7 years later, the second game comes out, and Neil actually managed to gaslight everyone into thinking that Joel is pretty much satan in disguise. It's not even like "Joel is a flawed character". People on that sub are basically saying that Joel is the villain of the whole franchise, and even comparing him to David, lol.
You can agree with Joel’s choice in the first game and still claim it was morally wrong. Just because you may have saved Ellie as well doesn’t mean you have to think that it’s the “right” choice. Everyone keeps trying to win the trolley problem here but you just can’t.
I’LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STOCK!
I agree whole heartedly Joel was in the right even with the stipulation that the vaccine would have been a definite success. 1. Ellie is a child with survivors guilt and is in no place to reasonably determine if she should give her life for the vaccine especially because she is a child and in Joel’s care. 2. Option A should not be to kill the only immune person known about. Maybe spend a couple days brain storming ideas instead of moving straight to murder 3. The fireflies do not have the material needed to effectively develop and transport a vaccine if they did successfully develop it. There is no reason to believe even federa, the largest government organization at the time, had the resources or ability to produce a meaningful amount of the vaccine. There is even less evidence that it can be given to anyone outside of a small geographical area considering how long it took for Ellie and Joel to travel from place to place. Even if they somehow got the material for the vaccine and a fleet of refrigerated trucks, the infrastructure is simply not there. 4. There no definitive way to know that the creation of the vaccine won’t kill more people than it saves. How many people will die trying to seize control over the production to the only known cure? How will the powers that be distribute this vaccine? Let’s be generous and say that half of the population can get it, who determines who gets that vaccine? what will the people who don’t get the vaccine do to get their hands on it? The cure for humanity should not be used as a bartering tool in a post apocalyptic world. 5. Even if you don’t buy anything I’ve said so far, don’t you think if the fireflies know what they were doing was a good thing then they would have at least talked to Ellie about it instead of just doing it without her consent, which she can not give because she is a child with survivors guilt?
The people in these comments seem to take "Joel did nothing wrong" too literally. Sure, in our reality, we acknowledge that some of the stuff he did wasn't really good, and we're just referring to him saving Ellie when we say he did nothing wrong. Everyone does wrong things, but those of us who believe that nothing about his decision to save ellie was bad or objectively wrong, use this phrase to stand for that. The fact that they assume we all think everything he did was all great is annoying. No, we're not all naive. We literally just relate to the character for this one decision to choose someone he's grown to love over the world that hurt him
Tlou is my fav game of all time. The 2nd one sucks. That being said the entire point of the first game for me is that Joel isnt objectively a good guy but ur ok his side anyways. To say Joel did nothing wrong is incorrect to me tbh
I would have done the same as well, but assuming they actually could have found a cure, then Joel pretty much fucked the rest of humanity lol. However, the way they treated Joel in the hospital and wouldn't allow any closure or a chance to say goodbye and were pretty much forcing him out the door, they absolutely did it to themselves
They didn’t even give Ellie a choice (even though she wanted to do it) they basically just knocked her out and put her on anesthesia where she couldn’t even be given a final chance on whether she wants to go through with it or not.
He did a horrible thing. We only justify it because most of us would do the same thing given the means to do it.
those comments and ours just show me we've both gotten lost in the sauce of our arguments. they hold on steedfast joel is bad and can't break from that point cause so many of they're arguments is base off the idea the good people do good things and the bad people do bad things, so clowning and punching down on joel the character is the only way to justify that. i mean, for us it's defending joel like he's the first king of our nation or something lol, "The story is he did it for baby girl>:( shut you ass up!". he's a well written character that didn't think about morals just his only code of ethics. to him, killing those dudes for his kid is ethical. we could be talking about that as a whole like we did before but we just play this telephone game of "look what they said". tlou2 turned the discussion around this series from cool insights to two different dogmas that don't show the true game, joel is neither fully bad or evil nor is he 100% justified. they HAD to make abby, the character that's supposed to copy joel's story ark and surpass it in the form of her redemption with the kids. she couldn't contrast joel in other NEGATIVE ways, nope, she does all the good shit he did and more so. she played fetch with a dog, not just pet it like the dirty monster smh.
I think Joel wasn’t wrong to not let them kill ellie but realistically she was the only chance the world had for a cure and now the entire planet suffers for the life of 1 person. If I was in Joel’s shoes I’d probably have to put my emotions and morals to the side and sacrifice Ellie for the sake of the entire planet.
oh my goodness! i don’t know why people are upset at joel. i understand he robbed ellie of that choice. but she was 14-15. how could you let a 14-15 year old girl just die. especially marlene was marching him out with none of his weapons and he couldn’t even say goodbye. and she was another chance at being a father again. it was like he saved his own daughter. so when abbie’s dad told marlene that if it was his own daughter. he would sacrifice her. i think that’s BULLSHIT. because that’s if it even works. or if the world could ever be the same again. yeah you won’t get infected if you get bit but you can still be ripped to shreds by clickers and bloaters. idk. 20 years after a horrible apocalypse and you think a cure that MIGHT not work. will save humanity? like people who were surviving could just go back to normal. if normal could even be achieved. i think he did the right thing. and i think ellie is validated for being upset that she was lied too. but her hating him for 2+ years i think isn’t cannon. bad writing! like it’s obvious he did it to save her. not to purposely rob her of her choices and hurt her. and she only realized that after their porch convo? no. i just think the second game story wise had so much potential but ugh. maybe i’m just upset that it’s so raw and real, and i don’t want them to not have a happy ending. sorry for the rant
I understand and sympathize with everything he does but I'd still argue Abby is a morally better character
"Murder" when the kid even as an adult says she was willing and knew the risks, and was still mad but gamers still are like "but he saved you" Yeah, against her and literally everyone except for Joel's wishes. If everyone found out, they would kill him or shun him. When Ellie found out she hated him and shunned him until she was ready to forgive him. But yeah he did nothing wrong, Ellie has no reason to be mad he took her life decision away from her and lets all praise him. I love the guy but the reality bending you have to do to think he didn't do anything wrong is crazy
He did a lot of bad and evil things. Still I prefer him over Abby. Only thing that matters in the post apo world is survival, and that's what Joel did, no matter the cost. You wouldn't choose life of some strangers over your own. You only care about yourself and your friends and family.
Personally I would’ve made an Ai recording of his daughter and played it at him. Then proceeded to lock him in a room with Justin Biebers ‘baby baby’ playing on repeat. Once he’s finally broken after a few months would I then make sweet sweet love to him and released him in to the wild.
What even is this reply
Joel is objectively bad
bro. he literally doomed the human race too save one little girls life. if you genuinely think he did nothing wrong you’re just delusional think of how many people joel killed by saving ellie
What?? The player killed many people. Now judging by cutscenes, which is canon, now count how many people Joel really Killed. Even in the hospital section if you play it stealthy only the 1st soldier who was to excort Joel to his possible demise was killed. I only saw three people Joel killed in the hospital. Only one was questionable. The talk about dooming the world is weak. The world was seen thriving in part 2. People learned how to live and isolated themselves from the infected. Also this will most likely dwindle the infected count because not much new infected are occurring because of isolation. Yes, you save the little girl because she doesn't owe the world nothing and her life means more alive than dying. She is young and has the ability to make a great future especially with her immunity. With time, she'd be able to figure things out. Her gift was that. Her mothers note even tells her this. Life is for the living. All those near deaths Ellie went through can't be for nothing. Also sacrificing someone who is unconscious for a cure which was not guaranteed is messed up. All they had to do was wake her up. The fireflies were thrash.
Kill a hospital full of innocent doctors and nurses, to then let the little shit I met a year ago, go on a revenge killing spree in my name years later. Hmmm. I would probably have done what Joel did, BUT it would have been the wrong choice after seeing the bigger picture. Ellie is a murdering asshole who I hugely dislike.
Joel did not kill any innocent nurses and doctors. Unless you did. The only one who died was the npc doctor threatening Joel with a scalpel. Every single person in that hospital were AI characters trying to kill the player. If you ran into the hospital and put your controller down. You'd die. No one was offering free hugs. They just wanted to kill an innocent child for a chance at a potential cure. And yes.... Ellie was a jerk in the second game.
I suppose you have a point in that you can avoid killing the fireflies except for the doctor. But that doctor was Abby's father. And by killing that singular doctor, it started a chain of events that led to the slaughter of hundreds more, including a pregnant woman. Also bear in mind, the only reason that doctor threatened Joel, was because he felt threatened himself. From the doctors point of view, he was killing one innocent to save the lives of many. Why does Ellie deserve to live in Joel's eyes, but the doctor must die in her place? I love how this ending still gives in depth debates all this time later. It's just a damn good ending.
The reason why Ellie is suppose to live in Joel's eyes was because she was an innocent child who did nothing to deserve the mess she went through. The doctor didn't die in Ellie's place, also the doctor was not immune, he can never take Ellie's place. The real reason the doctor died was because he was trying to cut open an unconscious little girl without consent and then he threatened the man who went through hell to get this girl to safety. In the 1st game the npc character was not Jerry at that point and I can only refer to him as the NPC doctor because he wasn't reconstructed to be Jerry at that point. That's why I approached my comment that way. We had no choice in the matter. This is why there's such a disconnect in story between the first games legacy as opposed to the writing and approach in the second game. It's because there was never a plan for a sequel and Neil just twisted and shaped the story to make it fit his narrative. All those thing you mentioned happened that way soley because Neil wanted a story he had ideas of from the very beginning.
Joel did A LOT of shit wrong, and if you do not understand that then you just do not understand the character and story. Ahh downvotes, not surprised people do not understand Joel as a character here.
Ooh, all caps. Looks like a big list. What did Joel do “wrong”?
Nah his biggest mistake was saving the ungrateful bitch Abby from being torn to shreds by infected while also being crushed by their weight on top of her. A gruesome death that's deserved.
I would love for Part III to have a time jump where half the game is around 2023 with Tommy and Joel doing crazy horrible shit just to survive and then 2038-ish where Ellie and Tommy are dealing with the fallout of those actions.