Board 8 > **SPOILER TOPIC** The Last of Us Part 2 **SPOILERS**

(+) Yeah! (+)

pezzicle posted...

the crux of their argument is that Joel is likable.

No it's not.

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well, it seems that way to me and if you would like to elaborate on that instead of just calling all my posts trash, i'm all ears

the last 2 pages would have been widely different if you hadn't of dismissed my posts as trash in the first place because you didn't want to interact with them

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It absolutely does not seem like that is the crux of the entire diatribe. In fact, it seems to me that the original post is fine with the death of Joel but believes it serves no purpose other than to progress a plot to another specific moment the writers wanted to reach.

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I'm not elaborating on them to you because I'm not repeating everything I said in this topic.

The fact that you are incapable of reading is why your posts are trash and not worth engaging with.

You are fucking lunacy with selective vision.

You are not worth talking with because of that.

So either go back and read or stop crying about how people are ignoring you and your idiotic posts that aren't grounded in any sort of logic or understanding.

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Man I really feel bad for the woman who wrote TLOU, to be driven out of the company and watch your story be completely destroyed by the people who took it over from you has got to be heartbreaking.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I'm not elaborating on them to you because I'm not repeating everything I said in this topic.

The fact that you are incapable of reading is why your posts are trash and not worth engaging with.

You are fucking lunacy with selective vision.

You are not worth talking with because of that.

So either go back and read or stop crying about how people are ignoring you and your idiotic posts that aren't grounded in any sort of logic or understanding.

jfc
you literally called my posts trash after a single post talking about the first game and a small interaction with Leon about my misrepresentation of your posts

you never once gave me the time of day so don't go riding around on your high horse like youve been totally willing to engage with me but i've been rude or inconsiderate

you literally dismissed me immediately

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You want me to go back and read. Fine. Here:

• youre mad that Abby kills joel with no interaction. you are mad that Joel is hardly in the game at the start, that he doesn't really get to engage with Ellie. You are mad that Abby kills Joel after he saves her.
• calls it both bad and insane that this happens
• believes that abby is deranged and it angers you that we have to play as "some random character who kills joel for no reason"
• joel isn't the villian because he just saved abby
• its sloppy and rushed
• its dumb because this game revolved around a character who was meaningless in the first game
• "[Joel] tried to do a lot of the right things, and he had a lot of humanity to him. The ending of the game is crafted in a way to make you feel like Joel is making the right decision to save Ellie and kill the Fireflies, who are billed as very nasty people overall throughout the game. It's only now, before this game is released, that they are trying to convince us that Joel was actually in the wrong for it, to the point of retconing things"
• "I would say if Joel started killing random people and rampage against them to murder them, yes. He'd be a psychopath too. But you'd also have to contend with the fact that they killed a little girl too, which is pretty unconscionable in itself."

Bold things are things that are, in my opinion, you using the narrative of "Joel is a good guy" to explain why it is you don't like the creative decisions in this game.

We then get to "Chose one: Joel going on a murder spree to save Ellie's life after they took her without consent to crack her head open for a cure, in which they've stated they've had zero success with despite trying countless times to use immune people for the cure [...]"

Which, bolded, is not true at all and I've point that out already.

we then get an assumption about abby in the form of: "But Abby still had a giant support system with her group she's been with her whole life, currently lives in a place with electricity and air conditioning and a state of the art gym" While we actually have no idea if this is true or not and we have no idea what kind of state Joel left the Fireflies in or what happened with their base (unless i have missed some key info from LoU info dumps, which if so, correct me)

• "She is trying to hunt down and murder him, full stop."
• "Joel is saving Ellie from some people who don't give a s*** and will do whatever they can for another likely failed crack at a cure. That's the sticking point here."

"That's the sticking point here." Which I have already pointed out is not accurate. So it's not a sticking point at all actually it makes your entire argument fall apart when the "sticking point" is not true.

You go on to support your argument again that Joel is "saving Ellie from awful people trying to murder an her," when that isn't really a fair representation of the game.

You then circle back around to it being done too quickly and without "any sort of meaningful interaction" or "nuance". There is no positive Joel and Ellie hangs, no talk of who Abby is, and you just kill Joel like he means nothing.

Which, to me, just complete ignores the fact that there is TWENTY hours left in the game, and so to make claims like that and to suggest that none of those thing ever happens in the rest of the game, is pretty disingenuous.

We then get to a point where I enter the conversation and get told my posts are trash.

I am not saying that you can't dislike the game. I'm not saying that where you end up is not where you should end up. It's art, you are allowed to like or it or you are allowed to dislike it. I have issue with how you get to your conclusion, because I think the way you get there is based on some key pieces that I think are either just flat out wrong, or interpreted incorrectly.

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sorry, my daughters name is ally i used ally instead of abby will edit

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pezzicle posted...

would Joel being dead undermine the first game? Would him dieing because of zombies or because he like falls off a cliff or something undermine the first game?

I agree that the bond was the entire point of the game and the reason it is so revered as a well written game is entirely because of how it ends and what Joel does

but I dont think that his death completely diminishes that. Im wondering why this death diminishes the bond he had with Ellie

ideally, when you base so much of your story around a certain thing, you wanna make that thing look very valuable before you take it away. that is just basic storytelling

so, scenes that make us go "oh! this could only happen because of the way Joel/Ellie developed as characters during TLOU1!". preferably ,if you're gonna kill one of them, you would attach one of such scenes to their deaths. Like Joel sacrificing himself to save Ellie, or something similar.

you also would not do it right at the start of the game.

are people here actually playing the game or are they just talking

ExThaNemesis posted...

Man I really feel bad for the woman who wrote TLOU, to be driven out of the company and watch your story be completely destroyed by the people who took it over from you has got to be heartbreaking.

Despite my disdain for what seems to have occurred with the game's story, it is a shame that this conversation is going to completely dominate the game's reception, and is going to overshadow the awful working conditions and social environment that's been building up around Naughty Dog as a company.

It cannot be properly stated how much more important that is than this.

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Any chance that there's a Choose Your Ending aspect to this game? Pick between Ellie or Abby for the final showdown and play it out from there?

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Given certain leaks I don't think that is likely but we won't know for sure until it is up.

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So apparently the scene in the trailers where Joel covers Ellie's mouth and says "Think I'd let you do this on your own?" is in the game. Except they changed it to Jesse, the kid who knocked up Ellie's girlfriend. There's video of it floating around. Yeesh.

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Wait, so the stuff they showed in the trailers isn't actually in the game?

That's probably my biggest frustration in this whole thing, at least before I get to try the game. That it was advertised as a game around Joel and Ellie. There will be people buying this because they've been told that the game is about Joel and Ellie and they're not getting that.

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I mean, it's certainly not the first game to pull a switcheroo with a trailer, but yeah, this does feel like false advertising.

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At the very least, this one scene has an entirely different character in place of Joel, yes.

There's also a rumor of an ultra grim dark embarrassingly bad ending now. I don't want to talk too much about it and lend too much credence to it since it isn't confirmed (aside from two people saying it's the truth), but it's so bad that I feel like I don't want to believe it, but it's still so bad that given everything we know about this game I don't put it past them.

This also puts the scene where Ellie and Abby are fighting at maybe 3/4 of the game rather than the ending like we thought. And the ending would involve them fighting again. Given that we were entirely wrong about the timeline of things to begin with (what with Joel dying 2 hours in as opposed to halfway through), it's entirely possible.

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Oh, I should also mention that we do get some Ellie/Joel segments in the game, but they're entirely in flashbacks.

Ellie and Joel spend no time in the present with each other in this game.

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those ending spoilers seem about right. shame.

note that I am not angered by this development, just a bit disappointed. I just feel like the revenge angle here is not particularly interesting or unique in video games or in other media.

I'm not finding the new ending leaks but I'd love to see them

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Yeah disappointed would be the right word, I'd say. Like, I can just ignore the game's existence so it's not like there's much for me to be upset about.

Just a shame that TLoU went from being something fairly special that folks could actually have conversations about to apparently just being misery porn whose overall message is "revenge is bad" with no nuance whatsoever.

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Alright, I'll post the ending spoilers, but please don't assume they're the truth.

Abby beats down and breaks Dina's face and Ellie's arm and leg and nearly chokes her to death and then goes "Okay I'll let you live."

Abby and Dina survive, Dina has her kid, and then Ellie wants to go and kill Abby again. Dina says she's leaving if Ellie does this and that she needs to think about them instead. Ellie refuses and leaves anyway.

Ellie goes and I guess Abby is being crucified or something (???) and Ellie saves her and cuts her down and then proceeds to try and murder her. In the ensuing fight, Abby bites off two of Ellie's fingers, but Ellie is ready to kill Abby. Instead, Ellie decides not to kill Abby after all and leaves.

She returns home and Dina and her kid are gone. And then she goes to play guitar like Joel taught her to and because she is missing fingers she can't play properly.

Like if this is really the ending then holy shit fuck Neil Druckmann research the files on his computer.

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Well.

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So hang on, let me make sure I've got the story all mapped out. Is this actually all correct?

1. Joel saves Abby
2. Abby kills Joel, beats up Ellie
3. Ellie kills Abby's crew
4. Abby beats the shit out of Ellie and her girlfriend
5. Ellie beats the shit out of Abby, then goes home and is sad

If this is all legit then it's kind of embarrassing lol

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That is correct if the ending spoilers are real.

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That one reviewer that said TLoU2 is like Schindler's List in a world where every game is John Wick should probably go actually watch John Wick to see how you tell a revenge story.

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from chrono cross to ground zeroes to this, I hope developers finally get the message that murdering/torturing/putting beloved main characters through hell doesn't automatically make your stories emotionally resonant. in fact, it often has the opposite effect.

authors I think feel the urge to "kill their darlings" but sometimes (read: usually) it's a cheap play to add stakes that the narrative doesn't necessarily deserve.

however, I will say that if a lot of story stuff is being left out of these leaks (i.e. lots and lots of development and some genuinely non miserable moments of pathos) then this might not be too bad. the point is, stories have to earn deaths and based on the outcry it doesn't feel like this game has.

Oh my god no, that ending is confirmed by reviews from people who drop subtle hints about it involving a guitar and other hints involving mutilation.

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If all that is true then that's just a big nope from me. Like, roomate is getting the game but I probably won't even play it once he's done.


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I cant stop laughing at the spoilers of the guitar scene. Am I right in thinking thats not the intended reaction?

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https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/12/the-last-of-us-part-ii-review-a-brilliant-game-that-is-not-what-it-seems/ : "This new game also has its bookend ending, and all I will say about that, for now, is that it involves a guitar."

https://theface.com/life/the-last-of-us-2-naughty-dog-game-playstation : "The story concludes with an act of mutilation that is tethered to one of the game's few non-violent activities."

Oh, a detail I left out is that the reason Ellie doesn't kill Abby after all of this is that she has a flashback of Joel that somehow convinces her that revenge is bad but for some reason she didn't come to that conclusion until after she traveled a huge distance away from her girlfriend and daughter and had to get her fingers bitten off to realize revenge is bad.

This legit gets to the point of being absolutely disturbing. I don't know why someone would write something this bleak and fucking depressing when the last game ended with the bitter sweet feeling of Joel having each other and caring for one another. I don't understand why do this with Ellie.

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I can't tell if that's better or worse than the initial leaks that had you kill Ellie as Abby.

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Well, that Abby scene is still in the game. She essentially leaves her for dead in a horrible zombie-filled hellscape without the use of one of her arms and legs and having savagely beaten her enough she should probably actually be dead.

...I don't know if Ellie dying here is better or worse, because at least we don't have Neil Druckmann having ANOTHER brutal snuff fight between these two young women that tries hard to one up the last one and then have a god awful realization that NOW revenge is bad all of a sudden, and then Ellie loses everything anyway.

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Clearly Ellie flashbacked to the wrong Troy Baker character and was immediately convinced that revenge = bad from this speech

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

actually..that's basically the plot of the last of us 2 there in a nutshell. now y'all dont need to buy the game to get this incredibly deep message. you're welcome.

Hey, so I just watched the leaked video of the final confrontation of Ellie and Abby.

For whatever reason Abby and her boyfriend are hanging from some kind of post (I dunno probably has to do with some cult?) and Ellie cuts Abby down. Abby frees her boyfriend and tells Ellie that there are boats at the end of the beach. So Ellie follows her there.

They get ready to leave and Ellie walks up to her and says "I can't let you leave" and Abby says she's not doing this now. Ellie threatens to kill her boyfriend and tells her she involved him (likely for almost killing Dina). So they they have a pissy short fight in which Ellie tries to drown Abby. At one point, and this happens in like a second, Abby BITES OFF TWO OF ELLIE'S FINGERS IN ONE GO, and then Ellie is drowning her.

She has a flashback of Joel playing guitar for like 3 seconds and then she lets Abby go and then hugs her knees and her missing fingers and cries and tells Abby to just go.

I thought that, at the very least, the flashback of Joel was going to have him say something to her. But he just sits there and smiles at her with his guitar. What the fuck. Why is this the moment you decide not to go for revenge anymore? How is this game written so poorly? The final confrontation is super anti-climactic and it has like 2-3 QTEs in it and it's them wrestling briefly before Ellie tries to drown Abby.

This is TRASH and no amount of context can fix that. Also, Abby's face is like melting in these scenes for some reason. Jesus.

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colliding posted...

from chrono cross to ground zeroes to this, I hope developers finally get the message that murdering/torturing/putting beloved main characters through hell doesn't automatically make your stories emotionally resonant. in fact, it often has the opposite effect.

Hey both of those stories hurt because they're going directly against the tone and themes of previous games, but at least they are actually using that suffering to tell complex and unique stories! Neither of them are as straightforward as TLOU2 seems to be, which is mostly an exaggerated version of the first game's tone with a simpler message of revenge bad.

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Oh, just saw the ending.

The ending opens with EXTREME CLOSE OF UP MISSING FINGERS FLAPPING IN THE WIND LIKE TENTACLES (what the fuck are these physics). Ellie goes home to Dina and the kid (apparently they lived in a farm house) and then Ellie opens the door and everything is hilariously open or missing in the most dramatic way. You can walk around and maybe interact with things for more depression porn I guess until you find Joel's guitar.

Ellie takes it and sits down and you have a QTE where you play guitar, specifically the song from the beginning (Pearl Jam fuck you Druckmann for using my favorite band for this garbage), and her nubs are making it so the song sounds off. Ellie frowns and then sets her guitar down.

Credits.

The ending is like, so devoid of emotion. Ellie doesn't show any emotion to her girlfriend leaving. She shows barely any emotion to her not being able to play guitar. No words are spoken.

This is the most fart huffing ending ever. You're supposed to draw conclusions that "Oh Ellie is so sad she lost everything going for revenge" while she looks mostly stone-faced until the last moment. Like... holy shit, what is this ending even supposed to be?

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And the killer of all of this is that you could have an impactful ending that would work so much better if you have Ellie kill Abby, who everyone will probably hate anyway. Have her end up killing Abby after all with her sobbing uncontrollably as she flashes back to Joel. THEN have her go back home and look hopeful that maybe Dina will be there still. Maybe she didn't lose everything. And then you have her disappointment sink in. Dina is gone. She has nobody left because she had to kill Abby.

And then have Ellie play the guitar, a sad smile on her face, because she did this for Joel at least. She can be glad about that. And then she starts to play and the very first time she messes up the note, just have her freeze and look horrified that because of her revenge, she doesn't even get to share her memory of Joel anymore. She lost that at the cost of avenging his death, which meant nothing compared to the memory she could still keep of him.

But you let Abby win. So Ellie doesn't sacrifice her humanity and loses EVERYTHING. Abby gets to live happily now with her loved one and Ellie has nothing.

What a garbage job these people did on this game. This is shameful writing.

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ABBY WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?



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How is Ellie suddenly strong enough to physically overpower Abby in a hand to hand fight? Did she spend all her time since the last fight farming power tabs?

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Presumably Abby is a lot weaker now because she can barely walk (but then neither can Ellie so who the fuck knows).

Also THERE IS MORE.

There is one final scene in the game. After the depression guitar, we flash back to Joel and Ellie having a talk where Ellie gets mad at Joel for not allowing her to be experimented on and that he should have let her die so her life would have had meaning. Joel affirms that if the Lord gave him another chance, he'd do it all over again without hesitation. Ellie tells him she doesn't think she can ever forgive him for this, but that she'd like to try. They both smile at each other.

I have no idea why you closed out with this scene. No idea at all. This feels like a final fuck you.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Presumably Abby is a lot weaker now because she can barely walk

I mean even if this is the case theres no way Ellie could have known this so what in the fuck was her plan?

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And think about how many unrelated people Ellie kills and how far she travels to try killing Abby at the end. And then she's like "No, killing you will be wrong."

You killed so many people Ellie! So many innocent people to get to Abby! And then you let her live! The ending provides no context or reasoning why she would make that choice! Why she would actively stop Abby from leaving so she could murder her only to decide that she doesn't want to anymore!

I cannot understand this fucking game. Who thought this was an okay story?

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redrocket posted...

I mean even if this is the case theres no way Ellie could have known this so what in the fuck was her plan?

I have no idea what leads up to Abby being strung up to die at all. But Ellie is covered in blood at this point and she's beaten up to high hell so presumably she went through a lot to get to Abby.

I assume her plan was get revenge or die trying which makes it even more baffling that she just doesn't kill her.

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Man, I should have avoided this topic because I didn't play TLoU very far and didn't have any interest in TLoU2, but with all these spoilers I now desperately need to play this game.

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I wanna know why Abby is okay with just peaceing out after Ellie almost kills her. Is the joke that she's the one that suddenly grows a conscience?

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I've seen a lot of people on Reddit who have decided that the only ones who have a problem with this game are bigots who don't like lesbians. Meanwhile, this sounds like a poorly written excuse for torture porn that examines one of the most basic themes there is with no nuance whatsoever. I hate when legitimate criticism gets lumped in with the worst examples and then discarded.

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Shadow Dino posted...

I wanna know why Abby is okay with just peaceing out after Ellie almost kills her. Is the joke that she's the one that suddenly grows a conscience?

She decides she doesn't want to kill Ellie for reasons. And then Abby presumably just leaves because they both are sick of revenge. Like, Abby was angry at her buddies because they told her to STOP torturing Joel. But then I guess we're supposed to hate her less because she lets Ellie live?

And we end the game with Ellie having nothing and Abby having her lover. What the hell. I think they want us to be rooting for Abby and Ellie?

ALSO REMEMBER WHEN THIS GAME WAS ABOUT ZOMBIE INFECTIONS?

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Oh, more about the guitar because this bothered me too.

She kept playing the guitar like she forgot she lost two fingers. Like the guitar scene goes on so long. And then she just stops eventually. Your big build up to your finale and the last statement you make and it's lands so poorly and awkwardly. God damn Druckmann.

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