Current Events > In 2021, we all agree that Joel was wrong correct? TLOU1 ending spoilers

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XxAxem_BlackxX posted...

What Joel was aware of has nothing to do with the fact that it's improper to say somebody "would want" something unless you didn't ask them. She would have said "It's what she wants." "Would want" implies a lack of direct knowledge.

Utterly irrelevant because that was never the point. Joel had already killed everyone before this confirmation occurred.

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TheOtherMike posted...

Dude, you're wrong. Get over it.

Nah, he owned you.

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superman 2000 posted...

Nah, he owned you.

No he didn't, but you're welcome to try and point out where I'm wrong.

Does anybody else think Ellie would have only said yes because of survivor's guilt? It seemed obvious to me after playing left behind that it was an issue with her after her friend died.

And Joel did nothing wrong.

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I don't think you are supposed to think Joel was totally in the right here. Yeah its totally understandable, and you get more than enough information to suggest that the Fireflies may have no idea what the **** they're doing. They are just wandering through this apocalypse clinging to whatever thing they have to give themselves some sense of purpose, like Ellie with being a cure and (by the end of the game) Joel and his relationship with Ellie.

XxAxem_BlackxX posted...

What Joel was aware of has nothing to do with the fact that it's improper to say somebody "would want" something unless you didn't ask them. She would have said "It's what she wants." "Would want" implies a lack of direct knowledge.

The lack of consent was never really the issue though. Joel just says **** it and kills everyone, to hell with what Ellie wants. It doesn't matter if they talked to Ellie or not, Its 100% a selfish action, its just an action you are supposed to be behind to.

Really, the biggest issue should be at the very end when Ellie asks Joel what happened, and he lied to her face, and Ellie knew it. That's why Joel is a monster.

TheOtherMike posted...

No he didn't, but you're welcome to try and point out where I'm wrong.

You're wrong when you say Joel knew Marlene hadn't gained consent from Ellie in their first conversation, because nothing confirms that. At best, Joel is assuming; at worst, the thought didn't even cross his mind. Either way, rebirth is right because you're arguing from inference but pretending it's indisputable.

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superman 2000 posted...

You're wrong when you say Joel knew Marlene hadn't gained consent from Ellie in their first conversation, because nothing confirms that.

I've already laid out what confirms that. There doesn't need to be a literal conversation with the question "Did you gain her consent?" and a "yes" or "no" for the scene to be unambiguous.

superman 2000 posted...

At best, Joel is assuming; at worst, the thought didn't even cross his mind. Either way, we can't say for sure. Rebirth is right because you're arguing from inference but pretending it's indisputable.

If Joel is assuming, it's with more than sufficient evidence to be certain. I see no conceivable way it wouldn't cross his mind with how blatantly obvious it is given Marlene's attitude and Ellie's absence.

Either way I'm tired of the argument, and I have better things to do now.

superman 2000 posted...

You're wrong when you say Joel knew Marlene hadn't gained consent from Ellie in their first conversation, because nothing confirms that.

That's like saying Fairy Godmother wasn't the one who cursed Fiona just because it was never explicitly stated.

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You're supposed to side with Joel after playing tons of hours behind him.

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Joel didnt have to massacre the hospital but I can understand and empathize why he did. The Fireflies were more in the wrong because they didnt even give Ellie the option to consent as common decency. Had they done so and if Joel still wouldve killed everyone, fine villainize Joel then. They didnt though.

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Veggeta X posted...

You're supposed to side with Joel after playing tons of hours behind him.

Same with Abby, but the chuds think shes the most irredeemable monster in the history of video games while Joel did nothing wrong in lying to Ellie and dooming humanity.

Joel obviously was wrong.

With his actions at the end of tlou1, he made sure the world got tlou2.

He's a monster.

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i get he wanted to save Ellie since he developed this fatherly bond with her but yeah, he done fucked it up when he killed that doctor...

Veggeta X posted...

You're supposed to side with Joel after playing tons of hours behind him.

Why do you assume he's supposed to be a hero? I knew Joel was getting what he deserved in a potential sequel immediately after I finished the first game 8 years ago

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after playing TLoU2, I feel like, if Joel had let Jerry live, then there would have still been people coming after him and/or Ellie, since Jerry so much believed in what the cure meant.

maybe Joel wouldn't have been killed with a golf club, but there wouldn't have been a good ending for him.

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TheOtherMike posted...

I've already laid out what confirms that. There doesn't need to be a literal conversation with the question "Did you gain her consent?" and a "yes" or "no" for the scene to be unambiguous.

Yes, and it was finely disputed by rebirth. The context of the conversation was why Marlene was willing to allow the operation if she truly cared about Ellie. Nothing to do with consent.

If Joel is assuming, it's with more than sufficient evidence to be certain. I see no conceivable way it wouldn't cross his mind with how blatantly obvious it is given Marlene's attitude and Ellie's absence.

Literally nothing about Marlene's attitude changes with or without Ellie's consent; Joel would still threaten her, Ethan would subdue him, and things would go exactly as they did. And anyway, as several others have pointed out to you numerous times, Joel was not motivated by whether or not Ellie gave consent, so what's even your point?

Either way I'm tired of the argument, and I have better things to do now.

Yeah yeah, we'll see how true that is.


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I never thought Joel was right.

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There's no way in hell Ellie would consent to the surgery without saying her final goodbyes to Joel, but it's not like that's what was motivating Joel. So yeah, Joel was wrong because he would have killed everyone and kidnapped Ellie regardless.

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logical posted...

There's no way in hell Ellie would consent to the surgery without saying her final goodbyes to Joel, but it's not like that's what was motivating Joel. So yeah, Joel was wrong because he would have killed everyone and kidnapped Ellie regardless.

And the Fireflies werent in the wrong? They took agency away from Ellie as well by not even getting her consent in the first place before prepping her for surgery. Thats why I dont really feel bad for Jerry when he got killed.

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hockeybub89 posted...

Why do you assume he's supposed to be a hero? I knew Joel was getting what he deserved in a potential sequel immediately after I finished the first game 8 years ago

Hes an anti hero just like Ellie and Abby in TLOU2. Even though theyve done bad shit, you can still sympathize with them and root for them.

logical posted...

Joel was wrong because he would have killed everyone and kidnapped Ellie regardless.

It's very possible that with some time, Ellie could convince him to let her go through with it. Joel isn't stupid, he would know that if he tried to kidnap her she would only run away back to the Fireflies. He can't keep her hostage for the rest of his life. It may take days or weeks, but she definitely has a shot at getting Joel to see it's the right thing.

And in that time, the Fireflies could have been studying Ellie's infection and trying to find non-lethal ways to extract and culture samples, rather than going the mad scientist route and immediately killing their one and only miracle patient.

Really, if Marlene had just let Joel and Ellie talk there's a very good chance the outcome would have been positive. But she had to fuck with parental instinct, and that's a dumbshit move when you're dealing with a one man army.

JoelMiller95 posted...

Hes an anti hero just like Ellie and Abby in TLOU2. Even though theyve done bad shit, you can still sympathize with them and root for them.

Maybe more people wouldve sympathized with Abby if she was written better. It says a lot that even after ND forced you to play as her that there were tons of people gleefully willing to have her die brutally at the hands of Ellie even though you were controlling her!

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^ I disagree.

it wasn't an issue of how she was written, it was just the attachment people had with Joel and/or other issues that had them having a problem with her.

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g0ldie posted...

^ I disagree.

it wasn't an issue of how she was written, it was just the attachment people had with Joel and/or other issues that had them having a problem with her.

You know what the issues are. #1: shes a woman that doesnt look like a pornstar. #2: shes more buff than 95% of gamers.

JoelMiller95 posted...

You know what the issues are. #1: shes a woman that doesnt look like a pornstar. #2: shes more buff than 95% of gamers.

Nope. not true in the slightest. unless you have sources?

Morpheus102686 posted...

Maybe more people wouldve sympathized with Abby if she was written better.

agreed, she was a garbage character

what was wrong with how Abby was written?

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Abby was completely irredeemable in my eyes, and the ham-fisted attempts to make her more sympathetic just made it worse because of how transparently manipulative I felt they were.
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

transparently manipulative I felt they were.

what do you mean?

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I somewhat liked Abby. I didn't like Joel.

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g0ldie posted...

UnholyMudcrab posted...

transparently manipulative I felt they were.

what do you mean?

Well, take that scene with the zebra. They wanted to remake the giraffe scene, but throughout the entire thing, the overwhelming feeling I got was "Hey, look at what great, caring people Abby and her dad were. Aren't you ashamed that we made you kill him?"

It's the same kind of "force the player to do an action and then chastise them for it" stuff that made Spec Ops: The Line fall flat for me as well.
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It still blows my mind that some people thought Joel letting Ellie be sacrificed would have saved humanity. It's like they never once paid attention to what was happening in the world around them or who the Firefly's were. There was no guarantee that Ellie's death could have led to a cure and/or that it would be widely distributed in a way and not held back from certain individuals for political reasons.

There never ever was a clear cut this person or that person is in the right or wrong. There were many layers to the situation and no one except perhaps Ellie was morally clean.

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TommyG663513 posted...

It still blows my mind that some people thought Joel letting Ellie be sacrificed would have saved humanity. It's like they never once paid attention to what was happening in the world around them or who the Firefly's were. There was no guarantee that Ellie's death could have led to a cure and/or that it would be widely distributed in a way and not held back from certain individuals for political reasons.

It was confirmed by the creators that it would have been success.

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logical posted...

It was confirmed by the creators that it would have been success.

OK but that's useless info. In the real world the Fireflies and Joel would have no way of knowing.

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Imagine thinking that a group of guerilla fighters who have to scavenge basic supplies are somehow going to create a safe and effective vaccine and then somehow distribute it to everyone and not be tempted to use said miracle vaccine for their own political goals.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Well, take that scene with the zebra. They wanted to remake the giraffe scene, but throughout the entire thing, the overwhelming feeling I got was "Hey, look at what great, caring people Abby and her dad were. Aren't you ashamed that we made you kill him?"

It's the same kind of "force the player to do an action and then chastise them for it" stuff that made Spec Ops: The Line fall flat for me as well.

I think the point was more to humanize her, and show that she wasn't just this terrible, malicious person, and that her hate towards Joel is what turned things around for her.

like with Ellie, we see her during her good moments, but due to her hate towards Abby, we see her do a lot of reprehensible stuff.

plus the game doesn't point the finger at the player, since it doesn't give you any agency in how the story plays out; it just shows the destructive nature of hate, and how it affects the characters involved.

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Joel did nothing wrong. Said that in 2013, saying that now. Even if you take away the element of father/daughter between the two, the Fireflies screwed Joel out of his payment, threatened to kill him, and offered absolutely nothing to aid the two to get to the hospital in the first place. They fucked up, plain and simple.

Hell, depending on how you look at it, Ellie spends the majority of TLOU2 coming to terms with that fact as well.

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logical posted...

It was confirmed by the creators that it would have been success.

Then they failed at communicating that through the narrative. There is absolutely no dialogue in game that confirms it to be a certainty.

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All the murder wasn't exactly right, but if it's between your adopted daughter and a bunch of people trying to kill your adopted daughter, and you have the ability to choose...

More so in 2021 actually, cause we can better imagine it now - like 1 year ago some doctors do a Covid test on you and find you've got weird blood and want you to undergo a procedure that would kill you but would also create a vaccine, you would've been like 'no, figure it out another way'. If it was your child, you'd be like 'hell no, figure it out another way'. I don't really buy the point that that's what Ellie would have wanted either - both that it's an unrealistic attitude for a child to have, and also that she is a child, a minor, who wouldn't be able to make that decision now without parental consent.

Also not sure Joel was wrong to lie about it afterward either, cause how and why would you put the weight of something like that on a kid? One who's already seeming a little depressed with a touch of survivor's guilt already.

And also the medical stuff someone's probably already mentioned, that you can't vaccinate against a fungus, no point in killing the host keeping the mutated cordyceps alive, why not just start with a biopsy etc. Fireflies dumb.

TommyG663513 posted...

Then they failed at communicating that through the narrative. There is absolutely no dialogue in game that confirms it to be a certainty.

even though it wasn't presented as being a certain thing, but from the one recorder Joel picks up, the doctor believed that it was, and most likely with Joel, too.

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JoelMiller95 posted...

You know what the issues are. #1: shes a woman that doesnt look like a pornstar. #2: shes more buff than 95% of gamers.

Shut up.

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A lot of people seem to think Joel's motivations were entirely selfish, that he cared about nothing other than not losing Ellie. In the immediate sense that was probably true. He was thinking "I won't let them murder my replacement daughter!" Deeper down I think there was more to it than that though. Think about everything he had gone through and everything he had seen from the start of the game to the end.

The city he lived in at the start was one of the few places that was relatively safe and even that was hardly an ideal place. It was controlled by the military who ruled with an iron fist and often abused their power. Everywhere he and Ellie went after that was full of infected or hunters. He saw two people murdered in cold blood by hunters as they ran away and begged for their lives just so they could steal their shoes.

Henry and Sam were two of the only decent friendly people they met and he watched Sam turn into an infected and then Henry committed suicide in front of him. When they finally made it to the Fireflies, there was almost nothing left of them. There were a few scientists and military guys holed up in a hospital surrounded by infected and this small group of people were supposed to somehow create a vaccine that would save humanity even though they didn't have the equipment or resources for that, nor the ability to mass produce and distribute a vaccine to whatever remnants of humanity were left.

When Joel found the Fireflies, they treated him like a criminal. Ellie was drowning and when he pulled her out of the water and was doing CPR on her, they pointed their guns at him and knocked him out when he begged them for help. Then they were going to kill Ellie and take her brain out without asking her if she was okay with it and without even giving Joel a chance to say goodbye.

Joel knew that most of humankind had gone extinct and the majority of those who were left were either people living under an oppressive military regime, hunters who murdered outsiders on sight or crazy cultists who cannibalized people. I think that's why he didn't let Ellie die. There was almost nothing left of the world to be saved and he wasn't going to let Ellie die for the few assholes who were left behind.

Way late on this but I'll post my thoughts.

Joel's an asshole. He did what he did out of pure selfishness and then lied to Ellie's face multiple times about it.

Marlene is ever so slightly less of an asshole but still an asshole.

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Joel would have killed everyone and subsequently lied to Ellie, regardless of what she wanted. Marlene was going to operate on Ellie without her consent, and didn't even pay Joel for his services.
They both had understandable motives. They both were still wrong.

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