The Last of Us: Remastered

[The JareBear]

Ending:

Spoiler

Eh, I mean, I can see your point. If I look at the ending I can see myself believing that Joel believes, or at least is trying to convince himself, that there was no guarantee of anything and it wasn't worth the loss of his loved one. I still maintain that is a big decision for Joel to make. Also, if he didn't believe in the Fireflies once he really grew to love a Ellie wouldn't he have decided to stop the journey? I mean the whole point was these people were supposed to save the day, right? Tess clearly believed and I think Joel did do. At the end does he ever tell Marlene "this isn't even a sure bet?" I just remember him saying "find somebody else."

Definitely not a right or wrong answer situation here. Personally, I think it's not totally damnable for the FFs to fail, it's not like there is a blueprint on how to handle a zombie apocalypse. The bottom line is, the world has ended, conventional methods, logic, morality, those all really don't apply anymore.

I don't blame the FFs for their angle with Ellie and I don't blame Joel for his angle with Ellie. The beauty of this game is it doesn't force you to think a certain, play a certain way, it doesn't have an agenda. It presents itself and delivers it's content expertly and lets the user decide how to play, think, or feel. Honestly it's a pretty "realistic" take on the whole scenario and a refreshing one.

Everyone in the game, from Joel to Tommy to Marlene to David to Ellie to the Fireflies, I mean everyone, is just living the life they think is the best route to survive. They have bought into their method or lifestyle and basically have to have faith in their belief that they are right because without that, they really have nothing to hold onto. Joel makes a comment to Ellie right before they enter that big two story store with all the hunters inside, when she is asking about why the government was holding out food and whatnot, and he basically says "the many outweigh the few" not those words precisely but something similar.

I know that Joel is hard not to empathize or sympathize with. In no way do I think he or his intentions were evil. I just think he's a flawed man, an anti-hero for lack of a better term, as really they all are except for Ellie, and I love his character for that and I love how ND made so many subtle yet profoundly deep touches to his beautiful game.

[Burns11]

Quote: Originally Posted by The JareBear

Ending: Spoiler Eh, I mean, I can see your point. If I look at the ending I can see myself believing that Joel believes, or at least is trying to convince himself, that there was no guarantee of anything and it wasn't worth the loss of his loved one. I still maintain that is a big decision for Joel to make. Also, if he didn't believe in the Fireflies once he really grew to love a Ellie wouldn't he have decided to stop the journey? I mean the whole point was these people were supposed to save the day, right? Tess clearly believed and I think Joel did do. At the end does he ever tell Marlene "this isn't even a sure bet?" I just remember him saying "find somebody else."

Spoiler

There was never a cost applied there, it was never said they were going to kill and dissect Ellie, just study her. If it didn't work, no harm no foul, they could just eventually leave.

I mean, if somebody came up to you and said "I can cure cancer, all I need from you is an x-ray", I'm sure you would just say OK. It's an x-ray, literally just a picture. Now if that guy said "I can cure cancer, all I need is remove your testicles with these pruning shears", I think you might feel like you need an explanation there. If you say no, are you saying "**** humanity, I like my testicles"? Of course not, there is just a level of trust that needs to be there for something so drastic. So just continuing to meet up with the fireflies doesn't mean you have total faith in everything the fireflies might do.

[SinisterAlex]

Quote: Originally Posted by LionsFanNJ

I broke down the ending back on the ps3 release like this. Spoilered just in case Spoiler The world took everything from Joel, now he's taking something from the world Sent from my GT-P5210 using Tapatalk

That's deep.

[Scott]

Just finished the game, really enjoyed it..Took me 15 hours, 34 mins.

[thedudedominick]

Some thoughts on the end:

Spoiler

Joel wasn't a hero, but he wasn't necessarily a madman. I, like some others have mentioned, didn't have much faith in the fireflies to "save humanity." Joel had found one little part of his own humanity he had lost. He was now a father figure to a girl around his daughter's age. Killing Ellie wasn't going to guarantee anything for humanity. For all we know she is unique and no matter what is done the mutation of the fungus would only be with her.

We also only see this small fraction of the overall world. Who knows what FEDRA is doing. They may quarantine people as they turn, who knows if they found someone else.

I also believe Ellie knows Joel is lying to her at the end, but in a way wants him to get the weight of humanity off of her shoulders the way he did.

She didn't seem like she knew she was going to have to sacrifice her life. She even had a couple lines about a future with Joel in the last chapter before the hospital.

I think the biggest mistake on the fireflies part was not letting Joel see Ellie. I'm not saying his viewpoint would have changed, but if she had a chance to tell him straight to his face "I want to sacrifice myself for the greater good" it would have made his decision much tougher.

[zanner]

My take :

Spoiler

I don't fault Joel, there's perhaps some selfishness in his decision but that selfishness was the result of finding it in him to care about someone again. And as I played through the second time, there's no certainty that her death would have brought a.) a cure or b.)any good. From just the limited viewpoint and story of Joel and Ellie, even if she died and a cure was found is it still worth the sacrifice when it seems like there's no saving humanity at this point? It seems as though nobody has anyone they truly care about left throughout the whole story so it's a fractured society that there isn't any true happiness left from everything we witnessed; only surviving. Having a cure doesn't change the fact that humanity has become relationally fractured and as nasty and in many ways worse than a clicker or infected. And on that note, sacrificing Ellie isn't worth curing a lost cause in his mind. Which is the irony of the situation because of the transition we see with Joe who was heartless even from the first car ride not picking up the family to his final decision where he has human feelings and relationship that is driving his decision.

[DickDalewood]

Four more:

http://i.picpar.com/b8Z.jpg

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http://i.picpar.com/d8Z.jpg

http://i.picpar.com/e8Z.jpg

[The JareBear]

Quote: Originally Posted by thedudedominick

Some thoughts on the end: Spoiler Joel wasn't a hero, but he wasn't necessarily a madman. I, like some others have mentioned, didn't have much faith in the fireflies to "save humanity." Joel had found one little part of his own humanity he had lost. He was now a father figure to a girl around his daughter's age. Killing Ellie wasn't going to guarantee anything for humanity. For all we know she is unique and no matter what is done the mutation of the fungus would only be with her. We also only see this small fraction of the overall world. Who knows what FEDRA is doing. They may quarantine people as they turn, who knows if they found someone else. I also believe Ellie knows Joel is lying to her at the end, but in a way wants him to get the weight of humanity off of her shoulders the way he did. She didn't seem like she knew she was going to have to sacrifice her life. She even had a couple lines about a future with Joel in the last chapter before the hospital. I think the biggest mistake on the fireflies part was not letting Joel see Ellie. I'm not saying his viewpoint would have changed, but if she had a chance to tell him straight to his face "I want to sacrifice myself for the greater good" it would have made his decision much tougher.

I agree. More ending talk, and also a spoiler from the book "The Road." Just an advanced warning.

Spoiler

Had that been a part of the end, had you heard her say to Joel "this is what I want" this would have been an entirely different discussion, especially had he still decided to turn around at the end and pull her out the hospital.

I can't argue that was no guarantee of anything, there definitely wasn't. I guess the debate really comes down to what Ellie truly wanted, which I guess we don't know for sure. All we know is at the end she says she is "still waiting for my turn," and Marlene tells Joel "she wanted this." I always assumed that meant that Ellie had signed off on the sacrifice (her comments about a future with Joel were, I had assumed, before she was told that the surgery would kill her and she agreed to do it. I realize now I may have been wrong) but now I see where I may have made an incorrect inference there. Maybe Marlene is lying, since Ellie never says anything about the surgery or anything, she just asks "what happened?" It might signify that after she was resuscitated by the the FFs after drowning that she never really "woke up" and was put right to sleep and had no say in the matter.

Anyway, I guess we really don't know for sure. At the end of The Road, when I asserted that the ending was a good ending but two of my friends felt it was a bad ending and the family at end was evil. We debated it hard for awhile until finally I realized there wasn't a right answer. There's no for sure proof either way. You can infer different meanings based on the rest of the book.

The fact that the Fireflies didn't let Joel see Ellie first is suspicious, I mean what was the hurry? She's a healthy young kid, wasn't going anywhere. I didn't think about that at first.

Personally, I still believe thts Ellie is the only true hero. I think Joel and the FFs both were serving their own agenda at the end and I "fault" (using that term loosely) both of them equally. Or maybe I don't fault either of them, I'm not sure how to accurately describe my stance, I'm trying to say in either guilt or innocence they are equal, they both believed in what they were doing.

Another personal question that this discussion relies on is how much do you value a single life when weighed against the possibility of a cure. Again, I think Ellie and Ellie alone, not the FF or Joel, has the authority to make a call on that, and as already stated, we don't really know for sure.

Joel is a really good character and I hope we see him again in another game at some point. The comments you guys have made make me really see his transformation.


Here's a question for those that think Joel was right. If you don't fault Joel at all, do you fault the FFs? It seems to me that they believed in finding a cure just has much as Joel believed in saving Ellie. I'm not saying they were right, just saying, can you see where they were coming from or to you are they just the bad guys?

I really have enjoyed reading all of your opinions fellas, great stuff. Thanks for indulging me, wish I had been around for the ps3 version discussion.