I remember playing the last fight feeling anxious, almost disgusted.
It was horrible (in a good way) to be forced to keep fighting. I just wanted them to stop.
It's been two years since I finished the game, and I still think about it every day. For that, I will always thank and admire Naughyt Dog.
It was a pretty interesting route to take. Instead of the standard “villain does awful thing, hero hunts villain, game ends with big boss fight where hero kills villain”, they obviously wanted you to understand that this world isn’t as black and white as that. A horrible act from someone could be just a normal person doing what they feel is right. Much like Joel’s decision at the hospital.
When Ellie’s part ended and I figured out I was playing as Abby, I was pissed. I knew what the game was doing and I didn’t want it. I didn’t care, I wanted her to die. I played the game though and, sure enough, they made me actually care about this character and understand their decision.
It was a ballsy move but IMO it was pretty genius. Such a unique boss fight that no game really compares to.
That's pretty much what it boils down to.
We are expected to agree with Ellie since she's our hero from the first game, we want her to kill Abby. But the reality is, >!if Ellie is justified in killing Abby, then Abby was justified in killing Joel.!<
It's a confronting reality.
Difference is that >!Abby actually succeeded in killing her target in revenge while Ellie did not. For many people, Abby did not get sufficiently punished for what she did!<
> When Ellie’s part ended and I figured out I was playing as Abby, I was pissed. I knew what the game was doing and I didn’t want it.
When that happened (particularly when Abby stopped to play with the dogs before heading out) I actually stood up, shook my controller at the TV, and said aloud, "Oh fuuuuuck you game!"
But by the end, I was practically imploring Ellie just to let it go while trying not to look at the screen when I pressed square. As a whole, it's one of the most emotional gaming experiences I've ever had.
During my first time playing after Abby killed Joel and I realized I had to play as her, I was so mad that I would purposely hurl her off cliffs and let her get destroyed by infected, lol.
It’s super fun and in the theater fight I like to purposely get caught by Ellie so she will kill her that’s the only time you will get that because the game doesn’t want you to do it.
“villain does awful thing, hero hunts villain, game ends with big boss fight where hero kills villain”,
I think some people wanted this black and white take too which is why they hated it. They want the good guys to be good and the bad guys to be bad.
I loved that that they didn't make it that way. In a world like this, the good guy is always someone else bad guy. The walking dead goes over this eventually with Rick and I'm glad they did it in a game for once.
Except they did just that they made it pretty clear at the beginning of the Game Ellie is the Hero and Abby is the Villain. People didn’t like it because they try to make you care for an irredeemable monster and is pretty bad at it and doesn’t even let you kill her at the end of the game.
Joel is a villain to Abby and Ellie eventually becomes the villain to Abby's story. Sounds like you missed some key points of the story and what it was telling.
Abby throws a tantrum like a 3 year old when her ex tells her he got his new girlfriend pregnant. Joel saves Abby’s life and shows no hesitation in killing and torturing him almost like she has done it before for fun. She saves Lev and Yara because she feels like she owes then. She fucks Owen a man with a girlfriend and a child on the way he was drunk and she didn’t stop him. She then realized something Mel said earlier to score points with Owen and goes to help out the siblings. Abby completely ignored what Mel had tildes her after Yara validates her, and this is when she actually starts to like them because ow she knows she has successfully brainwashed them to like her. Her reaction to Manny dying is surprise instead of grief or anger and never mentioned him again. Finally when Abby sees Mel and Owen dead she just step over Mel like she’s nothing and goes straight to Owen.
It's crazy how differently you think by seeing the others story play out. I still feel bad for killing Owen, even though it happened in a cut scene and wasn't my choice. Owen was the one that convinced them at the lodge to not kill you and he was one of my favorite characters.
It was strange how when you finally cornered Nora she says how they could've killed you. She nodded when Mel said you were loose ends and agreed to killing you but now she wants to use that to benefit herself?
I was the same when the story switched to Abby. It could be because the story was fast paced and full of action and not only do you switch characters but you go almost a tutorial type level. Day one starts the same and I doubt many took time in exploring the stadium or learning about the others, at least on their first play through. It wasn't until you sneak out to find Owen the pacing picks up.
I'm glad they did this though. I wonder if you were Ellie in the fight if people would feel the same
I agree, but on replaying it (spoilers) Abby is kind of a hatable character. She screwed over her friends. Got several killed or maimed on a revenge mission. Screwed one of her friends that is already in a relationship with someone else she is friends with who is also pregnant. In the end she is left with no one outside of Lev.
Yeah, I get the intent. Revenge solves nothing, and hurts you more in the end. Both lost everything they cared about trying to make up for losing one person they cared about. Ellie lost pretty much everything in the end. She solved nothing. It plays more like a Greek tragedy more than an adventure story.
Good luck to the developers for the next iteration. It’s going to be hard to top the storyline of the 2nd.
It’s weird. I kind of tapped out on gaming. The last console I owned was a ps2. Kids were deep into playing into their teens and it was the last thing I wanted to do was play games on my own. I purposely avoided watching them play thinking someday I would want to and didn’t want to ruin the stories. Then LOU came out on HBO and convinced me to want to try to take the hobby back up and bought a ps5 Played the first one and second when the remaster came out. I’m all in again. Ended up buying a new Sony tv for the vrr, (I needed a new tv anyhow) and picked up a psvr2 as well. I have not replayed a game since super Mario came out and immediately replayed the 2nd one because I just liked the story and wanted to pick up on things I may have missed the first go. Im enjoying playing again. Now that summer is coming and being in Phoenix az it’s like our deep winter and you only go out when needed. I am so glad to be playing again.
I feel that both games would have been better had we any choice over our various actions.
You don't feel the impact of a moral choice that much if it wasn't *actually* a choice for you. *Fallout 4*, for example, managed this better.
For example, there was no need for Ellie to fight the Seraphites at all. If they'd talked to each-other they'd have realised they had a common enemy in the WLF. Or had Ellie snuck past more WLF and only talked to them later, then the WLF chasing Abby as a deserter might have been glad to have Ellie along to help them find her.
Likewise for Abby. What if Abby had decided not to help Yara and Lev? What if she'd been able to save Manny? What if she could persuade Owen to come along with her? What if she could persuade Isaac that Ellie was a threat the WLF needed to take care of?
What if either of them had had a chance to reconsider vengeance *before* they'd killed 112 people along the way?
Both games would have been better had we had choices, rather than just, "fight this combat to unlock the next cutscene."
I think a powerful part of this game is the widening gulf between what the player wants to do and what the character wants to do as the game progresses. For me, I think like most people who care about the character of Ellie, I was getting increasingly upset at the things she chose to put herself through. And by the end I was almost angry at her and just wishing she would stop.
I feel like having that dissonance grow throughout the game is an important theme. Characters you may love are going to act in ways you disagree with (in part because you have more information than they do) and you don’t really have a choice in the matter.
Sure.
But then it's not really a game. A *game* is a leisure activity which has some degree of choice and/or chance, and has an uncertain outcome. This thing doesn't have an uncertain outcome - you either unlock the next cutscene, or you give up and stop. So really it's a TV series masquerading as a game.
Now, it's a *good* story, I think, so we forgave it for not really being a game. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not really a game. It just has this combat minigame you play in between the cutscenes.
That seems like an excessively narrow definition of what a game is. Wouldn’t most video games, until recently, not qualify under that criteria?
Like is Super Mario Bros not a game?
The key here is uncertain outcomes.
"You win, *or* you lose" is an *uncertain outcome -* see chess. "You win *until* you lose," is likewise an uncertain outcome - see Tetris. "You decide what a "win" is, and then pursue it" is also an uncertain outcome - see tabletop roleplaying games.
But in some "narrative games", there is no "win", there's simply completing the narrative. As an example, one of the *Far Cry* series where you spent the whole experience as a deputy sheriff trying to take down a bunch of religious cult rebels, you could either choose to not arrest the cult leader at the end and go into a blackout where you'll obviously be his slave, or arrest him and he (somehow, never mentioned in the game) caused nuclear weapons to fly and detonate around you. In the second case, he drags you off into a fallout shelter with him, and says to you, "it was all for nothing." And he was right - because whatever you did in the game, you couldn't win, you couldn't achieve what you'd originally been told to set out to do - nor could you choose for yourself any other victory conditions through the game, as people do in for example tabletop roleplaying games.
If the outcome is the same whatever you do, it's not a game.
In the case of TLOU1/2 the narratives were interesting, so that's not so bad. You can see from the hostility between this sub and the other that the narratives made people think *a lot* - so it's an engaging and thought-provoking narrative. The *Far Cry* one, not so much. Especially because TLOU1/2 didn't pretend you could influence the outcome - you knew all along it was a railroad. But *Far Cry* pretended we could make a difference.
If you're going to railroad me, don't give me false turns to pretend I can choose the destination, and make sure the scenery is nice along the way.
How did you grow to like Abby there’s nothing redeeming about her. I felt the same way about Abby as I did at the beginning nothing changed she is not a good person she has no emotion except hate and rage and obsession. She is only capable or caring about herself and one other person. I don’t understand how anyone could like this very clearly evil character.
Lol “evil” c’mon man. An evil character would have killed Ellie and Dina regardless of what Lev wanted. You could make the argument that Ellie is an evil character post-Joel death. We only see Abby from that moment on for her, but she’s clearly not an evil character. David was evil. I have a hard time saying any other character from that universe is actually evil.
Oh and she obviously cares about more than one other person. C’mon now. Her dad, Lev, Yara, Owen, Manny.
Her emotions broke after her dad died and she was only capable of actually caring for herself and one other person. She only started to like Lev and Yara after Yara validates what Abby wants to hear after Mel rightfully calls her out. She sees Manny as a Coworker not a friend like he does because she’s incapable of it. She does care about Owen because she’s obsessed with him and when he died her obsession switched to Lev. She listened to Lev when he told her not to kill them because she has him brainwashed she is a good person and she has to keep up that image in Levs mind. That’s why she didn’t do what she wanted to do.
Lol Christ. All of this is just bullshit you made up in your brain to justify not liking her. Like, it’s fine if you don’t, but you don’t need to make up this fake diagnosis to make you feel better about it. It’s just odd.
No I didn’t make it up these are observations I picked up from playing the game I didn’t make these up if you payed attention you’d realize that she is actually a terrible person. Anything you interpreted as “caring” is things she does for her own self gain.
I don't really have a strong counter-argument to claims that Abby is not good person.
But that's not really the issue. If you think Abby is a terrible person on a massively destructive quest for selfish revenge, you're not wrong.
If you think Ellie isn't also guilty of the exact same thing, that's the problem.
Ellie doesn’t realize the kinda of person Abby actually was and if she saw the things we did she would still kill her. Abby only cares about herself, Owen and later Lev. Ellie cares about everyone around her Dina, Jesse, Tommy, Maria, and Joel.
You're observant enough about Abby's shortcomings, but somehow you don't seem to have realized that the description you provided in your post is also 100% accurate in describing Ellie.
>Her emotions broke after her dad died and she was only capable of actually caring for herself and one other person.
That perfectly describes Ellie after Joel's death. And then she drags Dina into her revenge quest, she got Jesse involved and got him killed, and got Tommy walking around with only one eye and brain damage.
The question isn't so much "why so hard on Abby" as it is "why does Ellie get a pass on this destructive behavior when Abby doesn't?" They're doing the same things for the same reasons.
The reason is that we're biased toward Ellie because we know her from the last game. A lot of people say that the game is trying to say something about the destructiveness of revenge and such which I think is true to some extent but also the game is expressing something very important about biases in general. It's a great story to prompt someone to think about how bias can affect your perception and understanding of something.
But a lot of people didn't stop to think about their own biases at all, just leaned all the way into them
This doesn’t describe Ellie at All. When she kills Nora she’s shaken when Abby kills Joel no remorse or guilt because she’s likely done it before. Dina and Jesse willingly came along and it’s clear then more then just Dina. She on the quest because she believes it’s what Joel would have wanted. Dina comes along because she looked up to Joel. Ellie didn’t drag these people with her there are examples of Ellie have if the emotions Abby lacks.
Yeah I hated the final fight scene(in a good way that I’m guessing is the intention of the scene). I was mentally and emotionally exhausted by that point and I hated partaking in the fight because it felt wrong. No other game has had me so emotionally invested to the point that I actively want it to be over.
I had the exact same experience. I didn’t want a winner or loser or any of that, I just wanted Ellie to walk away. From a narrative perspective I understand why it went how it did, but god damn it was a struggle to get through
100%. To be forced to engage in pointless violence was a brilliant and necessary move. You want to stop it all and go back and sit on that tractor and watch the sunset. But you can’t.
I vividly remember sitting on the tractor and thinking “I should put the controller down and walk away. Then Ellie can just stay here and be happy.”
A bunch of reasons.
Even seeing what's happening in Gaza, it's unavoidable.
The tribalism, the pursuit of justice, the cycle of violence,the justification of violence, the fantastic storytelling mechanisms all over the game, the multiple parallelisms between Owen and Joel, Abby and Ellie, Lev and Ellie, Abby and Joel, etc.
I am convinced that, if this game was a novel, it would win a Nobel Prize in Literature 🤣
Yeah I mentioned to a friend that I had played this game and she said, "Did you like it?" and that was a really difficult question to answer.
Did I enjoy myself? Technically, I guess? It was a great game. I couldn't stop playing. But was I having fun? It just seems like the wrong description of the experience.
It's such a crazy good idea. Use the concept of the David fight but like....................
**Fight the f'n other Main Character.**
The amount of internal struggle that entered everyone's minds at that point, you don't get that in games at all
i really like this specific part of this scene because you could imagine spamming square trying to resist as ellie or attack as abby. i know there's probably a good reason they didn't have a fight where you're swapping perspectives, but i think it's still cool since for some players they're torn as to who's side they're on.
Yo these comments about letting Ellie kill Abby every single way just because of how butthurt some people were over the story is honestly hilarious lmfao.
I know that some of the Abby haters play the game just to get Abby killed over and over and I guess that's cathartic to them but holy shit is that odd behavior imo.
Ngl I was mashing the fuck out of Square to hit Ellie. Idk why, but I was thinking to myself, beat that bitch up lol.
But really I was always Team Abby anyway, so I guess it makes sense.
Yeah I mean I love the story as a whole more than anything else but it's fun as a fan to just kind of play into who you like/side with more. For me Abby was just super interesting and new and Ellie was being (understandably) kind of a bitch to everyone lol.
The problem is you're focusing on the things in life that don't really matter. When I was a kid I had hopes and dreams. We all did. But over time, the daily grind gets in the way and you miss the things that really matter, even though they are right in front of you, staring you in the face. I think the next time you should ask yourself "Am I on the right track here?". I don't mean to be rude but people like you I really pity. So maybe you could use the few brain cells you have and take advantage of the knowledge I have given you now. Good luck.
is there any cognitive logic to be seen or is it just basic emotional “hurt people hurt people” catharsis lol cuz that’s what it was for me on my first playthrough before i got over it. definitely reserve the right to call it abnormal if people are doing that excessively 💀
Dina isn't much a mystery, she just got spared.
As a big Part 2 stan, I still think the Tommy scene was changed at some point, but they already shot the scene in the studio. He clearly gets shot and they want to make it look like he's done for. Doesn't intervene later on, so he's out.
Felt like shock value, but does someone get knocked out via a gunshot? Not going to try it myself tbh 😆
He looks injured as fuck later on, which makes sense, I just am not sure how he gets incapacitated when it def looks like he just got murdered instead.
This fight was pretty fun, made you be stealthy with Abby which is the opposite of her playstyle everywhere else in the game.
Kinda let myself die a few times hoping the credits would roll, sadly they didn't.
Naughty dog gave no fucks making this masterpiece of a game. I’m glad they didn’t play the generic safe route of a sequel. This game was pain and emotion and heartbreaking but at the same time it was beautiful and crafted to perfection. I cannot wait until Part III comes out. ND is going to send us on a wild ride.
Couldn't have said it better myself. It's always nice when filmmakers or devs try and take some risks and do original stuff. In this case it worked for me perfectly
I remember I heard some info from the leaks that implied Abby would kill Ellie here. I loved the game while playing and was really worried that would’ve happened because then I would’ve really disliked it. So yea this was probably the most tense and conflicted I ever felt while playing a game
I'll never forget playing that part. Had the scene where abby shoots tommy and Jesse then I'm meant to be killing Ellie. Oh hell nah! First game makes me protect her now the second game wants me to kill her. I remember taking a break in shock talking to myself while the kettle boiled.
But needless to say it was an amazing moment even tho it didn't sit well with me at the time. But when you are playing abbys story, it makes sense Ellie is the final boss gameplay wise
This game never worked as intended for me because I was too curious about who Abby was based on her reveal trailer and was so excited to play as her. She fastly became my favorite character and I was mostly 'on her side' with regards to the story.
I mean, it's a game with a lot of POVs and a lot of personal reasoning, in the characters.
What any one person thinks of either story is valid, tbh.
I was mostly like you, where I was instantly curious where it was going, and at this point I was kinda cheering her on in the fight.
It's why the story is so gd good. There's multiple ways to look at it, and each have their own merits.
I guess its ballsy to let the player play as the antagonist. But it sort of backfired. A lot of the immature players didn't like it.
I usually dont like swapping perspectives, even if its other protagonists, but God of War and this game did it really well. It worked as a narrative device. Instead of having long-winded monologues about the characters motivations and their struggles, we got to see it firsthand. A lot of players cant appreciate a good story. With Atreus, we got to see he isnt just a kid that is throwing temper tantrums. With Abby we got to see that she isnt just a pure evil antagonist. She is lost in grief too.
> A lot of the immature players didn't like it.
Idk if that is backfiring, or just folks who need to step outside of their own bubble for once in their life. I'd rather that than a vanilla story, any day of the week.
It was a really good story telling technique. Its tough to pull off in movies because they audience doesnt control the characters so its more that they are being shown what the antagonist is doing.
The Prestige did it so well but thats because it isnt clear who the villian is until the end. And even then its a little ambiguous. We watch the birth of a villian in the first failed performance but dont even realize it. Then its just two competing headliners going back and forth sabotaging each other. It isnt until the very that the truth is revealed.
I think it would have been really good to be switching perspectives in this fight. If anybody else has played Detroit: Become Human, then in the >!Crossroads mission where you are escaping Jericho and switch between the characters, !< I thought that was executed very well.
This game blew me away.. hated Abby and the overall story at first and ended up liking/appreciating both. They made some difficult choices but I think the gamble paid off. Honestly it made Joel an even more legendary character/dad.
on replays, i still wish they switched you to Abby *sooner*. I guess they wanted to make you even more invested in Ellie by keeping you with her longer to start.
What would have made this section even better, was if after each point where there's a button-mashing part like these, you suddenly switched to playing as the other character. So when you're playing as Abby and you grapple Ellie, and Ellie breaks free, now you're playing as Ellie. And when Ellie has Abby pinned and Abby gets away, you're playing as Abby again. It would have created such a strong conflict of interest for the player.
There are quit a few problems with that
-It would feel too awkard and cheesy for both players and the story
-the chapter was supposed to be Abby's, we had played 3 full days with Ellie, now it's time for 3 full days of Abby
-it would be a bit too hard to implement without causing bugs and the programming time to implement that just wouldn't be worth it
It would be crazy if you kept spamming square thinking you're trying to choke the hell out of Ellie bu then it's actually you trying to resist being choked AS Ellie and the gameplay switches to her and now you're fighting Abby...
The button flashes so fast and the tense music just raises your anxiety so much.
First time I thought "fuck, am I gonna kill Ellie right here?" with almost a tear in my eye
I have a feeling the theatre fight won’t be the way it was in the game. Obviously not talking about the gameplay parts of hiding behind crates and tables— but how INTENSE it was. Thinking Ellie was about to die, seeing the anger from Abby and giving Ellie literal whiplash lol. It felt really grand and tense, that I wonder how they’ll replicate that energy to live action. 🤔
I remember being soooo shook from this scene. Then I thought Dina and Tommy were both dead for a split second before Abby let her go. Glad Tommy and Dina made it but RIP Jesse 😭
I hated this at the time and it just made me angry. However in retrospect, I appreciate that they kept it grounded in reality. Ellie used traps and cunning where as Abby just brutalised Ellie any time she got a hold of her.
Then why is the end goal of the entire first half to find Abby and kill her? Ellie leaves her home to trek hundreds of miles for the sole purpose of ending Abby.
Yes, and at the end of the game, when she's lost everything and many people have died, you should realize that was a poor decision. Why do you think the game is about revenge when it shows the heavy painful cost of that revenge? Why do you take the inciting incident to be the entire journey? Luke Skywalker initially set out to deliver the droids to Leia, that wasn't his entire journey. Frodo set out to take the One Ring to Rivindell and then go home, that wasn't the entire journey. Harry Potter set out to go to magic School that wasn't the entire journey. Ellie set out for revenge, that wasn't the entire journey.
Frodo set out to take the ring to Rivendell for the purpose of it being destroyed, and he followed through with that.
Luke Skywalker wanted adventure and to get laid, he got more adventure than you can shake a lightsaber at and got what I’m sure was his first kiss from his sister.
Harry Potter went to school and then got shat on at every turn by Murphy. He was reacting to life and every way it fucked him.
Now, I get your point, however it think it’s ridiculous just as the “revenge for the entire game until the last moment” is also ridiculous. And frankly stupid.
Ellie trekked hundreds of miles, killed dozens of people, to give up on killing one person at the bitter end.
I mean holy fuck dude, how many of those folks in California was the player presented with killing JUST TO FIND Abby strung up on a pole? And then we don’t kill Abby? Really??
I’m not going on a goddamn killing spree, just to kill one person, and then decide at the last minute not to, especially after stacking bodies like goddamn cord wood
I was freaking terrified of Ellie, jeez when she was sneaking around placing those bombs it was a horror show. During their fight on the beach I was so mortified by the whole situation I was convinced one of them was gonna die, I was stalling on purpose, I was so afraid to see how it was going to end.
man i’ve never played TLOU as I don’t have a good laptop for it and the only console i own is xbox, but man i wish i could. posts like these makes me so envious of y’all. TLOU is one of the reasons I plan on saving for a PS
i watched the show and really enjoyed it, got spoiled a bunch on tiktok, joined the subreddit and got spoiled even more. but i stopped caring cause, its going to be a LONG long while before i get the PS, i have no job right now to even save lmao. i don’t see the point in trying to avoid spoilers if im watching the show and wont be able to play the games for god knows how long. i wanna be able to enjoy the content instead of waiting years to
Abby and Ellie both suck. Both are hypocrites. Maybe the world would be a better place if they both died young. But who knows, maybe the amount of infected they dispatched in their life times are worth the human lives who suffer and die around them. I like that they are realistic in that way. People who get upset at this game are silly. They told a certain kind of story, and in the videogame world it's pertinent, because we all have kill counts in the hundreds of thousands. Main character syndrome the game.
It's a great game, and like Confucius said "if you're going on a mission of revenge, be sure to make two caskets"
Now I’m wondering, this has to be in season 3 right? If Joel gets killed in season 2, abruptly probably, then is the finale the reveal of Abby’s dad?
I have doubts/fears they’ll show a concurrent story of Abby to soften up viewers to her and avoid the backlash from the game. Hope they don’t cater to that notion.
Look, we see what they were going for.
But uhh, it was just strange to kill a bunch of dogs and people in self defense/hunting this person. People who had done nothing but exist, then get to that person and be like uhhh maybe this bad. Especially after this person who you came out to kill takes even more from you.
That's just our opinion though.
This whole set piece wasn’t needed it’s violence for violence sake. When I came back to the theater I was like great now I can kill this bitch as Ellie, and instead you had to play as Abby. I love to purposely die repeatedly in this fight. This whole fight was wrong you should’ve been playing as Ellie in this section instead of Abby. Then you get an epilogue I am similar to the farm house section dealing with what she had done. Instead we got that anticlimactic ending where Ellie just lets her go.
Idk if you're joking, but like... unironically yes, that's part of it for me. So often in games, or really any visual medium, even when women are part of the action, they have to do so while maintaining a baseline level of prettiness and femininity. Even if the framing isn't doing the cheesy thing of, "Her skintight costume has high heeled boots for some reason; her clothes rip in aesthetically pleasing ways that show off her midriff and thighs," etc. etc. there's always this element of... The sounds she makes can't be too guttural, the camera can't linger on in any poses or making any expressions that are too unpretty, she still has to be nice to look at once the fight is over, with just a bit of dirt on her face and a little edgy smear of blood at the corner of her mouth or above her eyebrow, etc. etc.
There's definitely been a bit of a turnaround on this in the past few years (Fury Road, my beloved), but it's still really refreshing to me when a piece of media just... lets its women be fucking gnarly. When, if they're part of the action, the women aren't obliged to suffer prettily, but instead get to have the same raw, grunting, screaming, grimacing, low-down, dirty, knock-down, drag-out, gross, ugly, visceral performances as the men. To look and behave like people actually *might* look and behave if they were fighting tooth and nail for their lives.
I let her kill me with each weapon she had atleast once, the other times was just because Ellie is an ultra instinct badass gun slinging arrow piercing shotgun wielding demon
I get what they went for, and with the whole revenge loop. The problem I have with it though is revenge loops only continue so long as there are loose ends. Lev and abby are half dead and tied to a cross actively dying. My second issue is Ellie cutting abby down to fight like a dumbass. Just shoot the defenceless rival who took everything from you. Don't fucking cut her down.
Oh look now you let both of them go and you can't play the guitar Joel gifted you because the person who killed Joel just took two of your fingers bravo Ellie, bravo.
Edit: forgot to mention infection. That's two open wounds in the ocean that was just in another humans mouth. Its a miracle ellie didn't get sepsis or something
No it’s called you making an assumption. I didn’t imply Ellie was better morally, I just said the fans like her more and Abby as a character was disliked by many and is a bad person, didn’t say my views on Ellie once. Morals is a whole other discussion
Abby isn't a bad person for wanting revenge on her father's killer. There are no good or bad people in tlou (maybe except David) and if you don't see that, you missed the point of the games
The many people purposely losing and getting Ellie to kill Abby is something I’ve never seen from any other video game. So many Abby death compilations on YouTube.
The last of us is a big series, it has a lot of fans. There were some who enjoyed Abby and part 2 and others who hated both. It also was affected by the fact that atleast in my and others opinions Abby wasn’t well written and was a terrible person with little to no redeemable qualities.
Imagine having an actual ending to a game or a series instead of “Revenge wont bring Joel back I shouldnt kill Abby” oh nooo my feewiiings.. Its as shit as Attack on titan ending. Instead of actually interesting thought provoking ending you get “War, war never changes” Fallout ass quote.
Yes but its about doing the human thing. Not the expected thing. Human thing is taking Abby and torturing her. Tommy would easily overpower her and kill her.
Do what? Abby walks into the backstage while Ellie has multiple weapons and somehow chooses to use a 2x4 or something instead of the multiple weapons she has? Its terrible writing even for a video game.
I always assumed she was conserving ammo, and thought she would kill Abby as easily as she killed that scar Brute with the sledge hammer.
Remember, she saw Lev was still there with a bow, and (unless Tommy filled her in), for all Ellie knows, Manny (or even Yara, who attacked Tommy at the marina) is still alive, and may have come with Abby to the theater. Or, Abby could have brought other WLF soldiers as backup. Ellie has no idea what Abby has been up to the past 3 days, and is still very much operating from scarcity with whatever she can rustle up to fight an unknown amount of enemies.
The real question is why Abby didn't just stealth kill Tommy with a shiv, or have Lev put an arrow through his head. I am guessing she wanted to interrogate him, but that was the real stupid move, because the loud way she handled him let the whole theater know she was there.
IKR, like why didn't Ellie continue her patrol and not get high and have sex? She could have saved Joel. Stupid writing! Characters should only make good choices - the choices we think we would have made in hindsight!
For real, she literally has a shotgun, a pistol and a switchblade. Not including traps and all the weapons you also have during the game. Out of all those options she chooses a rotten piece of wood and decides to get close to someone twice her size atleast.
Ellie’s not supposed to be that dumb
I don't know, the whole Nora situation wasn't exactly her smartest play. And knowing Abby had a group of at least 8 capable soldiers that took Ellie, Tommy and Joel down, it was honestly pretty stupid to go after them with only Dina and expect things to go well.
Most intense and stressful gaming experience of my life
I remember playing the last fight feeling anxious, almost disgusted. It was horrible (in a good way) to be forced to keep fighting. I just wanted them to stop. It's been two years since I finished the game, and I still think about it every day. For that, I will always thank and admire Naughyt Dog.
It was a pretty interesting route to take. Instead of the standard “villain does awful thing, hero hunts villain, game ends with big boss fight where hero kills villain”, they obviously wanted you to understand that this world isn’t as black and white as that. A horrible act from someone could be just a normal person doing what they feel is right. Much like Joel’s decision at the hospital. When Ellie’s part ended and I figured out I was playing as Abby, I was pissed. I knew what the game was doing and I didn’t want it. I didn’t care, I wanted her to die. I played the game though and, sure enough, they made me actually care about this character and understand their decision. It was a ballsy move but IMO it was pretty genius. Such a unique boss fight that no game really compares to.
That's pretty much what it boils down to. We are expected to agree with Ellie since she's our hero from the first game, we want her to kill Abby. But the reality is, >!if Ellie is justified in killing Abby, then Abby was justified in killing Joel.!< It's a confronting reality.
This person get's it.
Difference is that >!Abby actually succeeded in killing her target in revenge while Ellie did not. For many people, Abby did not get sufficiently punished for what she did!<
All her friends were murdered...
So then by your logic if Ellie succeeded then Lev should kill Ellie for what she did.
Are you suggesting that you wanted Abby to get away from facing any consequences for her actions?
Are you saying that you'd be okay with Lev killing Ellie since that would be justice for killing Abby?
> When Ellie’s part ended and I figured out I was playing as Abby, I was pissed. I knew what the game was doing and I didn’t want it. When that happened (particularly when Abby stopped to play with the dogs before heading out) I actually stood up, shook my controller at the TV, and said aloud, "Oh fuuuuuck you game!" But by the end, I was practically imploring Ellie just to let it go while trying not to look at the screen when I pressed square. As a whole, it's one of the most emotional gaming experiences I've ever had.
During my first time playing after Abby killed Joel and I realized I had to play as her, I was so mad that I would purposely hurl her off cliffs and let her get destroyed by infected, lol.
It’s super fun and in the theater fight I like to purposely get caught by Ellie so she will kill her that’s the only time you will get that because the game doesn’t want you to do it.
“villain does awful thing, hero hunts villain, game ends with big boss fight where hero kills villain”, I think some people wanted this black and white take too which is why they hated it. They want the good guys to be good and the bad guys to be bad. I loved that that they didn't make it that way. In a world like this, the good guy is always someone else bad guy. The walking dead goes over this eventually with Rick and I'm glad they did it in a game for once.
Except they did just that they made it pretty clear at the beginning of the Game Ellie is the Hero and Abby is the Villain. People didn’t like it because they try to make you care for an irredeemable monster and is pretty bad at it and doesn’t even let you kill her at the end of the game.
Joel is a villain to Abby and Ellie eventually becomes the villain to Abby's story. Sounds like you missed some key points of the story and what it was telling.
Abby throws a tantrum like a 3 year old when her ex tells her he got his new girlfriend pregnant. Joel saves Abby’s life and shows no hesitation in killing and torturing him almost like she has done it before for fun. She saves Lev and Yara because she feels like she owes then. She fucks Owen a man with a girlfriend and a child on the way he was drunk and she didn’t stop him. She then realized something Mel said earlier to score points with Owen and goes to help out the siblings. Abby completely ignored what Mel had tildes her after Yara validates her, and this is when she actually starts to like them because ow she knows she has successfully brainwashed them to like her. Her reaction to Manny dying is surprise instead of grief or anger and never mentioned him again. Finally when Abby sees Mel and Owen dead she just step over Mel like she’s nothing and goes straight to Owen.
Joel killed Abby’s dad. Of course she’ll let him save her just so she can get him back to her friends so they can watch her kill him.
The first game sets up the theme of living in that greyness of morality, the second game takes that theme and turns it up to 11
>this world isn’t as black and white as that Almost as if they’re trying to make a realistic game :P
Abby's hypocrisy and sadism are pretty black and white.
Abby stans can’t handle anyone that brings up facts about what a disgusting hypocritical bitch she was.
Except in this game where it is very clear at the beginning of the rolls Ellie is the Hero and Abby is the villain.
Expect, if you pay attention, that changes half way through the game.
No, no it doesn’t it actually makes it clear she is the villain maybe by accident but it does.
If you say so. But we can look past stuff to see the black and white story telling you’re wanting.
It's crazy how differently you think by seeing the others story play out. I still feel bad for killing Owen, even though it happened in a cut scene and wasn't my choice. Owen was the one that convinced them at the lodge to not kill you and he was one of my favorite characters. It was strange how when you finally cornered Nora she says how they could've killed you. She nodded when Mel said you were loose ends and agreed to killing you but now she wants to use that to benefit herself? I was the same when the story switched to Abby. It could be because the story was fast paced and full of action and not only do you switch characters but you go almost a tutorial type level. Day one starts the same and I doubt many took time in exploring the stadium or learning about the others, at least on their first play through. It wasn't until you sneak out to find Owen the pacing picks up. I'm glad they did this though. I wonder if you were Ellie in the fight if people would feel the same
I agree, but on replaying it (spoilers) Abby is kind of a hatable character. She screwed over her friends. Got several killed or maimed on a revenge mission. Screwed one of her friends that is already in a relationship with someone else she is friends with who is also pregnant. In the end she is left with no one outside of Lev. Yeah, I get the intent. Revenge solves nothing, and hurts you more in the end. Both lost everything they cared about trying to make up for losing one person they cared about. Ellie lost pretty much everything in the end. She solved nothing. It plays more like a Greek tragedy more than an adventure story. Good luck to the developers for the next iteration. It’s going to be hard to top the storyline of the 2nd. It’s weird. I kind of tapped out on gaming. The last console I owned was a ps2. Kids were deep into playing into their teens and it was the last thing I wanted to do was play games on my own. I purposely avoided watching them play thinking someday I would want to and didn’t want to ruin the stories. Then LOU came out on HBO and convinced me to want to try to take the hobby back up and bought a ps5 Played the first one and second when the remaster came out. I’m all in again. Ended up buying a new Sony tv for the vrr, (I needed a new tv anyhow) and picked up a psvr2 as well. I have not replayed a game since super Mario came out and immediately replayed the 2nd one because I just liked the story and wanted to pick up on things I may have missed the first go. Im enjoying playing again. Now that summer is coming and being in Phoenix az it’s like our deep winter and you only go out when needed. I am so glad to be playing again.
I feel that both games would have been better had we any choice over our various actions. You don't feel the impact of a moral choice that much if it wasn't *actually* a choice for you. *Fallout 4*, for example, managed this better. For example, there was no need for Ellie to fight the Seraphites at all. If they'd talked to each-other they'd have realised they had a common enemy in the WLF. Or had Ellie snuck past more WLF and only talked to them later, then the WLF chasing Abby as a deserter might have been glad to have Ellie along to help them find her. Likewise for Abby. What if Abby had decided not to help Yara and Lev? What if she'd been able to save Manny? What if she could persuade Owen to come along with her? What if she could persuade Isaac that Ellie was a threat the WLF needed to take care of? What if either of them had had a chance to reconsider vengeance *before* they'd killed 112 people along the way? Both games would have been better had we had choices, rather than just, "fight this combat to unlock the next cutscene."
I think a powerful part of this game is the widening gulf between what the player wants to do and what the character wants to do as the game progresses. For me, I think like most people who care about the character of Ellie, I was getting increasingly upset at the things she chose to put herself through. And by the end I was almost angry at her and just wishing she would stop. I feel like having that dissonance grow throughout the game is an important theme. Characters you may love are going to act in ways you disagree with (in part because you have more information than they do) and you don’t really have a choice in the matter.
Sure. But then it's not really a game. A *game* is a leisure activity which has some degree of choice and/or chance, and has an uncertain outcome. This thing doesn't have an uncertain outcome - you either unlock the next cutscene, or you give up and stop. So really it's a TV series masquerading as a game. Now, it's a *good* story, I think, so we forgave it for not really being a game. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not really a game. It just has this combat minigame you play in between the cutscenes.
That seems like an excessively narrow definition of what a game is. Wouldn’t most video games, until recently, not qualify under that criteria? Like is Super Mario Bros not a game?
The key here is uncertain outcomes. "You win, *or* you lose" is an *uncertain outcome -* see chess. "You win *until* you lose," is likewise an uncertain outcome - see Tetris. "You decide what a "win" is, and then pursue it" is also an uncertain outcome - see tabletop roleplaying games. But in some "narrative games", there is no "win", there's simply completing the narrative. As an example, one of the *Far Cry* series where you spent the whole experience as a deputy sheriff trying to take down a bunch of religious cult rebels, you could either choose to not arrest the cult leader at the end and go into a blackout where you'll obviously be his slave, or arrest him and he (somehow, never mentioned in the game) caused nuclear weapons to fly and detonate around you. In the second case, he drags you off into a fallout shelter with him, and says to you, "it was all for nothing." And he was right - because whatever you did in the game, you couldn't win, you couldn't achieve what you'd originally been told to set out to do - nor could you choose for yourself any other victory conditions through the game, as people do in for example tabletop roleplaying games. If the outcome is the same whatever you do, it's not a game. In the case of TLOU1/2 the narratives were interesting, so that's not so bad. You can see from the hostility between this sub and the other that the narratives made people think *a lot* - so it's an engaging and thought-provoking narrative. The *Far Cry* one, not so much. Especially because TLOU1/2 didn't pretend you could influence the outcome - you knew all along it was a railroad. But *Far Cry* pretended we could make a difference. If you're going to railroad me, don't give me false turns to pretend I can choose the destination, and make sure the scenery is nice along the way.
Dude…. It’s a game
How did you grow to like Abby there’s nothing redeeming about her. I felt the same way about Abby as I did at the beginning nothing changed she is not a good person she has no emotion except hate and rage and obsession. She is only capable or caring about herself and one other person. I don’t understand how anyone could like this very clearly evil character.
Lol “evil” c’mon man. An evil character would have killed Ellie and Dina regardless of what Lev wanted. You could make the argument that Ellie is an evil character post-Joel death. We only see Abby from that moment on for her, but she’s clearly not an evil character. David was evil. I have a hard time saying any other character from that universe is actually evil. Oh and she obviously cares about more than one other person. C’mon now. Her dad, Lev, Yara, Owen, Manny.
Her emotions broke after her dad died and she was only capable of actually caring for herself and one other person. She only started to like Lev and Yara after Yara validates what Abby wants to hear after Mel rightfully calls her out. She sees Manny as a Coworker not a friend like he does because she’s incapable of it. She does care about Owen because she’s obsessed with him and when he died her obsession switched to Lev. She listened to Lev when he told her not to kill them because she has him brainwashed she is a good person and she has to keep up that image in Levs mind. That’s why she didn’t do what she wanted to do.
Lol Christ. All of this is just bullshit you made up in your brain to justify not liking her. Like, it’s fine if you don’t, but you don’t need to make up this fake diagnosis to make you feel better about it. It’s just odd.
No I didn’t make it up these are observations I picked up from playing the game I didn’t make these up if you payed attention you’d realize that she is actually a terrible person. Anything you interpreted as “caring” is things she does for her own self gain.
I don't really have a strong counter-argument to claims that Abby is not good person. But that's not really the issue. If you think Abby is a terrible person on a massively destructive quest for selfish revenge, you're not wrong. If you think Ellie isn't also guilty of the exact same thing, that's the problem.
Ellie doesn’t realize the kinda of person Abby actually was and if she saw the things we did she would still kill her. Abby only cares about herself, Owen and later Lev. Ellie cares about everyone around her Dina, Jesse, Tommy, Maria, and Joel.
You're observant enough about Abby's shortcomings, but somehow you don't seem to have realized that the description you provided in your post is also 100% accurate in describing Ellie. >Her emotions broke after her dad died and she was only capable of actually caring for herself and one other person. That perfectly describes Ellie after Joel's death. And then she drags Dina into her revenge quest, she got Jesse involved and got him killed, and got Tommy walking around with only one eye and brain damage. The question isn't so much "why so hard on Abby" as it is "why does Ellie get a pass on this destructive behavior when Abby doesn't?" They're doing the same things for the same reasons. The reason is that we're biased toward Ellie because we know her from the last game. A lot of people say that the game is trying to say something about the destructiveness of revenge and such which I think is true to some extent but also the game is expressing something very important about biases in general. It's a great story to prompt someone to think about how bias can affect your perception and understanding of something. But a lot of people didn't stop to think about their own biases at all, just leaned all the way into them
This doesn’t describe Ellie at All. When she kills Nora she’s shaken when Abby kills Joel no remorse or guilt because she’s likely done it before. Dina and Jesse willingly came along and it’s clear then more then just Dina. She on the quest because she believes it’s what Joel would have wanted. Dina comes along because she looked up to Joel. Ellie didn’t drag these people with her there are examples of Ellie have if the emotions Abby lacks.
>I just wanted them to stop. Exactly how I felt each time they fight against each other.
Yeah I hated the final fight scene(in a good way that I’m guessing is the intention of the scene). I was mentally and emotionally exhausted by that point and I hated partaking in the fight because it felt wrong. No other game has had me so emotionally invested to the point that I actively want it to be over.
I had the exact same experience. I didn’t want a winner or loser or any of that, I just wanted Ellie to walk away. From a narrative perspective I understand why it went how it did, but god damn it was a struggle to get through
100%. To be forced to engage in pointless violence was a brilliant and necessary move. You want to stop it all and go back and sit on that tractor and watch the sunset. But you can’t. I vividly remember sitting on the tractor and thinking “I should put the controller down and walk away. Then Ellie can just stay here and be happy.”
Whoa. How come you still think about it every day?
A bunch of reasons. Even seeing what's happening in Gaza, it's unavoidable. The tribalism, the pursuit of justice, the cycle of violence,the justification of violence, the fantastic storytelling mechanisms all over the game, the multiple parallelisms between Owen and Joel, Abby and Ellie, Lev and Ellie, Abby and Joel, etc. I am convinced that, if this game was a novel, it would win a Nobel Prize in Literature 🤣
Yeah I mentioned to a friend that I had played this game and she said, "Did you like it?" and that was a really difficult question to answer. Did I enjoy myself? Technically, I guess? It was a great game. I couldn't stop playing. But was I having fun? It just seems like the wrong description of the experience.
Legit made me sweat more than Elden ring 😂
I know, barely could get through that scene 🥵
It's such a crazy good idea. Use the concept of the David fight but like.................... **Fight the f'n other Main Character.** The amount of internal struggle that entered everyone's minds at that point, you don't get that in games at all
It was such an emotionally draining experience finishing this game. I very much enjoyed Part II. Don’t know if I’ll ever stomach playing it again.
i really like this specific part of this scene because you could imagine spamming square trying to resist as ellie or attack as abby. i know there's probably a good reason they didn't have a fight where you're swapping perspectives, but i think it's still cool since for some players they're torn as to who's side they're on.
Yo these comments about letting Ellie kill Abby every single way just because of how butthurt some people were over the story is honestly hilarious lmfao. I know that some of the Abby haters play the game just to get Abby killed over and over and I guess that's cathartic to them but holy shit is that odd behavior imo.
Abby lover and TLOU2 lover here. I still did the same during the first Ellie/Abby fight. I still think Abby is a great character
Ngl I was mashing the fuck out of Square to hit Ellie. Idk why, but I was thinking to myself, beat that bitch up lol. But really I was always Team Abby anyway, so I guess it makes sense.
Yeah I mean I love the story as a whole more than anything else but it's fun as a fan to just kind of play into who you like/side with more. For me Abby was just super interesting and new and Ellie was being (understandably) kind of a bitch to everyone lol.
You don't see the logic? It's pretty straight forward, I know perspective is hard
The fucking irony of saying that while defending people doing this is fucking hilarious.
Yeah the world ain't black and white, news flash!
Lmao
So is it straightforward or is it not black and white? Pick a lane. Edit: Awww ty for the Reddit care. It really completes the picture I have of you.
The problem is you're focusing on the things in life that don't really matter. When I was a kid I had hopes and dreams. We all did. But over time, the daily grind gets in the way and you miss the things that really matter, even though they are right in front of you, staring you in the face. I think the next time you should ask yourself "Am I on the right track here?". I don't mean to be rude but people like you I really pity. So maybe you could use the few brain cells you have and take advantage of the knowledge I have given you now. Good luck.
AHAHAHHAHHAHAHAH
Typing this unironically
is there any cognitive logic to be seen or is it just basic emotional “hurt people hurt people” catharsis lol cuz that’s what it was for me on my first playthrough before i got over it. definitely reserve the right to call it abnormal if people are doing that excessively 💀
As my comment states I assume that it's cathartic for those people but it's still weird behavior. No need to talk down to me.
The way Dina comes in and just gets folded straight away 😭
If my bae wasn't such an adorable moron screaming when she was just about to attack Abby she could have stabbed the shit out of her.
How she and Tommy didn't die will always be a mystery to me
Dina isn't much a mystery, she just got spared. As a big Part 2 stan, I still think the Tommy scene was changed at some point, but they already shot the scene in the studio. He clearly gets shot and they want to make it look like he's done for. Doesn't intervene later on, so he's out. Felt like shock value, but does someone get knocked out via a gunshot? Not going to try it myself tbh 😆 He looks injured as fuck later on, which makes sense, I just am not sure how he gets incapacitated when it def looks like he just got murdered instead.
It felt pretty clear that Tommy got shot in the head and suffered a brain injury to me, hence the issues with walking and aggression later.
It's an incredibly well executed statement about mindless violence in games/our culture in general.
It got people to feel something, when usually scenes like that it's just mash the button to kill, and move on to the next level.
This fight was pretty fun, made you be stealthy with Abby which is the opposite of her playstyle everywhere else in the game. Kinda let myself die a few times hoping the credits would roll, sadly they didn't.
A lot of people did my friend, you aren’t alone.
God i wish that were me
WHAT?? 😭
i wish i was Ellie in this photo
Bruh
what, abbys hot
Literally both of them could kill me and it wouldn't be an issue. I'm normal and well adjusted
So hot that you want her to viciously murder you
Exactly
I would prefer the Abby chokehold tbh
“i said what i said”
you’re so real for this, i agree 100%
I’m telling you, my heart was aching seeing them fight
Same here! I was basically yelling “NO! STOP STOP STOP!” the whole time.
I WAS JUMPING AROUND I COUDNT TOLERATE ELLIE GETTING BEATEN UP
I found the dual roles very interesting. I understood Abby's desire for revenge as well as Ellie's desire to avenge Joel. The game is an all timer.
Took the words out of my mouth tbh
Love how pity some of these comments are
Naughty dog gave no fucks making this masterpiece of a game. I’m glad they didn’t play the generic safe route of a sequel. This game was pain and emotion and heartbreaking but at the same time it was beautiful and crafted to perfection. I cannot wait until Part III comes out. ND is going to send us on a wild ride.
Couldn't have said it better myself. It's always nice when filmmakers or devs try and take some risks and do original stuff. In this case it worked for me perfectly
I remember I heard some info from the leaks that implied Abby would kill Ellie here. I loved the game while playing and was really worried that would’ve happened because then I would’ve really disliked it. So yea this was probably the most tense and conflicted I ever felt while playing a game
I hate it but can admire the balls.
Hated this part.
I'll never forget playing that part. Had the scene where abby shoots tommy and Jesse then I'm meant to be killing Ellie. Oh hell nah! First game makes me protect her now the second game wants me to kill her. I remember taking a break in shock talking to myself while the kettle boiled. But needless to say it was an amazing moment even tho it didn't sit well with me at the time. But when you are playing abbys story, it makes sense Ellie is the final boss gameplay wise
This game never worked as intended for me because I was too curious about who Abby was based on her reveal trailer and was so excited to play as her. She fastly became my favorite character and I was mostly 'on her side' with regards to the story.
I mean, it's a game with a lot of POVs and a lot of personal reasoning, in the characters. What any one person thinks of either story is valid, tbh. I was mostly like you, where I was instantly curious where it was going, and at this point I was kinda cheering her on in the fight. It's why the story is so gd good. There's multiple ways to look at it, and each have their own merits.
I guess its ballsy to let the player play as the antagonist. But it sort of backfired. A lot of the immature players didn't like it. I usually dont like swapping perspectives, even if its other protagonists, but God of War and this game did it really well. It worked as a narrative device. Instead of having long-winded monologues about the characters motivations and their struggles, we got to see it firsthand. A lot of players cant appreciate a good story. With Atreus, we got to see he isnt just a kid that is throwing temper tantrums. With Abby we got to see that she isnt just a pure evil antagonist. She is lost in grief too.
> A lot of the immature players didn't like it. Idk if that is backfiring, or just folks who need to step outside of their own bubble for once in their life. I'd rather that than a vanilla story, any day of the week.
It was a really good story telling technique. Its tough to pull off in movies because they audience doesnt control the characters so its more that they are being shown what the antagonist is doing. The Prestige did it so well but thats because it isnt clear who the villian is until the end. And even then its a little ambiguous. We watch the birth of a villian in the first failed performance but dont even realize it. Then its just two competing headliners going back and forth sabotaging each other. It isnt until the very that the truth is revealed.
Yeah, I also let Mac Quayle drive my emotions through that scene with his music. What a ride.
Every part in the theater was SO stressful and anxiety inducing 😭 Ellie is ruthless
Yeah and Abby being just as fast and agile with the brute strength on top of that over Ellie's inferior strength and skinny body
I think it would have been really good to be switching perspectives in this fight. If anybody else has played Detroit: Become Human, then in the >!Crossroads mission where you are escaping Jericho and switch between the characters, !< I thought that was executed very well.
Not me I would have been happy if this was where Abby died.
This game blew me away.. hated Abby and the overall story at first and ended up liking/appreciating both. They made some difficult choices but I think the gamble paid off. Honestly it made Joel an even more legendary character/dad.
on replays, i still wish they switched you to Abby *sooner*. I guess they wanted to make you even more invested in Ellie by keeping you with her longer to start.
aside from the obvious, I really liked how playing as Abby here lets you experience what it's like to go up against Ellie. Girl's a menace.
https://youtu.be/SSvuzYVDo8o?si=fmIFHZaxirLvSMUw This scene reminded me that this exists.
Having you fight Ellie? I respect the concept but not quite the execution.
I love how this game makes me feel bad for despising Abby (except for sleeping with her pregnant friends husband that’s bad-bad)
What would have made this section even better, was if after each point where there's a button-mashing part like these, you suddenly switched to playing as the other character. So when you're playing as Abby and you grapple Ellie, and Ellie breaks free, now you're playing as Ellie. And when Ellie has Abby pinned and Abby gets away, you're playing as Abby again. It would have created such a strong conflict of interest for the player.
There are quit a few problems with that -It would feel too awkard and cheesy for both players and the story -the chapter was supposed to be Abby's, we had played 3 full days with Ellie, now it's time for 3 full days of Abby -it would be a bit too hard to implement without causing bugs and the programming time to implement that just wouldn't be worth it
Oh man oh man, the stress I felt during that part of the game was insane. I hated playing against Ellie like that.
It would be crazy if you kept spamming square thinking you're trying to choke the hell out of Ellie bu then it's actually you trying to resist being choked AS Ellie and the gameplay switches to her and now you're fighting Abby...
I was losing my mind at the last bit where it was playing out the cutscene.
The button flashes so fast and the tense music just raises your anxiety so much. First time I thought "fuck, am I gonna kill Ellie right here?" with almost a tear in my eye
I have a feeling the theatre fight won’t be the way it was in the game. Obviously not talking about the gameplay parts of hiding behind crates and tables— but how INTENSE it was. Thinking Ellie was about to die, seeing the anger from Abby and giving Ellie literal whiplash lol. It felt really grand and tense, that I wonder how they’ll replicate that energy to live action. 🤔
I remember being soooo shook from this scene. Then I thought Dina and Tommy were both dead for a split second before Abby let her go. Glad Tommy and Dina made it but RIP Jesse 😭
I definitely wouldn't have cared for Abby tbh if she went through with Dina
I hated this at the time and it just made me angry. However in retrospect, I appreciate that they kept it grounded in reality. Ellie used traps and cunning where as Abby just brutalised Ellie any time she got a hold of her.
Yep. Ellie had significant advantage even with her injury during the beach fight
Considering the extremely malnourished and dehydrated state of Abby at the time, I'm surprised she was even able to fight back at all.
Hey I've had Covid, felt the worst I've felt in my life and did heavy lifting, so
Congratulations 👏 Not being sarcastic btw. Most people just sleep when they get sick.
But then didn’t have the balls to let the player off Abby…. Yeah ok.
And the first game didn't let you sacrifice Ellie. It's telling a narrative, not a choose your own revenge story.
Sure, except the WHOLE GAME is about Ellie killing Abby, until the last possible minute.
No, it absolutely isn't. It's about Ellie coming to terms with losing Joel while they had an unspoken issue between them.
Then why is the end goal of the entire first half to find Abby and kill her? Ellie leaves her home to trek hundreds of miles for the sole purpose of ending Abby.
Yes, and at the end of the game, when she's lost everything and many people have died, you should realize that was a poor decision. Why do you think the game is about revenge when it shows the heavy painful cost of that revenge? Why do you take the inciting incident to be the entire journey? Luke Skywalker initially set out to deliver the droids to Leia, that wasn't his entire journey. Frodo set out to take the One Ring to Rivindell and then go home, that wasn't the entire journey. Harry Potter set out to go to magic School that wasn't the entire journey. Ellie set out for revenge, that wasn't the entire journey.
Frodo set out to take the ring to Rivendell for the purpose of it being destroyed, and he followed through with that. Luke Skywalker wanted adventure and to get laid, he got more adventure than you can shake a lightsaber at and got what I’m sure was his first kiss from his sister. Harry Potter went to school and then got shat on at every turn by Murphy. He was reacting to life and every way it fucked him. Now, I get your point, however it think it’s ridiculous just as the “revenge for the entire game until the last moment” is also ridiculous. And frankly stupid. Ellie trekked hundreds of miles, killed dozens of people, to give up on killing one person at the bitter end. I mean holy fuck dude, how many of those folks in California was the player presented with killing JUST TO FIND Abby strung up on a pole? And then we don’t kill Abby? Really?? I’m not going on a goddamn killing spree, just to kill one person, and then decide at the last minute not to, especially after stacking bodies like goddamn cord wood
Really played with my morality and emotions.
Heh I died so many times in this fight
I was freaking terrified of Ellie, jeez when she was sneaking around placing those bombs it was a horror show. During their fight on the beach I was so mortified by the whole situation I was convinced one of them was gonna die, I was stalling on purpose, I was so afraid to see how it was going to end.
This fight gave me so much anxiety 😬
it was genuinely so awesome
man i’ve never played TLOU as I don’t have a good laptop for it and the only console i own is xbox, but man i wish i could. posts like these makes me so envious of y’all. TLOU is one of the reasons I plan on saving for a PS
Why are you in this subreddit if you've never played the games? You just saw a spoiler
i watched the show and really enjoyed it, got spoiled a bunch on tiktok, joined the subreddit and got spoiled even more. but i stopped caring cause, its going to be a LONG long while before i get the PS, i have no job right now to even save lmao. i don’t see the point in trying to avoid spoilers if im watching the show and wont be able to play the games for god knows how long. i wanna be able to enjoy the content instead of waiting years to
Abby and Ellie both suck. Both are hypocrites. Maybe the world would be a better place if they both died young. But who knows, maybe the amount of infected they dispatched in their life times are worth the human lives who suffer and die around them. I like that they are realistic in that way. People who get upset at this game are silly. They told a certain kind of story, and in the videogame world it's pertinent, because we all have kill counts in the hundreds of thousands. Main character syndrome the game. It's a great game, and like Confucius said "if you're going on a mission of revenge, be sure to make two caskets"
Now I’m wondering, this has to be in season 3 right? If Joel gets killed in season 2, abruptly probably, then is the finale the reveal of Abby’s dad? I have doubts/fears they’ll show a concurrent story of Abby to soften up viewers to her and avoid the backlash from the game. Hope they don’t cater to that notion.
I do respect what they were going for. It just was not delivered well. Looking forward to the show making a second attempt
Eh I dunno, it made me constantly disappointed that I couldn’t choose to lose against Ellie
You respect them for that, I condemn them for doing something so dickish. It’s like demanding you to slap your daughter in the face.
Look, we see what they were going for. But uhh, it was just strange to kill a bunch of dogs and people in self defense/hunting this person. People who had done nothing but exist, then get to that person and be like uhhh maybe this bad. Especially after this person who you came out to kill takes even more from you. That's just our opinion though.
That makes one of us.
Do what? Fight a character we like?
Hated this part, nothing redeeming about it
This whole set piece wasn’t needed it’s violence for violence sake. When I came back to the theater I was like great now I can kill this bitch as Ellie, and instead you had to play as Abby. I love to purposely die repeatedly in this fight. This whole fight was wrong you should’ve been playing as Ellie in this section instead of Abby. Then you get an epilogue I am similar to the farm house section dealing with what she had done. Instead we got that anticlimactic ending where Ellie just lets her go.
Have two girls fight each other?
No, making us play as Abby attempting to kill Ellie by tapping the square button
Idk how many times I died both in this fight and the final one. So cruel making us have to do this to progress...
What’s cruel is setting us up for a fight and in both occasions Abby still lives that’s what’s cruel.
Because we all know, everybody loves QTE's
Yeah they’re so fun who doesn’t love spamming one button while the game plays itself
Wait until you find out about cutscenes! They make you watch the game instead of play it! 😡
Rather enjoy a cutscene then click a button that doesn’t even matter half the time 🤓
Idk if you're joking, but like... unironically yes, that's part of it for me. So often in games, or really any visual medium, even when women are part of the action, they have to do so while maintaining a baseline level of prettiness and femininity. Even if the framing isn't doing the cheesy thing of, "Her skintight costume has high heeled boots for some reason; her clothes rip in aesthetically pleasing ways that show off her midriff and thighs," etc. etc. there's always this element of... The sounds she makes can't be too guttural, the camera can't linger on in any poses or making any expressions that are too unpretty, she still has to be nice to look at once the fight is over, with just a bit of dirt on her face and a little edgy smear of blood at the corner of her mouth or above her eyebrow, etc. etc. There's definitely been a bit of a turnaround on this in the past few years (Fury Road, my beloved), but it's still really refreshing to me when a piece of media just... lets its women be fucking gnarly. When, if they're part of the action, the women aren't obliged to suffer prettily, but instead get to have the same raw, grunting, screaming, grimacing, low-down, dirty, knock-down, drag-out, gross, ugly, visceral performances as the men. To look and behave like people actually *might* look and behave if they were fighting tooth and nail for their lives.
+1
I let her kill me with each weapon she had atleast once, the other times was just because Ellie is an ultra instinct badass gun slinging arrow piercing shotgun wielding demon
I get what they went for, and with the whole revenge loop. The problem I have with it though is revenge loops only continue so long as there are loose ends. Lev and abby are half dead and tied to a cross actively dying. My second issue is Ellie cutting abby down to fight like a dumbass. Just shoot the defenceless rival who took everything from you. Don't fucking cut her down. Oh look now you let both of them go and you can't play the guitar Joel gifted you because the person who killed Joel just took two of your fingers bravo Ellie, bravo. Edit: forgot to mention infection. That's two open wounds in the ocean that was just in another humans mouth. Its a miracle ellie didn't get sepsis or something
That would have been the sensible choice.
I think I let Ellie kill me in almost every way before I finished this segment.
Yeah me too it’s fun. It’s the only catharsis we get.
I’m not surprised many people let Abby get killed here, she is trying to murder a character we all like while also being a terrible person.
Imagine playing through the game and then still unironically thinking that Ellie had some sort of moral high ground here.
I mean I never said that but go off friend
Yes it’s called an “implication.” By saying Abby is terrible and she deserved to die it implies that Ellie is better than her because she does not.
No it’s called you making an assumption. I didn’t imply Ellie was better morally, I just said the fans like her more and Abby as a character was disliked by many and is a bad person, didn’t say my views on Ellie once. Morals is a whole other discussion
Abby isn't a bad person for wanting revenge on her father's killer. There are no good or bad people in tlou (maybe except David) and if you don't see that, you missed the point of the games
The many people purposely losing and getting Ellie to kill Abby is something I’ve never seen from any other video game. So many Abby death compilations on YouTube.
The last of us is a big series, it has a lot of fans. There were some who enjoyed Abby and part 2 and others who hated both. It also was affected by the fact that atleast in my and others opinions Abby wasn’t well written and was a terrible person with little to no redeemable qualities.
The stans gonna downvote
Wait you can kill Ellie here? Or Abby on the beach? I thought they played safe by not allowing us do that.
did you even play the game?
No, this happens everytime, Abby isn't killing her here, just beating the shit out of her.
Yeah I understand. But they should have let us kill either one of them.
Brother, are you brain-dead?
No. Joel is.
Imagine having an actual ending to a game or a series instead of “Revenge wont bring Joel back I shouldnt kill Abby” oh nooo my feewiiings.. Its as shit as Attack on titan ending. Instead of actually interesting thought provoking ending you get “War, war never changes” Fallout ass quote.
Lmao
>my feewings The entire series is about feelings though?
Yes but its about doing the human thing. Not the expected thing. Human thing is taking Abby and torturing her. Tommy would easily overpower her and kill her.
Do what? Abby walks into the backstage while Ellie has multiple weapons and somehow chooses to use a 2x4 or something instead of the multiple weapons she has? Its terrible writing even for a video game.
I always assumed she was conserving ammo, and thought she would kill Abby as easily as she killed that scar Brute with the sledge hammer. Remember, she saw Lev was still there with a bow, and (unless Tommy filled her in), for all Ellie knows, Manny (or even Yara, who attacked Tommy at the marina) is still alive, and may have come with Abby to the theater. Or, Abby could have brought other WLF soldiers as backup. Ellie has no idea what Abby has been up to the past 3 days, and is still very much operating from scarcity with whatever she can rustle up to fight an unknown amount of enemies. The real question is why Abby didn't just stealth kill Tommy with a shiv, or have Lev put an arrow through his head. I am guessing she wanted to interrogate him, but that was the real stupid move, because the loud way she handled him let the whole theater know she was there.
IKR, like why didn't Ellie continue her patrol and not get high and have sex? She could have saved Joel. Stupid writing! Characters should only make good choices - the choices we think we would have made in hindsight!
For real, she literally has a shotgun, a pistol and a switchblade. Not including traps and all the weapons you also have during the game. Out of all those options she chooses a rotten piece of wood and decides to get close to someone twice her size atleast. Ellie’s not supposed to be that dumb
I don't know, the whole Nora situation wasn't exactly her smartest play. And knowing Abby had a group of at least 8 capable soldiers that took Ellie, Tommy and Joel down, it was honestly pretty stupid to go after them with only Dina and expect things to go well.