NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 8026026" data-attributes="member: 63">Do you think Joel was the villain of the first game, Manbearcat?Clearly not, right?Well, in the second game, Abby does to Ellie what Joel did to the Fireflies. Do you now think Joel is a bad guy? You apparently don't. You're angry at the game.But it's the same action, just in a different context. If you think what Abby did is naughty word, and unfair, and that it ruins a good thing . . . well, that's just what Joel did. Maybe you are unwilling to work through that cognitive dissonance.If so, good news: you're Ellie.Ellie might not know the details of why Abby's group killed Joel, but she guesses that it was one of the many people Joel crossed. Despite knowing he was a bad person, and despite knowing that Joel has hurt people the same way, she doesn't want to confront the cognitive dissonance of having to see her father as both good and bad, and to see his killer as being the same as Joel. And all that is bundled up with her anger at Joel for taking away her agency at the hospital, and for making her feel like her life has no point.Like Owen says at one point, she stops looking for the light. (Notice her guitar and her tattoo has a moth motif.)It's not simply that 'violence begets violence.' It's that often we are willing to turn to violence and anger because it is easier than holding two incompatible ideas in our heads at once. We'd rather just see them as the bad guy, and not interrogate our own actions.F*ck, I think that's a pretty useful lesson at any time in history, but it certainly fits now, as we're having a nationwide debate about who deserves justice and who gets targeted by extreme violence. It made me frikkin' love this game. And I love Abby, because basically she finishes the revenge quest that Ellie wants to finish, and she realizes it just hurt her more.Yes, by the end of the game, a lot of the good things from the first game are ruined. That is supposed to bother you. It is supposed to make you remember this story the next time you get angry at someone else, or the next time you vilify an entire group because you think they're bad. You're supposed to think about it the next time you see a flame war online, or a real war. You're supposed to look for another way to overcome the anger and trauma.What, would you want a story where everything went well, and where killing people has no consequences? That's not what The Last of Us 1 was about, so why would the sequel do that?</blockquote>

Verification