Who played the first game (wrongly) as a sort of power fantasy. Neil druckman has said Joel was a bad person and not a hero.
Imo he got what he deserved.
I also think last of us 2 is a great (albeit brutal) game
Hopefulness? At the end of last of us 1? Last Of Us 1 has maybe the most artfully executed heartbreaking ending on earth, like the direction of that final scene makes me tear up every time. Where is the hope?
Absolutely you’re meant to be sympathetic to joel or at least feel pity for him which is why the ending works, if anything he’s not anti-hero, he’s a failed hero. His inability to treat Ellie as an actual person with agency leads him to tragedy, that’s what the last scene is cementing. That one conversation destroys the relationship they’ve built over the entire story. His willingness to double down on a lie they both know isn’t true.
LOU2 has it’s problems sure but fuck that’s an awful pitch. Fine for another ip or a totally out of left field spin off or something but talk about surgically extracting all of the shit that makes the first game good.
Where is the hope?
Joel’s decision not to sacrifice his surrogate daughter to a room full of hack surgeons signals a desire to protect the young at the expense of the old. It is the personification of the Old World Dying and the New World Struggling To Be Born.
His inability to treat Ellie as an actual person with agency leads him to tragedy, that’s what the last scene is cementing. That one conversation destroys the relationship they’ve built over the entire story. His willingness to double down on a lie they both know isn’t true.
I think you can see it as Joel stripping Elle of her agency. But I can also see it as Joel liberating Elle from a duty foisted on her by her elders. She’s raised to believe that she is supposed to sacrifice herself for the greater good and Joel is tasked with leading her to the slaughter house.
LOU2 has it’s problems sure but fuck that’s an awful pitch.
LOU1 can get away with being a tragedy that subverts the narrative of traditional survival horror games. But LOU2 just repeating “humans are fallible” line never gets us to a story about how societies form or these strong social ties build thriving communities. At some point, you need to get to the other side of tragedy or its just Shepard Tone: The Video Game.
