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14-04-25, 14:16
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#4661 | |
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Joined: May 2009
Posts: 24,950
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14-04-25, 19:43
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#4662 | |
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Joined: Apr 2012
Posts: 13,134
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15-04-25, 05:55
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#4663 | |
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Golden
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 7,738
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Quote:
To be fair, in the beginning I also didn't get why Ellie would act the way she did in the final arc of the game. After some reflection I guess I just have never felt the extreme hate against someone that would gnaw on my very self until there's not much left of me to gnaw on. That final push to take revenge on the one person she blames the most for Joels death just shows how all that killing couldn't bring her closure. She still hadn't come over it and therefore couldn't accept it that Abby would live and Joel does not. Out there on the beach, she could have outright shot her. I give you that. But honestly, that goes for 90% of games out there where the heroes choose not to point-blank shoot the villain during act 1. During the final moments of the fight, when Ellie realises that by killing Abby she would only prolong the cycle of vengeance and hate, and that Abby is to Lev what Joel was to her, she chooses to let her go so she finally breaks the cycle. When she comes back home, she realises that her choices have cost her everything though. Her partner, her child and the only connection she still had to the man she had done it all for - her ability to play the guitar and the song Joel taught her to play. I don't think you have to like the game - because honestly it's by far not the masterpiece some people make it out to be. But if nothing else, it drives its core message home quite well with this final chapter. Revenge is a neverending, destructive cycle that consumes everything and everyone it touches until someone chooses to break it. |
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15-04-25, 08:51
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#4664 | |
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 3,979
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15-04-25, 11:55
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#4665 | ||
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Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 20,575
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 There wasn’t that one defining twist moment that causes us to reflect on the adventure. That defining moment of perpetuating violence/revenge is constant. I’m aware they’re trying to paint Abby as Joel needing to protect a child, and Ellie eventually understanding that protecting a child is more important than perpetuating violence, as Lev will inevitably come after her to do the same. We did not need 20 hours to come to this conclusion in terms of Narrative. Abby is still a piece of **** and makes poor choices throughout the course of her section. As a character, her writing nullifies any good will she’s trying to harbor. Quote:
Yara and Lev could have been cut from the game and I feel the message about to futility of revenge could have landed equally as well. By virtue of Abby being captured when Ellie finds us holds enough weight in my opinion. You abandoned all you loved for a woman who was going to die anyway. The lack of pay off is what I and several players are bothered with. We spend the majority of the game trying to kill someone who nearly killed us, and teaching the player a lesson they learned hours earlier when Abby spared Dina because of Lev is a lack of pay off. Ellie absolutely should have turned into a monster to feed her selfish desires. She doesn’t, so the ending doesn’t land. To me, that’s a waste of narrative time. Finding Abby near dead lands but it’s passed over for Abby being a surrogate mother for someone who saved her life (which contradicts how we even got here in the first place). Yara/Lev serve as examples of passing the cycle of revenge to someone else, but Abby and Ellie are already doing that to one another. I also find it hard to sympathize with Ellie and the futility of seeking revenge for the last part of the game. It’s clear her life was healthy and fine, and she already understood the value of preserving that. Dina warned her that she was leaving and she didn’t listen. As a player, was I to assume she was lying? Both Ellie and Abby did not consider that there was more to lose than their fathers on ther revenge quests, which is why the narrative does not land for me. They end up getting their friends killed, which makes them angrier, and ruin their lives. The same happens in Romeo and Juliet, and I hate that too. The story is not hard to understand. Not in the slightest. It’s just too long and tries to make Abby your best friend when she is the cause - and continuation - of all of this, and the plot constantly bends to make her look better than she actually is and to get us to feel bad for her. |
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15-04-25, 12:26
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#4666 |
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Member
Joined: Apr 2012
Posts: 13,134
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yeah you didn't get it lol
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15-04-25, 13:25
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#4667 |
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Tomb Raider Forums
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 14,298
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Isn't it better that Matrix completes the game to give his full conclusion more weight, rather than stopping midway? Otherwise it would lead people to brush off his opinion because he didn't finish the game and the narrative.
If the gameplay and visuals are good, usually that can carry you through a poor story. |
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15-04-25, 13:43
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#4668 |
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Member
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 16,388
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TLOU Part 2's story has more holes than swiss cheese. But i suppose when you make a game that's supposed to be a metaphor for the Israel/Palestine war, completely screw over your co creator Bruce Straley who kept your ideas in check, and focused on "subverting expectations" then a crappy story is bound to happen.
I think my favorite part of Neil's entire "Wevenge is bad UwU" story is that Ellie and Abby literally destroy hundreds upon hundreds of lives and in the end suffer little to no consequences except Ellie now can't play the guitar and looks out the window sad and her girlfriend left her. Then you have Ellie and her girlfriend living perfectly safe and happy with a baby on a farm protected my knee high chicken wire when we are told and shown that being outside a heavily guarded and walled off compound is too dangerous. |
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15-04-25, 14:45
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#4669 |
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Member
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 9,600
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*some endgame spoilers ahead*
I didn't really enjoy any of TLOU2's story after Abby and Ellie's meeting in the theater. It felt like useless retreading of themes that we'd already had beaten into our skulls for the first two-thirds of the game's runtime. Revenge is bad, and for some reason Ellie needs to learn this twice while still suffering relatively little in terms of consequences? The first time she gets one of her friends killed, another maimed, and nearly gets beaten to death by Abby before Lev's grace saves her. That's the narrative climax of the story for me, and it's a great one. If the game had ended on the first farmhouse scene, it would've been much better imo. Not quite as good as TLOU, but still a satisfying narrative arc. The second time... she loses her relationship with Dina and two fingers, and that's it. The Santa Barbara segment does nothing for me. It makes me dislike Ellie more as a character, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, the first two-thirds of the game already did a perfect job of showing the complexity and grayness of both Abby and Ellie. Regardless, I still liked the game. I know people like to harp on Abby and while I get it, I appreciated her perspective and some of my favorite moments of the game are from her bit. I liked the gameplay, the sub-stories, and most of the game's narrative pacing... MOST of it. I think that Abby and Ellie's long gameplay segments in Seattle would've hit a little better if we'd cut back and forth between them, maybe two or three times. That's a personal preference though. Last edited by sheepman23; 15-04-25 at 14:53. |
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15-04-25, 23:17
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#4670 |
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Member
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 24,950
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None of us got it guys.
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