Then I think that you don´t remember that much of the background details in the first game, because time and time again we are shown that they are not only a terrorist group that has been doing things harder for anyone, and who don´t doubt about killing civilians but they are also really incompetent... Just borrowing @GilliamYaeger list (that he made just after the release of the first game)
I never said they were superheroes. In fact, I accept that they are terrorists, and that they have committed a number of crimes, some of them quite serious. They also exist in a destroyed America where the remains of civilisation are ruled by an oppressive military regime. One might say it's a complicated situation, where clear distinctions between hero and villain are hard to make. Even the literal cannibals are simply trying to survive in a world on the brink.
The last time we had this argument, and by
we I mean literally I remember Carnage and searcher8 being there lol, people raised the Fireflies' supposed lack of resources. People mentioned how difficult it was for Joel and Ellie to find a car, and the lengths they went to just to get a working battery. It was argued that given what we see, it just wouldn't be possible.
But what we actually see is that the Fireflies do have the resources. There's a whole chapter where you explore a Firefly biotech lab. The last part of the game also takes place in ... a Firefly biotech lab. It's clear in the game that they do have abilities and resources far beyond the average person. They're not a small group. They're a national level organisation, coordinating multiple operations and maintaining multiple bases across the country. Their foot soldiers roll around in full tactical gear. Compared to even a particularly organised band of survivors like the WLF, the Fireflies are clearly on a whole different level.
I mention this specifically because a lot of this argument we're having hinges on assumptions being made about things we don't actually see. For example, we don't see the full extent of the Fireflies as an organisation. We only see a small slice of it. But what is textual is that they did have the capacity to make this cure. That's not to say that creating and distributing the cure would be
easy. Equally, something being difficult doesn't mean that it's
impossible. In fact that possibility is central and essential to the story. At the time, and I stress this was only back in January, I said this:
The whole moral and emotional crux of Ellie's journey is rooted in the knowledge that Joel sacrificed the entire human race for her. All her internal conflict is premised on the knowledge that he made that choice to save her life and it doomed the world. It would completely undercut the drama if it were even conceivable that the cure wasn't possible, because she would be able to resolve that conflict by coming to recognise that the cure was just illusory and so Joel saved her from a pointless death. It is the fact that it wouldn't have been a pointless death, and the fact it would have saved hundred of thousands, million, tens of millions of lives is the pyramidion for her intense feelings of survivor's guilt. It takes her so long to come around, costs her so much to come to terms, in large part because there isn't an easy out. There is no simple answer like 'the fireflies were just delusional' or 'the medical technology no longer exists.' She has to resolve her lingering feelings about Joel the hard way.
Now, you might say 'well, everyone involved was just wrong about that.' But that's a genuinely kind of weird way of thinking about this story. It's not unusual to write a story where people are mistaken about things. In fact, The Last of Us Part II has two main characters who are mistaken about how violent revenge will make them feel better. However, it would be kind of unusual if every single character was simply completely incorrect about something so central to the storytelling.
And it really is central. Joel's decision to pick Ellie over the cure is extremely characterful. It's deeply rooted in his selfish, survivalist mindset and his unresolved trauma over the loss of his daughter. As much as people in this thread have applauded him for doing the right thing, because he saved her from an unnecessary death at the hands of fake doctors, that's really not the reason why he did it. When he tells Ellie at the end of the game that there was no possibility of a cure, that's explicitly a lie. He saved her because over the course of his journey Ellie had come to fill the Sarah shaped void in his soul. He saved her because he couldn't bear the pain of her loss.
It's not a heroic moment. It's a very human one, but it's not heroic. It's certainly not presented that way. There are no stirring strings as Joel sweeps her away from the madmen. It's just a series of brutal murders as the last, best hope for eliminating the cordyceps infection is destroyed. Some people don't like this, and I do understand why. It's pretty a pretty hamfisted sequence, and for some people it's going to feel excessively nihilistic.
That's certainly fine. If you didn't vibe with the characters or the drama, that's just how it goes sometimes. But there is a difference between disliking a work of art, and deciding that its basic premises, stated clearly for the audience, are actually just wrong. That every single character's motivation is based on some kind of deranged falsehood. No matter how much you dislike it, what remains is that there is no easy out for these characters. For or better or worse, they cannot simply say that Ellie's survival was an unalloyed good.
You can say that you don't believe that a cure was possible. But it was. You can say that even if it were possible, the resources don't exist. But they did. You can say that you think that the brain surgery wasn't necessary. But it was. You can say that you think that there must have been a different medical solution. But there wasn't. Those premises are the price of entry to this story. If you don't want to pay that price, then you don't have to. You don't even have to justify that decision. That's your prerogative as part of the audience. Talking about how you disliked the game is also pretty normal stuff.
However, at some point, you're going to have to ask yourselves why you feel the need to come back every so often to make the case that your dislike is the 'correct position.' Because so many of the people with the energy to spend in this thread agree that the game is bad, they back each other up, and so undoubtedly they feel confident in that position. It's like the idea that the game is mostly unpopular. People in this thread like to hear that, and so it seems 'correct' even if it's probably not. This means that some of the arguments that have been made over the past year or so have bee pretty outrageous. Like, legitimately, someone tried to argue that the high rate of completion of this game is exclusively because of people hate playing it in the hopes that they'd get to kill Abby. That is a
really weird takeaway, and it's not the only one.
When I made this statement on the last page, someone asked me why I replied to the thread. And the answer is: when a topic that I'm interested in gets some activity, I tend to check it out. While I have issues with these games, such as the way that Black characters are treated by the narrative or the first game's bad puzzles, for the most part I did enjoy them. Given the reports about the treatment of developers at Naughty Dog, I didn't feel comfortable supporting TLoU2 monetarily, so I didn't buy it--I borrowed my housemate's copy. But I did play it, and I did enjoy it. And I did enjoy the first one. Solid 8/10 games.
This is obviously pretty longwinded, so I just want to clarify something here: I do not want to dispute anyone's dislike of this game, or really any piece of art. Your personal response to art is your own. What causes me some consternation is the lengths to which people go in talking about this, and how so many of the arguments are often just not ... right. Like this:
Specifically, after you've gone and done all the tests with the samples you get from her the first time, something that I'll point out the Fireflies never try to do in-game, making their blithering incompetence all the more apparent.
But ... they do. They really do. There's an audio recording where they describe the tests they've run on the samples they took. You actually have a like on a post, which contains a transcript, which makes this explicit. They're not doing it because they're evil, they're doing it because that what they need to do in order to pursue a cordyceps cure. You don't have to like that, and in fact I think that you're not even supposed to. I think to feel conflicted about the cure, just as you're supposed to feel conflicted about Joel saving Ellie. As I said earlier it's a bit hamfisted, but it's followed through pretty effectively in the second game, which deals extensively with how Ellie feels about those events.
But it's just not the case, that they're crazy, or incompetent, or bloodthirsty. That's just not the text. As I said last time, if you want to have a discussion about deontological vs utilitarian ethics as it pertains to the events at St Mary's, then we can do that. But this unwillingness to take the story on face value, to even meet it halfway, has made this thread kind of unpleasant. The two parts of this story hinge on the cure being possible, and you keep saying 'well I don't believe that it was.'
Cool, I guess! I don't know about any of the other ten million people who played this game, but my enjoyment was not premised on it having a strikingly realistic depiction of brain surgery or fungal infection. If it really matters to you, then okay. I accept your position. You can't buy into the story because you don't accept its premises. You've made your case. I don't agree with it, but you are entitled to your opinion.
