The Last of Us Part 2

[t209]

So it is out.
Quite bad.
Like a complete letdown by people online.
Can anyone tell me what went wrong with The Last of Us Part 2?

Spoiler: Plot spoiler

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From what I head, First Last of Us wasn't stated after all despite the trailer having "maybe murdering every researchers working on a cure to save Ellie may not have been a good idea".

[danzibr]

Awwwww that's disappointing.

I'm a bit busy with other real life stuff, but I intend to get it soon. Well, intended... we'll see.

[JadedDM]

I haven't played it yet, but from what I've heard, the main reason people are upset about it is:

Spoiler: Massive spoilers for TLoU2. Seriously, do NOT click unless you want to be spoiled.

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Joel gets killed.

Which puzzles me, because honestly I had assumed that would happen when the game was first announced.

[Anteros]

The issue is much less about your spoiler itself and more about the way it's handled. Imagine baby's first creative writing class with an enormous side of pretension and delusion about how deep you're actually being.

Couple that train wreck of a story to a series that was already known for sub par gameplay but exceptional stories that redeem the gameplay and you'll understand the issue.

[Rynjin]

Pretty much. The issue isn't that

Spoiler

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Joel dies (is this even a spoiler at this point?)

it's that he dies in a way that's deliberately disrespectful to the player's investment, and in service to a VERY tired and subpar recycling of the basic "cycle of revenge" plot that's been old hat for years at this point. It makes pretensions of being a "deep, adult" story and was hilariously referred to by at least one person as (paraphrased) the "Schindler's List of video games", but it really doesn't bring anything to the table to back up those accolades.

As I've mentioned before, it has the same basic plot as the last half of Naruto, but handles its themes with less subtlety and gravitas than that series, which was literally made for children.

[Narkis]

Pretty much. The issue isn't that

Spoiler

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Joel dies (is this even a spoiler at this point?) it's that he dies in a way that's deliberately disrespectful to the player's investment, and in service to a VERY tired and subpar recycling of the basic "cycle of revenge" plot that's been old hat for years at this point.

It makes pretensions of being a "deep, adult" story and was hilariously referred to by at least one person as (paraphrased) the "Schindler's List of video games", but it really doesn't bring anything to the table to back up those accolades.

As I've mentioned before, it has the same basic plot as the last half of Naruto, but handles its themes with less subtlety and gravitas than that series, which was literally made for children.

Yes, it is still a spoiler for a game that just came out. I would recommend adjusting what you've spoiled so it's not visible.

Anyway, the problem with TLOU2

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Isn't so much that Joel dies. Or even that he dies brutally with his murderer's posse spitting on his corpse. It's not unreasonable that he daughter of one of those stupid scientists would dedicate her life to seeking revenge. The problem is that the game switches protagonists so you then control said murderer, while Ellie is the villain slowly hunting her for revenge and killing her friends, only to decide that revenge isn't worth it a the last minute. The writers wanted to make us sympathize with the girl who murdered the first game's protagonist, and it did not work at all. They wanted a story that made people uncomfortable (that dog thing proves it), and they succeeded for entirely the wrong reasons. Oh, and from what I've heard the zombies barely feature in the entire game.

The game would have been fine if Ellie was the protagonist. Sure, some people would have complained anyway. But I'm sure it'd be nothing like what we saw.

[Rater202]

I haven't played it yet, but from what I've heard, the main reason people are upset about it is:

Spoiler: Massive spoilers for TLoU2. Seriously, do NOT click unless you want to be spoiled.

Show

Joel gets killed.

Which puzzles me, because honestly I had assumed that would happen when the game was first announced.

Spoiler

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It's not that he dies.

It's that the Game presents it as justified: The game makes a point of claiming that Joel was a murderer wo deserved to die and that Abby, his killer, was justified becuase Joel killed her father.

...Her father who was going to cut out Ellie's brain while she was still alive, without giving Ellie the choice to sacrifice herself or not.

At the same time, it makes Ellie out to be unjustified for seeking revenge on the murderer of her surrogate father's murderer.

For one, huge freaking doub;e standard much?

For two, lets look at the facts: Everyone Joel kills is a murderer who was trying to kill him, trying to kill someone else, or both. Up to an including all of the Fireflies.

Abby's father, meanwhile, was going to cut out a fourteen year old girl's brain and discect it while she was still alive on the off chance that doing it would let them make a handful of people immune to the infection. There are about a dozen reasons why that plan was doomed to failure. And they should know i becuase they've done this to several immune children already.

He's also a hypocrite, he justifies killing Ellie becuase some people need to be sacrificed for the greater good but dodges the question when asked if he'd still do it if it was his own kid on the table.

The Fireflies, Abby's father included, are a bunch of delusional serial child murderers. Every Firefly that Joel killed had it coming.

For three: Abby's father was a specific character in the first game. One that the game wouldn't let you leave alive. You don't have to kill all of the surgeons who were going to kill Ellie, only the Head Surgeon. The Head Surgeon who comes at you with a knife when you try to stop him from murdering a child. If you don't stop him, he will kill you, and if you don't kill him it somehow results in you being gunned down later on. Not only is Abby's father a child murderer and a hypocrite, but Joel is acting not only in defense of a child but in self defense when he kills him.

So Joel is a monster for killing in defense of himself and others? But the man who kills children for a living is an innocent victim? Do you even logic, people?

For four: Abby comes across as a sociopath. She finds out where Joel is becuase Joel shows up and saves her life from a bunch of infected, then offers to bring her back to his settlement to rest and recover. This doesn't make her even blink when she comes around to bash his skull in with a golf club.

Abby eventually decides that Revenge was meaningless... But never regrets killing Joel and it's still presented as Joel's murder was justified.

She also doens't seem to feel bad about her friends and co-conspirators getting killed by Ellie as a direct result of Abby's west for vengeance(and their own actions: 'Think of all the people he killed' is the wrong thing to say to someone who is pissed off that you killed their dad... Especially when she knows for a fact that every last one of those kills was self defence or defence of a third part.) so it comes across as Abby's friends paying the price for Abby being a murderous bitch while she gets off scott free.

For Five: Ellie's life is ruined by her pursuit of justice for Joel's murder, with her girlfriend going so far as to leave her when Ellie just can't let it go that Joel's murderer got off scott free even knowing why. (if they'd stopped there, with Ellie learning why Joel was killed and going home, it would have been an okay game, but frick!)

For six: In the first game, the head surgeon, Abby's father, was black. In the second game, he's shown as being white. So... When he's a delusional child murderer, he's black... But when he's an "innocent victim" he's white. Can you say "unfortunate implications?"

[t209]

Spoiler

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It's not that he dies.

It's that the Game presents it as justified: The game makes a point of claiming that Joel was a murderer wo deserved to die and that Abby, his killer, was justified becuase Joel killed her father.

...Her father who was going to cut out Ellie's brain while she was still alive, without giving Ellie the choice to sacrifice herself or not.

At the same time, it makes Ellie out to be unjustified for seeking revenge on the murderer of her surrogate father's murderer.

For one, huge freaking doub;e standard much?

For two, lets look at the facts: Everyone Joel kills is a murderer who was trying to kill him, trying to kill someone else, or both. Up to an including all of the Fireflies.

Abby's father, meanwhile, was going to cut out a fourteen year old girl's brain and discect it while she was still alive on the off chance that doing it would let them make a handful of people immune to the infection. There are about a dozen reasons why that plan was doomed to failure. And they should know i becuase they've done this to several immune children already.

He's also a hypocrite, he justifies killing Ellie becuase some people need to be sacrificed for the greater good but dodges the question when asked if he'd still do it if it was his own kid on the table.

The Fireflies, Abby's father included, are a bunch of delusional serial child murderers. Every Firefly that Joel killed had it coming.

For three: Abby's father was a specific character in the first game. One that the game wouldn't let you leave alive. You don't have to kill all of the surgeons who were going to kill Ellie, only the Head Surgeon. The Head Surgeon who comes at you with a knife when you try to stop him from murdering a child. If you don't stop him, he will kill you, and if you don't kill him it somehow results in you being gunned down later on. Not only is Abby's father a child murderer and a hypocrite, but Joel is acting not only in defense of a child but in self defense when he kills him.

So Joel is a monster for killing in defense of himself and others? But the man who kills children for a living is an innocent victim? Do you even logic, people?

For four: Abby comes across as a sociopath. She finds out where Joel is becuase Joel shows up and saves her life from a bunch of infected, then offers to bring her back to his settlement to rest and recover. This doesn't make her even blink when she comes around to bash his skull in with a golf club.

Abby eventually decides that Revenge was meaningless... But never regrets killing Joel and it's still presented as Joel's murder was justified.

She also doens't seem to feel bad about her friends and co-conspirators getting killed by Ellie as a direct result of Abby's west for vengeance(and their own actions: 'Think of all the people he killed' is the wrong thing to say to someone who is pissed off that you killed their dad... Especially when she knows for a fact that every last one of those kills was self defence or defence of a third part.) so it comes across as Abby's friends paying the price for Abby being a murderous bitch while she gets off scott free.

For Five: Ellie's life is ruined by her pursuit of justice for Joel's murder, with her girlfriend going so far as to leave her when Ellie just can't let it go that Joel's murderer got off scott free even knowing why. (if they'd stopped there, with Ellie learning why Joel was killed and going home, it would have been an okay game, but frick!)

For six: In the first game, the head surgeon, Abby's father, was black. In the second game, he's shown as being white. So... When he's a delusional child murderer, he's black... But when he's an "innocent victim" he's white. Can you say "unfortunate implications?"

I see.

Spoiler: Last of Us spoiler

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Assuming if the players picked up many many journals of Fireflies’ many attempts and failures at trying to create cure by surgeries.

[Dire_Flumph]

You know, in general, as ham-fisted as the writing in this game is, I'd say for the most part the gameplay is still really strong. Excellent action/stealth/exploration, as long as you don't mind that it's not a huge evolution from the first game.

And then...just the weirdest things that I'm surprised made it in this far.

So, not really a spoiler, but I'm running from these military-geared guys and have to run into a subterranean area infested with clickers (just clickers, no runners). The soldiers follow me in, so, obvious strategy, throw a brick to "wake up" the clickers and have them fight the soldiers. Good strategy, right? Well, it must not be something the designers anticipated because they chase each other around, waving arms and shooting, but don't actually *fight* each other. Clickers chasing soldiers, soldiers running from clickers, occasionally an ineffective shot is fired and I'm just tucked in a corner for several minutes watching this display of ineptitude with "Yakety Sax" playing in my head until finally a soldier notices me, fires two shots, then runs from a clicker waving its arms, practically making "whoop whoop" noises.

After several minutes, I just reloaded the checkpoint, and, same thing. Except after several more minutes, I think all the soldiers died because I only see clickers now. Oddly enough I didn't see the clickers actually get anyone, it's just like the soldiers suddenly disappeared.

Reload again, same thing, but the soldiers never disappear after several more minutes. After awhile, the soldiers *finally* kill one clicker.

Reloaded one more time, I find a different hiding spot with a better view, and this time, the soldiers are all killed by clickers in under a minute.

It was just really weird, but I'm guessing it's a problem with clicker/NPC interaction?

Edit: I'm getting really fascinated watching this. Reloaded *again* (I'm keeping this save spot) and this time, one clicker comes out first, the soldiers take position and gun it down quickly. I figure this is probably what was supposed to happen in the first place. Then the other two clickers come out and the Benny Hill sketch starts up again.

[Lethologica]

I don't have a PS4 so I stuck to Let's Plays, and got to the end this morning.

I felt the story was generally fine. Relentlessly grim and full of characters making wrong choices, not hugely entertaining or fun, but it absolutely accomplished what it set out to do:

Spoiler

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show Ellie's life poisoned by revenge pursued, and Abby's poisoned by revenge taken, until both ultimately realize the futility of it. If the game were any less miserable about its brutality, it would risk wallowing in what it attempts to decry, the way Fight Club ended up promoting the nihilistic attitude of Tyler Durden despite intending to convey its failings, but I think TLOU2 succeeds in escaping that trap.

My main complaints are: the survival side of the gameplay is still incredibly tedious (though that's just my attitude towards such games in general); there wasn't enough interaction between Ellie's and Abby's storylines, making it feel like two short stories rather than one long story; the Scar-Wolf conflict feels inadequately explored; and the third-act villains are inconsequential. Like the characters themselves, this game is so wrapped up in its past that it hurts its present.

Of course, saying the story was generally fine flies in the face of all the objections to the story. I could write for days and not get to it all, and I'm about to hit the hay, so I'll run down some highlights (those I've seen, not those necessarily espoused by anyone here):

Spoiler: Story objections

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* "Joel gets brutally murdered and Abby shouldn't get away with it and get her happy ending."
First, the failure of that kind of thinking is kind of the point of the game. Second, Abby suffered tremendously, and much of that derives from both her decision to take revenge on Joel and Ellie's decision to take revenge on her. What little she survives with is because she spared Ellie and because Ellie spared her.

* "Joel should have been more suspicious and not given out his name, the writers made him a chump so they could kill him off without buildup."
Joel has been living in relative peace in Jackson for four years under the influence of "come to Jackson with us to restock" Tommy - he's not as suspicious as he used to be. He's been fleeing on horseback with infected nipping at his heels. If he noticed the WLF patches, well, he has no beef with the WLF (that we know of). He does ask what the group is doing here, but it's not like there's anywhere he can go if he doesn't like the answer he gets.

* "Joel was justified in killing the Fireflies because self-defense/unworkable cure/reasons, so Abby shouldn't have brutally murdered him/the game shouldn't have justified Abby."
I think trying to avoid the moral quandary of the first game's ending with 'realistic' or legalistic considerations is counterproductive. Joel was committed to rescuing Ellie and killing anyone who got in his way, even if it wasn't self-defense and even if the vaccine was certain. That is the choice the game asks us to evaluate, not a choice where Joel is perfectly innocent because he defended himself while saving Ellie from the grasping hands of useless fanatics. Nobody, up to and including Joel, treats his choice that way, so if we want to understand Joel, we can't dismiss his choice with our technicalities.

Moreover, the game does not justify Abby's revenge (since, again, the game is not interested in justifying revenge), it merely explains Abby's perspective. Of course Abby and her friends think revenge is justified. From her perspective, Joel murdered her friends, family, and hope for the world, all in one. He deserves to suffer and die. Even saving Abby doesn't come close to balancing the scales.

* "The game could never have made us sympathize with Abby and shouldn't have made her the protagonist for half the game."
I can only shrug at this one, really. I sympathized with Abby. I can't tell other people what to feel.

* "The infected barely show up in the game."
My memory is far from perfect, but I thought there was a reasonably good balance of infected and human enemies. Certainly the most terrifying enemy in the game is an infected. They're not as prominent as in the first game because most of this game takes place in a human settlement rather than cutting across country, but it's not like they disappeared.

* "The game has us rampage through Abby's friends and kill tons of Wolves and Scars, but Ellie lets Abby go because Revenge Is Bad? That's not consistent."
Ellie does go on this raging rampage through Seattle...and it f***ing destroys her. The game lets us kill Wolves and Scars without going full Spec Ops: The Line on us for doing it, but when it comes to revenge, the game always takes our hands off the controls and shows us that this is what Ellie is doing, and it's making her miserable.

Now, Ellie absolutely would have killed Abby in Seattle if she could have - I've seen enough streamers let Ellie do so to know that. But the Ellie who shows up in Santa Barbara is not the Ellie who was shooting up Seattle. She's no longer driven by sheer rage. Even revenge is not in itself a good explanation for Ellie's actions by that point. Yes, Ellie leaves the farm, and yes, Ellie refuses to let Abby leave...but Ellie also cuts Abby down from the pillar, and she forces Abby to fight her instead of just hurting and killing Abby.

My understanding of the third act is that Ellie is haunted by Joel's death and her powerlessness to save him. She thinks that she can't live with things unfinished, and that fighting and beating Abby (who is in any case unforgivable and deserves to die) will resolve her powerlessness and allow her to move forward. But in a way, this goal isn't the same as killing Abby. Ellie does win the fight. And maybe that's what lets her move past Joel's dead face to his live one, and remember that she was going to try to forgive Joel for his own unforgivable act. And that's why she decides to try to forgive Abby, despite everything.

Now, is that how I would have done it, no. I would have had Ellie beat up Abby until she's preparing the killing blow and sees Joel's face in Abby's, maybe her own face in Lev's, and reel back from that awful realization and let Abby go. A much more traditional "she who fights monsters" kind of device. But that has its own issues and I don't mind the way they handled it.

* "Ruined by SJWs."
Not even a little bit. Rewrite the story with Ellie as a dude and Lev as any other kind of nonconformist and the story doesn't change one iota.

Okay, 'night y'all.

[Anteros]

I'm going to respond to some of your points. I don't disagree with everything you said, but I'll respond to the parts I do disagree with.

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"Joel gets brutally murdered and Abby shouldn't get away with it and get her happy ending."
First, the failure of that kind of thinking is kind of the point of the game. Second, Abby suffered tremendously, and much of that derives from both her decision to take revenge on Joel and Ellie's decision to take revenge on her. What little she survives with is because she spared Ellie and because Ellie spared her.

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Saying "that's the point" doesn't excuse it from being poorly executed and bad. Lots of bad stories would make valid points if they were written by better authors. If they fail to get their point accross to the majority of people who experience their story, that's on them, not the consumer.

* "Joel was justified in killing the Fireflies because self-defense/unworkable cure/reasons, so Abby shouldn't have brutally murdered him/the game shouldn't have justified Abby."
I think trying to avoid the moral quandary of the first game's ending with 'realistic' or legalistic considerations is counterproductive. Joel was committed to rescuing Ellie and killing anyone who got in his way, even if it wasn't self-defense and even if the vaccine was certain. That is the choice the game asks us to evaluate, not a choice where Joel is perfectly innocent because he defended himself while saving Ellie from the grasping hands of useless fanatics. Nobody, up to and including Joel, treats his choice that way, so if we want to understand Joel, we can't dismiss his choice with our technicalities.

Maybe they could have written the story in such a way so that Joel wasn't completely justified in what he does. They didn't do that though. The rest of us are talking about the actual story they wrote and not some hypothetical story that doesn't exist where Joel's actions are less justified. You're basing a lot of your points on a version of the story that doesn't actually exist.

Moreover, the game does not justify Abby's revenge (since, again, the game is not interested in justifying revenge), it merely explains Abby's perspective. Of course Abby and her friends think revenge is justified. From her perspective, Joel murdered her friends, family, and hope for the world, all in one. He deserves to suffer and die. Even saving Abby doesn't come close to balancing the scales.

* "The game could never have made us sympathize with Abby and shouldn't have made her the protagonist for half the game."
I can only shrug at this one, really. I sympathized with Abby. I can't tell other people what to feel.

I don't sympathize with her any more than any other of the psycho murderers in the game, who presumably also had families and motives.

* "The game has us rampage through Abby's friends and kill tons of Wolves and Scars, but Ellie lets Abby go because Revenge Is Bad? That's not consistent."
Ellie does go on this raging rampage through Seattle...and it f***ing destroys her. The game lets us kill Wolves and Scars without going full Spec Ops: The Line on us for doing it, but when it comes to revenge, the game always takes our hands off the controls and shows us that this is what Ellie is doing, and it's making her miserable.

Yes, people are typically miserable when you murder their loved ones. Yes, Ellie is miserable. So is everyone else. That's because the authors of this story think sad=depth. Like I said before, it's baby's first creative writing.

My understanding of the third act is that Ellie is haunted by Joel's death and her powerlessness to save him. She thinks that she can't live with things unfinished, and that fighting and beating Abby (who is in any case unforgivable and deserves to die) will resolve her powerlessness and allow her to move forward. But in a way, this goal isn't the same as killing Abby. Ellie does win the fight. And maybe that's what lets her move past Joel's dead face to his live one, and remember that she was going to try to forgive Joel for his own unforgivable act. And that's why she decides to try to forgive Abby, despite everything.

Everyone understands the plot. It's simplistic. Like someone else said, literal children's shows have done the same plotlines for years, and done them much better. When you're rehashing the plot of Naruto...but somehow it's worse? It's not exactly stellar writing.

Now, is that how I would have done it, no. I would have had Ellie beat up Abby until she's preparing the killing blow and sees Joel's face in Abby's, maybe her own face in Lev's, and reel back from that awful realization and let Abby go. A much more traditional "she who fights monsters" kind of device. But that has its own issues and I don't mind the way they handled it.

There's no way to write that scene that isn't awful, because it's just a culmination of the story up to that point. You'd have to just scrap the whole thing and write something different if you wanted a satisfying ending.

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: Story stuff

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Saying "that's the point" doesn't excuse it from being poorly executed and bad. Lots of bad stories would make valid points if they were written by better authors. If they fail to get their point accross to the majority of people who experience their story, that's on them, not the consumer.

You don't have any polling data with you (that hasn't been review-bombed to smithereens), so I'm just going to ignore comments about "the majority of people."

My point in this segment was to get back to, as you put it, "the actual story they wrote," which is not one where Abby is presented as getting off scot-free, or as deserving to get off scot-free. Again, my opinion is that they did a perfectly fine job executing that point, and you may have a different opinion, but that's entirely orthogonal to the point.

Maybe they could have written the story in such a way so that Joel wasn't completely justified in what he does. They didn't do that though. The rest of us are talking about the actual story they wrote and not some hypothetical story that doesn't exist where Joel's actions are less justified. You're basing a lot of your points on a version of the story that doesn't actually exist.

For clarity, my version of the story is one where Marlene tells Joel that the doctor can make a vaccine, but that it will kill Ellie, and Joel decides to save Ellie even if it means killing all the Fireflies in his way. That story plays out here, verbatim. Also, in TLOU2, Abby walks in on multiple bodies, so this is not a version of the story where Joel only killed the head surgeon because of the knife.

Now, you are welcome to cite the parts of the story where Joel's actions are ever presented as justified by the uncertainty of a vaccine being developed, but my guess is you're importing that based on your understanding of vaccine development in real life and your impression of the Cordyceps fungus from the game in order to disbelieve what the game tells you. And you can run with that for your own personal moral calculus of the situation. But you can't cite a single iota of either game to tell me that was Joel's moral calculus, let alone any other character's understanding of Joel's moral calculus.

I don't sympathize with her any more than any other of the psycho murderers in the game, who presumably also had families and motives.

As far as not sympathizing with Abby, as I said, shrug. This is not a position to be argued. I am curious if you do sympathize with anyone in the game.

Yes, people are typically miserable when you murder their loved ones. Yes, Ellie is miserable. So is everyone else. That's because the authors of this story think sad=depth. Like I said before, it's baby's first creative writing.

This doesn't actually address anything I wrote.

Everyone understands the plot. It's simplistic. Like someone else said, literal children's shows have done the same plotlines for years, and done them much better. When you're rehashing the plot of Naruto...but somehow it's worse? It's not exactly stellar writing.

I am addressing plot misunderstandings that I have observed, so it is not the case that everyone understands the plot.

With that said, would you like to address in what way the plot is simplistic?

There's no way to write that scene that isn't awful, because it's just a culmination of the story up to that point. You'd have to just scrap the whole thing and write something different if you wanted a satisfying ending.

I was satisfied. But hey, more power to you.

[Anteros]

Spoiler

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You don't have any polling data with you (that hasn't been review-bombed to smithereens), so I'm just going to ignore comments about "the majority of people."

Yes, I suppose ignoring literal mountains of evidence does make defending your position easier. I'm sure the 100,000 reviews on metacritic that averaged out to a 4/10 are just an outspoke minority. Also literally every single person involved in this conversation except you.

My point in this segment was to get back to, as you put it, "the actual story they wrote," which is not one where Abby is presented as getting off scot-free, or as deserving to get off scot-free. Again, my opinion is that they did a perfectly fine job executing that point, and you may have a different opinion, but that's entirely orthogonal to the point.

She doesn't get off scot-free, but she does get off much more lightly than what she deserves.

For clarity, my version of the story is one where Marlene tells Joel that the doctor can make a vaccine, but that it will kill Ellie, and Joel decides to save Ellie even if it means killing all the Fireflies in his way. That story plays out here, verbatim. Also, in TLOU2, Abby walks in on multiple bodies, so this is not a version of the story where Joel only killed the head surgeon because of the knife.

Now, you are welcome to cite the parts of the story where Joel's actions are ever presented as justified by the uncertainty of a vaccine being developed, but my guess is you're importing that based on your understanding of vaccine development in real life and your impression of the Cordyceps fungus from the game in order to disbelieve what the game tells you. And you can run with that for your own personal moral calculus of the situation. But you can't cite a single iota of either game to tell me that was Joel's moral calculus, let alone any other character's understanding of Joel's moral calculus.

I'm sorry, but if you're implying that the story requires the readers to completely ignore everything they know about medical science, as well as all common sense in order to work...that's still just a writing flaw.

As far as not sympathizing with Abby, as I said, shrug. This is not a position to be argued. I am curious if you do sympathize with anyone in the game.

I sympathize with Joel, and a few of the side characters who certainly didn't deserve what they got.

This doesn't actually address anything I wrote.

You brought up the fact that Ellie is miserable as if it somehow justified the story beats. I pointed out the fact that misery does not equal depth. Everyone in the game is miserable (including the player) because the authors are fresh from their high school lit class where "Sad=deep"

I am addressing plot misunderstandings that I have observed, so it is not the case that everyone understands the plot.

So...arguments that no one here has made. I can certainly see how those would be easier to disprove.

With that said, would you like to address in what way the plot is simplistic?

I already have, and so have others. I doubt we're going to suddenly agree if I just repeat it.

[Rynjin]

There was a pretty easy way to not have the events of the game contradict the apparent message, while keeping the same theme and general plot.

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Have the player play as Abby from the start. Let them grow to sympathize with her and her pursuit of vengeance, while keeping it vague (but figure-out-able from context clues) who she wants it on. Then finagle the plot from there based on how you want it to end. Does Abby come to know Joel as a person before realizing who he is, exactly? Does that stay her hand, or not? If she does kill him, does she feel bad about it? If she does, what does she do to atone? Etc., etc.

You could very easily have things still end up the way they ended up with Joel but now it feels like a more earned moment. Or you could go a different route; either way works. That's the point. But the story isn't written this way because it is not a proper narrative driven story, nor is it structured properly to be a character driven story. The narrative is too disjointed and the characters too ill defined for that. It is pretty much the definition of a contrived plot. Everything happens because it's fairly clear certain narrative set pieces were thought up first, and then the connective tissue was written to fill in the gaps between those set pieces.

TL;DR (though the spoiler's not that long to begin with): Almost every major issue with the plot stems from Naughty Dog feeling the need to use Ellie and Joel for marketing purposes instead of writing a more narratively and characteristically cohesive plot.

[Rater202]

For clarity, my version of the story is one where Marlene tells Joel that the doctor can make a vaccine, but that it will kill Ellie, and Joel decides to save Ellie even if it means killing all the Fireflies in his way.

You're leaving out some very important context.

1: Ellie is taken while unconscious and doesn't wake up until after she's rescued. Ellie did not know that this is what they wanted her for. She had absolutely no say in this, the Fireflies were going to murder her. Making sacrifices for the good of others is one thing but if the person making the sacrifice isn't also the person being sacrificed then they have nomoral high ground.

2: The doctor can't make a vaccine. The Fireflies only have surgeons. Also... The infection is caused by a parasitic fungus. You can't make a vaccine for a fungus. They don't have the relevant skills or training to make a vaccine and they're trying to do the imp9ossible.

3: Ellie's immunity has nothing to do with Ellie herself. She's not special. Either she's infected with a benign version of the fungus, it has something to do with her being infected in-utero or both. In the second and third cases, her immunity can't be replicated at all unless you're willing to infect pregnant women so that their children will be immune. In the first case, killing Ellie is not only morally and ethically wrong, it's completly unessesary and the stupidest possible thing they could do.

If its the fungus, not Ellie, then you don't need to cut out her brain. You just need to figure out where in her body the fungus is and take samples. Worst case scenario you just have to do a biopsy that doesn't even touch her brain. They might even be able to filet spores out of her blood. Then you study the fungal samples, culture them, and infect lab rats to see if they develop immunity and disect them, not murder a human girl by vivisecting her brain while she's still alive. It would be in their best interest to keep Ellie alive and healthy becuase they'd need to get samples of the fungus. The fact that they jump straight to terminal vivisection of her still-living brain is proof that these people have no ****ing clue what they're doing and are in no way qualified to be doing this kind of research. They're not only violating bio-ethics, they are very clearly not proper scientists. "Don't destroy the thing you're studying" is science 101, peeps.

4: On the off chance that they did somehow manage to develop a means to infect people with Ellie's strain of the fungus or otherwise replicate her immunity... They've destroyed their source of the "vaccine" so they're only going to be able to immunize a handful of people. This will have absolutely no effect on the world at large. At best, they're saving their own skins and leaving everyone else to rot... Unless they immunize outsiders and then kill them to make more "vaccine"

5: Making people immune to the infection solves nothing. The people who are already infected can't be cured for much the same reason that Ellie is immune in the first place. And the infection isn't the primary threat. The primary threat is the mixture of man-eating infected, bandits, raiders, and cannibals living outside of settlements, corrupt/overzealous soldiers from what's left of the Government, murderous cultists, and insular extremist. Strickling speaking, the Fireflies are part of the problem. Being immune to the infection means you won't turn if you get bit. It doesn't stop you from getting bitten or eaten, nor shot, stabbed, killed, or anything else.

6: It's a fungus! Those don't adapt very fast. To "cure" it you clean the bite mark(or amputate if you're desperate) and feed people anti-fungal medications. A vaccine is a waste of time.

7: Most importantly, there are documents that establish that the Fireflies have done the exact same thing to several other immune people. It never works. They just keep murdering people and hoping that doing the same thing over and over again will eventually work.

The second they said they were going to kill Ellie to try and make a vaccine, they forfeited their right to live.

[Lethologica]

Spoiler: Re: Anteros

Show

Yes, I suppose ignoring literal mountains of evidence does make defending your position easier. I'm sure the 100,000 reviews on metacritic that averaged out to a 4/10 are just an outspoke minority. Also literally every single person involved in this conversation except you.

Literally the first lesson of statistics is that methodology precedes volume. Audience score is a bad enough metric when the issue is merely self-selection; when the score has become the target of keyboard warriors, it's hopeless. There were 5,000 Metacritic user reviews in the first few hours of release day, and the flood never let up. Similarly, here's what Google looked like halfway through release day:

You can't tell me most of those reviews, whether 5/5 or 1/5, had anything to do with people's impressions of the game they experienced. They couldn't even have played the bloody game yet.

Ignoring mountains of s*** does, in fact, make constructing valid positions easier. I didn't reference the critic scores either, even though it's "evidence" that disagrees with you and is closer to my opinion of the game. (For reference: I'm a 6/10, 7/10 kind of opinion on the story, and 8/10 overall on the game.)

And no, I don't care about counting up anecdotal numbers either, whether in this thread or in general. You've probably experienced a different set of anecdotes than I have, and they probably disagree, and half the anecdotes are based on secondhand or selective interaction with the game to boot.

She doesn't get off scot-free, but she does get off much more lightly than what she deserves.

Yes, she merely gets all her friends killed, captured and enslaved, hung up to die, and beaten within an inch of her life. Practically a picnic. Still, she doesn't get what she deserves. But by the time Ellie made that decision, what she wanted (and what she needed) hadn't been about what Abby deserved for some time.

I'm sorry, but if you're implying that the story requires the readers to completely ignore everything they know about medical science, as well as all common sense in order to work...that's still just a writing flaw.

Getting the science wrong is in fact a writing flaw. (On that note, zombies are also a writing flaw.) However, I think you can at least see how others can read that as a moral quandary propped up by bad science, rather than bad science which invalidates the entire story moving forward, even if it doesn't work that way for you.

I sympathize with Joel, and a few of the side characters who certainly didn't deserve what they got.

All right. Do you sympathize with Joel's understanding of the choices he's made? Or are they invalid because the science was bad?

That said, if you don't sympathize with Ellie either, then yeah, there's no way you're going to tolerate the experience. That's 100% of the game from a POV you don't sympathize with.

You brought up the fact that Ellie is miserable as if it somehow justified the story beats. I pointed out the fact that misery does not equal depth. Everyone in the game is miserable (including the player) because the authors are fresh from their high school lit class where "Sad=deep"

I brought up that getting revenge was deepening Ellie's misery, in contradiction to the idea that the revenge Ellie takes is inconsistent with the revenge Ellie doesn't take. You are making an entirely separate argument about the misery generally not having value...except you are doing so only by ridiculing an opposing position (not apparently taken by anyone) that "sad = deep." I can agree with that entirely and yet reach no conclusion about whether this particular sadness was meaningful. So you have not even made a prima facie case for your actual claim, never mind addressing my argument about an entirely different claim.

So...arguments that no one here has made. I can certainly see how those would be easier to disprove.

I did say at the beginning of my post that I was addressing arguments I'd seen and not arguments necessarily espoused by anyone here...precisely so that people wouldn't take every point listed as a characterization of something they said and every counterargument as an attack on their own position, only the ones that directly addressed objections they'd raised. And I listed the arguments I was addressing to make the context of my own points doubly clear.

I already have, and so have others. I doubt we're going to suddenly agree if I just repeat it.

If what you have already written is the entirety of your argument for the plot being simplistic, then yes. However, if you've gotten here, you've probably gotten around to replying to some points upthread that would lead to a case being made, so maybe we'll see.

You're leaving out some very important context.

I'm leaving out considerations that did not factor into Joel's decision-making process, or any other character's understanding of his decision. I am well aware that the dilemma he faces rests on flawed science, that the Fireflies are morally compromised, and that Ellie did not get a say in the process (although both we and Joel know what she would have chosen). But that's not why Joel chose as he did. We know this because Joel lied to Ellie. If Joel knew he was straightforwardly right in this way, he would have believed he could persuade Ellie of that. And I'm willing to let the game run with Joel's moral quandary rather than invalidating everything else in the text because the science is wrong.

5: Making people immune to the infection solves nothing. The people who are already infected can't be cured for much the same reason that Ellie is immune in the first place. And the infection isn't the primary threat. The primary threat is the mixture of man-eating infected, bandits, raiders, and cannibals living outside of settlements, corrupt/overzealous soldiers from what's left of the Government, murderous cultists, and insular extremist. Strickling speaking, the Fireflies are part of the problem. Being immune to the infection means you won't turn if you get bit. It doesn't stop you from getting bitten or eaten, nor shot, stabbed, killed, or anything else.

Now, this is something that Joel would have thought about. More accurately, making people immune doesn't solve everything. But it would substantially reduce the threat of the infected, save a lot of lives, and erode one of the pillars of suspicion that helped make post-outbreak society what it was. It's not a game-winner, but it's a game-changer.

7: Most importantly, there are documents that establish that the Fireflies have done the exact same thing to several other immune people. It never works. They just keep murdering people and hoping that doing the same thing over and over again will eventually work.

Would you mind citing them? I've poked around and could only find one relevant document, which confirms that Ellie's immunity is unique as far as we know, and refers to other experiments done on "infected patients," not other immune people. For reference, I believe this page has all the documents that could be found in that chapter.

[Rater202]

You can't dismiss that "The Science is bad" from Joel's reasoning, becuase Joel was born well before the outbreak and presumably would have gone to school and taken science classes, at least up to the minimum..

To anyone who remembers science class, the fact that the Fireflies are at best dangerously delusional would be obvious the second they said they were going to murder a kid to study that kid's immunity to the disease and create a vaccine, becuase "fungus doesn't work like that" and "science doesn't work like that" are pretty basic things. By saying they're going to kill Ellie to makes a vaccine, the Fireflies wellbeing ceases to be a consideration becuase they are planning to murder a child for a plan that has no chance of working.

"These people hired me under misleading circumstances to protect and escort this child for a year, then to murder her for a pipe dream... Okay, I'm going to rescue that kid, and if I have to kill any of them, well, they're child murderers" would be his thought process. A 100% justifiable thought process.

Considering the way Marlene told him, where she basically just authoritatively dictates "we are going to murder this child for the greater good" and just assumes that the man who spent the last year taking care of Ellie would accept that, she comes across in that moment and a god damned sociopath. Which just adds to the justification for stopping the surgery even if it means killing all of the Fireflies.

Edit: Not to mention that the Fireflies attacked him while he was trying to revive Ellie when she almost drowned and wanted to kill him to keep what they were doing secret. It was only Marlene deciding that he'd understand that and be okay with it that left him alive, so really, any sane person would question the Fireflies motivation.

The Fireflies are bad guys who desired what they got. That's really the only valid reading of them, and that's why the sequel is so offensive.

[Vinyadan]

While it sounds like this one didn't meet expectations, the extremely loud reactions I have seen elsewhere would make for great marketing, if the first title were ported to PC.

[Lethologica]

You can't dismiss that "The Science is bad" from Joel's reasoning, becuase Joel was born well before the outbreak and presumably would have gone to school and taken science classes, at least up to the minimum.

This is an odd argument. I'm not saying Joel is ignorant. I'm saying Joel isn't basing his decision on that information. That could be because he is ignorant, or - more likely - it is because the writers didn't account for that information, either through ignorance or for convenience. But my argument is based on how the characters behave in the game, not how many science classes I think Joel took.

(But since this is apparently the argument, I don't remember the parts of the mandatory biology curriculum which went over the properties of fungal vaccines and the vaccine development pipeline. That sounds more like someone expecting Joel to remember what they looked up on Wikipedia.)

"These people hired me under misleading circumstances to protect and escort this child for a year, then to murder her for a pipe dream... Okay, I'm going to rescue that kid, and if I have to kill any of them, well, they're child murderers" would be his thought process. A 100% justifiable thought process.

But his thought process on explaining that the Fireflies were delusional child murderers to Ellie was...not to? Because she needed to be sheltered from the knowledge that child murderers exist? Your analysis of the thought process you think he would does not follow from the thought processes we see from him.

Considering the way Marlene told him, where she basically just authoritatively dictates "we are going to murder this child for the greater good" and just assumes that the man who spent the last year taking care of Ellie would accept that, she comes across in that moment and a god damned sociopath. Which just adds to the justification for stopping the surgery even if it means killing all of the Fireflies.

She doesn't come across that way to me. Again, all I can do with statements like that is shrug.

Not to mention that the Fireflies attacked him while he was trying to revive Ellie when she almost drowned and wanted to kill him to keep what they were doing secret. It was only Marlene deciding that he'd understand that and be okay with it that left him alive, so really, any sane person would question the Fireflies motivation.

Questioning their motivations ain't exactly what either you or Joel are doing.

The Fireflies are bad guys who desired what they got. That's really the only valid reading of them, and that's why the sequel is so offensive.

I'll just be chilling over here in invalid territory, then.

[Rater202]

There's no good way to say "I killed the closest thing you've ever had a to a family for 93.333% of your life becuase they unilaterally decided that a tiny chance that they could replicate your immunity in themselves was worth more than your life. They weren't even going to give you a choice and tried to kill me when I tried to stop them so... Sorry, your family were asshats and I killed them."

Marlene even admits that the chance of creating a vaccine is slim. The Fireflies know that they're the bad guys, otherwise why would they want to kill Joel?

Why would they attack the guy they hired while he was trying to save the life of the girl they hired him to protect!?

They wanted to get rid of a loose end. They could have just taken Ellie and said "your job is done know, she's in good hands" and sent him on his way. It woudln't have worked, but they wouldn't have known that, they thought he was just a smuggler.

The Fireflies are no better than the Hunters and the Cannibals and they proved it the second they attacked Joel.

[JadedDM]

"These people hired me under misleading circumstances to protect and escort this child for a year, then to murder her for a pipe dream... Okay, I'm going to rescue that kid, and if I have to kill any of them, well, they're child murderers" would be his thought process. A 100% justifiable thought process.

That was not the impression I got at all of what Joel's thought process was. From what I could tell--granted, it's been a few years since I've played, so maybe my memory is rusty--his decision had nothing at all to do with morality or science. He grew to care about Ellie, realized she was going to die, and basically said, "Screw the world, I'm saving her." Not "This plan has little to no chance of working so it's bad."

[Rater202]

That was not the impression I got at all of what Joel's thought process was. From what I could tell--granted, it's been a few years since I've played, so maybe my memory is rusty--his decision had nothing at all to do with morality or science. He grew to care about Ellie, realized she was going to die, and basically said, "Screw the world, I'm saving her." Not "This plan has little to no chance of working so it's bad."

Marlene told him that the chances of a vaccine were far from a sure thing. And she's deluded enough to think it's possible in the first place.

Between this and the fact that the Fireflies attacked him, knocked him on unconscious, and it's only Marlne's intervention tha prevented them from killing him and the unstated "these people are murderous asshats who are going to kill the kid I've grown fond of for a pipe dream" is the obvious read.

It's not "screw the world" when the person doing the evil thing admits that chances are good that the evil thing might not save the world.

[Lethologica]

Marlene even admits that the chance of creating a vaccine is slim.

Okay, here's all the dialogue in the game and here's the scene where Marlene tells Joel about the surgery. Give me a line, or give me a timestamp, where Marlene says what you claim she said.

Or, bonus round, go find that other document you claim exists that shows all the other immune people the Fireflies have supposedly experimented on.

Or maybe stop making assertions about what's in the game that you can't support, then using those assertions to justify your reading as the only valid one.

[Rynjin]

Okay, here's all the dialogue in the game and here's the scene where Marlene tells Joel about the surgery. Give me a line, or give me a timestamp, where Marlene says what you claim she said.

Or, bonus round, go find that other document you claim exists that shows all the other immune people the Fireflies have supposedly experimented on.

Or maybe stop making assertions about what's in the game that you can't support, then using those assertions to justify your reading as the only valid one.

Here.

He says straight up they've never seen anything like it, and have not yet found a way to replicate it. They were going to kill Ellie and then wing it from there.

[Lethologica]

Here.

He says straight up they've never seen anything like it, and have not yet found a way to replicate it. They were going to kill Ellie and then wing it from there.

First, that's certainly a novel interpretation of "Marlene said the chance of creating a vaccine is slim." It's also the evidence against Rater's earlier claim that documents showed Ellie was one of many immune people the Fireflies had experimented on. So as far as things Rater claimed were in the game, it's 0 for 2.

Second, that's a snapshot of the surgeon's first interaction with Ellie's infection. A perfectly plausible timeline is that the surgeon records this interaction saying "we must figure out how to replicate this state under laboratory conditions," then figures out a way to replicate the state under laboratory conditions which involves a surgery that kills Ellie, and tells Marlene this, and everything else follows from there. It's crock science in the sense that the writers don't know how vaccine development works, or don't care to integrate that into the story, but not in the sense that the people in the story are meant to be ignorant morons, much less that Joel made his decision on the basis that they're ignorant morons.

EDIT: This timeline is also consistent with Marlene's recordings.

[Dienekes]

I know this is a minor tangent to the rest of the argument. But while Rater is correct about his statement on fungus and Vaccines in the real world. I have to ask how it’s presented within the story. Because it’s quite possible that the writers are just dumber than you, or attempting to use shorthand that the “common folk” can understand to get the story across without getting bogged down in explaining the minutia of what is essentially plot magic.

Does anyone bring up that the interaction between fungus and vaccines is inaccurate within the context of the story? I honestly don’t remember. But I think that the doctors statements are supposed to be taken at face value to bring about the pivotal decision of the story. Ellie is the only hope for potential salvation, she is unique in her makeup to be this salvation, it is only a possibility for success how much or how little a chance is not known, but it will certainly cause Ellie’s death. Having the doctors all just be wrong on a fundamental level takes away all the emotional and narrative weight of Joel’s decision.

I know it’s annoying when you actually have to disregard things you know because the writers decided not to do more research. I pretty much have to do the same thing every time a fantasy story talks about how much a brilliant strategist someone is only to have them so the bare minimum of creating a tactic (and often not even that). Or when the plot revolves around something you know doesn’t work like presented (airports do not work like that in Die Hard 2, the stock market doesn’t work like that in TDKR, the human body doesn’t work like that in every action movie ever, but we accept that it does in this world for the sake of the story).

[Lethologica]

I know this is a minor tangent to the rest of the argument. But while Rater is correct about his statement on fungus and Vaccines in the real world. I have to ask how it’s presented within the story. Because it’s quite possible that the writers are just dumber than you, or attempting to use shorthand that the “common folk” can understand to get the story across without getting bogged down in explaining the minutia of what is essentially plot magic.

Does anyone bring up that the interaction between fungus and vaccines is inaccurate within the context of the story? I honestly don’t remember. But I think that the doctors statements are supposed to be taken at face value to bring about the pivotal decision of the story. Ellie is the only hope for potential salvation, she is unique in her makeup to be this salvation, it is only a possibility for success how much or how little a chance is not known, but it will certainly cause Ellie’s death. Having the doctors all just be wrong on a fundamental level takes away all the emotional and narrative weight of Joel’s decision.

I know it’s annoying when you actually have to disregard things you know because the writers decided not to do more research. I pretty much have to do the same thing every time a fantasy story talks about how much a brilliant strategist someone is only to have them so the bare minimum of creating a tactic (and often not even that). Or when the plot revolves around something you know doesn’t work like presented (airports do not work like that in Die Hard 2, the stock market doesn’t work like that in TDKR, the human body doesn’t work like that in every action movie ever, but we accept that it does in this world for the sake of the story).

There is:
* A scene between the protagonist and the most familiar face among the Fireflies, Marlene, who presents what "the doctors tell me": if they perform surgery on Ellie (which will kill her), they can reverse-engineer a vaccine.
* A surgeon's recording which says Ellie's condition is unlike anything they've ever seen and that they have to "find a way to replicate the state under laboratory conditions."
* A recording from Marlene saying the doctor told her they'd have to "eliminate the host" to "extricate the parasite."
* Another recording from Marlene saying "Here's a chance to save us" and saying she gave her go-ahead (which she suspects was just a formality) for the surgery.

So there are a couple of complications beyond "the doctor's statements are supposed to be taken at face value." The statement is delivered not by the doctors, but at a remove by a non-expert. The surgeon's recording admits to not yet having a way to replicate the state under laboratory conditions. And the Fireflies are a terrorist organization and violently antagonistic towards Joel, hence baseline untrustworthy. So the interpretation where the doctors don't actually have a sure way to create a vaccine and are just taking a shot in the dark, and Marlene is either lying, lied to, or ignorant, becomes viable within the narrative, not just as a product of game-external knowledge. ('Viable' meaning 'a legitimate interpretation of an ending already full of ambiguity' rather than the best or only valid interpretation.)

However, most of the stuff being brought up about how vaccines actually work is not mentioned in the game. (Also, the moral implications of this interpretation clash rather directly with how the moral implications are portrayed in TLOU2, on which basis TLOU2 is criticized - hence the discussion.)

[JadedDM]

Again, I haven't played the first game in a few years now (I plan to replay it soon, before I try the second one), so maybe my memory is rusty. But I remember the narrative thrust of the game's ending was basically that Joel makes a selfish decision to save one person rather than sacrifice her to possibly save millions. Then he lies to her about it. Whether you agree with what Joel did or not, it was clear that the narrative was, while not outright condemning his actions, at least trying to present them as morally ambiguous.

I don't remember Joel ever expressing doubt that the Fireflies could make a vaccine, nor did he make any attempt to talk them out of it. So this idea that he did what he did because he had a better understanding of science than the Fireflies did doesn't fit. It felt like Joel did believe they could do it, but had a last minute change of heart and decided Ellie meant more to him than saving the world did.

[JadedDM]

Just finished a new playthrough of the first game last night, and it seems my memory was pretty spot on.

* Neither Marlene or anyone else ever claims the odds of making the vaccine are slim. Everyone in the game acts as if this is more or less a sure thing.
* There is no evidence anywhere that the Fireflies have cut up and killed other immune people, or even discovered them before. The only person who comes close is Joel in the ending, when he lies to Ellie and tells her the Fireflies have found many immune people and nothing came from it, and so they gave up on looking for a cure.
* At no point does Joel or anyone else question the science of making a vaccine for a fungal infection. The story is presented as Joel selfishly choosing to sacrifice the world to save one person he cares about.

Basically, everything Lethologica said was accurate.

[Anteros]

Just finished a new playthrough of the first game last night, and it seems my memory was pretty spot on.

* Neither Marlene or anyone else ever claims the odds of making the vaccine are slim. Everyone in the game acts as if this is more or less a sure thing.
* There is no evidence anywhere that the Fireflies have cut up and killed other immune people, or even discovered them before. The only person who comes close is Joel in the ending, when he lies to Ellie and tells her the Fireflies have found many immune people and nothing came from it, and so they gave up on looking for a cure.
* At no point does Joel or anyone else question the science of making a vaccine for a fungal infection. The story is presented as Joel selfishly choosing to sacrifice the world to save one person he cares about.

Basically, everything Lethologica said was accurate.

I don't need characters in a game to tell me that stabbing innocent children in the brain doesn't magically create vaccines. Maybe some people do? I don't know their lives. Maybe that's why the anti-vax movement got so popular?

It doesn't matter if Joel is a selfish person, because I'm not Joel. I'm the person consuming the media. Of course I'm going to side with the guy trying to save an innocent child over the one murdering them chasing some crazy cure that won't work. You can argue for suspension of disbelief, and that the player should just assume the vaccine would work, but suspension of disbelief doesn't work that way. People are willing to belief completely outlandish things in fictional media such as zombies. They aren't willing to believe that basic science doesn't work the same.


Regardless, none of this even matters to the overall point that Abby is a complete monster who no one should empathize with and needs to be put down. There's a point in the game where Ellie is begging Abby to spare someone's life because she's pregnant. Abby, like the well adjusted "hero" that she is say's she's glad she's pregnant and slits her throat. Maybe I can kinda see her justification for beating the guy who just saved her life to death with a golf club...but combined with all of the other horrifically evil **** she does? No. She's a monster, and no amount of forcing me to control her while she plays with a dog, or acts sad because her stupidity and evil decisions get her friends killed is going to make me empathize with the type of person who glorifies in slitting a pregnant woman's throat as they stand over their friend.