No.31006
I’m going through part 1 again and there are several sections of the game that are almost cringeworthy in terms of writing that feel even more forced than what I got from part 2. Like the Pittsburg sequence that sees Henry and Sam randomly killed off because the writers didn’t know what to do with their characters beyond being helpers for Joel and Ellie, or the fact that the hunters don’t exist as anything more than mindless henchmen for something I guess. Marlene being a dick and not telling Joel anything about what could happen to Ellie, Joel pointing a gun at Henry and refusing to calm down even with the awareness that he and his brother went out of their way to keep him and Ellie from drowning, the fact that Joel’s relationship with Ellie goes from completely hostile to caring during the bills town segment with little transition etc. like fuck I can get some people not being able to handle Joel’s death, or part 2 in general feeling way more emotionally draining but I didn’t encounter anywhere near the same amount of disbelief from the kind of things that happened in part 2 as I did in part 1.
I’m guessing it’s due to screenwriters getting more experience in the sequel because holy fuck, there’s a lot of segments in the first game where it’s obvious that the leading protagonists are untouchable to the point where several sections of the game play out like what you’d find in an uncharted level or left 4 dead. Examples include the horde shootout in bills town, Joel firing a sniper in the suburbs against the hunters with infinite ammo, Joel and Ellie surviving jumping off a bridge with no immediate injury, the opening chase sequence with FEDRA officers surrounding Tess, Joel and Ellie, or just the side character deaths that often feel completely random like Sam dying to some random runner in seconds after outrunning a tank over several days.
I get shit like this was in part 2 like what happened in hillcrest, or Joel being a fucking idiot by letting someone he just met follow him in an abondoned house, but fuck it didn’t happen anywhere near at the same rate as much as it did in part 1 to the point where it became distracting to the games overall tone and pacing for me.
No.31007
I love poorly written shit
No.31008
>>31007I wouldn’t say part 1 was poorly written, but it did have a lot of flaws in its writing relative to the fact that its writers were less experienced. Part of why some sections of the plot feel so disconnected from the setting is because Joel isn’t a soldier/militant like Ellie and Abby. He’s just a dude with a lot of informal combat experience from 2 decades of crime. If his character was setup to describe either as an isolated veteran that fights well to take on his problems or as an isolated hobbyist that crafts well to avoid problems his character would work a lot better to the games overall tone than making it feel like an uncharted spinoff whenever an action segment comes up with him.
No.31009
its a video game trying to be a tv show that fails at both things
No.31026
>>31008I thought Joel was former military? It's been a while though so maybe it's just me conflating him with the soldiers in the opening in my tired brain.
No.31027
>>31006tbh the ending always bothered me the most. That and the story seems to be popularly depicted as a heroic father/surrogate daughter story instead of a selfish, broken man dooming the world because he can't let go of his dead daughter 20 years after the fact.
imo Joel killing everyone to prevent Ellie from giving the world a chance at a cure and potentially dooming humanity is a bad end. He's no different from the selfish asshole he was at the beginning of the story, it's just that now he's got a replacement for his dead kid, and instead of being able to move past that he chooses to not only slaughter all the scientists that could potentially develop a cure, but also subject whatever is left of humanity to the destruction caused by the fungus.
All the brainlets upset that Joel got merked in the second one are just proof of the break down of the education system because they don't have any fucking media literacy at all. Joel was the bad guy and he deserved to be murdered.
No.31031
>>31027>That and the story seems to be popularly depicted as a heroic father/surrogate daughter story instead of a selfish, broken man dooming the world because he can't let go of his dead daughter 20 years after the fact.Thank you, you’ve described my problems with the original games writing more than anyone I’ve seen debate it and part 2 online. The presentation and emotional tone of Joel is both out of sync with his character and does very little with his overall setup. I think the only thing that actually developed with his character during the entirety of the first game was his approachability overall as a person. What he’s like on a deeper level never felt properly addressed and I think the games writers just didn’t know entirely what they wanted with him, same goes for a lot of other weirder problems I had with the game, like the weird side character deaths or Ellie somehow not managing to dislike Joel’s precense after being around him for months compared to being near anyone else for a few days(or really just taking into account her own history before she was taken in by Marlene).
No.31032
>>31027I refused to finish the game cause I felt so strongly that he should have let Ellie die and killing all those people was wrong.
No.31075
People hate it because of Abby when they should hate it because it's Druckmann seething over some video of an IDF soldier getting killed by a mob.
No.31083
>>31027>imo Joel killing everyone to prevent Ellie from giving the world a chance at a cure and potentially dooming humanity is a bad end. He's no different from the selfish asshole he was at the beginning of the story, it's just that now he's got a replacement for his dead kid, and instead of being able to move past that he chooses to not only slaughter all the scientists that could potentially develop a cure, but also subject whatever is left of humanity to the destruction caused by the fungus.this was always my reading of it tbh, but it doesnt make joel an unsympathetic character, just a deeply tragic one. but yes the writing could definitely have better signalled that his motivations were selfish, if understandable
No.31093
>>31083tbf killing the one person with immunity is a stupid plan
No.31096
>>31093Do they ever say explicitly that they will definitely develop a cure from her brain if they kill her? It's been a while since I played and I don't recall if it was a "her brain is the last piece to the puzzle" or "we kinda maybe think we can hopefully probably develop a cure if we kill her" sort of thing.
I'd probably be more sympathetic to the not killing her option if she was at least planning on having kids and possibly passing on her immunity but by making her a lesbian(?) that kind of seems unlikely.
No.31196
>>31093Anon it was established In the game itself that Ellie isn’t a special case and that the fireflies have failed to produce a cure, this doesn’t necessarily mean all of their previous subjects died, only some but this does mean that it’s uncertain whether or not Ellie would’ve been a breakthrough. This also means Joel’s decision to not just recapture Ellie but inflict enough harm on the fireflies to end them directly fucked over a lot of people even if his initial intentions where in good nature for Ellie’s safety.
This is what fucks people over when they think about Joel’s decisions. He’s hurt a lot of people including those he loved and the final decisions he made in the final game that exist as expressions of what he’s like put a lot of people who were already questioning his nature as a person to fully evaluate what they thought of him by the ending. If you hated the guy at the start you would’ve been indifferent to his death by Abby for everything he did up to the end of part one, similarly if you thought he had a chance to improve with new people and prevent sliding into his own isolation alongside madness, knowing how his death was left off before he was given a chance to repair his relationship with Ellie was painful. Personally I don’t think much of him beyond what he’s like, he’s violent lonely and empathetic, he makes a lot of irrational decisions and pushes a lot of people he likes away from him because of it but brings a lot of people together. It was sad knowing how he passed for me but ultimately I can understand it was something that was inevitable to his character being he never fully grew out of the shell he was back in Boston regardless of his attempts.
No.31197
>>31196I'm not saying that Joel was a hero or something, just that the writing is a mess and potentially killing a test subject who you could study in a lot more depth is a bad idea. It feels like a lazy attempt to shoehorn nuance into the situation. If they really wanted to make out Joel to be in the wrong they should have just had him "rescue" her from being a test subject in general, killing people in the process instead of making them out to be sketchy and probably bad scientists.