That all goes without saying, surely there aren’t people who would still see Ellie as good in any way?! They just replace one another in trajectory as the story unfolds. Ellie becomes the monster hunting and Abby the one trying to protect her family.

I can’t...I love Elf too much...I change my mind and I’m onboard with him.

And no, The Park chapter didn’t really do enough to humanise her, not for me. Even after knowing Joel was who killed her father, all I could see was Joel’s bloodsoaked face looking at Ellie while lying on the floor, and I just wanted Abby (now me!) dead. 

Yes Ellie became a murderous vengeful bitch, but I still liked the fact she wanted closure and left Dina. But glad it ended how it did (story wise, not gameplay wise).

I may be wrong here, but I think in (what I guess is now known as Part 1), Joel is given the option of killing the surgeons or not? It’s interesting that the canon is that he did - as I suspect many of us did in the game, as it was a manifestation of the desire of ‘save’ Ellie.

I get where Elf is coming from, but personally I made peace with Abby’s character quite early on. I didn’t like that Joel died, but that was the story they wanted to tell. However, I fully understood why Abby wanted revenge - just as Ellie did later.

I think the character switcheroos came with the right place in the story. You stop playing as Ellie after she’s killed a pregnant woman (imagine carrying on straight after that), and you pick up as Abby, and learn all about her Dad and their relationship. It was very clever.

"fans"
I think any real fan would be interested in having an interesting story told instead of getting angry about minor details. Sure you can not like a thing, especially a thing like this which has a tough story but they're going to hate instead of critique and there's no time for hate. Apparently Abby's voice actor has received death threats.

I don't think multiple endings would work for this. Multiple endings only really work when you have choices throughout and ND love a solid story. I liked how in the first one it's sort of presented as a choice to not kill the scientist but you've built up this relationship so it becomes not a choice at all. Well it wasn't for me, I pulled that trigger straight away.

edit @Shabby

Yeah read about that - it's hard enough getting your head around death threats for anything, let alone a game, let alone an actor in a game.  Don't even know where to start.

The Reddit stuff I had a look at was mostly Comic Book Guy level complaints eg: Abby wouldn't have run into Joel right away, Joel wouldn't have gotten trapped by the Wolves, why did they go on patrol when there was a snow storm coming, etc.  Therefore the characters are ruined.  I'm no expert on story telling but I'm sure things like that could be applied to nearly every story.  Like they expected it to be bad and found reasons for it to be.  I'm no expert though!

I think you're right re: "Multiple endings only really work when you have choices throughout and ND love a solid story. I liked how in the first one it's sort of presented as a choice to not kill the scientist but you've built up this relationship so it becomes not a choice at all. Well it wasn't for me, I pulled that trigger straight away."

hylian_elf wrote:

Yes Ellie became a murderous vengeful bitch, but I still liked the fact she wanted closure and left Dina. But glad it ended how it did (story wise, not gameplay wise).

This just paints her the same as Joel. Selfish choices that only affect her vs taking the more difficult choices to help others. I hated the fact she left Dina and JJ. But each to their own and it shows that, at least by gaming standards, made something that can foster this kind of discussion.

As for death threats, fuck those people.

I finished this last night around 2am after a big 5 hour session on it.

I've gotta say over all it's fantastic, maybe the best of this generation for me personally but it's not without its faults. The main one for me being the fact it carried on after the showdown at the theatre. I'd of happily watched a 20 minute Cut scene to finish it right there at the point abbie is holding the gun to ellie. I wanted to see them fight (but I didn't want to be a part of it), shout at each other, go deeper on what we've all just witnessed. The final scenes of Ellie with the guitar thinking of the last exchange with Joel was a fitting end but that could of all come directly after the theatre scene. I wanted a montage of Joel and Ellie's upbeat moments with the guitar playing in the background and occassionly cutting to Joel/Ellie playing it. I'd off also liked abit of an Ellie voice over to tell you which direction the main cast are going in with scenes of them moving on in a sort of terminator 1/2 John Conner/ Sarah Conner tone if you know what I mean.

I'll also add I'd of liked Abbies part in that last voice over bit to have seen here contacting the fire flys on the radio just how she did with that bit of hope still remaining.

That's just my thoughts on the final scenes though. If it finished with some hope or scenes of teary nostalgia I think people wouldn't have come away so crushed by the depressing bleakness of it.

I will say again seeing Joel and Ellie make piece with Joel's decision to save her at the end of the first game was absolutely the right scene to finish on. Both in how the last game finished and how this game started made me want to see what happened the night of the dance and what their last words were to each other.

When Joel was killed in front of Ellie it did make me furious. I wanted revenge as Ellie for what Abby did. I didn't wanna murder everyone on my way through but I was having A blast with how the game handled so I was sort of split on that with the narrative and my own mindset I wanted revenge on that group that were present but I didn't feel the need to kill all the goons. Thing is the game plays so well it made me not realy care about trying to stealth my way through areas.

After hating Abby for the first half of the game I'd say my feelings started changing towards her quite quickly during day 1 in Seattle so when it did come to the fight in the theatre I didn't want to control either. I felt like my job was done and now I just wanted naughty dog to take the reigns.

Body count was way way to high but all games fall prey to that and at least it was fun for the most part

I think it's set a new bench mark for believable animations between charactors, by that I mean their facial expressions, subtleties in their small movements. The kissing scenes looked real, not like a game usually does. When Dina was in Eugenes weed den basement and was seducing Ellie it looked real. You could sense a tension and Dinas performance and facial animations were just a level above and they should be applauded for that.

Sorry if this is abit scatter gun, just throwing out whatever's coming to mind.

It’s must be great. I’m still thinking about it, reading about it and watching analysis of it. What I couldn’t believe (though I shouldn’t be surprised) is the level of hate at this game.

Yeah I can't understand the hate either. Like dislike I guess if you wanted another Joel and Ellie buddy buddy game. But then I think the people that are hating would have hated anything really, they have unrealistic expectations that could never be met.

I really liked that ND out you in a position where you didn't want to play the story that was being told. I think that was the point of it. I do think it could have been executed a little better in maybe taking the reigns from you anyway even if you held off instead of it being an insta death and forcing you to push the buttons. But it's an interesting experiment in game design because generally pushing buttons to make the action happen is an easy thing to do.

I'd be interested to read an interview about it. To know if that's what they were going for because it seems that way to me.

I started watching a video yesterday to see what some of the criticism was. I got a couple of minutes in listening to some whiney cry baby berate the game for Abbys physique. Women don't look like that he said, blah blah blah. I'm gonna try and watch as much as I can to understand why it's getting the hate but all I found so far is complaints about the story not going the way they wanted it to and people moaning about the game being woke. I thought all the "woke" stuff was handled just fine and was an important part of the motivations in some ways. Anyway I couldn't give a flying fuck whether a charactor likes munching carpet or sucking cock or wants to be the sex they are or not regardless of gender and who's cares if the characters don't look like Lara croft and Nathan drake, I'm not playing it to wank over.

Sorry, might be abit strong but people make such a fuss over these things, maybe it's ignorance, I just don't get why people are so upset.

It's a game and a fuckin great one at that.

Gamers on the whole as an audience aren't used to complex narratives with shifting perspectives. Most of them are there for the thrill; the shooting, the puching, the kicking, the stabbing and the explosions. With a nice teary eyed backstory as a bonus. Give them something more complex (confrontational?) and certain parts of the gamersphere will start to kick up a storm. Hence fucking death threats to the cast.

That Cupa video is good. Nothing groundbreaking but I like his measured and well thought out response to it.

Someone in the youtube comments (of all places) talked about Ellie leaving the farmhouse for revenge without the bracelet that Dina gave her but when she returned at the end she was wearing it. Potentially suggesting that she had just made a short trip from Jackson to look at the old stuff she had and say one last goodbye to Guitar Joel before going home to Dina. It's certainly a nicer ending than I had in my mind

Yeah that's how I read it at the time too. Haven't chased up anything else regarding the fact that it might be a happier ending.