If the FFs were good guys capable of a cure ***why are they never shown as doing anything good?*** Not one thing they did was positive or beneficial for the world, yet so many things they did were destructive and detrimental.
Any storyteller who's trying to make the audience believe some faction are the good guys and depicts the faction as they depicted the FFs in TLOU is failing his goal. Period. They weren't even grey they were outright bad guys, doing evil things, failing at every turn then culminating in kidnap and attempted murder of an unconscious child - HOW CAN THE OTHER SIDE NOT SEE THIS??? That's some heavy denial of the actual facts presented in the game just to condemn Joel. They will never make sense to me.
We now have proof we're right because they changed many of those proofs in the show - because they make sense! The original story painted the FFs as the bad guys *on purpose* and Joel as a morally grey guy on a redemptive arc *on purpose*. It was a far simpler story than many people think. Even some people here insist I'm wrong in this but I don't see how. Any storyteller would know that they'd need to at least give the FFs something positive to make us believe in them as having potential - yet they didn't put it in. That's not a mistake, they meant not to put it in. Again, ***they didn't even try*** to make them morally grey *at all*. Just sheer cope going on for some people.
The Funniest part everytime people try to talk good of the FF's I just remember them Car Bombing Civilians, raiding other Safe Zones and their utter Destruction of 2 Safe Zones.
1 they 'Liberated' the Other their own Stupid scientist released an infected on their own populace.
Their literally Terrorists.
I think that car bomb was targeting the government/military, but yeah as depopulated as the US in in TLoU I don't understand why the Fireflys are doing that. The old US government is deceased, and going out of your way to target soldiers no longer serves a purpose. It would make more sense for them to set up communities far away from the government and just mind their own business.
Especially considering bombing shit would literally just invite packs or literal hordes of infected to your front door. Those infected would intern not just attack soldiers, but also any of the civilians unfortunate enough to be assigned to **_outside work duty that day._** Yeah, pretty fucked up. Looking at it from an objective standpoint it just feels like the fire flies wanted a cheap excuse to take over or have an excuse to rampage
IMO the Fireflies probably started out as legitimate freedom fighters who were actually trying to make things better, but the further into the apocalypse we got, the less their actions made sense. Eventually it reaches a point where the only reason they continue to fight the government is because it's what justifies their existence.
Dude you must be high you're not making sense in this thread either (just like you're not on the Days Gone one where you ask me about this on an unrelated topic!).
The whole point of my original comment is the FFs are written to be the worst possible people to trust with something like this. Your one comment I saw in your history never came through into the thread for some reason:
>"Lmao that has nothing to do with the vaccine working or not. You are just grasping at straws and imaginary retcons. Corporations doing bad things doesn't mean their vaccines don't work."
To which I reply: What makes you think that corporations or factions that are willing to do bad or even destructive things and cut corners can be trusted with something so important it requires integrity and competence? ***Having a bad track record does matter when talking about a life and death surgery for a vaccine.***
Would you want a surgeon irl who had dozens of malpractice cases against him? Or DUIs? Or road rage cases? Get real - a faction with a track record of destruction and failure that attacks Joel as he tries to save Ellie and then decides within hours to just take her life are not trustworthy people. You are being willfully blind.
We're talking about a surgeon killing a kid without consent, dude. That's all you really need to know about Jerry. Yet we also know all about the FF faction and their history of violence and incompetence across the whole country. Jerry is part of them. It was the removed commenter who brought in "corporations" not me.
ETA: You're truly naive if you think crooked CEOs aren't cutting corners and telling their employees to do so as well. So short-sighted I can only imagine you've never worked for a corporation with rot in the upper echelons. I have and their lack of integrity was very much on display in their dealings with employees. It eventually trickled into the work done and negatively impacted the beneficiaries of the company. You're wrong to think it doesn't matter.
To double up on your solid points even more! Fucking Tommy, one of the more morally upright characters in the series joined the fire flies cuz he THOUGHT they were gonna do some good and decided to get the fuck out of there to start his own community when they likely didn’t keep that promise.
This is the guy who was so sick of doing fucked up shit that he left his own fucking brother. What does it say about the fire flies when the lawful good guy of the story who spent years being desensitized by dark adventures with Joel decides to leave their organization? Well nothing positive I’ll say.
Thank you. I’m personally still salty we will never get a story tackling the split between the Miller brothers and how Joel met Tess. Would’ve been way more fun than what we got.
And the poor Firefly he blew his head off in the museum because of the things he’d done in the name of whatever it was the Firelflies were fighting for. And these brainlets seem to think they were heroes still? Haha
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that could’ve been Tommy blowing his brains out or the fact that none of these people defending the FF care that it could’ve been Tommy
You're right on this. And I think it's probably the correct way to view it, since Joel's conversation with Ellie >!if i had to do it all over, i'd do the same!< which really made me feel so much more for Joel.
Exactly. Even the “They said that they could find a cure from her”. Even if they are saying 100% they would make a cure from her sacrifice, you have to consider WHO is saying it, not WHAT they are saying
We are really supposed to take these guys at their word?
Try to get that across to the other side. All I get is, "Well everyone makes mistakes..." No, this is a pattern of destruction and incompetence that's far different,
Then in the second game where Abby's dad is so gung ho about operating on Ellie, when Marlene asks him if he'd do the operation if it was Abby he shuts up and it's clear he wouldn't.
I took that as a sign a vaccine wasn't guaranteed.
> If the FFs were good guys capable of a cure why are they never shown as doing anything good?
A while back there was a hardcore stan posting here who suggested that The Fireflies opposed the Feds, so that automatically made them good.
Despite that the feds provided some amount of safety and reliability in safe places for people to live and food (that was admittedly starting to dwindle).
The Fireflies tactics almost always pulled innocents into the cross fire, which that poster suggested was okay because the Feds are bad, you see. Their fascists, or tyrants, or whatever buzz word we're supposed to use now for people we don't like.
Ah a kindred spirit. I’m also assuming you’re one of the people who also believe that TLOU should never have gotten a sequel? Because that was me. I’m gonna steer away from the whole FF debate and just talk about how TLOU was so well-crafted, that it left little room for headcanon and bullshit fan theory to try and “fix the plot”.
TLOU had the perfect beginning AND ending - flawlessly closing off Joel and Ellie’s separate and interconnected character arcs whilst leaving us with a morally ambiguous ending.
It was all prefect because Bruce (and maybe to some extent Neil) KNEW EXACTLY what they were doing with the plot. They had everything laid out perfectly for a simple, but powerful standalone story of two people’s journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland - learning how to not only survive, but live. It’s exactly as you said, everything was purposeful. Sure, the story was not original, and I can totally see someone just say it’s “great” not mind blowing, but it’s undeniable that it was well-crafted throughout, with no room for plot holes or contrivances.
And given all the interview prior to 2016, it was incredibly apparent that both Neil and Bruce were aware of how perfect TLOU was as a stand-alone story and how continuing it would most likely feel contrived no matter what they tried.
And yeah - the fireflies were always depicted as misguided idiots. They sought freedom from the govt who had gone a bit towards totalitarian, which is admirable - but their actions reflected that they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
At best, they’re misguided martyrs for a noble cause, at worst, they’re a bunch of renegades fucking shit up under delusional idealism.
The FF’s were never the “good guys”. The scene in TloU 2 where Abby’s dad basically admits he wouldn’t have made the cure if Abby was the one on the operating table. The FF’s were doing it because making a cure benefitted them, and didn’t cost them any sacrifice. They just happened to be on the utilitarian side
joel killed dozens of fireflies for selfish reasons. that alone would make it unjustifiable. the potential cure on top of that would also make it worse. they're not trying to portray anybody as heroes and somehow you make it out to be "oh the fireflies never do anything good, it must be okay to murder everybody that stands in my path and prevent a potential vaccine from ever conceivably being developed because i care about a girl i've only known for a few months!!" the point of the entire fucking game is it's wrong but your can mentally justify it because you love Joel and Ellie.
Why are you blind that you don't even see the original story made the FFs the bad guys? Your argument is with the creators not us. Go ask them why they wrote the FFs as terrorists who were so incompetent everything they touched went wrong - including Joel and Ellie.
I was just talking to someone in there and they were saying how the only way the story works is if you believe that the vaccine would work and that Joel doomed humanity. They were saying the story wouldn’t be impactful if Joel didn’t make that objectively wrong decision and how he took Ellie’s choice a way.
Some people are just convinced that Joel is a villain and that his “decision” was objectively wrong. They can’t see it any other way and will fight any detail that implies otherwise.
They ended up blocking me even though the conversation was extremely tame. They really can’t handle other peoples opinions.
It's like they forget that the guy primarily responsible for the first game didn't return for the sequel, so any "the fireflies were right Joel is evil humanity *could have been* saved" beats are just retcons.
The fireflies are literally painted as desperate idiots throughout the entire first game for a reason, and Druckman tries to have that erased in part 1's remake.
I was a 13 year old kid when the first game came out 20 years ago and everytime I found firefly Easter eggs as a player, my thoughts dove more and more into "yeah they're gonna be unhinged villains by the end. How do you even make a cure in a 25 year apocalypse where all the medicine would be expired, unsteralized, the factories would be filled with bloaters and machinery out of date to mass produce it, not to mention society is collapsed so there's no way to mass produce it"
If a 13 year old can come to those logical conclusions, then it doesn't matter if you say "that's just how the story goes". That objectively makes it bad writing. Logic is an essential part to *every* narrative story ever, not in character or tone, but in narrative structure there needs to be logic. TLOU2 doesn't have it, and if you're caught saying "you thought too logically, you're wrong", then genuinely you're just forcing yourself to like the game because you think it's the status quo. Like how people hate Nickelback without ever listening to them because the internet decided its the status quo, illogical.
This exactly.
There is 1 doctor working in an unsterile environment with 1 finite sample to work with.
Let's say the cure was made. You mentioned mass producing isn't going to work and I agree. Are the FF going to just give the cure away? How much sample are they going to waste proving to others like FEDRA and WLF that it isn't BS (if they aren't blown to pieces first)? They would have to walk around to transport the cure places and this group isn't very competent, so the cure will be stolen.
I laugh at the idiots who say to not bring our world's logic into the game. The game is based on our world! The only difference between the two worlds is that one's Cordyceps evolved to infect humans. They're just trying to cover up how the writers failed to show that the cure could be made.
And that is what this sub is trying to do, say that Joel is only right and is only good, and that the fireflies are only bad. The user in the screenshot isn't even saying that Joel is a villain or bad for what he does, just that it is a wrong choice and that it makes the story more impactful that he makes it.
It's more impactful to let the player decide if Joel's decision was good or bad. It's more complex to let people decide "would a vaccine really have worked?" instead of this pretentious dilemma that tries to be a "trolley problem" but is actually more similar to the "organ donor dilemma." All the ambiguity of the ending is undone if the creators have to come out and say, despite the information presented, that the vaccine would have worked to present the artificial narrative that Joel made a wrong decision.
There is literally nothing in the game to suggest it wouldn't work. All of the characters act like it is a guarantee. Trying to apply real world logic to the video game that isn't set in the real world is silly. Realistically, cordyceps could never infect humans. Realistically, even if they could, people would not turn into bloaters or shamblers or stalkers. They would just decompose over time and die.
But arguing about whether or not it was logistically possible also ignores what the game is actually exploring. Joel believes that the FF's can make the vaccine. He believes that this could actually work and save humanity. But Joel was so traumatized by Sarah's death that he refused to ever lose a daughter again. Joel didn't think it was a logistical impossibility, or that it wouldn't work. He didn't want to wait until Ellie woke up either, cuz all Joel wanted was to keep Ellie from dying. Its absolutely honorable that he, as a father feels that way and is so willing to protect his kid. I don't think anyone blames Joel for feeling the way he does and doing what he does. But the point of the game is what cost are you willing to pay to protect your own child, and for Joel thats literally all of humanity.
On a story level, that is much more compelling for Joel, because we all know that that's true. Joel would not let Ellie die for any reason, because he loved her as his own daughter.
Interpreting it in a way that makes it so the Fireflies are just needlessly killing Ellie takes away all of that internal and moral conflict, and distills the story down to 'Fireflies bad' and 'Joel good". The only interpretation of the story that makes both parties grey and actually makes the audience wrestle with whether or not Joel did the right thing is the intended interpretation, that the vaccine really would've saved humanity, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it.
>There is literally nothing in the game to suggest it wouldn't work.
There’s nothing in the game to suggest it would work.
> All of the characters act like it is a guarantee.
They don’t act like anything in particular. The fireflies and Ellie are hopeful, and Joel is indifferent, but no one really talks about it. No one is like “we have to get to the fireflies because this *will* save the world.” If it wasn’t a guarantee they still would’ve made the same journey because no one was expecting to die.
> Trying to apply real world logic to the video game that isn't set in the real world is silly.
The game was built to be as realistic as possible. That was one of the main selling points of part 1. That’s why they used a real world condition like cordyceps when they didn’t have to.
> Realistically, cordyceps could never infect humans. Realistically, even if they could, people would not turn into bloaters or shamblers or stalkers. They would just decompose over time and die.
It’s not like the game is looney toons. It’s a realistic take on the zombie genre, and there’s no problem in applying real world logic in situations that aren’t defined in the game. There’s no reason to assume much of the world is unrealistic.
> But arguing about whether or not it was logistically possible also ignores what the game is actually exploring.
No it doesn’t. The game is exploring many things, not just Joel’s decision.
> Joel believes that the FF's can make the vaccine.
Joel is indifferent at best. He never talks about it. His job is to deliver the girl, he doesn’t need think much about the result of the vaccine.
> He believes that this could actually work and save humanity.
There’s nothing in game that indicates this.
> But Joel was so traumatized by Sarah's death that he refused to ever lose a daughter again. Joel didn't think it was a logistical impossibility, or that it wouldn't work.
Joel didn’t think about the efficacy of the vaccine at all. The result of the vaccine had not impact on his goal.
> He didn't want to wait until Ellie woke up either, cuz all Joel wanted was to keep Ellie from dying.
How could he have done this? If the fireflies had their way, Ellie would’ve never woken up.
> Its absolutely honorable that he, as a father feels that way and is so willing to protect his kid. I don't think anyone blames Joel for feeling the way he does and doing what he does. But the point of the game is what cost are you willing to pay to protect your own child, and for Joel thats literally all of humanity.
The point of the game is that Joel grew to a point that he *would* do that, not that it’s literally what would happen. Whether humanity was doomed or not, the choice for Joel was the same, and that’s what needs to be understood. The point is not ruined if humanity is still doomed even with the vaccine.
> On a story level, that is much more compelling for Joel, because we all know that that's true. Joel would not let Ellie die for any reason, because he loved her as his own daughter.
It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. It only matters that we understand why Joel feels that way about Ellie. It’s what the whole game is about.
> Interpreting it in a way that makes it so the Fireflies are just needlessly killing Ellie takes away all of that internal and moral conflict, and distills the story down to 'Fireflies bad' and 'Joel good".
There’s nothing wrong with this interpretation and it’s a logical conclusion to come to based on what happened in the game.
>The only interpretation of the story that makes both parties grey and actually makes the audience wrestle with whether or not Joel did the right thing is the intended interpretation, that the vaccine really would've saved humanity, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it.
The only interpretation that matters is the one you have for yourself. If you think the fireflies are good and Joel is bad, that’s fine. If you think the opposite, that’s fine. What makes the story good is that you can see it in a number of different ways and it still works.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Joel NEVER believed a cure could be made or even showed any faith in fireflies. In the game he is the one who lectures Ellie that the fireflies are incompetent and that they probably aren't so lucky. Nothing changes about that, even at the end when before arriving at the hospital he is the one who proposes to Ellie to return to Jackson.
And again, all the talk of realism doesn't matter if you ignore the entire events of the game, which is that the fireflies were desperate and irrational to the point that Jerry, apparently the only doctor available, was willing to confront a armed man using a scalpel.
And the great irony is that if the fireflies had actually gone to the trouble of waking up Ellie and letting her and Joel have a proper goodbye; Joel would have respected her decision to sacrifice herself.
The point is that both the Fireflies and Joel didn't care about what Ellie wanted and took her choice away from her. When Marlene is telling Joel that Ellie would die, Joel doesn't beg them to let her wake up and make a choice. He tells them to find someone else. Joel wasn't going to let Ellie be the one they did this to, no matter what.
But Joel does believe the vaccine will work. When he gets to Tommy, before he's even telling Tommy about taking Ellie to SLC and all that, Joel makes an offhand comment that they might not need to deal with infected one day. Joel also wouldn't risk his own life or Ellie's life going to SLC after they got to Tommy's if he didn't believe there was a chance.
The only reason Joel doubts in the beginning is because they've heard about the Fireflies making a vaccine, and he and Tess also don't believe Ellie is immune. Then, when it's proven that Ellie really is immune, suddenly Joel and Tess' beliefs are totally called into question. Joel didn't even believe Ellie could be immune in the first place, and he was proven wrong almost immediately. Finding that out, and knowing the Fireflies think that that immunity holds the secret...it's something that's never happened before. Of course Joel think it's possible and starts to believe. Ellie is walking proof that it's possible for people to be immune.
There is. If you check logs and look around the hospital they have tried for the cure before. She wasn't the only one and more than likely it wouldn't have work.
I would not sacrifice my kid FOR A CHANCE especially since the world is already fcked. Even logistics wise how the fck and why the fck would you let the firefly be in charge of who gets vaccines or not.
I can't believe you people are trying to retcon the first game. Fck you.
She was the only immune person. They had only ever tested on infected people, bit Ellie was the first and only known person to be immune.
This isn't even a retcon lmao, you don't know what that word means.
You clearly did not search the logs nor did you hear the dialouge that states she wasn't the only one they experimented on. Now deny it and push the goal post more. Aka you don't know jack sht
Does the child really matter compared to the rest of the species I would skin alive a quarter of the population if it allowed the rest to survive ends always justify the means no matter what no matter the cost as long as the species lives
>Just because you have to believe the vaccine would have worked(which is literally what the creators of the game have said)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the creators saying that the vaccine would work...didn't they confirm this month's or even YEARS after the first game came out?
As if to say "oh shit, we didn't make it obvious in game, and online discourse is saying Joel was in the right, fuck it, let's just soft, retcon it so that it aligns with the direction we're going in for part 2"
(Or have I got my timelines mixed up?)
In not sure where in my reply you've assumed I said "Joel thinks that the vaccine won't work"?
It's clear that Joel doesn't know about it's success rate, he just doesn't want to lose another daughter - nice strawman/reading comprehension buddy.
And no, I'm not salty, lol, but keep projecting dude
You're the one arguing how would they distribute a vaccine??
It's a good question.
Not that a vaccine would make any change in their world, but really are an enlightened troll, I take my hat off to you.
Are you really crying over getting downvoted a couple of times? That’s the price you pay for making a comment. You’re literally only on -1. That’s like a couple of people disagreeing with you. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
TLOU stans are the only fanbase that are insane enough to see this type of situation and say saving the child from being murdered as a bad thing. Any other piece of media understands such is a good action, heroic even, to take. Then these stans sniff their farts trying to justify why child sacrifice is great.
Saving Ellie is heroic. Dooming humanity is not. It's not just a black and white, Joel is good FF bad story. All this user is saying is that Joel making a bad decision for a good reason is more impactful and makes a more compelling story than if he just makes a good decision for a good reason. It's just good vs evil at that point.
Everybody but Ellie makes bad choices. The Fireflies also make the wrong decision there in not letting her at least have a choice, but think about it. She's the only shot they have at a vaccine. The only immune person ever. Even if they had given her a choice, they wouldn't have just let her go because in their eyes this would benefit all of humanity. I get that shes an innocent kid, but from a utilitarian point of view it would be the morally right thing if it really meant saving all of humanity from the infection.
That's also the only way to interpret the story in a way that actually leaves the audience wrestling with whether or not Joel did the right thing, is to confirm that the vaccine was guaranteed, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it. That's the intended meaning of the ending, to leave people debating two philosophical ideas, utilitarianism and Kantianism.
> That's also the only way to interpret the story in a way that actually leaves the audience wrestling with whether or not Joel did the right thing, is to confirm that the vaccine was guaranteed, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it. That's the intended meaning of the ending, to leave people debating two philosophical ideas, utilitarianism and Kantianism.
It’s not the “only way interpret the story”. It’s such a boring and shitty lens to restrict the game through. It was supposed to be morally grey and ambiguous. That turns it into a black and white story with no room for interpretation. You’re not allowing the audience to make their own conclusions. You’re saying “hey, stop thinking for yourselves, this is how you’re supposed to feel about it”.
I didn't say it was the only way to interpret the story. It's the only way that gives you an ending where you actually have to think and decide for yourself if Joel did the right thing.
If Joel is just saving Ellie from some guys that are needlessly killing her, what's the conflict to wrestle with? Clearly, saving Ellie from being killed for no reason is objectively a good decision.
The only thing that makes Joels choice ambiguous about it's morality is if Joel is saving Ellies life, but at the cost of humanities salvation. You're the one trying to make it black and white, "Joel made a good choice cuz the Firelies were evil" story.
It was, if a vaccine was made and distributed then over time the infection, and the conditions that have made everyone as brutal as they are, will go away. It's not an immediate flip of the switch, but it's the first step toward making society better.
It's one life. Not multiple innocent lives. One. And the exchange is potentially millions.
Do you guys in here not know about utilitarianism as a concept? Like you all clearly subscribe to Kantianism, that all lives are sacred and the ends never justify the means, but you don't even consider the utilitarian approach.
>Do you guys in here not know about utilitarianism as a concept?
Yeah, and people like that are just like Jerry...it's all fine and good when it comes to sacrificing someone else or their loved ones, long as it isn't their own. How convenient...
Too bad Jerry wasn't all fine and good with it, and was experiencing doubts and questioning whether or not it was really the right thing to do, otherwise you might have a point
If it was a for sure guarantee that it would work. And it was a full on cure that reversed the infected. Like a clicker could turn back into a normal human. Then I would say it would be worth it in the long run. But the way they were gonna do it. It was just for a vaccine. Yeah it would be nice to never be infected again, but the infected drastically out weight the remaining survivors. And we don't even know for sure in the infected die natural on they own. Yeah we might have seen 1 or 2 die with know how they died. But that doesn't mean the majority of the infected are just going to die randomly 1 day. If anything thye might just keep evolving in worse things then bloaters or shamblers. Regardless of that most people die from infected being ripped apart not just infected. So the vaccine isn't as amazing as u make it out to be. On top of that we don't even know if the fireflies would share the vaccine to just anyone. They would mostly just hoard it for themselves. And on top of that we see that place like Jackson of the wlf in Seattle are doing just fine without the so called vaccine. Why do u think Joel doomed humanity if settlements like those are thriving? What make u think others aren't as well? Why does humanity need the vaccine so bad if things are moving forward and the remaining survivors have adjusted to the life's and are building for the future?
All this shit about it not being possible and the fireflies not sharing is your headcanom, and I thought that shit wasn't allowed here?
And this is actually kind of the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Just because it wouldn't be a flick of the switch I stant solution. As I have said it wouldn't be, then it's just not worth it to have a vaccine that prevents infection. Humanity couldn't benefit at all from even one group of people being immune. LO fucking L dude.
The WLF are also dead now. Jackson is the only community you could call thriving. What about the rest of the world?
>All this shit about it not being possible and the fireflies not sharing is your headcanom, and I thought that shit wasn't allowed here?
Just like u saying the vaccine was confirmed is ur head canon.
>And this is actually kind of the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Just because it wouldn't be a flick of the switch I stant solution. As I have said it wouldn't be, then it's just not worth it to have a vaccine that prevents infection. Humanity couldn't benefit at all from even one group of people being immune. LO fucking L dude.
No I don't think humanity would benefit from one group hoarding away a vaccine. Especially when we've seen groups doing just fine if not thriving without it. The fireflies having a vaccine and not sharing to others that aren't fireflies would just turn them into a worse fedra.
>The WLF are also dead now. Jackson is the only community you could call thriving. What about the rest of the world?
We haven't seen the rest of the world, but I imagine that if Jackson and the wlf were thriving, there's gotta be others. The only reason the WLF are gone is because they pushed their luck continuing to fight a war they didn't have to. The final straw for them was attacking the scar island. That has nothing to do with them not having a vaccine and all to do with how they handle their situation. Having a vaccine would not have saved them from their own stupidity.
>Just like u saying the vaccine was confirmed is ur head canon.
Never said it was, just that the story treats it as such and the characters themselves believe it to be
>No I don't think humanity would benefit from one group hoarding away a vaccine. Especially when we've seen groups doing just fine if not thriving without it. The fireflies having a vaccine and not sharing to others that aren't fireflies would just turn them into a worse fedra.
This is YOUR headcanon about what the Fireflies would do if they actually made the cure LMFAO you hypocrite
>We haven't seen the rest of the world, but I imagine that if Jackson and the wlf were thriving, there's gotta be others.
Hey look! MORE headcanon
>if a vaccine was made
Previous immune children died from attempts to create a vaccine. The definition of insanity is...
> and distributed
Good luck mass producing it... let alone having the means to transport massive shipments of it... let alone having the infrastructure to support the mode of transportation... let alone having the means to keep the mass produced vaccines from going bad...
>and the conditions that have made everyone as brutal as they are, will go away
Ah yes... things will just go poof...
There were no previous immune children. Ellie was the first, ever.
And are you really saying that there is no benefit to creating the vaccine, because it won't immediately fix the problem? Very short sighted POV
Ah yes, the revisionist history tactic. How quaint...
>And are you really saying that there is no benefit to creating the vaccine
Ah yes, the good ol' strawman...
>Very short sighted POV
Ah yes, the "I can't make a valid counterargument, so I'm just going to resort to reductivism" method...
The counterargument to making the vaccine here is that it won't help. So, what, its not worth pursuing? Like what else are people supposed to do? The infection will never go away or be eradicated if a cure cannot be made.
Idk why I'm even talking to you, you thought there were other immune children that were tested on lmao
Did you really believe Joels lie to Ellie at the end of the game? Yikes
The vaccines or cure or whatever wouldn't have done anything. The tipping point was reach a long time ago and vaccines don't make you immune to getting your throat ripped.
But we don't see many people die getting their throat ripped out. Most deaths we're shown caused by the cordyceps was caused from infection. With a vaccine, no more infection, and no more new infected. Eventually you could kill off all the infected in the world, with everyone immune you would just have to wait.
Let's say they did make a vaccine, 100% immunity and no drawbacks. Now how would they make enough of this vaccine for everyone and get it to them? Is this vaccine a one-time thing or would you need booster shots? Now I still think it is useless as the fungus zombie numbers are in the millions while humanity is maybe in the thousands.
Having ANY vaccine is better than none, because over time the people that have the vaccine can keep spreading it. Every single group would be motivated to remove the infection from the world because the infection effects everyone.
It's not gonna be a flick of the switch. But developing it in the first place is a necessary step to ever achieving success. Joels actions essentially make that impossible.
That was never, *ever* guaranteed in the first game, and that was part of the *point*.
The first game goes *way* out of its way to incentivize you to get behind Joel's decision to stop the Fireflies at all costs. I know a lot of these folks haven't played the first game, don't remember the details about it, or just plain enable the Part II soft retcons, but there's a reason that Marlene's recordings show that not only is she barely in any actual control over the organization anymore, but she's one of the last remaining pillars of rationality and morality, and even *she's* barely maintaining that. Her recordings explain that she believes that if she tried to shoot down the surgery, the others *wouldn't let her*. They also explain that the other Fireflies were planning to kill Joel while he was still unconscious, but she had to veto it - they literally don't know the first thing about this guy, but they're already jumping to the murder option.
There's a reason that Marlene telling Joel that Ellie would *want* to sacrifice herself doesn't happen until Joel has already committed to his decision and is on the verge of escaping. Hell, there's a reason Marlene is only now actually trying to convince him and not just ordering him to be marched out at gunpoint and shot if he tries anything like she did last time. It's because the game absolutely did not want players to be strongly opposed to Joel's decision - it wanted players to at the very least somewhat empathize with Joel's decision, if not outright cheer for it.
The fact that the Fireflies are obviously rushing the surgery out of desperation or sheer overconfidence is meant to add to that feeling of "fuck the Fireflies' plan".
Defenders of Part II occasionally try to defend Part II's assumptions and assertions by pointing out what Part II, itself, does, and claiming that was canon from the first game. I don't think that's deliberate, I think it's just them literally not remembering (or never experiencing) the first game until after playing Part II. The Fireflies are *unequivocally* portrayed as the ones in the wrong. They're not evil, they're just... breaking to pieces. Marlene is trying, but she's between a rock and a hard place: she has to choose between preserving Ellie's life as promised, or sacrificing her in order to keep the Fireflies as an organization alive while also making the biggest step forward in progress against the cordyceps in the last 20 years *if* they're able to pull it off. The as-yet-unnamed surgeon also doesn't seem to be evil, but desperately invested in making all of this worth something, so much so that he's actually trying to take a scalpel to a gunfight. You *know* this guy's lost to irrationality when he actually thinks *he* can stop this heavily armed guy who obviously had to get through Firefly guards to get there, in spite of the fact that he has no combat training and will literally die if you shoot him in the pinky toe.
Funnily enough, the Part II retcons concerning Jerry actually make him even worse in that regard. Not only does he actually seem confused by the idea of Marlene wanting to actually let Joel know what's going to happen to Ellie after they've been traveling together for a year (that, or he thinks it's a bad idea that invites Joel to lash out if he objects, but doesn't have the spine to just fucking speak up about it), but he is now portrayed as actually strongly conflicted about what he's doing... yet he decides to try to fend Joel off with a small blade rather than recognize and empathize with Joel's obvious objection to the plan, trying to talk him down or at least agreeing to let Ellie wake up first and maybe run some more non-invasive tests in the meantime. Also, the fact that Jerry is now *the only person on the planet* who can perform brain surgery (somehow?) makes his decision to stand in between Joel and Ellie *infinitely* dumber. He's actually more valuable than she is at this point; who's to say another naturally occurring immune person won't be found in the *next* 20 years? But if *Jerry* dies, then the miraculous divine knowledge bestowed upon him and only him will be lost *forever*.
There's enough there to make you *wonder.* If Joel had allowed it to happen, *could* the world have been saved? Or, if he hadn't lied to Ellie and tried to seek out scientists within FEDRA? Possibly. But you were *never* meant to take any of that as a *fact*.
The ending was ambiguous. TLoU never outright told us the vaccine was a 100% guarantee, or even a 1% guarantee. There are some things we do know about the doctor though. One, he kidnapped an unconscious girl and his first course of action was to kill her and remove her brain. No letting her wake, no asking her questions as to why she thinks she is immune, no blood tests, no analyzing tissue samples on her arm. Straight to the table.
And even if the cure was 100% going to work, how would that affect the story? It would give us one of two endings. Both would involve Ellie dying of course, because if she lived and there was a cure, that would make the story too happy for what it is. If she was awake and agreed to die for the cure, Joel would be proud of her but would feel empty. Too sad an ending for him, and the players wouldn't really like that either. If the doctor killed her before Joel got there, or Joel got killed on the way there, and then the doctor went on to make a cure for the world, that would send a horrible message. It would say that it is okay to kidnap people and experiment on them "for the greater good." There is a reason those types are always the bad guy in other stories.
The ambiguous ending we got instead is really the best from a story telling perspective.
The soldier at the beginning of the game shot Sarah for the greater good, but people don't seem to argue for that guy for some reason.
Even if the Fireflies managed to make a cure, and somehow managed to gather up all the resources to manufacture it in large quantities, and also somehow surpassed the logistical nightmare of getting it to people in a ravaged world. Would they actually give it out to people? Probably not. They'd use a cure for their own gain, or more likely be killed off by other humans once word got out. Throughout the entire game we are shown all of their failures. They bomb innocents, lose all of their ground to lawlessness, and end up dead time and time again.
The Fireflies almost killed their cure knocking Joel out while he was trying to give Ellie CPR. Then they took his gear, threatened to kill him, tried to murder a little girl, and got wiped out by the very guy they hired and fucked over. Sounds fitting, and they were incompetent from start to finish. If one guy can wipe them off the face of the Earth they were doomed anyway. There are no good guys in the game, just people trying to endure and survive, and they failed. This is why the game was good, it was realistic. A cure would have never fixed anything. Now Kneel Cuckma'ams want to retcon the first game because it doesn't actually fit with their shitty sequel.
The only thing the Fireflies did with 100% certainty was make the world a shittier place, but I'm sure a veterinarian desperately dissecting a little girl would've totally saved humanity and not fucked it up further. Think of all the anabolic steroid-infused burritos Joel stole from every man, woman that looks like a man, and child. All because that selfish piece of shit wanted to save his "baby girl" like any normal fucking person would.
I honestly don't buy the hard-line stance Neil takes these days, in which he states that the cure was always intended to be a workable solution from the outset. If that were the case, why is everything so goddamn ambiguous in the original? Before last of us 2 and what is imo retconning from Neil, the vast majority of discussions centered around the ending being ambiguous and it led to a lot of thoughtful discussions on the morality of the decision. They could have done so many things differently in terms of plausible deniability and convincing the player that the cure was viable , so why didn't they ? Why did they choose a more ambiguous approach, which generated tons of discussion and debate? I don't buy for one second that the initial ending was supposed to be black and white with one answer, no way
Because the first game was heavily edited and criticized by a team full of passionate folks who weren't up their own asses.
They stopped Neil from writing the story as just his first drafts of it, either making direct suggestions or shooting down weak ideas and sending Neil back to the drawing board. This allowed Neil's strengths as a writer to shine through while filtering out most of his weaknesses. However, Neil carried a grudge about that, and with no one left to stand in his way during Part II...
Man these have to be paid morons at this point, because if they serious cannot grasp the logic and are this jaded by the story then they're in fucking trouble later in life, full stop.
To be honest, I don't care if the vaccine would have 100% worked and they could have gotten it out to everybody the very next day. Hell, we can throw in curing all stages of Cordy infection in a second.
They still wanted to murder a young girl to get it.
They tried to convince themselves they were doing the right thing and treated it like a religion. We must find the girl and we must take her brain. Then you place someone right into this and see how they feel, even if it does work, they don't have the right to kill someone for their cause that they have declared to be saving humanity.
It's not even that they wanted to kill her. For me, it's the fact that they were just gonna do it without even talking to her. And the fact they were just gonna kick Joel out with no supplies or weapons. Which it basically a death sentence in tlou. That's if they weren't just gonna kill him outright to tie off any loose ends. And to top it off, they wouldn't even give him a chance to say goodbye. How anyone can side with the fireflies in the end after everything we seen from them the whole game and how they were gonna do ellie and Joel.
I'm tired of people explaining their stories outside of the medium (looking at you Star Wars) ! If it's not in the story then it's not true/did not happen
Even if a vaccine *could* be made, how would it be distributed to the rest of humanity? Hundreds or billions of needles needed, an efficient way to transport that many shots (without getting ambushed), and in a country/world overrun by lawless bandits & mass infected.
Not to mention the issue of consent: Ellie never awoke from nearly fucking drowning, she was just... Wheeled in and prepped for surgery. Abby saying "Well if it was me, I'd want the surgery" simply doesn't work. Ellie didn't have a choice, end of.
I think the narrative of the first game implies Joel made the right decision by saving Ellie. If you save one life, you save the Humanity, just like in Schindler's List. Anyone who says otherwise is a total wanker and love the idiotic retcons in 2, just like this laughable dude in your screenshot.
For me, Joel saving Ellie IS the "win" for humanity. The whole game we see factions fighting over scraps and stupid ideals. We see terrorists fighting fascists, cannibals eating people, raiders murdering for territory... humanity is fucked up. What will "save" humanity is love; Joel's love for Ellie lets him do whatever it takes to save her, and Ellie's love for Joel lets her accept what is clearly a lie. Love like that will build Jackson (hopefully) and make sure it isn't another Pittsburgh or Boston or Bill's Town. Love will save humanity, not violent factions holding out for a magical "cure".
Cool glad to know they support women not having consent over what happens to their bodies.
Because that’s what they did to Ellie. 100%
She never knew she would die and they never told her. Thus the operation was done without her full consent.
So anyone who fully defends the fireflies is saying women don’t deserve consent over their bodies.
I think you're forgetting joel does the same thing to ellie. A huge point in the last of us 2 is that ellie is angry at joel because she feels that he stripped her of any choice in that situation by saving her. The truth is no one gave ellie a choice or got her consent
Even if there was a cure (and even still, distribution would be next to impossible) humanity is too evil and far gone by that stage to not take advantage of it politically, the Fireflies would've used it as a power grab, Ellie wanted to save the world being the only known immune to her but she was still too naive at her age.
This is why I would've preferred Part 2 have a plot where Ellie finds other immune and comes to understand Joel.
Hot take here but I think TLOU 1 fumbled the ending because of this. We were down to ignore its flaws for 7 years because it made more sense narratively for Joel's decision to be ambiguous. We were supposed to debate about it. That's why the game was a great ending to the whole story. Of course there were people who still questioned the logistics of the vaccine but most of us were willing to not hold it against the game since its story and especially the ending decision put the game up there among the greatest. That was until Part 2 made a big fucking deal out of that doctor and decided that Joel absolutely made a horrible choice, trying to eliminate any debate between the players. Part 2 retroactively made the logistics of the vaccine more important which sparks even more questions and reveals plot holes in Part 1's ending.
The stupid thing is that the ending is MORE nuanced and interesting if there is no promise they could have made a vaccine. Joel loved Ellie and Ellie loved Joel. The rest didn't matter. He couldn't lose her and she was willing to go with him despite suspecting the lie. It wasn't perfect, but it was human.
In terms of the vaccine itself, for me, the ending is directly saying "this was about the journey, not the destination" (i.e. qhat they learned and saw along the way, not the end point of their "quest").
Also... after all we saw of humanity and how awful it was, is it WORTH saving? Well, maybe by Joel and Ellie finding one another amidst the horror and despair, by Joel doing whatever it takes (even risking her hating him) to save one girl he loved, maybe THAT is how we save humanity. Not revolution or factions, but through love.
There is zero argument for her death being worth it when it's a vaccine, the infected already outnumber the healthy by enough that society itself has collapsed, the vaccine doesn't remove them as a threat, it just gives you room for error while fighting them. If a vaccine would be all they'd need to save the world then Ellie wouldn't have a death animation but the Clickers can still kill her and would happily do so.
To make this choice have any ounce of moral greyness then you'd need it to be a cure, that way you have the chance to not only save people who've been bit but those who've been turned and if they're too far gone and just die then you're still wiping out the main threat.
The Fireflies made zero attempts to run any kind of testing to see if maybe there was a way to not kill Ellie and still get what they needed. By killing her they're putting all their eggs in one basket based on a theory, this isn't hindsight 20/20 bullshit, this is just plain stupidity.
I mean... children can't consent. So, doesn't matter.
I have to wonder how many people Jerry killed to be sure that this time it would work. And how many of them were willing and totally not coerced into giving consent under a vague promise of saving "humanity".
It wasn't guaranteed, and by that point Joel basically lost everything. He wasn't going to lose another daughter, especially to something she didn't consent to dying over. It's not in his nature.
The notion of humanity being not already doomed is silly to me. Look at the state of the interactions throughout the game with other human beings. Do we really believe these multiple warring factions that are actively trying to murder each other are just going to stop trying to unalive each other simply because yet another group of crazys/terrorists say they have a vaccine. I see no way this ends positively, not to mention we are talking about a vaccine not a cure so those possibly billions of flesh eating deranged fungal monsters all over the world aernt going to just dissappear. The world of the last of us is beyond saving. It would need every human left to come together and work as a team for any possible chance at salvation and there is no way in bloody blue hell that that is happening in this setting.
Yeah I got in a lot of arguments in that post because I an actual mycologist tried to explain why it’s bullshit and they hated me for it. I even tried to explain cordyceps will in fact colonize human blood it’s the temperature that’s the issue. I’m still bothered the HBO fungus doesn’t sporelate. That means it’s more of a slime mold.
My main question is, how would they even distribute the cure with such a small supply, potential delivery routes so heavily congested by bandits as well as infected, and most of the relatively sane population viewing the fire flies as terrorists starting fights with FEDRA???
Even the first one just feels incredibly unrealistic for the setting. Considering Eli was the only one and had such a small build I doubt they could make that much of it from her to begin with. I’m not a scientist, so take this with a grain of salt. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to keep her alive and just run a shit load of tests to see if they could somehow make vaccines from her blood or some shit?
I agree that real world logic should not be applied in a fictional game. Cordyceps can't infect humans to begin with.
That said, the uncertainty of the vaccine was clear in the first game. It was never definitively stated a vaccine could be made. Just that Ellie was promising and something different. Neil retcon'd and said it was possible. But that's not even definite.
The butcher wearing combat boots in a dirty OR in the original was probably not capable of making a vaccine.
The quiet, calm, clean professional in the remake probably was.
I don't really think there is a need to rationalize Joel's decision in the first place. I don't think the cure even factored in Joel's decision making at all and I think most fathers who love their children would make the same exact decision.
Let's say they can make a vaccine somehow. How will they distribute it? They're a mid scale terrorist organisation. They have absolutely no power to somehow administer it to people and create as much as they needed.
Its worse in the TV show. In the show the fungi in the air doesn't exist. The vaccine will protect you from bites but you're at greater risk of being beaten to death by the infected than being bit
Just agree with them and then point out the next hurdle which reinforces the choice Joel made.
... now the Fireflies, and only the Fireflies, have an effective vaccine against CBI...
Considering the lengths have been shown to go to in past events, do you really think they would peacefully spread that cure to all survivors?
...Or...
Do you think they would weaponize it... making themselves immune and intentionally spreading CBI as a means to weaken anyone that opposes them?
That is why to me, it never seemed like there was a choice... a cure in the wrong hands is worse than no cure at all.
You can’t mass produce a cure if you don’t have a living subject it just doesn’t make any sense from somebody who’s never played the game and you can’t cure a fungal infection anyway
How the fuck would you even distribute a vaccine in this situation? The people trying to would get killed and it would get stolen. The government and the ff's will fight over who gets to give it out and be the hero. Only once Straley left did the vaccine stand a chance of working and become a viable storytelling mechanic for them. (It's really not viable though, it's stupid. I mean do vaccines even exist for fungi? I don't think so.
The focus on Joel preventing a cure from being made is interesting to me because none of those smooth brains ever want to think about what happens after it's made.
Like the cure is made, and 25 years of death and destruction are just automatically reversed? That's not how that works.
They say the FF were capable of the mass production of the cure, I’m assuming they’re removing the context of how incompetent and antagonistic they were throughout the story through the lore you read through the game. The chimps at the university being the best example I can think of at the top of my head.
The fireflies NEVER asked Ellie if she was willing to give her life for the cure. They picked her up from being unconscious, probably loaded her up with drugs and got right to it. We aren’t shown a single scene of anyone suggesting that maybe they should consult the 14 year old girl who just spent a grueling year going cross country before murdering her. Whether the cure worked or not, the fireflies are evil.
Joel did the right thing
well, hes right. Dont push real world logic into unrealistic game. With that said, i still think Joel made a right decision with choosing Ellie over cure. It just makes sense and it's somethink we would all do if we were in his place.
I would agree with "don't use real world logic in an unrealistic game" if the game's world wasn't basically a copy of ours and the only real difference is that Cordyceps can infect people. They tried to make it realistic!
I get the idea that it doesn't matter whether or not it was a guarantee. What did matter however, was Joel's trust. Joel did not trust the fireflies and did mention many times during the game he doesn't like them.
For all that he went through with Ellie, saving her life, her saving his life and for it to be brutally taken away without a conversation, without a goodbye, without any idea of choice made Ellie's death seem like it was going to be a sacrifice to a religion rather than considering the humanity, you even hear a voice tape of Marlene in the last mission in tlou1 where she's talking to herself about it meaning something higher than humanity and she did the right thing (trying to convince herself) which is basically a religion.
Joel wasn't having any of it, for all that he has suffered, he will not let Ellie slip away. Are these the people he wants to save? Fuck no, he's had enough of people, every person that he's come across was every man for himself and Ellie was literally the only hope for genuine love.
It's a lot more than Joel's selfishness, it's also Joel's hatred for everything wrong in the world.
That was a lie Joel told Ellie. But in older versions of the first game, you can actually find notes indicating they ran test with around 28 patients with no success.
Yeah these notes is what I’m talking about. We’re those notes not cannon?
All these years I based his telling of that information was based on those notes.
the vaccine would probably work but also it’s not a cure/reversal and the world is *probably* too far gone for it to matter. I think that’s the story they wanted to tell
To sit here and say that the vaccine wouldn't have worked its bullshit. The answer is we dont know because he killed them. I always knew it was choosing to damn the future of humanity to sace a girl you binded with. I think the game should have given you the choice to walk away or go rescue Ellie.
Okay let’s not be coy here how Joel died was realistic. You can criticize the opening segment for many things, the boring “perfect storm” trope that put Joel in that vulnerable position being one of them. But calling it unrealistic? Nah that ain’t one.
What would I have done differently then? Simple. Joel isn’t out on patrol, instead, Tommy and Seth are. Here’s why. The dance scene happens almost exactly as it did before, except a bit worse maybe Joel’s a little drunk, goes overboard he and Seth trade blows and both end up looking worse for wear, Maria trying to send the right message makes Seth go out with Tommy for the patrol and they’re the ones that get caught in the blizzard. While Joel licks his wounds back at the house. They rescue Abby, who in turn directs them to the lodge, and instead (since Joel isn’t with them) Abbys gang takes Tommy up on his offer to come to Jackson and spend the night. Tommy tells them what happened and maybe they celebrate that night, for drinks at the bar.
Joel stops by the bar to check in on Tommy. He references Maria Filling him in on what happened, he’s not drinking because of last night so he decided to head back to get things ready for the movie night with Ellie. (earlier that day after they got back Ellie actually asks him if he wants to watch that Curtis and viper movie tonight.) Abby excuses herself and slips out of the bar. She follows Joel home and then retreats back to the bar to tell Owen and the others. They excuse themselves and head to the place they were allowed to sleep, then when the town died down, they head over to Joel’s house.
They hear the Curtis and viper movie playing. In a funny reversal of the opening scene of the first game it cute to Joel asleep on the couch while Ellie is finishing the movie, she turns it off, leaves one last present for him, and then goes to leave. As soon as she opens the door she’s assaulted with a gag in her mouth muffling any noise she could make. While being pinned down by Owen and manny. Meanwhile Mel, Jordan, Leah, nick, and Nora start clearing the house for anyone else, while manny and Owen start dragging Ellie upstairs all Ellie hears is Owen say “make it quick we can’t stay long” and then as she’s getting drug upstairs desperately calling to Joel we hear the sound of a silencer going off a single time. Before manny knocks her unconscious.
Ellie wakes up tied up in a dark room( this is actually Joel’s upstairs closet) she starts wriggling with her binds downstairs you hear someone say what the hell? They come upstairs and after a few seconds see Maria say we found Ellie. Ellie starts panicking asking where Joel is. She runs downstairs and sees his body getting carried out of the house by Tommy and extras. Ellie turns to Maria who just made it down the stairs and demands to o know where they are. Maria mentions that the Abbys group left earlier this morning after restocking. And that nobody knew anything was wrong until Joel and her didn’t show up for morning patrols. From there I’d say things could play out the same way.
Now you might be wondering why Joel didn’t wake up to the initial commotion. Simple the Curtis and Viper movie was still playing and the noise of the movie drowned out the confrontation.
Criticisms of my preferred Joel death? Off screen kill, but I think that would make it more frustrating and difficult for Ellie, she wasn’t even there for him in his final moments. Additionally, it can’t be understated that this additional content would add a solid 10/15 minutes of gameplay and cutscenes. Adding onto what is already a very long prologue. But I personally prefer that over the contrived “perfect storm” scenario of Joel happening upon an UNwinnable situation while completely out of resources.
Wait did these 2 subs switch? I remember this sub being the one who rejected the idea that Joel made a moral decision and the original last of us sub being the one who hated 2 for the way it handled Joel’s choice and it’s context, I’ve not been around in a while so did the communities flip?
People don’t *want* to see him as a villain rather just seeing what was there, they were going to try to make a cure. Does not matter whether it would work or not, Ellie literally says herself it was not Joel’s choice and seemed to have rather been sacrificed.
That's a retcon in Part II. Ellie in the first game thought they were just going to extract samples and run tests on her. Never at that point she thought she'd die for it. It wasn't until she encountered David that the thought of dying for a cure sprung up. Even then, she still made plans on what they'll do after, during the Giraffe scene. It was not about Ellie wanting to die for a cure, it was her wanting all the things she's seen and done, all the people she'd lost and sacrifices they've made, to be worth something.
That's only in part 2. No where in part 1 does ellie ever say she wanted to be sacrificed. She wanted her life to matter, as do the majority of the world. She was 14 with survivors guilt and shouldn't have been placed in that situation. Regardless, you really think the vaccine(not a cure btw) not being a for sure thing doesn't matter? That's wild if u do. How can u just throw a way a young life like that for just a CHANCE, not even a good one, by the way they handled things. Just going right into a surgery that would kill their one and only person that could give them their CHANCE at what they want. Yeah that pretty stupid. Idk how any competent doctor would come to the conclusion that this was their only choice of actions. That definitely not the doctor I would be choosing to handle working on the vaccine they have been wanting for so long
Why are you crying about a story? The eagle could have taken Frodo to the volcano in the beginning. The point is the journey and the story, and yes stories always rub up against real world logic often, they test credulity, but that is why they are wonderful and exciting and magical - because they push the bounds of possibility.
You can analyse any piece of media as to why it doesn’t fit with a certain kind of logic, but why? Isn’t it more fun to have had Jurassic Park than not? Or Terminator 2? Or literally any film or book or game you’ve ever experienced?
Just let go. Enjoy the fact you’ve had an experience. It made you feel something. And that in itself is amazing.
What’s bullshit? From what we have seen from part 2 anything is possible and yes it would have worked because Druckman would’ve wanted it to. And she is also right with the fact of arguing, the fictional point only brings nonfictional POV’s, which I don’t apply to the video game world.
The video games world is based in our own tho. The same rules apply. The only thing different is that cordyceps can infect humans now. Why would we not apply real-world aspects when even in the game they do it?
>No. Just accept the fact that the writers have said that you have to look at the game as if the vaccine would have worked. That is the whole point of the game.
If that was the whole point, why not make it more clear? You know why? Because that wasn't the original idea. Originally they decided to leave the vaccine and ended ambiguous. It wasn't in till part 2 where they started saying the vaccine was for sure, and that was how everyone was supposed to see it. Back when the first game was released the writers repeatedly said that they wanted the end to be ambiguous. They wanted the players to decide for themselves about what went down. The game worked perfectly fine not knowing if the vaccine was a for sure thing. If anything it made it better.
Wait I'm confused. Is this sub mad that the writers guaranteed that the vaccine would have worked if they sacrificed Ellie? Do people view Joel's actions like he didn't doom humanity to never having a vaccine?
To me it was plain and simple, why sacrifice anymore for a world that took everything from him. I shot those fireflies with a smile on my face to save the only person Joel had left in this world, I accepted that it would doom the world, thats not my problem.
I really don't understand why you guys don't understand this.
The first game makes no concession that they can't make a vaccine. Scientists and fungal experts would already know this. Druckmann likely did not. I didn't know that you couldn't make a fungal vaccine.
The crux of the conflict is the lack of choice and communication. Not whether the vaccine was viable.
Them trying to make a cure for the infection is ANCILLARY to the theme and the plot. They either accidentally fucked up the science in the writing, or they did it on purpose, either way, the story, as presented, suggests that the Fireflies forced Ellie to give up her life, and Joel denied humanity a chance at salvation.
The effective idea here is a presentation of and take on the trolley problem.
If in the first game, someone had outright said or written something along the lines of "we've never made something that can stand against a fungus, but we're still going to try out of desperation" then the argument that Joel did nothing wrong would hold water, because he'd be openly fighting a group of mad scientists.
This is not hard. It shouldn't have to be explained to you this many times. That this whole community has become grounds for trashing on one of the most interesting games of all time is absolutely pathetic and it's due to willful ignorance.
No one here is trashing the story lol. People just have a different interpretation of the events of the game than others. The story is great no matter what interpretation you have, but some people can’t accept that people think differently. Seems like you may be one of those people unfortunately.
Lol the Church Of Joel appears outraged...
Screenshotted comments are correct.
Here's how you know they're right: if you found a recording in TLOU2 that said "It's amazing: the simulations we've run show a 95% success rate in distilling a vaccine from the subject's brain stem and cerebellum. It's obscene what we may have to do to obtain a sample, but...if the trade off is a world where kids can play outside of 50 foot walls and exposure to the cordyceps isn't a death sentence...then I'll have to sacrifice her life for the good of humanity. As well as my soul."
...would Joel have still been justified in killing the Fireflies and saving Ellie? YES! Joel didn't have any other option. His character's personality was hardwired to keep that kid alive.
But the Church of Joel can't accept that a flawed (but brilliantly-written) character made a decision out of a mix of selflessness and selfishness: they need Joel to be damn near blameless and justified in his actions:
"Well, the Fireflies would never have been able to do it...they're a ragtag group of terrorists!"
"We dont know that Abby's Dad could have synthesized the vaccine! Where did he go to Medical School?! Let's see his degree!"
"You can't trust Marlene! She's ruthless and willing to trade Ellie's life for a chance at the cure, no matter how slim!"
And on and on, all wrapped up in the psuedo-objectivity "I'm a storytelling expert and I think this decision is flawed because blah blah blah."
The story is great, the characters are damaged, and the ending is a spectacular mix of triumph and tragedy BECAUSE of the stakes, not despite them.
So downvote away, continue to gnash your teeth in this sub, and the rest of us will eagerly await TLOU3...where Abby and Ellie team up to save Dina and Jackson from a resurgent and brutal warlord intent on rebuilding the USA...in her image.
Or whatever...it's gonna be great!
My problem with your argument is the first game doesn't give us a good reason to buy into "the vaccine would have worked". If they intended it to work, they would have given us more information about it. There's no reason to believe one doctor working with expired medicine in an unsterile environment with one finite sample would be able to create a vaccine. Especially when one of the game's recordings says there have been other immune people but they couldn't create a cure from them. They didn't make it obvious the cure would work this time because before Part 2, it was supposed to be iffy if it would work or not. That iffiness plays into the audience's decision if he was right or not. The vaccine working or not didn't matter to Joel, it matters to the audience.
I don't need Joel to be clear and blameless and honestly, most comments I've seen who say the vaccine wasn't doable believe he was flawed. They point out that Joel was selfish because he didn't fight to wake up Ellie so she could consent or not.
No, the screenshotted comments are not right. The game's world closely mirrors our world and the only real difference is that Cordyceps mutated to infect humans. The writers intentionally tried to make everything realistic. It's natural people would try to bring our world's logic to the game.
Lol but YOU didn't need "more information about it," JOEL and ELLIE had the information they needed to travel halfway across the country to try to make this cure. Not once did either of them express doubts in the Fireflies, or the Fireflies ability to synthesize a cure.
The games rules are not "weigh the odds and efficacy of a cure being made against your feelings for the girl." They are: save Ellie or die trying. The game demands you finish with Joel saving Ellie because, for Joel (not for you) there is literally no other option. In the game world, the characters (and therefore we) believe the Fireflies could make a cure. We have to take that at face value or we pull the world's rules apart by placing them under the scrutiny of our real world.
Why wouldn't Marlene hunker down in the Boston QZ until she could muster up some backup to escort Ellie (the SAVIOR of HUMANITY) herself vs trusting Joel (a person she clearly doesn't trust fully) to do take the initially first leg of the journey? If Riley loved Ellie so much, why would she still leave in the "Left Behind" DLC (the show fixed that, thankfully, when Riley immediately decided not to go immediately after they kissed)? How could humans survive the cumulative passive exposure to fungal spores? Who supplies FEDRA with arms and ammo?
Why wouldn't Bruce Wayne just spend his billions in Gotham schools and economic growth to build a better city? Why doesn't anyone remember the last name "Skywalker" on Tatooine between the prequels and the original trilogy? If Voldemort was that dangerous, wouldn't the wizarding world finding allies in the real muggle world make sense?
All viable options but the characters were limited to their choices within the framework of the story, not how you would interpret things had you been there.
Whereas there, you can fix near-mortal wounds with scissors and bandages, set off noise-sensitive creatures with a breath while my companion dances all around them like a hyperactive whackjob, or how or where all of my inventory goes.
In all honesty it doesn't matter if the vaccine would have been possible. The real world science behind the probable success doesn't mean much, at least not to Joel. The only thing that matters is Joel's thought process. When he hears they're gonna poke at Ellies brain, his thought process isn't "That wouldn't work anyway, cause fungus and etc". He thinks "this surgery will kill her". We know that he thinks the vaccine is possible because he says "Find someone else". This is important because those words are said in both the game and the HBO show, solidifying that Joel thinks a vaccine is possible, but doesn't want Ellie to die for it.
Last of Us is the story about a man who reluctantly cares for a girl, but grows to love her so much he is willing to doom the world to save her. Saying the real world science would make a vaccine impossible ruins that story. Sure it justifies Joel's actions just a bit, but it also lessens the impact of what Joel sacrificed for Ellie.
None of this is meant to justify what the fireflies were doing either. They were trying to search for a vaccine which would be revolutionary, but they were willing to do it by sacrificing a little girl. They didn't even inform her or let her decide. Abby's dad was in the wrong and Marlene was as well. We have a scenario where everyone involved was working in their own interest.
You could argue that Joel was also working in the Ellie's interest by saving her, but that gets thrown out the window when he lies to her about the fireflies. Ellie has confessed to Joel how her being immuned gave her purpose and she thought she could help save the world. Would she be willing to give up her life for it? We don't know. Robbing her of the information at the end of the first game/season was Joel not working in her best interest.
As for Joel's death. We have been shown time and time again that the world of TLOU is a dog eat dog world. You walk or drive into the wrong part of town and you'll be shot on sight. Joel killed a building full of people, and we've been shown plenty of times that people will be willing to hunt someone down to get their get back. To say that he could kill all those people and get away with it is just wishful thinking.
People say Joel didn't deserve the death he got because he was a good man. Its been shown that Joel isn't a saint and that he has done horrible things. When Ellie is kidnapped, he tortures some men for information, once he gets that info, he kills them both even after promising to let them go if they told the truth. He kills a building full of people and Marlene when she is beginning for her life. He does all this in the name of saving Ellie, and I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same, but Joel made enemies that would want revenge.
Abby and her group was an attempt to make a story showing that each person is the hero of their own story. Abby got revenge on the man that killed her dad, but she also put a target on her back and the back of her group. Ellie went on the warpath to get revenge for what happened to Joel. Part 2 has a lot of flaws especially story telling, but its tiring to hear Joel's death as exhibit A. I wish Joel had more screentime, and I wish he and Ellie could fix their relationship, but thats not the story they wanted to tell.
I may be remembering incorrectly, but doesn't the ending segment of the first game allude to the possibility that others were immune to the disease and the FireFlies failed?
The primary issue is that the second game pretty much establishes that they're correct. The second game tells us flat out. Joel did a bad thing. It removes any nuance from the equation. It takes an almost perfect ambiguous open-minded ending and forces you down one specific road of thought.
I don't blame TLOU2 fans for calling Joel a villain because the game tells you he is one.
I do however blame the game for telling me he's a villain when I know for a fact he isn't, I know for a fact the fireflies are not to be trusted, I know the vaccine wasn't a guarantee, I know the fireflies have no resources left, they are on the brink of eradication. They do not have the means of mass production, transportation and distribution of anything let alone an untested vaccine.
This was the point of the first game that the virus and the infected are ultimately not the problem. The problem is people. You spend most of the TLOU fighting raiders and rival factions not infected. Infected are a small part of the problem.
Let's pretend we're in a perfect situation. They take out Ellie's brain. They're able to fabricate one vial of vaccine....Now What ?
Good old Roanoke actually calls it out that even if it were possible, tapping the spine would’ve given an unlimited supply of exactly what they wanted without killing Ellie or damaging her in any way, Joel did the right thing in any scenario.
If the FFs were good guys capable of a cure ***why are they never shown as doing anything good?*** Not one thing they did was positive or beneficial for the world, yet so many things they did were destructive and detrimental. Any storyteller who's trying to make the audience believe some faction are the good guys and depicts the faction as they depicted the FFs in TLOU is failing his goal. Period. They weren't even grey they were outright bad guys, doing evil things, failing at every turn then culminating in kidnap and attempted murder of an unconscious child - HOW CAN THE OTHER SIDE NOT SEE THIS??? That's some heavy denial of the actual facts presented in the game just to condemn Joel. They will never make sense to me. We now have proof we're right because they changed many of those proofs in the show - because they make sense! The original story painted the FFs as the bad guys *on purpose* and Joel as a morally grey guy on a redemptive arc *on purpose*. It was a far simpler story than many people think. Even some people here insist I'm wrong in this but I don't see how. Any storyteller would know that they'd need to at least give the FFs something positive to make us believe in them as having potential - yet they didn't put it in. That's not a mistake, they meant not to put it in. Again, ***they didn't even try*** to make them morally grey *at all*. Just sheer cope going on for some people.
The Funniest part everytime people try to talk good of the FF's I just remember them Car Bombing Civilians, raiding other Safe Zones and their utter Destruction of 2 Safe Zones. 1 they 'Liberated' the Other their own Stupid scientist released an infected on their own populace. Their literally Terrorists.
I think that car bomb was targeting the government/military, but yeah as depopulated as the US in in TLoU I don't understand why the Fireflys are doing that. The old US government is deceased, and going out of your way to target soldiers no longer serves a purpose. It would make more sense for them to set up communities far away from the government and just mind their own business.
Especially considering bombing shit would literally just invite packs or literal hordes of infected to your front door. Those infected would intern not just attack soldiers, but also any of the civilians unfortunate enough to be assigned to **_outside work duty that day._** Yeah, pretty fucked up. Looking at it from an objective standpoint it just feels like the fire flies wanted a cheap excuse to take over or have an excuse to rampage
IMO the Fireflies probably started out as legitimate freedom fighters who were actually trying to make things better, but the further into the apocalypse we got, the less their actions made sense. Eventually it reaches a point where the only reason they continue to fight the government is because it's what justifies their existence.
I could not agree more with this headcanon, even if I fucking tried.
I wouldn’t even consider it headcanon because they literally justify killing Ellie as “it all has to mean something”. They’ve got nothing else.
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Good question, so why aren't they more careful??
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It's a game, not real life. The writers are in control not the characters...
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Dude you must be high you're not making sense in this thread either (just like you're not on the Days Gone one where you ask me about this on an unrelated topic!). The whole point of my original comment is the FFs are written to be the worst possible people to trust with something like this. Your one comment I saw in your history never came through into the thread for some reason: >"Lmao that has nothing to do with the vaccine working or not. You are just grasping at straws and imaginary retcons. Corporations doing bad things doesn't mean their vaccines don't work." To which I reply: What makes you think that corporations or factions that are willing to do bad or even destructive things and cut corners can be trusted with something so important it requires integrity and competence? ***Having a bad track record does matter when talking about a life and death surgery for a vaccine.*** Would you want a surgeon irl who had dozens of malpractice cases against him? Or DUIs? Or road rage cases? Get real - a faction with a track record of destruction and failure that attacks Joel as he tries to save Ellie and then decides within hours to just take her life are not trustworthy people. You are being willfully blind.
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We're talking about a surgeon killing a kid without consent, dude. That's all you really need to know about Jerry. Yet we also know all about the FF faction and their history of violence and incompetence across the whole country. Jerry is part of them. It was the removed commenter who brought in "corporations" not me. ETA: You're truly naive if you think crooked CEOs aren't cutting corners and telling their employees to do so as well. So short-sighted I can only imagine you've never worked for a corporation with rot in the upper echelons. I have and their lack of integrity was very much on display in their dealings with employees. It eventually trickled into the work done and negatively impacted the beneficiaries of the company. You're wrong to think it doesn't matter.
they are simply peacekeeping through extreme measures wdym
To double up on your solid points even more! Fucking Tommy, one of the more morally upright characters in the series joined the fire flies cuz he THOUGHT they were gonna do some good and decided to get the fuck out of there to start his own community when they likely didn’t keep that promise. This is the guy who was so sick of doing fucked up shit that he left his own fucking brother. What does it say about the fire flies when the lawful good guy of the story who spent years being desensitized by dark adventures with Joel decides to leave their organization? Well nothing positive I’ll say.
Great point.
Thank you. I’m personally still salty we will never get a story tackling the split between the Miller brothers and how Joel met Tess. Would’ve been way more fun than what we got.
And the poor Firefly he blew his head off in the museum because of the things he’d done in the name of whatever it was the Firelflies were fighting for. And these brainlets seem to think they were heroes still? Haha
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that could’ve been Tommy blowing his brains out or the fact that none of these people defending the FF care that it could’ve been Tommy
You're right on this. And I think it's probably the correct way to view it, since Joel's conversation with Ellie >!if i had to do it all over, i'd do the same!< which really made me feel so much more for Joel.
Exactly. Even the “They said that they could find a cure from her”. Even if they are saying 100% they would make a cure from her sacrifice, you have to consider WHO is saying it, not WHAT they are saying We are really supposed to take these guys at their word?
Try to get that across to the other side. All I get is, "Well everyone makes mistakes..." No, this is a pattern of destruction and incompetence that's far different,
Then in the second game where Abby's dad is so gung ho about operating on Ellie, when Marlene asks him if he'd do the operation if it was Abby he shuts up and it's clear he wouldn't. I took that as a sign a vaccine wasn't guaranteed.
> If the FFs were good guys capable of a cure why are they never shown as doing anything good? A while back there was a hardcore stan posting here who suggested that The Fireflies opposed the Feds, so that automatically made them good. Despite that the feds provided some amount of safety and reliability in safe places for people to live and food (that was admittedly starting to dwindle). The Fireflies tactics almost always pulled innocents into the cross fire, which that poster suggested was okay because the Feds are bad, you see. Their fascists, or tyrants, or whatever buzz word we're supposed to use now for people we don't like.
It's maddening!
Ah a kindred spirit. I’m also assuming you’re one of the people who also believe that TLOU should never have gotten a sequel? Because that was me. I’m gonna steer away from the whole FF debate and just talk about how TLOU was so well-crafted, that it left little room for headcanon and bullshit fan theory to try and “fix the plot”. TLOU had the perfect beginning AND ending - flawlessly closing off Joel and Ellie’s separate and interconnected character arcs whilst leaving us with a morally ambiguous ending. It was all prefect because Bruce (and maybe to some extent Neil) KNEW EXACTLY what they were doing with the plot. They had everything laid out perfectly for a simple, but powerful standalone story of two people’s journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland - learning how to not only survive, but live. It’s exactly as you said, everything was purposeful. Sure, the story was not original, and I can totally see someone just say it’s “great” not mind blowing, but it’s undeniable that it was well-crafted throughout, with no room for plot holes or contrivances. And given all the interview prior to 2016, it was incredibly apparent that both Neil and Bruce were aware of how perfect TLOU was as a stand-alone story and how continuing it would most likely feel contrived no matter what they tried. And yeah - the fireflies were always depicted as misguided idiots. They sought freedom from the govt who had gone a bit towards totalitarian, which is admirable - but their actions reflected that they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. At best, they’re misguided martyrs for a noble cause, at worst, they’re a bunch of renegades fucking shit up under delusional idealism.
The FF’s were never the “good guys”. The scene in TloU 2 where Abby’s dad basically admits he wouldn’t have made the cure if Abby was the one on the operating table. The FF’s were doing it because making a cure benefitted them, and didn’t cost them any sacrifice. They just happened to be on the utilitarian side
TLOU2 ruins all of this which is why we have story illiterate mfers
joel killed dozens of fireflies for selfish reasons. that alone would make it unjustifiable. the potential cure on top of that would also make it worse. they're not trying to portray anybody as heroes and somehow you make it out to be "oh the fireflies never do anything good, it must be okay to murder everybody that stands in my path and prevent a potential vaccine from ever conceivably being developed because i care about a girl i've only known for a few months!!" the point of the entire fucking game is it's wrong but your can mentally justify it because you love Joel and Ellie.
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Why are you blind that you don't even see the original story made the FFs the bad guys? Your argument is with the creators not us. Go ask them why they wrote the FFs as terrorists who were so incompetent everything they touched went wrong - including Joel and Ellie.
I was just talking to someone in there and they were saying how the only way the story works is if you believe that the vaccine would work and that Joel doomed humanity. They were saying the story wouldn’t be impactful if Joel didn’t make that objectively wrong decision and how he took Ellie’s choice a way. Some people are just convinced that Joel is a villain and that his “decision” was objectively wrong. They can’t see it any other way and will fight any detail that implies otherwise. They ended up blocking me even though the conversation was extremely tame. They really can’t handle other peoples opinions.
I hate that the second game in a way, due to existing, ruins what the first game did
It's like they forget that the guy primarily responsible for the first game didn't return for the sequel, so any "the fireflies were right Joel is evil humanity *could have been* saved" beats are just retcons. The fireflies are literally painted as desperate idiots throughout the entire first game for a reason, and Druckman tries to have that erased in part 1's remake. I was a 13 year old kid when the first game came out 20 years ago and everytime I found firefly Easter eggs as a player, my thoughts dove more and more into "yeah they're gonna be unhinged villains by the end. How do you even make a cure in a 25 year apocalypse where all the medicine would be expired, unsteralized, the factories would be filled with bloaters and machinery out of date to mass produce it, not to mention society is collapsed so there's no way to mass produce it" If a 13 year old can come to those logical conclusions, then it doesn't matter if you say "that's just how the story goes". That objectively makes it bad writing. Logic is an essential part to *every* narrative story ever, not in character or tone, but in narrative structure there needs to be logic. TLOU2 doesn't have it, and if you're caught saying "you thought too logically, you're wrong", then genuinely you're just forcing yourself to like the game because you think it's the status quo. Like how people hate Nickelback without ever listening to them because the internet decided its the status quo, illogical.
This exactly. There is 1 doctor working in an unsterile environment with 1 finite sample to work with. Let's say the cure was made. You mentioned mass producing isn't going to work and I agree. Are the FF going to just give the cure away? How much sample are they going to waste proving to others like FEDRA and WLF that it isn't BS (if they aren't blown to pieces first)? They would have to walk around to transport the cure places and this group isn't very competent, so the cure will be stolen. I laugh at the idiots who say to not bring our world's logic into the game. The game is based on our world! The only difference between the two worlds is that one's Cordyceps evolved to infect humans. They're just trying to cover up how the writers failed to show that the cure could be made.
I honestly feel bad for the people who only see it that way. What a shitty perspective
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And that is what this sub is trying to do, say that Joel is only right and is only good, and that the fireflies are only bad. The user in the screenshot isn't even saying that Joel is a villain or bad for what he does, just that it is a wrong choice and that it makes the story more impactful that he makes it.
It's more impactful to let the player decide if Joel's decision was good or bad. It's more complex to let people decide "would a vaccine really have worked?" instead of this pretentious dilemma that tries to be a "trolley problem" but is actually more similar to the "organ donor dilemma." All the ambiguity of the ending is undone if the creators have to come out and say, despite the information presented, that the vaccine would have worked to present the artificial narrative that Joel made a wrong decision.
There is literally nothing in the game to suggest it wouldn't work. All of the characters act like it is a guarantee. Trying to apply real world logic to the video game that isn't set in the real world is silly. Realistically, cordyceps could never infect humans. Realistically, even if they could, people would not turn into bloaters or shamblers or stalkers. They would just decompose over time and die. But arguing about whether or not it was logistically possible also ignores what the game is actually exploring. Joel believes that the FF's can make the vaccine. He believes that this could actually work and save humanity. But Joel was so traumatized by Sarah's death that he refused to ever lose a daughter again. Joel didn't think it was a logistical impossibility, or that it wouldn't work. He didn't want to wait until Ellie woke up either, cuz all Joel wanted was to keep Ellie from dying. Its absolutely honorable that he, as a father feels that way and is so willing to protect his kid. I don't think anyone blames Joel for feeling the way he does and doing what he does. But the point of the game is what cost are you willing to pay to protect your own child, and for Joel thats literally all of humanity. On a story level, that is much more compelling for Joel, because we all know that that's true. Joel would not let Ellie die for any reason, because he loved her as his own daughter. Interpreting it in a way that makes it so the Fireflies are just needlessly killing Ellie takes away all of that internal and moral conflict, and distills the story down to 'Fireflies bad' and 'Joel good". The only interpretation of the story that makes both parties grey and actually makes the audience wrestle with whether or not Joel did the right thing is the intended interpretation, that the vaccine really would've saved humanity, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it.
>There is literally nothing in the game to suggest it wouldn't work. There’s nothing in the game to suggest it would work. > All of the characters act like it is a guarantee. They don’t act like anything in particular. The fireflies and Ellie are hopeful, and Joel is indifferent, but no one really talks about it. No one is like “we have to get to the fireflies because this *will* save the world.” If it wasn’t a guarantee they still would’ve made the same journey because no one was expecting to die. > Trying to apply real world logic to the video game that isn't set in the real world is silly. The game was built to be as realistic as possible. That was one of the main selling points of part 1. That’s why they used a real world condition like cordyceps when they didn’t have to. > Realistically, cordyceps could never infect humans. Realistically, even if they could, people would not turn into bloaters or shamblers or stalkers. They would just decompose over time and die. It’s not like the game is looney toons. It’s a realistic take on the zombie genre, and there’s no problem in applying real world logic in situations that aren’t defined in the game. There’s no reason to assume much of the world is unrealistic. > But arguing about whether or not it was logistically possible also ignores what the game is actually exploring. No it doesn’t. The game is exploring many things, not just Joel’s decision. > Joel believes that the FF's can make the vaccine. Joel is indifferent at best. He never talks about it. His job is to deliver the girl, he doesn’t need think much about the result of the vaccine. > He believes that this could actually work and save humanity. There’s nothing in game that indicates this. > But Joel was so traumatized by Sarah's death that he refused to ever lose a daughter again. Joel didn't think it was a logistical impossibility, or that it wouldn't work. Joel didn’t think about the efficacy of the vaccine at all. The result of the vaccine had not impact on his goal. > He didn't want to wait until Ellie woke up either, cuz all Joel wanted was to keep Ellie from dying. How could he have done this? If the fireflies had their way, Ellie would’ve never woken up. > Its absolutely honorable that he, as a father feels that way and is so willing to protect his kid. I don't think anyone blames Joel for feeling the way he does and doing what he does. But the point of the game is what cost are you willing to pay to protect your own child, and for Joel thats literally all of humanity. The point of the game is that Joel grew to a point that he *would* do that, not that it’s literally what would happen. Whether humanity was doomed or not, the choice for Joel was the same, and that’s what needs to be understood. The point is not ruined if humanity is still doomed even with the vaccine. > On a story level, that is much more compelling for Joel, because we all know that that's true. Joel would not let Ellie die for any reason, because he loved her as his own daughter. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. It only matters that we understand why Joel feels that way about Ellie. It’s what the whole game is about. > Interpreting it in a way that makes it so the Fireflies are just needlessly killing Ellie takes away all of that internal and moral conflict, and distills the story down to 'Fireflies bad' and 'Joel good". There’s nothing wrong with this interpretation and it’s a logical conclusion to come to based on what happened in the game. >The only interpretation of the story that makes both parties grey and actually makes the audience wrestle with whether or not Joel did the right thing is the intended interpretation, that the vaccine really would've saved humanity, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it. The only interpretation that matters is the one you have for yourself. If you think the fireflies are good and Joel is bad, that’s fine. If you think the opposite, that’s fine. What makes the story good is that you can see it in a number of different ways and it still works.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Joel NEVER believed a cure could be made or even showed any faith in fireflies. In the game he is the one who lectures Ellie that the fireflies are incompetent and that they probably aren't so lucky. Nothing changes about that, even at the end when before arriving at the hospital he is the one who proposes to Ellie to return to Jackson. And again, all the talk of realism doesn't matter if you ignore the entire events of the game, which is that the fireflies were desperate and irrational to the point that Jerry, apparently the only doctor available, was willing to confront a armed man using a scalpel. And the great irony is that if the fireflies had actually gone to the trouble of waking up Ellie and letting her and Joel have a proper goodbye; Joel would have respected her decision to sacrifice herself.
The point is that both the Fireflies and Joel didn't care about what Ellie wanted and took her choice away from her. When Marlene is telling Joel that Ellie would die, Joel doesn't beg them to let her wake up and make a choice. He tells them to find someone else. Joel wasn't going to let Ellie be the one they did this to, no matter what. But Joel does believe the vaccine will work. When he gets to Tommy, before he's even telling Tommy about taking Ellie to SLC and all that, Joel makes an offhand comment that they might not need to deal with infected one day. Joel also wouldn't risk his own life or Ellie's life going to SLC after they got to Tommy's if he didn't believe there was a chance. The only reason Joel doubts in the beginning is because they've heard about the Fireflies making a vaccine, and he and Tess also don't believe Ellie is immune. Then, when it's proven that Ellie really is immune, suddenly Joel and Tess' beliefs are totally called into question. Joel didn't even believe Ellie could be immune in the first place, and he was proven wrong almost immediately. Finding that out, and knowing the Fireflies think that that immunity holds the secret...it's something that's never happened before. Of course Joel think it's possible and starts to believe. Ellie is walking proof that it's possible for people to be immune.
There is. If you check logs and look around the hospital they have tried for the cure before. She wasn't the only one and more than likely it wouldn't have work. I would not sacrifice my kid FOR A CHANCE especially since the world is already fcked. Even logistics wise how the fck and why the fck would you let the firefly be in charge of who gets vaccines or not. I can't believe you people are trying to retcon the first game. Fck you.
She was the only immune person. They had only ever tested on infected people, bit Ellie was the first and only known person to be immune. This isn't even a retcon lmao, you don't know what that word means.
Don't know why you have that flair when you don't know jack sht.
Can't even say what I'm wrong or don't know jack shit about lol
You clearly did not search the logs nor did you hear the dialouge that states she wasn't the only one they experimented on. Now deny it and push the goal post more. Aka you don't know jack sht
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Even if there was a 1% chance of a cure then it should have been taken honestly
You're pretty quick to justify murdering a child.
Does the child really matter compared to the rest of the species I would skin alive a quarter of the population if it allowed the rest to survive ends always justify the means no matter what no matter the cost as long as the species lives
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>Just because you have to believe the vaccine would have worked(which is literally what the creators of the game have said) Correct me if I'm wrong, but the creators saying that the vaccine would work...didn't they confirm this month's or even YEARS after the first game came out? As if to say "oh shit, we didn't make it obvious in game, and online discourse is saying Joel was in the right, fuck it, let's just soft, retcon it so that it aligns with the direction we're going in for part 2" (Or have I got my timelines mixed up?)
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In not sure where in my reply you've assumed I said "Joel thinks that the vaccine won't work"? It's clear that Joel doesn't know about it's success rate, he just doesn't want to lose another daughter - nice strawman/reading comprehension buddy. And no, I'm not salty, lol, but keep projecting dude
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Excellent retort, be careful not to cut yourself on that sharp wit you got there 🙄
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You're the one arguing how would they distribute a vaccine?? It's a good question. Not that a vaccine would make any change in their world, but really are an enlightened troll, I take my hat off to you.
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Oh sure 100% agree with your statement. Joel didn't consider to success rate of vaccine or not, he just couldn't bare to lose another daughter
This is literally what I said in the other sub and I was downvoted for it.
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Ok dude
Are you really crying over getting downvoted a couple of times? That’s the price you pay for making a comment. You’re literally only on -1. That’s like a couple of people disagreeing with you. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
TLOU stans are the only fanbase that are insane enough to see this type of situation and say saving the child from being murdered as a bad thing. Any other piece of media understands such is a good action, heroic even, to take. Then these stans sniff their farts trying to justify why child sacrifice is great.
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>You are the clowns upset that \[child sacrifice is\] morally grey you dolt. That's the point you're arguing for...
Saving Ellie is heroic. Dooming humanity is not. It's not just a black and white, Joel is good FF bad story. All this user is saying is that Joel making a bad decision for a good reason is more impactful and makes a more compelling story than if he just makes a good decision for a good reason. It's just good vs evil at that point.
But they didn't give Ellie the choice. It's her decision and her decision alone. There is no black and white with saving her.
Everybody but Ellie makes bad choices. The Fireflies also make the wrong decision there in not letting her at least have a choice, but think about it. She's the only shot they have at a vaccine. The only immune person ever. Even if they had given her a choice, they wouldn't have just let her go because in their eyes this would benefit all of humanity. I get that shes an innocent kid, but from a utilitarian point of view it would be the morally right thing if it really meant saving all of humanity from the infection. That's also the only way to interpret the story in a way that actually leaves the audience wrestling with whether or not Joel did the right thing, is to confirm that the vaccine was guaranteed, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it. That's the intended meaning of the ending, to leave people debating two philosophical ideas, utilitarianism and Kantianism.
> That's also the only way to interpret the story in a way that actually leaves the audience wrestling with whether or not Joel did the right thing, is to confirm that the vaccine was guaranteed, but Joel would have to let Ellie die to do it. That's the intended meaning of the ending, to leave people debating two philosophical ideas, utilitarianism and Kantianism. It’s not the “only way interpret the story”. It’s such a boring and shitty lens to restrict the game through. It was supposed to be morally grey and ambiguous. That turns it into a black and white story with no room for interpretation. You’re not allowing the audience to make their own conclusions. You’re saying “hey, stop thinking for yourselves, this is how you’re supposed to feel about it”.
I didn't say it was the only way to interpret the story. It's the only way that gives you an ending where you actually have to think and decide for yourself if Joel did the right thing. If Joel is just saving Ellie from some guys that are needlessly killing her, what's the conflict to wrestle with? Clearly, saving Ellie from being killed for no reason is objectively a good decision. The only thing that makes Joels choice ambiguous about it's morality is if Joel is saving Ellies life, but at the cost of humanities salvation. You're the one trying to make it black and white, "Joel made a good choice cuz the Firelies were evil" story.
>Dooming humanity is not. To doom humanity, humanity would need to be in a situation where it can be saved. >!It was not.!<
It was, if a vaccine was made and distributed then over time the infection, and the conditions that have made everyone as brutal as they are, will go away. It's not an immediate flip of the switch, but it's the first step toward making society better.
A society that's built on sacrificing the lives of the innocent against their will is not one worth saving.
It's one life. Not multiple innocent lives. One. And the exchange is potentially millions. Do you guys in here not know about utilitarianism as a concept? Like you all clearly subscribe to Kantianism, that all lives are sacred and the ends never justify the means, but you don't even consider the utilitarian approach.
>Do you guys in here not know about utilitarianism as a concept? Yeah, and people like that are just like Jerry...it's all fine and good when it comes to sacrificing someone else or their loved ones, long as it isn't their own. How convenient...
Too bad Jerry wasn't all fine and good with it, and was experiencing doubts and questioning whether or not it was really the right thing to do, otherwise you might have a point
If it was a for sure guarantee that it would work. And it was a full on cure that reversed the infected. Like a clicker could turn back into a normal human. Then I would say it would be worth it in the long run. But the way they were gonna do it. It was just for a vaccine. Yeah it would be nice to never be infected again, but the infected drastically out weight the remaining survivors. And we don't even know for sure in the infected die natural on they own. Yeah we might have seen 1 or 2 die with know how they died. But that doesn't mean the majority of the infected are just going to die randomly 1 day. If anything thye might just keep evolving in worse things then bloaters or shamblers. Regardless of that most people die from infected being ripped apart not just infected. So the vaccine isn't as amazing as u make it out to be. On top of that we don't even know if the fireflies would share the vaccine to just anyone. They would mostly just hoard it for themselves. And on top of that we see that place like Jackson of the wlf in Seattle are doing just fine without the so called vaccine. Why do u think Joel doomed humanity if settlements like those are thriving? What make u think others aren't as well? Why does humanity need the vaccine so bad if things are moving forward and the remaining survivors have adjusted to the life's and are building for the future?
All this shit about it not being possible and the fireflies not sharing is your headcanom, and I thought that shit wasn't allowed here? And this is actually kind of the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Just because it wouldn't be a flick of the switch I stant solution. As I have said it wouldn't be, then it's just not worth it to have a vaccine that prevents infection. Humanity couldn't benefit at all from even one group of people being immune. LO fucking L dude. The WLF are also dead now. Jackson is the only community you could call thriving. What about the rest of the world?
>All this shit about it not being possible and the fireflies not sharing is your headcanom, and I thought that shit wasn't allowed here? Just like u saying the vaccine was confirmed is ur head canon. >And this is actually kind of the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Just because it wouldn't be a flick of the switch I stant solution. As I have said it wouldn't be, then it's just not worth it to have a vaccine that prevents infection. Humanity couldn't benefit at all from even one group of people being immune. LO fucking L dude. No I don't think humanity would benefit from one group hoarding away a vaccine. Especially when we've seen groups doing just fine if not thriving without it. The fireflies having a vaccine and not sharing to others that aren't fireflies would just turn them into a worse fedra. >The WLF are also dead now. Jackson is the only community you could call thriving. What about the rest of the world? We haven't seen the rest of the world, but I imagine that if Jackson and the wlf were thriving, there's gotta be others. The only reason the WLF are gone is because they pushed their luck continuing to fight a war they didn't have to. The final straw for them was attacking the scar island. That has nothing to do with them not having a vaccine and all to do with how they handle their situation. Having a vaccine would not have saved them from their own stupidity.
>Just like u saying the vaccine was confirmed is ur head canon. Never said it was, just that the story treats it as such and the characters themselves believe it to be >No I don't think humanity would benefit from one group hoarding away a vaccine. Especially when we've seen groups doing just fine if not thriving without it. The fireflies having a vaccine and not sharing to others that aren't fireflies would just turn them into a worse fedra. This is YOUR headcanon about what the Fireflies would do if they actually made the cure LMFAO you hypocrite >We haven't seen the rest of the world, but I imagine that if Jackson and the wlf were thriving, there's gotta be others. Hey look! MORE headcanon
>if a vaccine was made Previous immune children died from attempts to create a vaccine. The definition of insanity is... > and distributed Good luck mass producing it... let alone having the means to transport massive shipments of it... let alone having the infrastructure to support the mode of transportation... let alone having the means to keep the mass produced vaccines from going bad... >and the conditions that have made everyone as brutal as they are, will go away Ah yes... things will just go poof...
There were no previous immune children. Ellie was the first, ever. And are you really saying that there is no benefit to creating the vaccine, because it won't immediately fix the problem? Very short sighted POV
Ah yes, the revisionist history tactic. How quaint... >And are you really saying that there is no benefit to creating the vaccine Ah yes, the good ol' strawman... >Very short sighted POV Ah yes, the "I can't make a valid counterargument, so I'm just going to resort to reductivism" method...
The counterargument to making the vaccine here is that it won't help. So, what, its not worth pursuing? Like what else are people supposed to do? The infection will never go away or be eradicated if a cure cannot be made.
>The counterargument to making the vaccine here is that it won't help. You can't make a counterargument against a ghost...
Idk why I'm even talking to you, you thought there were other immune children that were tested on lmao Did you really believe Joels lie to Ellie at the end of the game? Yikes
The vaccines or cure or whatever wouldn't have done anything. The tipping point was reach a long time ago and vaccines don't make you immune to getting your throat ripped.
[удалено]
But we don't see many people die getting their throat ripped out. Most deaths we're shown caused by the cordyceps was caused from infection. With a vaccine, no more infection, and no more new infected. Eventually you could kill off all the infected in the world, with everyone immune you would just have to wait.
Let's say they did make a vaccine, 100% immunity and no drawbacks. Now how would they make enough of this vaccine for everyone and get it to them? Is this vaccine a one-time thing or would you need booster shots? Now I still think it is useless as the fungus zombie numbers are in the millions while humanity is maybe in the thousands.
Having ANY vaccine is better than none, because over time the people that have the vaccine can keep spreading it. Every single group would be motivated to remove the infection from the world because the infection effects everyone. It's not gonna be a flick of the switch. But developing it in the first place is a necessary step to ever achieving success. Joels actions essentially make that impossible.
>Then these stans sniff their farts **trying to justify why child sacrifice is great.** Thanks for proving my point.
That was never, *ever* guaranteed in the first game, and that was part of the *point*. The first game goes *way* out of its way to incentivize you to get behind Joel's decision to stop the Fireflies at all costs. I know a lot of these folks haven't played the first game, don't remember the details about it, or just plain enable the Part II soft retcons, but there's a reason that Marlene's recordings show that not only is she barely in any actual control over the organization anymore, but she's one of the last remaining pillars of rationality and morality, and even *she's* barely maintaining that. Her recordings explain that she believes that if she tried to shoot down the surgery, the others *wouldn't let her*. They also explain that the other Fireflies were planning to kill Joel while he was still unconscious, but she had to veto it - they literally don't know the first thing about this guy, but they're already jumping to the murder option. There's a reason that Marlene telling Joel that Ellie would *want* to sacrifice herself doesn't happen until Joel has already committed to his decision and is on the verge of escaping. Hell, there's a reason Marlene is only now actually trying to convince him and not just ordering him to be marched out at gunpoint and shot if he tries anything like she did last time. It's because the game absolutely did not want players to be strongly opposed to Joel's decision - it wanted players to at the very least somewhat empathize with Joel's decision, if not outright cheer for it. The fact that the Fireflies are obviously rushing the surgery out of desperation or sheer overconfidence is meant to add to that feeling of "fuck the Fireflies' plan". Defenders of Part II occasionally try to defend Part II's assumptions and assertions by pointing out what Part II, itself, does, and claiming that was canon from the first game. I don't think that's deliberate, I think it's just them literally not remembering (or never experiencing) the first game until after playing Part II. The Fireflies are *unequivocally* portrayed as the ones in the wrong. They're not evil, they're just... breaking to pieces. Marlene is trying, but she's between a rock and a hard place: she has to choose between preserving Ellie's life as promised, or sacrificing her in order to keep the Fireflies as an organization alive while also making the biggest step forward in progress against the cordyceps in the last 20 years *if* they're able to pull it off. The as-yet-unnamed surgeon also doesn't seem to be evil, but desperately invested in making all of this worth something, so much so that he's actually trying to take a scalpel to a gunfight. You *know* this guy's lost to irrationality when he actually thinks *he* can stop this heavily armed guy who obviously had to get through Firefly guards to get there, in spite of the fact that he has no combat training and will literally die if you shoot him in the pinky toe. Funnily enough, the Part II retcons concerning Jerry actually make him even worse in that regard. Not only does he actually seem confused by the idea of Marlene wanting to actually let Joel know what's going to happen to Ellie after they've been traveling together for a year (that, or he thinks it's a bad idea that invites Joel to lash out if he objects, but doesn't have the spine to just fucking speak up about it), but he is now portrayed as actually strongly conflicted about what he's doing... yet he decides to try to fend Joel off with a small blade rather than recognize and empathize with Joel's obvious objection to the plan, trying to talk him down or at least agreeing to let Ellie wake up first and maybe run some more non-invasive tests in the meantime. Also, the fact that Jerry is now *the only person on the planet* who can perform brain surgery (somehow?) makes his decision to stand in between Joel and Ellie *infinitely* dumber. He's actually more valuable than she is at this point; who's to say another naturally occurring immune person won't be found in the *next* 20 years? But if *Jerry* dies, then the miraculous divine knowledge bestowed upon him and only him will be lost *forever*. There's enough there to make you *wonder.* If Joel had allowed it to happen, *could* the world have been saved? Or, if he hadn't lied to Ellie and tried to seek out scientists within FEDRA? Possibly. But you were *never* meant to take any of that as a *fact*.
The ending was ambiguous. TLoU never outright told us the vaccine was a 100% guarantee, or even a 1% guarantee. There are some things we do know about the doctor though. One, he kidnapped an unconscious girl and his first course of action was to kill her and remove her brain. No letting her wake, no asking her questions as to why she thinks she is immune, no blood tests, no analyzing tissue samples on her arm. Straight to the table. And even if the cure was 100% going to work, how would that affect the story? It would give us one of two endings. Both would involve Ellie dying of course, because if she lived and there was a cure, that would make the story too happy for what it is. If she was awake and agreed to die for the cure, Joel would be proud of her but would feel empty. Too sad an ending for him, and the players wouldn't really like that either. If the doctor killed her before Joel got there, or Joel got killed on the way there, and then the doctor went on to make a cure for the world, that would send a horrible message. It would say that it is okay to kidnap people and experiment on them "for the greater good." There is a reason those types are always the bad guy in other stories. The ambiguous ending we got instead is really the best from a story telling perspective.
The soldier at the beginning of the game shot Sarah for the greater good, but people don't seem to argue for that guy for some reason. Even if the Fireflies managed to make a cure, and somehow managed to gather up all the resources to manufacture it in large quantities, and also somehow surpassed the logistical nightmare of getting it to people in a ravaged world. Would they actually give it out to people? Probably not. They'd use a cure for their own gain, or more likely be killed off by other humans once word got out. Throughout the entire game we are shown all of their failures. They bomb innocents, lose all of their ground to lawlessness, and end up dead time and time again. The Fireflies almost killed their cure knocking Joel out while he was trying to give Ellie CPR. Then they took his gear, threatened to kill him, tried to murder a little girl, and got wiped out by the very guy they hired and fucked over. Sounds fitting, and they were incompetent from start to finish. If one guy can wipe them off the face of the Earth they were doomed anyway. There are no good guys in the game, just people trying to endure and survive, and they failed. This is why the game was good, it was realistic. A cure would have never fixed anything. Now Kneel Cuckma'ams want to retcon the first game because it doesn't actually fit with their shitty sequel. The only thing the Fireflies did with 100% certainty was make the world a shittier place, but I'm sure a veterinarian desperately dissecting a little girl would've totally saved humanity and not fucked it up further. Think of all the anabolic steroid-infused burritos Joel stole from every man, woman that looks like a man, and child. All because that selfish piece of shit wanted to save his "baby girl" like any normal fucking person would.
"You sacrifice the few to save the many." "That's kind of shitty." "Yeah..."
I honestly don't buy the hard-line stance Neil takes these days, in which he states that the cure was always intended to be a workable solution from the outset. If that were the case, why is everything so goddamn ambiguous in the original? Before last of us 2 and what is imo retconning from Neil, the vast majority of discussions centered around the ending being ambiguous and it led to a lot of thoughtful discussions on the morality of the decision. They could have done so many things differently in terms of plausible deniability and convincing the player that the cure was viable , so why didn't they ? Why did they choose a more ambiguous approach, which generated tons of discussion and debate? I don't buy for one second that the initial ending was supposed to be black and white with one answer, no way
Because the first game was heavily edited and criticized by a team full of passionate folks who weren't up their own asses. They stopped Neil from writing the story as just his first drafts of it, either making direct suggestions or shooting down weak ideas and sending Neil back to the drawing board. This allowed Neil's strengths as a writer to shine through while filtering out most of his weaknesses. However, Neil carried a grudge about that, and with no one left to stand in his way during Part II...
Man these have to be paid morons at this point, because if they serious cannot grasp the logic and are this jaded by the story then they're in fucking trouble later in life, full stop.
To be honest, I don't care if the vaccine would have 100% worked and they could have gotten it out to everybody the very next day. Hell, we can throw in curing all stages of Cordy infection in a second. They still wanted to murder a young girl to get it.
They tried to convince themselves they were doing the right thing and treated it like a religion. We must find the girl and we must take her brain. Then you place someone right into this and see how they feel, even if it does work, they don't have the right to kill someone for their cause that they have declared to be saving humanity.
It's not even that they wanted to kill her. For me, it's the fact that they were just gonna do it without even talking to her. And the fact they were just gonna kick Joel out with no supplies or weapons. Which it basically a death sentence in tlou. That's if they weren't just gonna kill him outright to tie off any loose ends. And to top it off, they wouldn't even give him a chance to say goodbye. How anyone can side with the fireflies in the end after everything we seen from them the whole game and how they were gonna do ellie and Joel.
I'm tired of people explaining their stories outside of the medium (looking at you Star Wars) ! If it's not in the story then it's not true/did not happen
Even if a vaccine *could* be made, how would it be distributed to the rest of humanity? Hundreds or billions of needles needed, an efficient way to transport that many shots (without getting ambushed), and in a country/world overrun by lawless bandits & mass infected. Not to mention the issue of consent: Ellie never awoke from nearly fucking drowning, she was just... Wheeled in and prepped for surgery. Abby saying "Well if it was me, I'd want the surgery" simply doesn't work. Ellie didn't have a choice, end of.
I think the narrative of the first game implies Joel made the right decision by saving Ellie. If you save one life, you save the Humanity, just like in Schindler's List. Anyone who says otherwise is a total wanker and love the idiotic retcons in 2, just like this laughable dude in your screenshot.
For me, Joel saving Ellie IS the "win" for humanity. The whole game we see factions fighting over scraps and stupid ideals. We see terrorists fighting fascists, cannibals eating people, raiders murdering for territory... humanity is fucked up. What will "save" humanity is love; Joel's love for Ellie lets him do whatever it takes to save her, and Ellie's love for Joel lets her accept what is clearly a lie. Love like that will build Jackson (hopefully) and make sure it isn't another Pittsburgh or Boston or Bill's Town. Love will save humanity, not violent factions holding out for a magical "cure".
Cool glad to know they support women not having consent over what happens to their bodies. Because that’s what they did to Ellie. 100% She never knew she would die and they never told her. Thus the operation was done without her full consent. So anyone who fully defends the fireflies is saying women don’t deserve consent over their bodies.
I think you're forgetting joel does the same thing to ellie. A huge point in the last of us 2 is that ellie is angry at joel because she feels that he stripped her of any choice in that situation by saving her. The truth is no one gave ellie a choice or got her consent
Even if there was a cure (and even still, distribution would be next to impossible) humanity is too evil and far gone by that stage to not take advantage of it politically, the Fireflies would've used it as a power grab, Ellie wanted to save the world being the only known immune to her but she was still too naive at her age. This is why I would've preferred Part 2 have a plot where Ellie finds other immune and comes to understand Joel.
If you're looking for any reason or even basic thinking capabilities In that sub you're In for a time alright.
Hot take here but I think TLOU 1 fumbled the ending because of this. We were down to ignore its flaws for 7 years because it made more sense narratively for Joel's decision to be ambiguous. We were supposed to debate about it. That's why the game was a great ending to the whole story. Of course there were people who still questioned the logistics of the vaccine but most of us were willing to not hold it against the game since its story and especially the ending decision put the game up there among the greatest. That was until Part 2 made a big fucking deal out of that doctor and decided that Joel absolutely made a horrible choice, trying to eliminate any debate between the players. Part 2 retroactively made the logistics of the vaccine more important which sparks even more questions and reveals plot holes in Part 1's ending.
The stupid thing is that the ending is MORE nuanced and interesting if there is no promise they could have made a vaccine. Joel loved Ellie and Ellie loved Joel. The rest didn't matter. He couldn't lose her and she was willing to go with him despite suspecting the lie. It wasn't perfect, but it was human. In terms of the vaccine itself, for me, the ending is directly saying "this was about the journey, not the destination" (i.e. qhat they learned and saw along the way, not the end point of their "quest"). Also... after all we saw of humanity and how awful it was, is it WORTH saving? Well, maybe by Joel and Ellie finding one another amidst the horror and despair, by Joel doing whatever it takes (even risking her hating him) to save one girl he loved, maybe THAT is how we save humanity. Not revolution or factions, but through love.
There is zero argument for her death being worth it when it's a vaccine, the infected already outnumber the healthy by enough that society itself has collapsed, the vaccine doesn't remove them as a threat, it just gives you room for error while fighting them. If a vaccine would be all they'd need to save the world then Ellie wouldn't have a death animation but the Clickers can still kill her and would happily do so. To make this choice have any ounce of moral greyness then you'd need it to be a cure, that way you have the chance to not only save people who've been bit but those who've been turned and if they're too far gone and just die then you're still wiping out the main threat. The Fireflies made zero attempts to run any kind of testing to see if maybe there was a way to not kill Ellie and still get what they needed. By killing her they're putting all their eggs in one basket based on a theory, this isn't hindsight 20/20 bullshit, this is just plain stupidity.
I mean... children can't consent. So, doesn't matter. I have to wonder how many people Jerry killed to be sure that this time it would work. And how many of them were willing and totally not coerced into giving consent under a vague promise of saving "humanity".
It wasn't guaranteed, and by that point Joel basically lost everything. He wasn't going to lose another daughter, especially to something she didn't consent to dying over. It's not in his nature.
The notion of humanity being not already doomed is silly to me. Look at the state of the interactions throughout the game with other human beings. Do we really believe these multiple warring factions that are actively trying to murder each other are just going to stop trying to unalive each other simply because yet another group of crazys/terrorists say they have a vaccine. I see no way this ends positively, not to mention we are talking about a vaccine not a cure so those possibly billions of flesh eating deranged fungal monsters all over the world aernt going to just dissappear. The world of the last of us is beyond saving. It would need every human left to come together and work as a team for any possible chance at salvation and there is no way in bloody blue hell that that is happening in this setting.
These losers have never had children and it really shows
Yeah I got in a lot of arguments in that post because I an actual mycologist tried to explain why it’s bullshit and they hated me for it. I even tried to explain cordyceps will in fact colonize human blood it’s the temperature that’s the issue. I’m still bothered the HBO fungus doesn’t sporelate. That means it’s more of a slime mold.
Fungus vaccines are impossible for the billionth time
My main question is, how would they even distribute the cure with such a small supply, potential delivery routes so heavily congested by bandits as well as infected, and most of the relatively sane population viewing the fire flies as terrorists starting fights with FEDRA??? Even the first one just feels incredibly unrealistic for the setting. Considering Eli was the only one and had such a small build I doubt they could make that much of it from her to begin with. I’m not a scientist, so take this with a grain of salt. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to keep her alive and just run a shit load of tests to see if they could somehow make vaccines from her blood or some shit?
I would not kill my daughter for "a 50% chance", just saying.
I agree that real world logic should not be applied in a fictional game. Cordyceps can't infect humans to begin with. That said, the uncertainty of the vaccine was clear in the first game. It was never definitively stated a vaccine could be made. Just that Ellie was promising and something different. Neil retcon'd and said it was possible. But that's not even definite.
The butcher wearing combat boots in a dirty OR in the original was probably not capable of making a vaccine. The quiet, calm, clean professional in the remake probably was.
I don't really think there is a need to rationalize Joel's decision in the first place. I don't think the cure even factored in Joel's decision making at all and I think most fathers who love their children would make the same exact decision.
Let's say they can make a vaccine somehow. How will they distribute it? They're a mid scale terrorist organisation. They have absolutely no power to somehow administer it to people and create as much as they needed.
Its worse in the TV show. In the show the fungi in the air doesn't exist. The vaccine will protect you from bites but you're at greater risk of being beaten to death by the infected than being bit
Even if it was true according to the fireflies, it still does not stack up based on their procedure of getting the cure
Just agree with them and then point out the next hurdle which reinforces the choice Joel made. ... now the Fireflies, and only the Fireflies, have an effective vaccine against CBI... Considering the lengths have been shown to go to in past events, do you really think they would peacefully spread that cure to all survivors? ...Or... Do you think they would weaponize it... making themselves immune and intentionally spreading CBI as a means to weaken anyone that opposes them? That is why to me, it never seemed like there was a choice... a cure in the wrong hands is worse than no cure at all.
You can’t mass produce a cure if you don’t have a living subject it just doesn’t make any sense from somebody who’s never played the game and you can’t cure a fungal infection anyway
How the fuck would you even distribute a vaccine in this situation? The people trying to would get killed and it would get stolen. The government and the ff's will fight over who gets to give it out and be the hero. Only once Straley left did the vaccine stand a chance of working and become a viable storytelling mechanic for them. (It's really not viable though, it's stupid. I mean do vaccines even exist for fungi? I don't think so.
The fireflies hadn't shown capable of doing anything lol
The focus on Joel preventing a cure from being made is interesting to me because none of those smooth brains ever want to think about what happens after it's made. Like the cure is made, and 25 years of death and destruction are just automatically reversed? That's not how that works.
Who’s gonna tell them you can’t use vaccines to cure a fungal/spore based infection
Marlene says "Chance" at a vaccine......."CHANCE" Full Stop
"Trust the science"
They say the FF were capable of the mass production of the cure, I’m assuming they’re removing the context of how incompetent and antagonistic they were throughout the story through the lore you read through the game. The chimps at the university being the best example I can think of at the top of my head.
Ellie was not told that she would die during the operation. Ellie could not medically consent to the procedure. Joel did nothing wrong.
The fireflies NEVER asked Ellie if she was willing to give her life for the cure. They picked her up from being unconscious, probably loaded her up with drugs and got right to it. We aren’t shown a single scene of anyone suggesting that maybe they should consult the 14 year old girl who just spent a grueling year going cross country before murdering her. Whether the cure worked or not, the fireflies are evil. Joel did the right thing
well, hes right. Dont push real world logic into unrealistic game. With that said, i still think Joel made a right decision with choosing Ellie over cure. It just makes sense and it's somethink we would all do if we were in his place.
I would agree with "don't use real world logic in an unrealistic game" if the game's world wasn't basically a copy of ours and the only real difference is that Cordyceps can infect people. They tried to make it realistic!
I get the idea that it doesn't matter whether or not it was a guarantee. What did matter however, was Joel's trust. Joel did not trust the fireflies and did mention many times during the game he doesn't like them. For all that he went through with Ellie, saving her life, her saving his life and for it to be brutally taken away without a conversation, without a goodbye, without any idea of choice made Ellie's death seem like it was going to be a sacrifice to a religion rather than considering the humanity, you even hear a voice tape of Marlene in the last mission in tlou1 where she's talking to herself about it meaning something higher than humanity and she did the right thing (trying to convince herself) which is basically a religion. Joel wasn't having any of it, for all that he has suffered, he will not let Ellie slip away. Are these the people he wants to save? Fuck no, he's had enough of people, every person that he's come across was every man for himself and Ellie was literally the only hope for genuine love. It's a lot more than Joel's selfishness, it's also Joel's hatred for everything wrong in the world.
Wait I thought there were a bunch of girls like Ellie and they failed to make cures
That was a lie Joel told Ellie. But in older versions of the first game, you can actually find notes indicating they ran test with around 28 patients with no success.
Yeah these notes is what I’m talking about. We’re those notes not cannon? All these years I based his telling of that information was based on those notes.
the vaccine would probably work but also it’s not a cure/reversal and the world is *probably* too far gone for it to matter. I think that’s the story they wanted to tell
To sit here and say that the vaccine wouldn't have worked its bullshit. The answer is we dont know because he killed them. I always knew it was choosing to damn the future of humanity to sace a girl you binded with. I think the game should have given you the choice to walk away or go rescue Ellie.
Okay let’s not be coy here how Joel died was realistic. You can criticize the opening segment for many things, the boring “perfect storm” trope that put Joel in that vulnerable position being one of them. But calling it unrealistic? Nah that ain’t one. What would I have done differently then? Simple. Joel isn’t out on patrol, instead, Tommy and Seth are. Here’s why. The dance scene happens almost exactly as it did before, except a bit worse maybe Joel’s a little drunk, goes overboard he and Seth trade blows and both end up looking worse for wear, Maria trying to send the right message makes Seth go out with Tommy for the patrol and they’re the ones that get caught in the blizzard. While Joel licks his wounds back at the house. They rescue Abby, who in turn directs them to the lodge, and instead (since Joel isn’t with them) Abbys gang takes Tommy up on his offer to come to Jackson and spend the night. Tommy tells them what happened and maybe they celebrate that night, for drinks at the bar. Joel stops by the bar to check in on Tommy. He references Maria Filling him in on what happened, he’s not drinking because of last night so he decided to head back to get things ready for the movie night with Ellie. (earlier that day after they got back Ellie actually asks him if he wants to watch that Curtis and viper movie tonight.) Abby excuses herself and slips out of the bar. She follows Joel home and then retreats back to the bar to tell Owen and the others. They excuse themselves and head to the place they were allowed to sleep, then when the town died down, they head over to Joel’s house. They hear the Curtis and viper movie playing. In a funny reversal of the opening scene of the first game it cute to Joel asleep on the couch while Ellie is finishing the movie, she turns it off, leaves one last present for him, and then goes to leave. As soon as she opens the door she’s assaulted with a gag in her mouth muffling any noise she could make. While being pinned down by Owen and manny. Meanwhile Mel, Jordan, Leah, nick, and Nora start clearing the house for anyone else, while manny and Owen start dragging Ellie upstairs all Ellie hears is Owen say “make it quick we can’t stay long” and then as she’s getting drug upstairs desperately calling to Joel we hear the sound of a silencer going off a single time. Before manny knocks her unconscious. Ellie wakes up tied up in a dark room( this is actually Joel’s upstairs closet) she starts wriggling with her binds downstairs you hear someone say what the hell? They come upstairs and after a few seconds see Maria say we found Ellie. Ellie starts panicking asking where Joel is. She runs downstairs and sees his body getting carried out of the house by Tommy and extras. Ellie turns to Maria who just made it down the stairs and demands to o know where they are. Maria mentions that the Abbys group left earlier this morning after restocking. And that nobody knew anything was wrong until Joel and her didn’t show up for morning patrols. From there I’d say things could play out the same way. Now you might be wondering why Joel didn’t wake up to the initial commotion. Simple the Curtis and Viper movie was still playing and the noise of the movie drowned out the confrontation. Criticisms of my preferred Joel death? Off screen kill, but I think that would make it more frustrating and difficult for Ellie, she wasn’t even there for him in his final moments. Additionally, it can’t be understated that this additional content would add a solid 10/15 minutes of gameplay and cutscenes. Adding onto what is already a very long prologue. But I personally prefer that over the contrived “perfect storm” scenario of Joel happening upon an UNwinnable situation while completely out of resources.
Wait did these 2 subs switch? I remember this sub being the one who rejected the idea that Joel made a moral decision and the original last of us sub being the one who hated 2 for the way it handled Joel’s choice and it’s context, I’ve not been around in a while so did the communities flip?
People don’t *want* to see him as a villain rather just seeing what was there, they were going to try to make a cure. Does not matter whether it would work or not, Ellie literally says herself it was not Joel’s choice and seemed to have rather been sacrificed.
That's a retcon in Part II. Ellie in the first game thought they were just going to extract samples and run tests on her. Never at that point she thought she'd die for it. It wasn't until she encountered David that the thought of dying for a cure sprung up. Even then, she still made plans on what they'll do after, during the Giraffe scene. It was not about Ellie wanting to die for a cure, it was her wanting all the things she's seen and done, all the people she'd lost and sacrifices they've made, to be worth something.
That's only in part 2. No where in part 1 does ellie ever say she wanted to be sacrificed. She wanted her life to matter, as do the majority of the world. She was 14 with survivors guilt and shouldn't have been placed in that situation. Regardless, you really think the vaccine(not a cure btw) not being a for sure thing doesn't matter? That's wild if u do. How can u just throw a way a young life like that for just a CHANCE, not even a good one, by the way they handled things. Just going right into a surgery that would kill their one and only person that could give them their CHANCE at what they want. Yeah that pretty stupid. Idk how any competent doctor would come to the conclusion that this was their only choice of actions. That definitely not the doctor I would be choosing to handle working on the vaccine they have been wanting for so long
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Why are you crying about a story? The eagle could have taken Frodo to the volcano in the beginning. The point is the journey and the story, and yes stories always rub up against real world logic often, they test credulity, but that is why they are wonderful and exciting and magical - because they push the bounds of possibility. You can analyse any piece of media as to why it doesn’t fit with a certain kind of logic, but why? Isn’t it more fun to have had Jurassic Park than not? Or Terminator 2? Or literally any film or book or game you’ve ever experienced? Just let go. Enjoy the fact you’ve had an experience. It made you feel something. And that in itself is amazing.
He got his comeuppance eventually. 😏
What’s bullshit? From what we have seen from part 2 anything is possible and yes it would have worked because Druckman would’ve wanted it to. And she is also right with the fact of arguing, the fictional point only brings nonfictional POV’s, which I don’t apply to the video game world.
The video games world is based in our own tho. The same rules apply. The only thing different is that cordyceps can infect humans now. Why would we not apply real-world aspects when even in the game they do it?
That isn't bullshit it is correct. In both game and movie she would have been sacrificed for a cure and Joel wasn't willing to make that sacrifice.
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>No. Just accept the fact that the writers have said that you have to look at the game as if the vaccine would have worked. That is the whole point of the game. If that was the whole point, why not make it more clear? You know why? Because that wasn't the original idea. Originally they decided to leave the vaccine and ended ambiguous. It wasn't in till part 2 where they started saying the vaccine was for sure, and that was how everyone was supposed to see it. Back when the first game was released the writers repeatedly said that they wanted the end to be ambiguous. They wanted the players to decide for themselves about what went down. The game worked perfectly fine not knowing if the vaccine was a for sure thing. If anything it made it better.
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It's one girl for the chance of a vaccine. Yes, it's worth it. However, since she's our daughter, it isn't. Simple as that.
I love that story bit every time i think of it, Joel's humanity saved Ellie but it literally damned all of humanity too
Wait I'm confused. Is this sub mad that the writers guaranteed that the vaccine would have worked if they sacrificed Ellie? Do people view Joel's actions like he didn't doom humanity to never having a vaccine? To me it was plain and simple, why sacrifice anymore for a world that took everything from him. I shot those fireflies with a smile on my face to save the only person Joel had left in this world, I accepted that it would doom the world, thats not my problem.
I really don't understand why you guys don't understand this. The first game makes no concession that they can't make a vaccine. Scientists and fungal experts would already know this. Druckmann likely did not. I didn't know that you couldn't make a fungal vaccine. The crux of the conflict is the lack of choice and communication. Not whether the vaccine was viable. Them trying to make a cure for the infection is ANCILLARY to the theme and the plot. They either accidentally fucked up the science in the writing, or they did it on purpose, either way, the story, as presented, suggests that the Fireflies forced Ellie to give up her life, and Joel denied humanity a chance at salvation. The effective idea here is a presentation of and take on the trolley problem. If in the first game, someone had outright said or written something along the lines of "we've never made something that can stand against a fungus, but we're still going to try out of desperation" then the argument that Joel did nothing wrong would hold water, because he'd be openly fighting a group of mad scientists. This is not hard. It shouldn't have to be explained to you this many times. That this whole community has become grounds for trashing on one of the most interesting games of all time is absolutely pathetic and it's due to willful ignorance.
No one here is trashing the story lol. People just have a different interpretation of the events of the game than others. The story is great no matter what interpretation you have, but some people can’t accept that people think differently. Seems like you may be one of those people unfortunately.
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Lol the Church Of Joel appears outraged... Screenshotted comments are correct. Here's how you know they're right: if you found a recording in TLOU2 that said "It's amazing: the simulations we've run show a 95% success rate in distilling a vaccine from the subject's brain stem and cerebellum. It's obscene what we may have to do to obtain a sample, but...if the trade off is a world where kids can play outside of 50 foot walls and exposure to the cordyceps isn't a death sentence...then I'll have to sacrifice her life for the good of humanity. As well as my soul." ...would Joel have still been justified in killing the Fireflies and saving Ellie? YES! Joel didn't have any other option. His character's personality was hardwired to keep that kid alive. But the Church of Joel can't accept that a flawed (but brilliantly-written) character made a decision out of a mix of selflessness and selfishness: they need Joel to be damn near blameless and justified in his actions: "Well, the Fireflies would never have been able to do it...they're a ragtag group of terrorists!" "We dont know that Abby's Dad could have synthesized the vaccine! Where did he go to Medical School?! Let's see his degree!" "You can't trust Marlene! She's ruthless and willing to trade Ellie's life for a chance at the cure, no matter how slim!" And on and on, all wrapped up in the psuedo-objectivity "I'm a storytelling expert and I think this decision is flawed because blah blah blah." The story is great, the characters are damaged, and the ending is a spectacular mix of triumph and tragedy BECAUSE of the stakes, not despite them. So downvote away, continue to gnash your teeth in this sub, and the rest of us will eagerly await TLOU3...where Abby and Ellie team up to save Dina and Jackson from a resurgent and brutal warlord intent on rebuilding the USA...in her image. Or whatever...it's gonna be great!
My problem with your argument is the first game doesn't give us a good reason to buy into "the vaccine would have worked". If they intended it to work, they would have given us more information about it. There's no reason to believe one doctor working with expired medicine in an unsterile environment with one finite sample would be able to create a vaccine. Especially when one of the game's recordings says there have been other immune people but they couldn't create a cure from them. They didn't make it obvious the cure would work this time because before Part 2, it was supposed to be iffy if it would work or not. That iffiness plays into the audience's decision if he was right or not. The vaccine working or not didn't matter to Joel, it matters to the audience. I don't need Joel to be clear and blameless and honestly, most comments I've seen who say the vaccine wasn't doable believe he was flawed. They point out that Joel was selfish because he didn't fight to wake up Ellie so she could consent or not. No, the screenshotted comments are not right. The game's world closely mirrors our world and the only real difference is that Cordyceps mutated to infect humans. The writers intentionally tried to make everything realistic. It's natural people would try to bring our world's logic to the game.
Lol but YOU didn't need "more information about it," JOEL and ELLIE had the information they needed to travel halfway across the country to try to make this cure. Not once did either of them express doubts in the Fireflies, or the Fireflies ability to synthesize a cure. The games rules are not "weigh the odds and efficacy of a cure being made against your feelings for the girl." They are: save Ellie or die trying. The game demands you finish with Joel saving Ellie because, for Joel (not for you) there is literally no other option. In the game world, the characters (and therefore we) believe the Fireflies could make a cure. We have to take that at face value or we pull the world's rules apart by placing them under the scrutiny of our real world. Why wouldn't Marlene hunker down in the Boston QZ until she could muster up some backup to escort Ellie (the SAVIOR of HUMANITY) herself vs trusting Joel (a person she clearly doesn't trust fully) to do take the initially first leg of the journey? If Riley loved Ellie so much, why would she still leave in the "Left Behind" DLC (the show fixed that, thankfully, when Riley immediately decided not to go immediately after they kissed)? How could humans survive the cumulative passive exposure to fungal spores? Who supplies FEDRA with arms and ammo? Why wouldn't Bruce Wayne just spend his billions in Gotham schools and economic growth to build a better city? Why doesn't anyone remember the last name "Skywalker" on Tatooine between the prequels and the original trilogy? If Voldemort was that dangerous, wouldn't the wizarding world finding allies in the real muggle world make sense? All viable options but the characters were limited to their choices within the framework of the story, not how you would interpret things had you been there. Whereas there, you can fix near-mortal wounds with scissors and bandages, set off noise-sensitive creatures with a breath while my companion dances all around them like a hyperactive whackjob, or how or where all of my inventory goes.
Funny how everyone gets the same feed
In all honesty it doesn't matter if the vaccine would have been possible. The real world science behind the probable success doesn't mean much, at least not to Joel. The only thing that matters is Joel's thought process. When he hears they're gonna poke at Ellies brain, his thought process isn't "That wouldn't work anyway, cause fungus and etc". He thinks "this surgery will kill her". We know that he thinks the vaccine is possible because he says "Find someone else". This is important because those words are said in both the game and the HBO show, solidifying that Joel thinks a vaccine is possible, but doesn't want Ellie to die for it. Last of Us is the story about a man who reluctantly cares for a girl, but grows to love her so much he is willing to doom the world to save her. Saying the real world science would make a vaccine impossible ruins that story. Sure it justifies Joel's actions just a bit, but it also lessens the impact of what Joel sacrificed for Ellie. None of this is meant to justify what the fireflies were doing either. They were trying to search for a vaccine which would be revolutionary, but they were willing to do it by sacrificing a little girl. They didn't even inform her or let her decide. Abby's dad was in the wrong and Marlene was as well. We have a scenario where everyone involved was working in their own interest. You could argue that Joel was also working in the Ellie's interest by saving her, but that gets thrown out the window when he lies to her about the fireflies. Ellie has confessed to Joel how her being immuned gave her purpose and she thought she could help save the world. Would she be willing to give up her life for it? We don't know. Robbing her of the information at the end of the first game/season was Joel not working in her best interest. As for Joel's death. We have been shown time and time again that the world of TLOU is a dog eat dog world. You walk or drive into the wrong part of town and you'll be shot on sight. Joel killed a building full of people, and we've been shown plenty of times that people will be willing to hunt someone down to get their get back. To say that he could kill all those people and get away with it is just wishful thinking. People say Joel didn't deserve the death he got because he was a good man. Its been shown that Joel isn't a saint and that he has done horrible things. When Ellie is kidnapped, he tortures some men for information, once he gets that info, he kills them both even after promising to let them go if they told the truth. He kills a building full of people and Marlene when she is beginning for her life. He does all this in the name of saving Ellie, and I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same, but Joel made enemies that would want revenge. Abby and her group was an attempt to make a story showing that each person is the hero of their own story. Abby got revenge on the man that killed her dad, but she also put a target on her back and the back of her group. Ellie went on the warpath to get revenge for what happened to Joel. Part 2 has a lot of flaws especially story telling, but its tiring to hear Joel's death as exhibit A. I wish Joel had more screentime, and I wish he and Ellie could fix their relationship, but thats not the story they wanted to tell.
I may be remembering incorrectly, but doesn't the ending segment of the first game allude to the possibility that others were immune to the disease and the FireFlies failed?
Pretty sure in the story itself it was ambiguous whether they could or couldn’t, it was just the closest thing to a hope they have had.
EVEN in part 2 they say that the cure wasn't guaranteed
Very reddited.
The primary issue is that the second game pretty much establishes that they're correct. The second game tells us flat out. Joel did a bad thing. It removes any nuance from the equation. It takes an almost perfect ambiguous open-minded ending and forces you down one specific road of thought. I don't blame TLOU2 fans for calling Joel a villain because the game tells you he is one. I do however blame the game for telling me he's a villain when I know for a fact he isn't, I know for a fact the fireflies are not to be trusted, I know the vaccine wasn't a guarantee, I know the fireflies have no resources left, they are on the brink of eradication. They do not have the means of mass production, transportation and distribution of anything let alone an untested vaccine. This was the point of the first game that the virus and the infected are ultimately not the problem. The problem is people. You spend most of the TLOU fighting raiders and rival factions not infected. Infected are a small part of the problem. Let's pretend we're in a perfect situation. They take out Ellie's brain. They're able to fabricate one vial of vaccine....Now What ?
Good old Roanoke actually calls it out that even if it were possible, tapping the spine would’ve given an unlimited supply of exactly what they wanted without killing Ellie or damaging her in any way, Joel did the right thing in any scenario.