It is that narrative and character development and the uneasy questions that the game forces you to examine that makes the game such a great story driven game and to me the odds out favorite for GOTY, too bad we're discussing it on the forums of a game that would be up for the equivalent of the razzies.

All this discussion is a Mark of what a great story TLoU has, rather hm the same old hollywood hero/please the majority ending we normally get in games we got one that causes controversy and debate. That's a good thing, stories should promote thinking and even a little self reflection, the majority of video games tend to toe the line and go for the heroic sacrifice ending in this kind of game, nice to see one that doesn't.

Its the kind of ending that Mass Effect was going for but they didnt botch it up.

GTA V will win game of the year i beat last of us in 2 days. Collecting dust since then no replay value at all, also to linear good lord give. Players choices to have different outcomes. Walking dead was better Last of us overrated.

IDK, when I talked about the whole story with my wife, we came to the conclusion that Joel was a selfish bastard, though an understandable selfish bastard.

Ok here we go again.

Today over at polygon we have some depraved hipsters once again calling Joel a villain and even a psychopath.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/24/4548992/the-ending-of-the-last-of-us

I think i am beginning to understand where these people make their fundamental mistake in judging Joel.

Joel does not believe the cure will work.

Here is why

First off an attempt at a "cure" literally killed his daughter. At the start of the game a soldier shoots at Joel and his daughter because some order he received over his com. One can only assume it was to kill everyone in a given zone in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease.

Second pretty close to the start of the game Joel tells Tess that he does not think a cure will work. He says it has been tried and it never works.

Third if you listen to all the recordings at the hospital in salt lake Elle is just the best research candidate so far. Yes the fireflys obviously think Elle is the cure but they are reg tag group of post apocalyptic rebels/terrorists Joel didn't join them before why would he suddenly start thinking they had the secret to the cure when for 20 years no one could find a cure?

The cure is presented in he story as ambiguous. You as the player may think it will work but there is no reason why Joel should jump on that ship...and his experience and attitude through out the game not only points to his disbelief in a cure but in fact justifies it.

So when Joel bursts into the operating room we see three doctors trying to save the world...that is if we think the cure is real. Joel on the other hand sees a 13 year old girl about to scarified by the faithful to appease their angry god.

If some Aztek priest was about to murder your adopted daughter on an alter what would you do with that gun in your hand?

Would anyone call you a psychopath villain if you simply did what anyone would do?

Note: the article says Joel is a psychopath because he does not change...HuH? anyway he does change because at the start he tried to keep an emotional distance between him and Elle. Obviously that distance is broken at the end.

Note2: the lie. At the end Elle says the world is dark and horrible and at one point i wanted to die. Joel simply responds you should not want to die because of rainbows Santa clause and ponies. Elle may have wanted to die for a cure. Joel probably suspected that she would. If some dumb little girl wanted to off herself to some fanciful god what you would say? I don't know what i would say but Joel is portrayed at the beginning of the game as protective to his daughter...he tells his brother to not talk about the crazy stuff going on around them in front of his daughter....he also tells Elle early on not to look at the pile of burnt corpses....It is pretty obvious from the start to end Joel would lie to adopted daughter to keep her safe...even safe from herself.

That might make him imperfect..but a villain and a psychopath? not so much.

So I agree with you wholeheartedly, especially regarding the idea of player agency vs. the writer's story. But my god, it made me mad as a player. Because I'm so conditioned to make the "heroic" choices in games GÇö the "save the little sister, save the village, Jesus-or-******" binary choice that we always make fun of as gamers. I was expecting to have that choice, and the fact that I didn't actually shocked me. It's TLOU's boldest, brashest move, and it works so well.

Wrong again, GTA V will win some GOTY awards cause of fanboism but it wont be anything spectacularly new or amazing. It will be a fun solid game to play.

TLoU was dark gritty fun and new on many levels. It took the tired genre of survival genres and made it feel refreshing and alive. Moreover linear games are vital to effective story telling. This wasnt a game to just play a game, this was a 15+hr interactive narrative that immersed you into the lives of a very sympathetic world and it refused to give you the tired conclusion that you expect and want yet ***** when you get it.

Game is GOTY at VGA and at least IGN, Machinima probably gives it to GTA V. Beyond this i really dont care. But this game will win the most GOTY awards IMO. GTA V following a close 2nd.

Who is he being selfish too?

Through at least 2/3rds of the game he is going on this quest for Tess (who is dead) and later on he is doing it for Ellie.

He puts himself in harms way though out the game for a dead women and because Elle wants to be with him.

I guess he could have died, sacrificing himself.....is surviving battle after battle in a survival story selfish?

His most selfish thing was to lie to Elle to prevent her from possibly killing herself for a cure Joel obviously does not think will work (even his lie in the car as they drive away hints at this. He tells her she is not a good candidate for researching the cure).

Is lying to someone to prevent them from killing themselves selfish? Would it not be selfish if Elle was random stranger? Is it more selfish if that person is not a stranger but someone you care about and don;t want to die?

...

Yeah Joel is son of a ***** in much of the game. He is gruff when you want him to be soft and mushy. You want him to say something to Tess when he leaves her. You want him to react different when Elle saves his life and not for him to yell at her, you want him to react different when he gets that photo of his daughter from his brother...he isn't the most pleasant or emotionally honest...but hell would you want him different? Do you want him to be Dr Phil or an interesting character?

Not to mention... this is 20 years after the devastating outbreak. the damage has been done, and even if they found a cure- how long would it take to distribute? Is that even viable?

more like the fireflies would use it for nefarious purposes. they already proved they were power hungry and would stop at nothing to win. no matter the cost.

I have to disagree with you, they do a rather accurate analysis of him. The term "anti-drake" or "anti-hero" fits Joel perfectly, the definition of anti hero is "In literature, an antihero[1] (or antiheroine[2] as the female) is a protagonist who has no heroic virtues or qualities (such as being morally good,[3] idealistic,[4] courageous,[4] noble,[5] and possessing fortitude[6]),[1][3][5][6][7][8][9] blurring the line between hero and villain."

That fits Joel perfectly, and naming him a sociopath is rather accurate, we're talking about a man who's suffered major emotional trauma. He had his daughter shot in his own arms for Christ's sake, add on the trauma of a global apocalypse, watching friends die, becoming desensitised to violence and death, failed relationships (I'm making an assumption from his dialogue with tess), are you surprised he's so twisted? In a society that would be considered seriously damaged mentally and morally by modern standards the fact that he's perceived as an outlier should tell you something about him.

Edit: oh and probably one of the most important paragraphs in that article, and a reason so many people are unhappy about the game

GTA V will 3x amount on the PS3 alone than the last which only sold 3.7 million units world wide. Gta V will sell that amount on day one.

I've not actually played the game, my knowledge of its story is based off of the Wikipedia article, various reviews and 2-3 hours of walk through footage. But does it actually state anywhere that the immunity could be passed down through generations? Is it not conceivably possible that given enough time the survivors could "evolve" pass the Infection? And that the fireflys are shooting themselves in the foot so to speak by cutting up immune people like Ellie?

Joel is pretty good to people he knows. Tess, Elle, Bob, his brother....he yells and gets angry (they do as well) but he doesn't abuse them physically. Joel in combat is a brute yet he is able to constrain his violence pretty easily among people he cares about. I don't think a psychopath with his physical prowess could be like that. A psychopath would use physical threat and abuse to get his way.

But yeah in our world he is an anti-hero were there is a civilization one can use a moral compass in....but in the post apocalyptic world he lives in? He comes pretty close to a hero as one can get.

And who cares what sells more?

GTAV is also on the 360 too. TLOU is only on PS3.

It's likely GTA V will be on PC.

Yeah i thought that as well.

Joel could very well be saving all of mankind by saving Elle...Only all of mankind will be decedents of Elle. There is a giraffe scene that hints that the world will go on fine if you just let it.

Note: I haven't played it either....just watched it all on Youtube. It is a linear story...i might not have seen all the collectibles and gear upgrades but i positive i saw the whole story.

How can you say that? The ending of the game rather emphatically shows that he is by no means a hero, the word itself is flawed, as is the word villain, as both are subjective and relative judgements, and would be vastly different things between our two worlds, and you talk about physical threat and abuse, the man effectively kills his way across the country, if that's not physical threat then I don't know what is. At the end of the day Joel is by no means a hero, or even someone that you would want to be like in any form, it's also clear that he has many, many issues, and closed doors I. His past that you don't want to open. Joel is a very human character, not a white knight or hero in any form, but not a villain either, he simply did what he saw was neccasary.

Also shouldn't this be in the locker room?

I say that cuz i think in the polygon article and in other reviews Joel is not getting a fair shake. They condemn him pretty quick without looking at the world he lives in, and make sinister his character flaws. Also i think the cross county murder spree he goes on is literally the game. You run into ludonarrative dissonance in any game like this. Bioshock, Tomb raider ect. Basically to have a game you need Joel to kill a lot because killing things is the game while the story is mostly cut scenes They do not match up perfectly.

I imagine if game play was less important the narrative would have had Joel kill less people....and Elle probably would have been less of a ninja monkey assassin like she was when you got to play as her. Why wasn't she doing moves like that in the chapters before when she was an NPC?

Why do people complain about re-play value? Do books have re-read value? TLoU was like a book, you play (read) it and enjoy it. When you finished you were happy for the adventure and move on.

Also shouldn't this be in the locker room?