168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us is over, and just like that, it's ten years ago. Joel has saved Ellie, but in doing so may have doomed humanity, and it is only through violent retribution that he can get her to safety. There are major differences between television and gaming. In TV, we only witness the act, whereas in games we participate, but that might be an upper hand for television. We rarely interrogate why we do what we do in games - we just achieve the objective we're told to do. In television, we choose who we support and who we condemn - we're Team Stark, we want Walt to survive, we want Elena to get with Damon. We can't control these actions, we don't need to do them to succeed, and yet we want them anyway. Even if it's not our finger on the trigger, it still implicates us in the deed - so, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:did Joel do the right thing?
My answer is that I don't think this is the question. I didn't when I first played the game, and I still don't now. I see why it interests people - it's the central question the narrative leaves you with, in asking that we interrogate our own feelings, and it opens up the most discussion. I've been warmed to see so many non-gamers pulled into the world, even if I'm not a die-hard TLOU fan myself, and I don't begrudge anyone from asking that question - especially those free from a decade of baggage.
I understand the impulse. When my wife and I recently saw 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Knock at the Cabin, which featured a gay coup🔥le being told they must choose to kill one of themselves or their child in order to save the world, the first thing we did when we left the theatre was to assign each other the roles based on the characters' reaction. People will see themselves or people they love in Joel, and so will not only understand the rationale behind the decision, but will support it. They will look at it and say, 'I would do the same thing'. But the choice is bigger than Joel.
This is often positioned as, much like Knock on the Cabin, the choice between saving Ellie and saving the world. But we don't know if that's true. The Fireflies hope to save humanity by using Ellie's brain, but as is stressed to Joel, there's no guarantee it will work. By the time The Last of Us Part 2 rolls around several years later, no cure has been found, and there don't even appear to be any attempts to find one. If, as the theory goes, Ellie is immune as a result of her mother being infected during pregnancy or her father being infected during conception, then that seems like a rare case, rather than an entirely unique one. The fact no cure emerges suggests Ellie's death would have been for nothing.
That recolours Joel's choice, but it doesn't necessarily justify it. He still kills innocent people - 'are they innocent?' is another more fascinating question - and does it selfishly. The key to all of this is Ellie. She is aware that she is being transported across the country essentially as cargo, and knows that her immunity is part of it. However, she is not told that she will die as part of the procedure, and can't give her blessing. Joel is placed in the impossible position of being unable to ask Ellie what she wants, so he either leaves her to die without his protection, or he kills people to save her from a fate she may have freely chosen.
The key question for me is not whether Joel is right (for the record, I believe he is not, but that the Fireflies should have allowed Ellie to consent to the operation), but whether Ellie believes him. Joel tells Ellie that their journey was for naught as there are dozens of immune people and so the Fireflies have already tried looking for a cure. Tried, failed, and stopped. Ellie, still woozy from her surgical drugs, barely reacts. It's not until later that Ellie talks about Riley and asks Joel to "swear" that he is telling the truth. He says he is, and Ellie accepts this - but you don't ask someone to swear if you already believe them.
The big question from the ending is not right or wrong because ultimately there is no answer there. Ellie was robbed of the chance to make the call herself, and the text does not offer a firm yes or no. It's a fine discussion to have but it shouldn't be the endpoint. Whether or not Ellie believes him, she still goes along with him, and that makes her unspoken choices far more fascinating. Ellie is the star of The Last of Us, and in future seasons I expect her to take the spotlight from Joel more. Joel's choice, right or wrong, is not surprising. We're still learning who Ellie is, and his choice made without choosing is a crucial part of who she is. Understanding The Last of Us from this point on means understanding Ellie's choice more than it does Joel's.