Do you dislike Joel?

[Mister Chippy]

I love Joel. He's an evil, heartless bastard who is far worse than most of the villains I've encountered in other games.

I personally feel that The Last Of Us is a very interesting piece of storytelling in that we get to play as a villain who has a few good bits. I see it kinda like Hotline Miami, only with more talking and a little less psychosis. He does have his good side, like how much he cares for Ellie, but even Jack cared about his daughter and would have done anything for her, even if what he did was totally fucked up. That doesn't make Jack any less of a villain, and the same goes for Joel.

 

[BabySinclair]

Joel was so much better than Mike. It wasn't just the movies either. He had better chemistry with Crow, Tom Servo, and Gypsy and could deliver his lines better... Wait, this is the Gaming Discussion forum isn't it? MST3K forever!

Last of Us? Haven't played it yet, sacrilege I know.

 

[Strain42]

Of course not, Joel is awesome. I love his character Jeff on Community, and I think it's cool that he's been getting more roles since then.

Also I always preferred him to Mike. I liked his comedic style more, and I liked how the bots treated him more like a father than how they treated Mike like just another brother to beat up.

 

[Zenn3k]

I don't find anything unlikeable in him...he's a little selfish, but all humans are selfish to some extent, especially those who have lost a lot.

Its a kill or be killed world, you gotta kill to live...and Joel has lived a LONG time in this world, might even be one of the oldest men still alive. I don't recall seeing anyone else even CLOSE to his age within the game, Joel was easily in his mid-40's to early 50's, every other male character appears to be around 30 or younger.

 

[Schadrach]

However since it's what Ellie would have wanted, it's ultimately a selfish act.

Can you be sure of that?

That's the one thing I find flawed in the whole hospital scene -- no one wanted to wake her first and make her aware of "we're going to kill you" being part of the whole "we want to see why it effected you differently and hope to make a vaccine/cure" thing. Given that she was talking about things she wanted to do after it was all over, I suspect that "this is going to kill you" wasn't something she was advised of before going on the trip in the first place. Also worth noting that there's absolutely no reason she couldn't get murdered for a small chance at a cure later on, presuming no one else kills her first.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I still do not really like the game's universe in general but that's just me. The general consensus is that you shoot everyone in the head for looking at you funny (twice as a reference to Zombieland,) resort to canniblism when in a well defended encampment with guns, ammo a fuck off machine gun car that can easily organise hunting parties for animals instead of raid parties for humans and never show an inkling of kindness or sympathy towards anyone ever because that's how the human mind works >.>

The machine gun humvee was in Pittsburgh, the cannibals were in Colorado. And the reason for the cannibalism was due to the harsh winter.

You meet plenty of people who aren't crazy, murdering phychopaths. Or at least, not the kind that have it in for you. There's Marlene, Bill, Henry, Sam, Tommy, Maria, and their entire community. The only bad guys are Robert and his crew, the hunters in Pittsburgh, and the community in Colorado. With the Fireflies falling somewhere in the middle. Kinda evens out if you ask me.

 

[AITH]

Apart from a few moments where he was just being a douche to Ellie for no reason (like AFTER they had gotten to know each other), I liked Joel just fine. He wasn't my hero, but I liked his character.

*spoilers*

I would have made the same decision at the end. The Firefly lady made the case that it wouldn't be a world worth living in, with the raping and the murder, etc. But I don't see how an immunity would change the world all that much. You'd still have everyone scavenging, killing, and getting chased by the infected, only difference is that when they get bitten, they aren't automatially dead. So what? The world is still shit and you still have to hunt all the infected down to make it safe. You could do that to begin with. Not to mention, science rarely gets anything right the first dozen times so Ellie probably would have been murdered for nothing.

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

We're talking about MST3K right? I prefer Mike, personally.

This was my first thought. Entirely!

I rather liked Mike as well. Joel did do some cameo's when Mike was hosting. But we all know that Crow and Brain Guy made that show.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Joel is awesome.

Nathan Drake is a psychotic killer.

At least Joel has a good (If selfish) reason for all his murder.
Besides Joel is voiced by Troy Baker so it's literally impossible not to like him.

The reason Joel is so awesome is because he grows emotionally and acts accordingly to that growth.
In stark contrast to... every other video game protagonist I can think of. He's not a tool of the plot. He gets a plot thrust upon him and says: No. I am a human being who has suffered enough, and I will not be subject to any more of it for you or anyone else!

 

[COMaestro]

That's true, but there was one guy I felt bad about killing...

Spoiler: at the end...

In the surgery room. There are three doctors and they all know why your there when you bust in. I'm not going to make the "they were just doing their job" speech (true, though it may be), my gripe is something different. I went in there with the intention of just getting Ellie and getting out, no more violence, no more killing. That first surgeon picks up a scalpel and says "I'm not going to let you take her!" He's not who I'm talking about, he's putting himself between me and Ellie, I had no problem shooting him. My problem is that you have to kill one more doctor before they let you leave. Doctors which, at that point, didn't want to fight you, they were tremendously scared, and cowering against the wall. This is a game that, for being filled with people that it's pretty justifiable to kill, really made me feel a value for it's human lives. I think it has something to do with how well they fleshed out their characters but a life was not an easy thing to take in this game. So I had a bit of a problem gunning down a cowering nurse.

TL;DR I didn't like killing the doctors.

PBMcNair already said it but I wanted to confirm it...

Spoiler

I was able to walk out of that room killing just the surgeon who threatened you with a scalpel. I don't know if your copy glitched or if you just thought you had to do it but to the best of my knowledge, scalpel surgeon is the only one who needs to be put down

Thirded.

Spoiler

I didn't even shoot the surgeon, I just interacted with him which makes you grab the scalpel and stab him in the throat with it. I was able to grab Ellie after that and go. Although the game did seem very picky about where you were standing in order to pick her up, so maybe that's why you had the problem.

To answer the question posted in the thread, I did not dislike Joel. I think he is a man that adapted to survive to incredible circumstancest that would have killed most people. Note I say "survive" and not "live". Living is more than just survival, and I think this distinction is what drove Joel and Tommy apart. They were doing horrible things to survive, and Tommy decided he wanted to actually live, as the things they were doing were crushing what little humanity they had remaining.

Joel doesn't really start living again until he connects with Ellie. At that point, the feeling of living again is so great, he cannot lose it again. This is why he makes the choice he does at the hospital. Ellie has brought back some of his humanity and he is not willing to give that up at any price.

 

[Nickolai77]

As someone who hasn't completed the game yet i'm appreciating all the spoiler tags

I can see why some people may dislike Joel, but i feel given the circumstances and the world he inhabits his behaviour is perfectly understandable. Despite the fact he's got a rather grim and stoic personality i find him surprisingly easy to relate to, even with some of the more immoral acts he does in the game, i was like "yep, given the circumstances i'd have done the same."The gaming universe is full of grim and gritty white males, yet Joel stands out because he's actually got character depth. I'm truly impressed by the writing for this game.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I still do not really like the game's universe in general but that's just me. The general consensus is that you shoot everyone in the head for looking at you funny (twice as a reference to Zombieland,) resort to canniblism when in a well defended encampment with guns, ammo a fuck off machine gun car that can easily organise hunting parties for animals instead of raid parties for humans and never show an inkling of kindness or sympathy towards anyone ever because that's how the human mind works >.>

The machine gun humvee was in Pittsburgh, the cannibals were in Colorado. And the reason for the cannibalism was due to the harsh winter.

You meet plenty of people who aren't crazy, murdering phychopaths. Or at least, not the kind that have it in for you. There's Marlene, Bill, Henry, Sam, Tommy, Maria, and their entire community. The only bad guys are Robert and his crew, the hunters in Pittsburgh, and the community in Colorado. With the Fireflies falling somewhere in the middle. Kinda evens out if you ask me.

Ehh American cities. They're all the same XD

Really I could condense everything I dislike about the universe into just Tess. More specifically the first mission. She formulates a random revenge plan (by "formulate" I mean she thinks it up in half a cutscene and goes with it) because some of Robert's (Robert was the guy at the very start yeah?) men apparently jumped her so she needs to go on a two man rampage through probably innocent bodyguards for petty revenge, shoots the first bodyguard straight up for daring to ask her to leave then shoots an unarmed man on the ground in the face.

??????????????????????????????????

My brain just cannot understand that, it's like she never even got together the proper facts before cooking up and rolling with this two man raid. She got a black eye and she does that? Overreaction of the century.

Oh then she gets bitten and we're supposed to feel sympathy for her... No. Just no. She had it coming. I was actually quite happy when she died trying to do a one woman last stand thing and gets practically instagibbed taking only I think two people with her.

They never really did so much with Fireflies. Or the proper US Military either. I gathered that the military is just turtling in martial law safe zones forever and Fireflies are rebelling against that in the first level but then it gets almost forgotten about

Who are these Fireflies exactly? How many are there? What do they do besides blow random shit up? How come the underdog terrorist-esque group is looking for a vaccine instead of y'know the government? They're implied to be ill-equipped but they have brain surgeons working with them among other combat gear. They even pack up all their research equipment from one location to another and in this universe that's hella dangerous so that implies they had the numbers to do that successfully.

I mean I know it's character focused story but come on.


Oh I just noticed, it did the cop-out thing and just moved the goalposts: entire goal of the game: get to Fireflies. Gets to Fireflies, kills everything. Yeah I can see why people would get annoyed over the ending

 

[PBMcNair]

snip

That's cool.

Spoiler

I'd normally have tried hand to hand first, but I only made it past the last "combat" room with luck, and the last of my crafting supplies in the form of a smoke bomb. I was in no mood for another death scene.

 

[EternallyBored]

Honestly, I was a bit surprised so many people disliked Joel or thought all the killing in the game made him a psychopath. They go quite a long way to justify pretty much every time he kills another person in the game. With Joel, you get a much more weighty impression with the kills that happen, and Joel treats it with a certain degree of levity that is absent from characters like Nathan Drake who mow through whole platoons, and then still try to come off as care-free good-hearted lovable rogues.

Even the final level didn't really put me off on him, because they made it extraordinarily vague whether the cure would have actually been possible, much less whether the Fireflies would have been able to distribute it. The hospital was poorly equipped and looked like it had a grand total of 3 doctors and a handful of militia trying to come up with a cure.

In the end, I got the impression that the whole finale was Joel realizing that the hope of a cure was the only thing keeping the fireflies alive and then realizing himself, just how hollow that hope was. An abandoned hospital, with almost no trained staff (mostly a bunch of armed untrained militia with no relevant medical skill), and no indication of any production facilities capable of even replicating the cure once it's made, much less a system to distribute it. Consider that they lost half their number just travelling across the U.S. to get there. Even if they could make a cure in sufficient quantity, every half-armed lunatic, nut case, scavenger, and opportunist is going to be making a bee line straight to the fireflies as soon as the word of a cure gets out. The game just fails to present a picture of the fireflies as anything other than a group of failed revolutionaries who are only still existing out of the desperate hope of a cure. Joel finally sees what Tommy saw in the fireflies, and makes the decision not to sacrifice Ellie for a bunch of empty platitudes and a distant chance.

 

[Korten12]

Really I could condense everything I dislike about the universe into just Tess. More specifically the first mission. She formulates a random revenge plan (by "formulate" I mean she thinks it up in half a cutscene and goes with it) because some of Robert's (Robert was the guy at the very start yeah?) men apparently jumped her so she needs to go on a two man rampage through probably innocent bodyguards for petty revenge, shoots the first bodyguard straight up for daring to ask her to leave then shoots an unarmed man on the ground in the face.

??????????????????????????????????

My brain just cannot understand that, it's like she never even got together the proper facts before cooking up and rolling with this two man raid. She got a black eye and she does that? Overreaction of the century.

What? No they planned on going after Robert when he took the guns he was going to trade to them and double crossed them and sold them to others. They didn't go after him because of the body guards. Hell, the entire interrogation scene with Robert in the end was about this- you must have not been paying attention...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

We're talking about MST3K right? I prefer Mike, personally.

Kudos and cookies to you. Massive kudos and cookies.
Just repeat to yourself its just a show...

 

[Gor Kur]

We're talking about MST3K right? I prefer Mike, personally.

This

 

[The Wykydtron]

Really I could condense everything I dislike about the universe into just Tess. More specifically the first mission. She formulates a random revenge plan (by "formulate" I mean she thinks it up in half a cutscene and goes with it) because some of Robert's (Robert was the guy at the very start yeah?) men apparently jumped her so she needs to go on a two man rampage through probably innocent bodyguards for petty revenge, shoots the first bodyguard straight up for daring to ask her to leave then shoots an unarmed man on the ground in the face.

??????????????????????????????????

My brain just cannot understand that, it's like she never even got together the proper facts before cooking up and rolling with this two man raid. She got a black eye and she does that? Overreaction of the century.

What? No they planned on going after Robert when he took the guns he was going to trade to them and double crossed them and sold them to others. They didn't go after him because of the body guards. Hell, the entire interrogation scene with Robert in the end was about this- you must have not been paying attention...

My point still stands... He goes and steals guns sure but she could have been a little less gung-ho once she killed an entire warehouse full of goons. That's pretty much the best "don't fuck with me again" statement ever. If she had just let him off, he could have gone and at least tried to get them back so they hadn't have had to trek through everything to get them...

Oh wait, they would have never have met Ellie if that didn't happen, so there would not be a game in the first place. So they had to make Tess a murderous, merciless psychopath.

I just have an inherent problem with several different people consistently nonchalantly shooting people in the face for no reason with 100% seriousness with no irony or self awareness.

 

[Animyr]

We're talking about MST3K right? I prefer Mike, personally.

I do as well. Though I did like Joel's half asleep, laid back attitude. Good times.

As for Joel from LOU, he doesn't really fall into any clear hero or villain box, which is why he's so interesting. How likable he is is kind of irrelevant to his character, though it is interesting how the way he was presented has fostered so many conflicting opinions. For most game stories, if half of the players dislike your protagonist, usually you've done something wrong. In this case though, I think it means they did something right.

Oh I just noticed, it did the cop-out thing and just moved the goalposts: entire goal of the game: get to Fireflies. Gets to Fireflies, kills everything.

...what?

You do realize that the goal of getting to the fireflies was a superficial objective, right? The point of the story is the growing bond between the leads. By the end of the game, Joel makes sit pretty clear that he doesn't give a damn about reaching the Fireflies anymore; he already has he wants. Hence why him turning on them so quickly was perfectly natural, IMO (actually, I expected it to happen).

Also, Joel doesn't actually care about Ellie.

I don't think that's true. Certainty he's trying to save himself by saving her, and when push comes to shove he disregards her desires when the come to conflict with his own, but I don't think she would've meant so much to him in the first place if he hadn't come to love her as a person, not just a companion. Actually, I think David's in the game as a counterpoint to Joel; he seems to covet Ellie like a object to be physically possessed and controlled, while Joel needs her emotionally. Though ultimately Joel's form of affection has it's own destructive consequences, of course.

 

[Olas]

Joel seems like a cool guy. I don't talk to him much though. I certainly don't dislike him, but I doubt we could ever be friends since he seems to have totally different interests than me.

I'm surprised you all know who he is though.