Do you dislike Joel?

[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.

 

[Vigormortis]

I thought Joel was a total dick from start to finish. There is not a single redeeming feature to his character. As someone pointed out already, he wanted to leave those people behind even just as the infection started. I mean, once the game gets going and you find out more about the character, you realize he had been a hunter, preying on innocents. I can understand that you need to adapt to a new environment, but you have to be a pretty shitty person to think that being one of those hunter people is justifiable under any circumstances. There is always a better way. They are just extremely weak individuals who prey on the weak instead of facing the infected.

The game shows the two main approaches to survival through the two brothers. Joel is a greedy, selfish person who just takes the easiest route for his own survival. His brother was the one with a conscience and tried to work together with others to build a new future. I found that it was much easier to identify with Tommy.

Also, Joel doesn't actually care about Ellie. The final act was done purely out of selfishness. He knows that this can lead to a cure, he knows that Ellie would probably have agreed to the operation, he knows that Tess' dying wish was to accept the job for the cure. However, he ignores all of that and kills a ton of people in the hospital just so he can have the life he wants.

Anyway, I agree that his decisions fit his character and the game was pretty good with a protagonist that wasn't the usual saint, but I sure as hell don't like or identify with him or the way he acts. Savage. There is pretty much zero argument in favour of a character like him and to those who try and justify it, I know I wouldn't want to meet you in a post-apocalyptic world.

Incredible. Someone who actually feels almost exactly as I do about the character. And, I presume, about the game.

That being: good game, but one populated by very unlikable characters and plenty of flaws.

Since the games release the only opinions I've come across are:
A: It's the greatest game ever
B: It's utter garbage

 

[senordesol]

Why won't he give Ellie a gun? Yeah, I know he does eventually, but he offers no rationale for his hesitation beforehand.

The girl went to military school and she's in just as much danger as anyone else; give her a firearm you petty jerk!

 

[WhyWasThat]

It's not so much that I like Joel himself but rather I love how fleshed-out and well-developed his character is. He is flawed - deeply so, but that's what makes him so grimly fascinating.

 

[Casual Shinji]

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.

Yes, that first goon she shoots in the head was a stupid moment. But then that whole first arena, with it's rectangular waist high objects, was an unintentional hilarious moment.

With Robert however it was not out of character. Tess is presented as a character that if you fuck with her she'll kill you right back. She's not a nice person, she's a hardened criminal. But just like Joel, this is how the world brought her up. And she doesn't live this life because she's greedy or she likes killing, it's how she's learned to put food on the table. Just as kids in real life can grow up not knowing any better.

And when she realizes the potential behind Ellie's secret, the part of her that yearns for a normal life immediately springs into action. Because after the incident with the military it's Tess that looks after Ellie. Joel at that point doesn't give a shit about her and just runs off, while it's Tess that gets Ellie on her feet and converses with her, trying to get to know her.

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

That's not a cop-out, that's a logical progression of Joel's character. Had Joel simply accepted Ellie's fate and walked away, that would've been a cop-out.

 

[Balkan]

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

I don't know where you grew up, but criminals in the real world are rarely OK with things. If you are an obstacle in some way, they'll deal with you. Hell, if we can't stop crime in our own civilized world, don't you think that it would be worse in TLOU's universe where the goverment has collapsed?
To the point, Rober broke the deal with Tess and tried to kill her. If he just kept his part of the deal, then everything would have been fine. Tess even said that, "I might have given you time if you hadn't tried to fucking kill me". She can't be a ***** for protecting her life and business, she's not impulsively aggressive, even shows regret for her life, calling herself and Joel "shitty people".
Now about the ending. I don't think that the point of the game was to make a vaccine. The narrative was about a father-daughter relationship, the save mankind thing was a device to set things in motion. The journey to the hospital is just a part of Joel and Ellie's story, not the goal of it. Even before it was know that Ellie must die for the cure, Joel wanted to get back to Jackson, he coutinued because of her(remember the giraffe scene?).
On to the fireflies. They are an anti martial law group (hence the blowing army shit up). To support their cause, they decide to start looking for a vaccine. Ellie is the first immune person and Marlene (the Queen Firefly) finds that out before the army. Of course that the leader of the Fireflies will decide to help her own efforts and not those of the enemy.
Sorry about that mess of a reply, but I don't think that your points are valid criticism.

 

[Zombie Badger]

I personally found Joel to be selfish and unlikable in the end for two main reasons. First, he never gives any thought to the implications of the choice he makes and second, and this is what really makes me dislike him, he never gives any consideration to what Ellie might want. The entire ending of the game is about her fate but she gets no say in it. I was honestly expecting a twist while playing the final level in that I'd burst into the operating theatre wielding a gun and Ellie would try to stop me, having agreed to everything the Fireflies were doing, but nothing unexpected really happened, which was another problem I had with the game's story. I would have sympathised with Joel a lot more though if after bursting into the room he had forced the doctors to wake Ellie up and ask what she wanted. What sealed my dislike of Joel though was him lying to Ellie about what he had done at the end, refusing to take responsibility for his own actions so he can live out his selfish fantasy.

On another note, I felt that the game had the same problem that the Tomb Raider remake had in that I sometimes found it hard to relate to Joel when the tone would shift suddenly from character drama to mass murder. I was actually really optimistic when I heard that Naughty Dog were trying to make individual encounters with enemies individually more impactful but I still ended up with a bodycount to rival even the most prolific of serial killers. I feel like a story like The Last of Us would be better suited to a different style of gameplay based mainly around exploration and environmental puzzle solving rather than action.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Are you sure its neccassary ?

Spoiler

I'm positive that I only shot the scalpel guy. Then I just picked Ellie up and ran.

Spoiler

Huh, I guess it must have been something in my game. Trust me, I tried to just pick her up and leave. The prompt wouldn't com up so I shot the nurse and the last doctor freaked out and said "Okay! Just take her and go!" Only then did the prompt appear. I don't know, I'm on my second run through the game, I'll try again.

 

[Azure23]

By the end of that game I was Joel. I'm going to be a father soon, I can understand a lot of what he did. Strangely enough the only thing that I didn't particularly agree with was the winter sequence.

Big Spoilers ahead.





Sure I hated David, but the game gives you every indication that so did everyone else in the community. Early on in Ellie's escape you hear two men saying that David had been indulged long enough, and that his leadership was going to be put up to a vote. A vote. This is not a horrible raider community built on strength. They have a fortified town and a semblance of government not unlike Tommy's place in Jackson. Also as soon as Ellie escapes you hear a man talking to a women, telling her that there's an infected (Ellie) in the town and to keep everyone safe, she immediately responds that she'll get the kids off the street. They have women and children. In any post apocalyptic scenario that tells you a few things. 1. that this group is not just a group of murderous rapists intent on survival and self gratification. 2. that they are trying to build a society, not just survive. Admirable in this situation.

The game heavily hints that the majority of the town has no idea that they're eating random people they capture out in the wilderness. It's further hinted that David was the one who instituted the cannibalism measure in the first place. Which, being completely honest, I'm not sure I have a problem with in the first place. It's gross, but it's preferable to starving to death. So when Joel goes through that town, killing people, in my mind he wasn't just killing raiders, he was killing husbands, fathers, and protectors just trying to keep themselves safe against what they were told was a bloodthirsty psychopath. I don't know, it didn't sit well with me. I didn't get the feeling that everyone in that town was out to kill Ellie and Joel, and Joel probably doomed that community by killing so many of it's protectors. I can't say I would have acted differently in his position though, which I guess is another point in the game's favor for creating such a believably brutal character.

I've talked at length on other threads about what I thought of the game's ending so I won't repeat all that here. But suffice to say I never really believed that the fireflies could distribute a vaccine even if they managed to synthesize one. And even if they could, what would it change? The cordyceps spreads so fast that in order to work at all the vaccine would have to be administered within a day of exposure. And It's not like it could cure those already infected, the cordyceps causes unrepairable brain damage and physical transformation. For me all of that adds up to a vaccine that isn't worth the high price of my daughter (I really inhabited Joel throughout the game, thanks ND). Joel is great and gaming could use more complex protagonists like him.

 

[Azure23]

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.

This is fascinating and something that I picked up on myself. David is strongly implied to be a hebephile and have some sort of sexual attraction to Ellie. He wants her to be his "newest pet." what happened to his others? My guess is that they couldn't cut it in the brutal world of TLOU. Ellie can, Ellie is everything David dreamed of. An object of his desire who has some staying power. like you said, Joel needs Ellie emotionally, and after winter, once he sees her hold her own, that she won't just die like his daughter and leave him shattered, he starts to open up to her more. He tells her about his previous life, about himself. He knows that it's safe to emotionally invest in her. In many ways David is Joel's dark mirror, and his inclusion only serves to deepen Joel's character and his relationship with Ellie. For someone to say that Joel doesn't really care about Ellie, it kinda blows my mind, were they even playing the same game?

 

[Inferus Eques]

Spoilers up ahead but I feel like pointing this out. Some people are saying Joel was doing the wrong thing in the end. If you listened to the surgeon's recorder he admits that other immune people are out there and if I recall they found a few of them. Think of the stuff we can do with modern medicine, and think of what the surgeon was proposing on doing. Does that make any sense? I for one just think the surgeon, isn't as good, it's been a zombie pit for 20 years, how many actual competent doctors would be left at this point.

Although it seems cruel what Joel did, what choice did he have considering how they treated him. Also, not asking Ellie for permission to do the surgery is a little suspicious. I can't be the only one to find that whole organization a little, weird, right? They have an awful lot of paramilitaries and seem to not mind commiting acts of terrorism. Think about this for a second. They are a group of paramilitary terrorists that seem to horde munitions and evidently will attack someone on sight who is performing CPR on a clearly injured person. These people are not as righteous as they claim, that whole "find the cure" thing might just be their PR speaking. Even if they did find a cure would they actually give the vaccine to everyone, or their friends. They could use it for their own political gain in a fractured world.

Overall Joel isn't a good guy, but I find it hard to hate him. People do dumb things in life, and in a world where life is cheap and the fungus of nightmares devour what survivors are left you tend to get desensitized to violence. I actually liked him, but sure wouldn't call him a role model.

 

[Animyr]

In many ways David is Joel's dark mirror,

He even looks like Joel, albeit shrunken and sickly (in more ways then one, though ironically Joel arguably proves to be the more despicable in some ways). He even boosts Ellie up some ledges, as I recall. Interestingly he also seems to have charisma and leadership ability, which Joel decidedly lacks.

Then again, most of the supporting cast mirrors Joel in some way. Marlene, Henry and Bill all either reflect or invert some aspect of his character and of his relationship with Ellie.

For someone to say that Joel doesn't really care about Ellie, it kinda blows my mind, were they even playing the same game?

I think what he/she was getting at is that by saving her, Joel is saving himself. It's definitely a selfish act; if Ellie dies, then he loses his purpose in life. Though again, I think the poster misunderstood their relationship to be more akin to how David sees Ellie; as something to enjoy possessing.