Games Where The 'Antagonist/Villian' Wins (Or Was Right)?

Lord Garnaat

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Mangod said:
Tanis said:
Hahaha...oi vey.

Anyways...

I'd say the Skyrim kind of had this.

If you 'Stay With Empire', you fuck over some of your people and promote religious intolerance.

If you 'Break With Empire', you fuck over all your people (in the long run), and promote racism (speciesism?).

:/
I haven't played Skyrim, but isn't Alduin the main villain? What's his plan (besides eat everyone)?

An example of the Antagonist winning... Ultima 8: Pagan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8edbJJAEaBI]. The Avatar more or less ends up selling his humanity - killing children, consorting with demonologists and necromancers, aiding murderers, etc - all so he can kill the Titans, become the Titan of Ether, and travel back to Britannia and save it from the Guardian... and in the end you're too late. Britannia has fallen and the Guardian is ruling over it as an evil God.

And then Ultima 9 happened... we try not to think about that...
Alduin's plan really can just be boiled down to eat everyone, including the universe itself. He is not called the "Worldeater" for nothing, after all. At any rate, there's no way within Skyrim's main story to have Alduin triumph in his quest, similar to the plot resolution in Oblivion.

It is worth noting, though, that there is another villain working behind the scenes that does arguably win in the end - the Aldmeri Dominion. For the uninitiated, they are essentially elf Nazis, and it is they whom Tanis was revering to. Basically, these jerks want to enslave all non-elves into servitude or whip them out, but their greater goal is a bit more complex - to destroy the physical world. Needless to say, they are not nice people, but the Civil War storyline in Skyrim (which arguably gets just as much attention as the main one) has you essentially choosing between two sides when neither will be able to lead an ideal fight against this world-ending threat. The Empire would do a much better job, but there being a civil war at all, rather than both sides getting along, plays right into the Thalmor's plan.

BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
Well, the main character in The Last of Us is essentially pure evil, and your actions allow him to succeed by the mere act of playing through the game. I was about to throw down the controller at the end of it, when you reach the point that he is slaughtering the last remaining hope for mankind just so that he can selfishly cling to the delusional fantasy that Ellie is his new daughter. Lord but I hated that ending.
Sheo_Dagana said:
Joel last minute decides he doesn't want to have to make a sacrifice and murders all the people wanting to save mankind from the mushroom-zombie apocalypse and violates the will of everyone that helped him get to that point, including the will of the very person he meant to 'save.'
He probably didn't know it, but Joel saved us all. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12829-The-Moral-Dilemma-of-The-Last-of-Us-Joel-Did-the-Right-Thing]
I'm sorry, but that article is just ridiculous. In no conceivable universe could Joel be considered as having done the right thing - the literal, precise, and inevitable result of his actions is mankind losing its only chance for a cure to the infection and thus its only chance to rebuild and survive. I'm frankly alarmed that the author became so convinced of the Fireflies' evil based seemingly on them A) threatening the two strangers that showed up unannounced at their secret base (keeping in mind that this is a world in which murderous bandits outnumbered rational people ten-to-one) and B) being willing to sacrifice one person to save however many millions or billions might remain, when that same character has explicitly said that they would be willingly to do just that. And yet for these frankly paltry "crimes" they apparently become comparable to Stalin and Mao. What the heck?

Joel did not save anyone from anything, that is the exact point of the ending. He only did what he did out of short-sighted selfishness, and now there is no way to undo it. The Fireflies were repeatedly said to be the last group in this horrible world that had both the resources and the inclination to cure the infection, and they are now wiped out completely - how does Joel "save us all" when there are literally no other people who are capable of using Ellie to create a cure? Who exactly is going to do it now? The military gave up on finding a cure ages ago and kill infected people on sight, and the bandits and scattered settlements are not exactly experts in biology and medicine. Creating a widespread cure and distributing it takes an infrastructure that only a group like the Fireflies had, and now that singular hope is lost. And for what? So that Joel could cling pathetically onto his emotional surrogate so that he wouldn't have to go through losing someone again. It's revolting.
 

DefunctTheory

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Mar 30, 2010
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Lord Garnaat said:
BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
Well, the main character in The Last of Us is essentially pure evil, and your actions allow him to succeed by the mere act of playing through the game. I was about to throw down the controller at the end of it, when you reach the point that he is slaughtering the last remaining hope for mankind just so that he can selfishly cling to the delusional fantasy that Ellie is his new daughter. Lord but I hated that ending.
Sheo_Dagana said:
Joel last minute decides he doesn't want to have to make a sacrifice and murders all the people wanting to save mankind from the mushroom-zombie apocalypse and violates the will of everyone that helped him get to that point, including the will of the very person he meant to 'save.'
He probably didn't know it, but Joel saved us all. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12829-The-Moral-Dilemma-of-The-Last-of-Us-Joel-Did-the-Right-Thing]
I'm sorry, but that article is just ridiculous. In no conceivable universe could Joel be considered as having done the right thing - the literal, precise, and inevitable result of his actions is mankind losing its only chance for a cure to the infection and thus its only chance to rebuild and survive. I'm frankly alarmed that the author became so convinced of the Fireflies' evil based seemingly on them A) threatening the two strangers that showed up unannounced at their secret base (keeping in mind that this is a world in which murderous bandits outnumbered rational people ten-to-one) and B) being willing to sacrifice one person to save however many millions or billions might remain, when that same character has explicitly said that they would be willingly to do just that. And yet for these frankly paltry "crimes" they apparently become comparable to Stalin and Mao. What the heck?

Joel did not save anyone from anything, that is the exact point of the ending. He only did what he did out of short-sighted selfishness, and now there is no way to undo it. The Fireflies were repeatedly said to be the last group in this horrible world that had both the resources and the inclination to cure the infection, and they are now wiped out completely - how does Joel "save us all" when there are literally no other people who are capable of using Ellie to create a cure? Who exactly is going to do it now? The military gave up on finding a cure ages ago and kill infected people on sight, and the bandits and scattered settlements are not exactly experts in biology and medicine. Creating a widespread cure and distributing it takes an infrastructure that only a group like the Fireflies had, and now that singular hope is lost. And for what? So that Joel could cling pathetically onto his emotional surrogate so that he wouldn't have to go through losing someone again. It's revolting.
There's several problems here.

The first is the assumption that the Fireflies had the ability to carry through with their claims. Either through the writers brilliance (Or, perhaps more pessimistically, incompetence), it fairly obvious they can't. They have no power base, no real resources, most of their best minds are dead, and they pretty clearly don't even know what the hell they'd do if they got the stuff in Ellie's skull. Their basically hacking into someones skull under the delusion that not only is there a neat little biological oddity in her head, but also instructions chiseled into her cranium so they know what to do with it.

In short, they barely know whats keeping her alive, they don't have the slightest idea where to even start on replicating the effect, and they could never hope to spread the 'vaccine' to enough humans to make any real difference.

Second, even if they could do something with it, would it really fix anything? The Fireflies are a group of barely functional rebels, and in the world of 'The Last of Us,' a vaccine against brain mushrooms is the ultimate weapon, as it effectively lets you weaponize the thing the vaccine is for. I can easily see them go dark side and holding the world hostage as they become the new ruling class.

Third... does it even matter? We're told time and again that the zombies are a big problem... but they really aren't. The biggest threat in the Universe is other people, and cracking Ellie's skull to bits doesn't solve that problem in the least.

Now, does Joel save the world? No, that's just stupid. Does he kill it? No, that's just as dumb - He put an end to a scheme put forward by fundamentally evil people, and he did it because the greater good can go fuck itself (And human history would probably be a bit better off if more people took that stance). And, maybe, he has helped the world a bit, because Ellie is one of a handful of people who does actually seem to give a shit about the world they live in and the people in it - Ellie's the hero here. While everyone else is clamoring to find someone else to hang on the cross, she's raising her hand and begging for it, despite the fact that her death solves nothing. Joel hasn't fixed shit, but maybe someday she will.
 

Lord Garnaat

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AccursedTheory said:
Lord Garnaat said:
BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
Well, the main character in The Last of Us is essentially pure evil, and your actions allow him to succeed by the mere act of playing through the game. I was about to throw down the controller at the end of it, when you reach the point that he is slaughtering the last remaining hope for mankind just so that he can selfishly cling to the delusional fantasy that Ellie is his new daughter. Lord but I hated that ending.
Sheo_Dagana said:
Joel last minute decides he doesn't want to have to make a sacrifice and murders all the people wanting to save mankind from the mushroom-zombie apocalypse and violates the will of everyone that helped him get to that point, including the will of the very person he meant to 'save.'
He probably didn't know it, but Joel saved us all. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12829-The-Moral-Dilemma-of-The-Last-of-Us-Joel-Did-the-Right-Thing]
I'm sorry, but that article is just ridiculous. In no conceivable universe could Joel be considered as having done the right thing - the literal, precise, and inevitable result of his actions is mankind losing its only chance for a cure to the infection and thus its only chance to rebuild and survive. I'm frankly alarmed that the author became so convinced of the Fireflies' evil based seemingly on them A) threatening the two strangers that showed up unannounced at their secret base (keeping in mind that this is a world in which murderous bandits outnumbered rational people ten-to-one) and B) being willing to sacrifice one person to save however many millions or billions might remain, when that same character has explicitly said that they would be willingly to do just that. And yet for these frankly paltry "crimes" they apparently become comparable to Stalin and Mao. What the heck?

Joel did not save anyone from anything, that is the exact point of the ending. He only did what he did out of short-sighted selfishness, and now there is no way to undo it. The Fireflies were repeatedly said to be the last group in this horrible world that had both the resources and the inclination to cure the infection, and they are now wiped out completely - how does Joel "save us all" when there are literally no other people who are capable of using Ellie to create a cure? Who exactly is going to do it now? The military gave up on finding a cure ages ago and kill infected people on sight, and the bandits and scattered settlements are not exactly experts in biology and medicine. Creating a widespread cure and distributing it takes an infrastructure that only a group like the Fireflies had, and now that singular hope is lost. And for what? So that Joel could cling pathetically onto his emotional surrogate so that he wouldn't have to go through losing someone again. It's revolting.
There's several problems here.

The first is the assumption that the Fireflies had the ability to carry through with their claims. Either through the writers brilliance (Or, perhaps more pessimistically, incompetence), it fairly obvious they can't. They have no power base, no real resources, most of their best minds are dead, and they pretty clearly don't even know what the hell they'd do if they got the stuff in Ellie's skull. Their basically hacking into someones skull under the delusion that not only is there a neat little biological oddity in her head, but also instructions chiseled into her cranium so they know what to do with it.

In short, they barely know whats keeping her alive, they don't have the slightest idea where to even start on replicating the effect, and they could never hope to spread the 'vaccine' to enough humans to make any real difference.

Second, even if they could do something with it, would it really fix anything? The Fireflies are a group of barely functional rebels, and in the world of 'The Last of Us,' a vaccine against brain mushrooms is the ultimate weapon, as it effectively lets you weaponize the thing the vaccine is for. I can easily see them go dark side and holding the world hostage as they become the new ruling class.

Third... does it even matter? We're told time and again that the zombies are a big problem... but they really aren't. The biggest threat in the Universe is other people, and cracking Ellie's skull to bits doesn't solve that problem in the least.

Now, does Joel save the world? No, that's just stupid. Does he kill it? No, that's just as dumb - He put an end to a scheme put forward by fundamentally evil people, and he did it because the greater good can go fuck itself (And human history would probably be a bit better off if more people took that stance). And, maybe, he has helped the world a bit, because Ellie is one of a handful of people who does actually seem to give a shit about the world they live in and the people in it - Ellie's the hero here. While everyone else is clamoring to find someone else to hang on the cross, she's raising her hand and begging for it, despite the fact that her death solves nothing. Joel hasn't fixed shit, but maybe someday she will.
You may call it incompetence if you like, but this notion that the Fireflies are doomed to fail is totally without grounds within the story. I have seen this repeated by both that article and by yourself, so I'm forced to ask: where is this idea that the doctors and scientists among the Fireflies are just imbeciles smashing rocks together come from? If they moved to operate, that's because they have a reasonable - and according to the only source we have, guaranteed - chance of success. They've been experimenting on the nature of the infection for years, as seen by the labs in Salt Lake City, and are able to pinpoint what they need to do in order to create a vaccine. All they need is an immune person, and then she shows up. If you want to say it was a case of poor writing for the Fireflies to operate as soon as Ellie arrives (which was done because the writers did not want to show the passage of further time, I suppose) then I would agree with you. But that does not support this idea of the Fireflies throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks.

To your second and third point, yes of course it would help and yes of course it would matter. Literally anyone having a cure, anywhere, would help the current situation, because it would effectively eliminate one of the largest threats remaining to people, one that prevents them from any large-scale travel, recolonization, or normalcy in their lives. You complain about the Fireflies hoarding it to themselves, despite that there is no indication that this was their plan. And even if it was... good! If your stance is honestly that "other people" are the major threat, than having one single group that could now rally every sane person in the world behind them would effectively end that problem.

You talk about a "ruling class," but that term in itself implies both that there is a functioning society and that there are people alive who can be ruled. Why on earth would someone not want that when the alternative is extinction? Even if it was a political system you disagree with - which I would doubt, seeing that the Fireflies' goal is to restore the civilian democracy of the United States - then at least it could change to something better in time. Dead, on the other hand, is just dead.

And the last point. I'm going to be blunt: are you insane? Because I find it hard to conceive of a possible reason outside of psychosis to explain why someone would value their own selfish interests over millions of human lives, and that is exactly what you are justifying. Yes, Ellie is the hero, which is why she is willing to sacrifice for others. For everyone, in effect. She values the billions of people of the world, and the countless billions who might come after her, more than she cares about herself, and you talk about that as though it were a character flaw.

How would human history be better off if no one gave a damn about anyone but themselves? The fact that Ellie actually cared and had a hope to save mankind was exactly why she wanted to do it, and yet Joel has taken that chance away from her, and the chance of all people to survive away from them, and you call it a moral act. Even if someone was so selfish as to value their own life over every other man, woman, and child on Earth, how could they possibly justify taking that choice away from someone else? Doesn't that violate that idea of individual liberty that your philosophy of "nuts to the greater good" seems to imply? How can you reconcile that?

That ludicrous article posts the absurd comparison of the Fireflies to Hitler, and yet there is only one singular person in this scenario that is actually responsible for millions of deaths, and that is Joel. And yet you defend him.
 

Chaos Isaac

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Lord Garnaat said:
You know, i'd say the end goal of the Fireflies is anything but civilian/civilized democracy. There's nothing that i've seen that really supports that.

Anyways, considering that it's mentioned that Ellie isn't the first, and they haven't really made much progress in actually developing a cure, right now it is the kind of sad desperate clawing of a organization that has failed. At any rate, the Fireflies and rebellion has honestly only shown to do one thing; make things worse. You see another zone where they totally rebelled and it was a Hunter/Raider shit show where they killed people on the street for their shoes.

At this rate, there's the possibility that she will survive and procreate, and her and the others who are immune will eventually bring a new era to humanity. It would take generations, but it can happen. And it seems that Joel's brothers town is well... well kept. Everyone worked to survive and there was no shown firefly group there, they were on their own and did what they could to keep living.

Joel is not guilty of convicting millions to their deaths. He is guilty of choosing one over the many, however there's no indication that Ellie's death would have saved anyone. She wouldn't have been the first failure. The greater good in this case is an idea, and one just from everything shown, was basically a pipe dream for how likely it would have happened.
 

Mangod

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Feb 20, 2011
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Lord Garnaat said:
AccursedTheory said:
Lord Garnaat said:
BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
Well, the main character in The Last of Us is essentially pure evil, and your actions allow him to succeed by the mere act of playing through the game. I was about to throw down the controller at the end of it, when you reach the point that he is slaughtering the last remaining hope for mankind just so that he can selfishly cling to the delusional fantasy that Ellie is his new daughter. Lord but I hated that ending.
Sheo_Dagana said:
Joel last minute decides he doesn't want to have to make a sacrifice and murders all the people wanting to save mankind from the mushroom-zombie apocalypse and violates the will of everyone that helped him get to that point, including the will of the very person he meant to 'save.'
He probably didn't know it, but Joel saved us all. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12829-The-Moral-Dilemma-of-The-Last-of-Us-Joel-Did-the-Right-Thing]
I'm sorry, but that article is just ridiculous. In no conceivable universe could Joel be considered as having done the right thing - the literal, precise, and inevitable result of his actions is mankind losing its only chance for a cure to the infection and thus its only chance to rebuild and survive. I'm frankly alarmed that the author became so convinced of the Fireflies' evil based seemingly on them A) threatening the two strangers that showed up unannounced at their secret base (keeping in mind that this is a world in which murderous bandits outnumbered rational people ten-to-one) and B) being willing to sacrifice one person to save however many millions or billions might remain, when that same character has explicitly said that they would be willingly to do just that. And yet for these frankly paltry "crimes" they apparently become comparable to Stalin and Mao. What the heck?

Joel did not save anyone from anything, that is the exact point of the ending. He only did what he did out of short-sighted selfishness, and now there is no way to undo it. The Fireflies were repeatedly said to be the last group in this horrible world that had both the resources and the inclination to cure the infection, and they are now wiped out completely - how does Joel "save us all" when there are literally no other people who are capable of using Ellie to create a cure? Who exactly is going to do it now? The military gave up on finding a cure ages ago and kill infected people on sight, and the bandits and scattered settlements are not exactly experts in biology and medicine. Creating a widespread cure and distributing it takes an infrastructure that only a group like the Fireflies had, and now that singular hope is lost. And for what? So that Joel could cling pathetically onto his emotional surrogate so that he wouldn't have to go through losing someone again. It's revolting.
There's several problems here.

The first is the assumption that the Fireflies had the ability to carry through with their claims. Either through the writers brilliance (Or, perhaps more pessimistically, incompetence), it fairly obvious they can't. They have no power base, no real resources, most of their best minds are dead, and they pretty clearly don't even know what the hell they'd do if they got the stuff in Ellie's skull. Their basically hacking into someones skull under the delusion that not only is there a neat little biological oddity in her head, but also instructions chiseled into her cranium so they know what to do with it.

In short, they barely know whats keeping her alive, they don't have the slightest idea where to even start on replicating the effect, and they could never hope to spread the 'vaccine' to enough humans to make any real difference.

Second, even if they could do something with it, would it really fix anything? The Fireflies are a group of barely functional rebels, and in the world of 'The Last of Us,' a vaccine against brain mushrooms is the ultimate weapon, as it effectively lets you weaponize the thing the vaccine is for. I can easily see them go dark side and holding the world hostage as they become the new ruling class.

Third... does it even matter? We're told time and again that the zombies are a big problem... but they really aren't. The biggest threat in the Universe is other people, and cracking Ellie's skull to bits doesn't solve that problem in the least.

Now, does Joel save the world? No, that's just stupid. Does he kill it? No, that's just as dumb - He put an end to a scheme put forward by fundamentally evil people, and he did it because the greater good can go fuck itself (And human history would probably be a bit better off if more people took that stance). And, maybe, he has helped the world a bit, because Ellie is one of a handful of people who does actually seem to give a shit about the world they live in and the people in it - Ellie's the hero here. While everyone else is clamoring to find someone else to hang on the cross, she's raising her hand and begging for it, despite the fact that her death solves nothing. Joel hasn't fixed shit, but maybe someday she will.
You may call it incompetence if you like, but this notion that the Fireflies are doomed to fail is totally without grounds within the story. I have seen this repeated by both that article and by yourself, so I'm forced to ask: where is this idea that the doctors and scientists among the Fireflies are just imbeciles smashing rocks together come from? If they moved to operate, that's because they have a reasonable - and according to the only source we have, guaranteed - chance of success. They've been experimenting on the nature of the infection for years, as seen by the labs in Salt Lake City, and are able to pinpoint what they need to do in order to create a vaccine. All they need is an immune person, and then she shows up. If you want to say it was a case of poor writing for the Fireflies to operate as soon as Ellie arrives (which was done because the writers did not want to show the passage of further time, I suppose) then I would agree with you. But that does not support this idea of the Fireflies throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks.

To your second and third point, yes of course it would help and yes of course it would matter. Literally anyone having a cure, anywhere, would help the current situation, because it would effectively eliminate one of the largest threats remaining to people, one that prevents them from any large-scale travel, recolonization, or normalcy in their lives. You complain about the Fireflies hoarding it to themselves, despite that there is no indication that this was their plan. And even if it was... good! If your stance is honestly that "other people" are the major threat, than having one single group that could now rally every sane person in the world behind them would effectively end that problem.

You talk about a "ruling class," but that term in itself implies both that there is a functioning society and that there are people alive who can be ruled. Why on earth would someone not want that when the alternative is extinction? Even if it was a political system you disagree with - which I would doubt, seeing that the Fireflies' goal is to restore the civilian democracy of the United States - then at least it could change to something better in time. Dead, on the other hand, is just dead.

And the last point. I'm going to be blunt: are you insane? Because I find it hard to conceive of a possible reason outside of psychosis to explain why someone would value their own selfish interests over millions of human lives, and that is exactly what you are justifying. Yes, Ellie is the hero, which is why she is willing to sacrifice for others. For everyone, in effect. She values the billions of people of the world, and the countless billions who might come after her, more than she cares about herself, and you talk about that as though it were a character flaw.

How would human history be better off if no one gave a damn about anyone but themselves? The fact that Ellie actually cared and had a hope to save mankind was exactly why she wanted to do it, and yet Joel has taken that chance away from her, and the chance of all people to survive away from them, and you call it a moral act. Even if someone was so selfish as to value their own life over every other man, woman, and child on Earth, how could they possibly justify taking that choice away from someone else? Doesn't that violate that idea of individual liberty that your philosophy of "nuts to the greater good" seems to imply? How can you reconcile that?

That ludicrous article posts the absurd comparison of the Fireflies to Hitler, and yet there is only one singular person in this scenario that is actually responsible for millions of deaths, and that is Joel. And yet you defend him.
Ignoring everything else, I would seriously question the scientific competence of the Fireflies, simply because they want to kill Ellie so quickly. I'm sorry, but if you only have one viable, living test-subject, euthanasia followed by dissection should not be your first step.

Like the article points out, there's any number of things they could have have done - blood samples, tissue samples, stemcells, bone marrow - but the Fireflies apparently feel like all of that is just too slow, and want to just hack open the one person in the world who's immune to the infection.

I'm reminded of Yahtzee's review of Prince of Persia [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/482-Prince-of-Persia]: if you have a goose that lays golden eggs, wouldn't you want to experiment with its food and vitamin intake, what conditions it gets to live in, if you can breed more geese, etc - before you hack the thing to bits, looking for the secret to the golden egg in its butchered guts?
 

Sheo_Dagana

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BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
AccursedTheory said:
Lord Garnaat said:
YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
If the Fireflies had an opportunity to take all the precautions that Mangod rightfully lists and determine what needs to be done, it was while Ellie was in Boston. But during the journey, she's unsure if she needs to die for the cure to work. In other words, they're recklessly diving into a gamble that absolutely can't work because, to paraphrase my favorite news anchor, MEDICINE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
The end result is still Ellie living with an unfathomable sadness inside with a man that she clearly cannot trust, who violated the fragile bond that grew between them. A cut epilogue confirms that even later she's still a mess, but what else can she do but live with Joel?

Whether or not the Fireflies could have pulled it off is irrelevant; Joel doesn't even try to reason with anyone, because reason is beyond him. Joel handles the situation in the manner in which he is most accustomed to - murdering everyone that isn't him or his current partner. If we look at Spec Ops: The Line's Walker as a sort of villain, can't we look at Joel the same way? He's really no better or worse than the other bandits that live out there.
 

Mangod

Senior Member
Feb 20, 2011
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Sheo_Dagana said:
BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
AccursedTheory said:
Lord Garnaat said:
YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
If the Fireflies had an opportunity to take all the precautions that Mangod rightfully lists and determine what needs to be done, it was while Ellie was in Boston. But during the journey, she's unsure if she needs to die for the cure to work. In other words, they're recklessly diving into a gamble that absolutely can't work because, to paraphrase my favorite news anchor, MEDICINE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
The end result is still Ellie living with an unfathomable sadness inside with a man that she clearly cannot trust, who violated the fragile bond that grew between them. A cut epilogue confirms that even later she's still a mess, but what else can she do but live with Joel?

Whether or not the Fireflies could have pulled it off is irrelevant; Joel doesn't even try to reason with anyone, because reason is beyond him. Joel handles the situation in the manner in which he is most accustomed to - murdering everyone that isn't him or his current partner. If we look at Spec Ops: The Line's Walker as a sort of villain, can't we look at Joel the same way? He's really no better or worse than the other bandits that live out there.
Oh, trust me, I'm not arguing that Joel is in any way heroic; I'm arguing that accusing him of f***ing over all of humanity is rather unfair when the people who claim that they can save humanity, want to take such a huge gamble with the one possible source of immunity we have. If the Fireflies kill Ellie, and then their "cure" doesn't work... what then? Ellie's dead.

The Fireflies' attempt at a cure allows for no chance of failure, which is why letting them kill Ellie would be a monumentally stupid decision. It's not what motivates Joel, of course, but from an outside perspective, I can see why it was the "right choice, for the wrong reasons."
 

Sheo_Dagana

New member
Aug 12, 2009
966
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Mangod said:
Sheo_Dagana said:
BuildsLegos said:
Lord Garnaat said:
AccursedTheory said:
Lord Garnaat said:
YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
And YOU get a snip!
If the Fireflies had an opportunity to take all the precautions that Mangod rightfully lists and determine what needs to be done, it was while Ellie was in Boston. But during the journey, she's unsure if she needs to die for the cure to work. In other words, they're recklessly diving into a gamble that absolutely can't work because, to paraphrase my favorite news anchor, MEDICINE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
The end result is still Ellie living with an unfathomable sadness inside with a man that she clearly cannot trust, who violated the fragile bond that grew between them. A cut epilogue confirms that even later she's still a mess, but what else can she do but live with Joel?

Whether or not the Fireflies could have pulled it off is irrelevant; Joel doesn't even try to reason with anyone, because reason is beyond him. Joel handles the situation in the manner in which he is most accustomed to - murdering everyone that isn't him or his current partner. If we look at Spec Ops: The Line's Walker as a sort of villain, can't we look at Joel the same way? He's really no better or worse than the other bandits that live out there.
Oh, trust me, I'm not arguing that Joel is in any way heroic; I'm arguing that accusing him of f***ing over all of humanity is rather unfair when the people who claim that they can save humanity, want to take such a huge gamble with the one possible source of immunity we have. If the Fireflies kill Ellie, and then their "cure" doesn't work... what then? Ellie's dead.

The Fireflies' attempt at a cure allows for no chance of failure, which is why letting them kill Ellie would be a monumentally stupid decision. It's not what motivates Joel, of course, but from an outside perspective, I can see why it was the "right choice, for the wrong reasons."
Fair enough, I just usually see that argument coming from people who try to justify that Joel isn't a nefarious individual. I can definitely see the "right choice, wrong reasons" idea.
 

Sonmi

Renowned Latin Lover
Jan 30, 2009
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Dragon Age 2 might have wanted to portray Meredith as a complete bigot and a fascist, but considering that every mage in the game turns out to be a hubris-fueled two-timing blood magic-wielding asshole that would deal with demons with no hesitation, I must certainly say that everything she suggests ends up being sensible in retrospective. Hell, the mage's "voice of reason", Orsino, ends up having secretly given protection and shelter to the serial killer and abomination that murdered your mum. Not only that, but the fact that "sympathetic" sidekick Anders ends up pulling a Breyvik and murders a shitload of innocents (including the only person who could have fixed the whole mage-templar mess) in order to trigger some kind of "race war" just makes me think that Meredith was all the more justified in her actions and her prejudices.

The game completely dropped the ball here, by the end I was truly disappointed that her radical points of view are explained as being born out of "lyrium corruption" and that you are forced to fight her.

Seriously, Dragon Age 2 robbed me of any sympathy I had for mages in Dragon Age Origins, with the exception of your bland sister, every single mage in that game is completely irredeemable, what a complete shit show.
 

gyrobot_v1legacy

New member
Apr 30, 2009
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Sonmi said:
Dragon Age 2 might have wanted to portray Meredith as a complete bigot and a fascist, but considering that every mage in the game turns out to be a hubris-fueled two-timing blood magic-wielding asshole that would deal with demons with no hesitation, I must certainly say that everything she suggests ends up being sensible in retrospective. Hell, the mage's "voice of reason", Orsino, ends up having secretly given protection and shelter to the serial killer and abomination that murdered your mum. Not only that, but the fact that "sympathetic" sidekick Anders ends up pulling a Breyvik and murders a shitload of innocents (including the only person who could have fixed the whole mage-templar mess) in order to trigger some kind of "race war" just makes me think that Meredith was all the more justified in her actions and her prejudices.

The game completely dropped the ball here, by the end I was truly disappointed that her radical points of view are explained as being born out of "lyrium corruption" and that you are forced to fight her.

Seriously, Dragon Age 2 robbed me of any sympathy I had for mages in Dragon Age Origins, with the exception of your bland sister, every single mage in that game is completely irredeemable, what a complete shit show.
She was also paranoid about you and your sister. Either you are an powerful force of opposition who would seize power from her at any cost (And a mage on top of that) or you harbor an apostate who would certainly spread word that she had put everyone in that tower to death in an eye for an eye solution. No matter which path you take one of the Hawkes is mage which immediately puts you on their shitlist.

Think about it for a second. The Templars basically have absolute power but yet you have the potential to become the Vicount and either Hawke is a ruthless bastard who wont play nice with her or horrified by her abuse of power and will do everything to cripple her power base. You had to be nipped in the bud for the Templars to actually get shit done.

If it wasnt Anders it would be some blood mage under Orsinos orders who triggers the destructipn of the Chantry and Anders was arguably the lesser evil since a bloodnmage is gonna usher in demons from the fade to seize Kirkwall
 

jedisensei

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Nov 23, 2009
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Someone mentioned Portal 2, but I'd argue the original Portal is actually the better fit, as GLaDOS remains "alive" and "triumphant," with her prized test subject in her control; she's much less an antagonist in 2, arguably, and she can't adequately scratch her testing "itch" when Chell is gone.

The canon ending for Soulcaliber sees the Soul Edge re-establishing it's control and conquest, despite whatever the player accomplishes with whichever character. That may be stretching the premise, somewhat, I will admit.

Does Braid count? Seems that's heavily up to interpretation...