Zombie Badger, I've heard people voice your sentiments before, and while it's perfectly okay to dislike LOU, IMO your comments have some misapprehensions that I'd like to comment on.
Zombie Badger said:
My first problem with the ending is that Joel never sees the morally ambiguous situation he's in as morally ambiguous. In his mind his happiness is all that matters and he doesn't care how many people may die as a result. The most important thing when attempting to tell a serious story in a game is to get the player into the mindset of the protagonist, and this game utterly failed to do so (earlier on I wasn't really forming a connection to Joel either.
While games as a medium are uniquely suited for role immersion, I really don't think that's mandatory, and it's small wonder that you weren't able to get into the protagonist's mindset, because I don't think LOU is that kind of game. The protagonist clearly has a distinct personality (it drives the plot, in fact) which is clearly supposed to be separate in morality from the player, whose along for the ride. Of course I doubt they intended to make the main character so unlikable that everyone stops playing, but they were definitely walking a line there and it's clear that Joel coming across as selfish and ruthless was deliberate(I really don't understand how some people, like Yahtzee, thought it was unintentional). Honestly, what seemed so interesting to me about LOU's story is that it got me to understand why character who would have been a villain in a lest complicated story does what he does, and see it from his point of view (even if it's a view you find reprehensible).
Which is the point. I think LOU is more of a character study then a role playing/role immersion exercise, like Spec ops was. The game (as a narrative experience) demands that you not necessarily like or agree the character (beyond a baseline of being willing to keep playing, of course) merely understand them. And it's fine if you don't like that kind of story or it just didn't interest you, but I just want to point out that I think you were under a misapprehension about what kind of story LOU was, or at least trying to be.
Zombie Badger said:
The second problem, and the true source of my seething contempt for Joel is that he does not care about what Ellie thinks. Despite the journey they've been on, her saving his life and protecting him from the cannibals, in the end he lies to her so he can live out his selfish fantasy life. He does not consider what she might think and feel about what has happened to matter, just that she take her place in his fantasy as his surrogate daughter.
I've occasionally heard people say that they found the ending disturbing because Joel covets Ellie like some sort of lifelike daughter doll and now Ellie is totally in his grasp. I really didn't get that impression at all. It seemed to me from their interactions that he respects her as a person and (by the end of the game) as a fellow survivor, and that it's precisely because of this respect that he tries to keep her in the dark about what he's done. He wants to give her the life that both his dead daughter and he, an emotionally stunted killer, were denied (and perhaps in the process get it himself, of course). David's the one who sees Ellie as an object to be possessed (though ironically, Joel's more human brand of affection does arguably have the more devastating consequences).
And while it's true that Joel ultimately betrays Ellie's wishes at the end, there's some subtext in the ending that you might have missed. Some could argue that it's reading too much into it or the wrong meaning, but I think if you pay attention these things are pretty clear. I want to point these out because I personally think that LOU not only has one of the best endings in a game, but one of the best endings I've ever seen, period, and I'd like to illuminate the reasoning behind that perspective a little.
Firstly, remember it's a bit ambiguous whether or not Ellie's sacrifice would have cured the infection (the tape mentions that Ellie's brain is unique, but not that unique), whether that cure would have saved humanity, or even whether or not humanity deserves to survive at all.
Secondly Ellie also betrays Joel. By that point, it's clear that Ellie is Joels only lifeline to his own humanity, and she knows this. And she still says to his face at the end that if he had given her the chance to choose, she would have knowingly destroyed him in the worst way possible, by sacrificing herself in order to escape her survivor's guilt. Note that she talks about it, she seems almost entirely uninterested in whether or not her death actually would have made a cure. It's implied (IMO) that she mainly finds it a psychologically acceptable pretense to commit suicide via the fireflies.
Thirdly-- It is pretty clear that Joel denied her the chance to do so and destroyed the fireflies because he was selfishly saving his own sanity in the process. But (as his short ending monologue implies) it's also because he's convinced that with time, Ellie will be able to overcome her guilt, to stop "waiting for her turn" just as he has. In short, he did actually do it in part for her, not just his own sanity. It's sentiments like this (admittedly unspoken and easy to miss) that make Joel's actions seem more sympathetic and less disrespectful towards Ellie to me.
Fourth, Ellie knows full well that Joel is lying through his teeth. I've seen alot of people (including professional commentators)not even consider this, but I think the very fact that she admits that she wants to die in the ending scene makes it pretty clear that she knows or at least is pretty certain that Joel betrayed her wishes. She provisionally accepts his words (not only about the fireflies, but about what it means to survive) not because Joel has successfully kept her in the dark (she's too smart for that, and Joel's too clumsy) but because she genuinely accepts that he made the right decision, about the cure and about her. Or at the very least (like the player) she understands why he did it. The ending's ambiguous not in what actually happened (as most ambiguous endings are, like Spec ops) but in what the characters are feeling.
Fifth,remember that Marlene and the fireflies didn't consult Ellie either. They turned out to be right, but they didn't know that and Marlene's men didn't care either way. There's an interesting parallel between Joel and Marlene (foster mother and father, one willing to kill her and another willing to kill for her) I wish they'd explored more.
Which is what made the ending conversation so damn awesome to me. The characters betray each other (or wanted to) in the worst way they could, yet end up all the closer for it, and it makes perfect sense in terms of their personality.