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The Last of Us 2: Morality vs. Sexuality
7 years ago
So the trailer from The Last of Us 2 got me thinking about the franchise; particularly about some tough conversations that I'm wondering if they'll put in the game or not. I'm gonna talk about some spoilers and such from the first game so if you haven't played it yet and are still wanting to, read no further.
So at the end of the first game, Joel makes a comprehensively immoral decision. Throughout the game, he is trying to deliver Ellie to this group called the Fireflies. When he arrives, he learns that they want to operate on Ellie, performing an autopsy to try and learn what makes her immune to the Clicker spores and hopefully devise a cure. Instead of letting his happen, Joel kills the doctors along with the leader of their group, and flees with an unconscious Ellie in tow.
Ellie wakes up in a hospital gown in the backseat of the car he stole while they're driving down the road. She asks him 'what happened', and he says that they weren't looking for a cure anymore. That people were becoming naturally immune, and it was only a matter of time before humanity regains its footing. He lies about what happened, and Ellie's following body language seems to indicate she knows he's lying. She even gives him a second chance to tell the truth later, but he sticks to the lie.
Throughout the game, Joel bonded with Ellie, and started seeing her as a surrogate daughter, replacing his own who died at the start of the game. Joel was then presented with a situation in which he was asked to sacrifice his own happiness for the greater good of humanity. He was either unwilling or unable to do so. In light of this, the title 'The Last of Us' seems rather sinister, as it feels like Joel just doomed humanity to extinction.
So cut to the recent trailer. It's years later, Ellie is older, and we know Joel is still around as someone refers to him as Ellies 'old man.' It's at a dance of some sort where Ellie shares an intimate moment with another woman, which culminates in a kiss. We as a player already know that Ellie is at least somewhat into girls via DLC from the first game. But is Joel aware of this? I am wondering if Joel feels any guilt or remorse for what he did in the first game, guilt which he possibly assuages by telling himself that if he keeps Ellie safe, and she grows up to start her own family and has children, that she'll pass her immunity on to them. And them to their children and so on. If this is what he told himself, how would he react to the news that Ellie seems to prefer the company of other women, and would therefore be less likely to have children in the future?
In light of this news, would Joel come clean? Would he tell Ellie what he did, and urge her to have children so she can pass her immunity onto a new generation? I think this would be a very interesting confrontation, because he would be essentially asking Ellie to do what he himself could not do in the first game: sacrifice her happiness for the good of humanity. If Ellie chooses not to have children, it again gives that title a dark tone: The Last of Us. Would she do it? Could she do it? SHOULD she do it? I don't know, it's a very interesting moral question, and I felt like sharing it.
Now, there's one more thing I want to talk about, and it's gonna be a touchy subject. But it's something I've noticed and wanted to comment on. I'm not saying this is the way things SHOULD be, but that it's just the way things have been in our history. Anywho, I wanted to talk about all the violence against women in these trailers for the new game. Between the three trailers we've seen, there is a noticeable amount of women that are fighting and being killed; certainly more than I can recall being in the first game at least. Historically speaking, women generally weren't the soldiers or hunters. If the women were fighting and dying, that meant something had gone horribly wrong. Granted, in this game things HAVE gone horribly wrong. Nearly everyone is dead. But does the increased presence of women among the ranks of enemy combatants mean things have gone even worse since the first game? Are humanity's numbers dwindling even lower that now every able bodied adult is needed in the field? Again, this gives the title that ominous ring: The Last of Us.
This is largely a hypothetical tangent of thought I went on, and I wanted to share it. I think it would be very interesting, if not downright impressive for the game to bring up and touch on these subjects. Whether or not they will, I guess only time will tell.
COMMISSION QUEUE
Temporarily Closed
COMPLETED
Snake_tornado 2.5 hours
m0nkeysensei 1 hour
rockie2013 2 hours
Zipeau set of 13 telegram stickers
reaper_da_dragon 2 hours
MellowMink 2 hours
So at the end of the first game, Joel makes a comprehensively immoral decision. Throughout the game, he is trying to deliver Ellie to this group called the Fireflies. When he arrives, he learns that they want to operate on Ellie, performing an autopsy to try and learn what makes her immune to the Clicker spores and hopefully devise a cure. Instead of letting his happen, Joel kills the doctors along with the leader of their group, and flees with an unconscious Ellie in tow.
Ellie wakes up in a hospital gown in the backseat of the car he stole while they're driving down the road. She asks him 'what happened', and he says that they weren't looking for a cure anymore. That people were becoming naturally immune, and it was only a matter of time before humanity regains its footing. He lies about what happened, and Ellie's following body language seems to indicate she knows he's lying. She even gives him a second chance to tell the truth later, but he sticks to the lie.
Throughout the game, Joel bonded with Ellie, and started seeing her as a surrogate daughter, replacing his own who died at the start of the game. Joel was then presented with a situation in which he was asked to sacrifice his own happiness for the greater good of humanity. He was either unwilling or unable to do so. In light of this, the title 'The Last of Us' seems rather sinister, as it feels like Joel just doomed humanity to extinction.
So cut to the recent trailer. It's years later, Ellie is older, and we know Joel is still around as someone refers to him as Ellies 'old man.' It's at a dance of some sort where Ellie shares an intimate moment with another woman, which culminates in a kiss. We as a player already know that Ellie is at least somewhat into girls via DLC from the first game. But is Joel aware of this? I am wondering if Joel feels any guilt or remorse for what he did in the first game, guilt which he possibly assuages by telling himself that if he keeps Ellie safe, and she grows up to start her own family and has children, that she'll pass her immunity on to them. And them to their children and so on. If this is what he told himself, how would he react to the news that Ellie seems to prefer the company of other women, and would therefore be less likely to have children in the future?
In light of this news, would Joel come clean? Would he tell Ellie what he did, and urge her to have children so she can pass her immunity onto a new generation? I think this would be a very interesting confrontation, because he would be essentially asking Ellie to do what he himself could not do in the first game: sacrifice her happiness for the good of humanity. If Ellie chooses not to have children, it again gives that title a dark tone: The Last of Us. Would she do it? Could she do it? SHOULD she do it? I don't know, it's a very interesting moral question, and I felt like sharing it.
Now, there's one more thing I want to talk about, and it's gonna be a touchy subject. But it's something I've noticed and wanted to comment on. I'm not saying this is the way things SHOULD be, but that it's just the way things have been in our history. Anywho, I wanted to talk about all the violence against women in these trailers for the new game. Between the three trailers we've seen, there is a noticeable amount of women that are fighting and being killed; certainly more than I can recall being in the first game at least. Historically speaking, women generally weren't the soldiers or hunters. If the women were fighting and dying, that meant something had gone horribly wrong. Granted, in this game things HAVE gone horribly wrong. Nearly everyone is dead. But does the increased presence of women among the ranks of enemy combatants mean things have gone even worse since the first game? Are humanity's numbers dwindling even lower that now every able bodied adult is needed in the field? Again, this gives the title that ominous ring: The Last of Us.
This is largely a hypothetical tangent of thought I went on, and I wanted to share it. I think it would be very interesting, if not downright impressive for the game to bring up and touch on these subjects. Whether or not they will, I guess only time will tell.
COMMISSION QUEUE
Temporarily Closed
COMPLETED
Snake_tornado 2.5 hours
m0nkeysensei 1 hour
rockie2013 2 hours
Zipeau set of 13 telegram stickers
reaper_da_dragon 2 hours
MellowMink 2 hours
Even so, it seems to me that we're seeing a lot more women in enemy camps than in the first game. That's specifically what I'm wondering about. What prompted that decision?
Is it a narrative choice meant to show a further decline of society and increased state of need, or was done on a basis of increased representation?
I typically don't take delight in brutally killing people in video games and especially not women. Most people don't. It makes them uncomfortable. If the designers knew this, and intentionally included more female enemies in the game to evoke a sense of grittiness and desperation in the state of the world, that strikes me as a far more interesting motivation than merely wanting more female character models in the game, just because.
Something else I should have mentioned was that so far, we see people primarily fighting each other, and not clickers. Some show up at the every end of one of the trailers but that's it. In the first trailer someone approaches her after the camera pans through a house full of dead people she has presumably killed, and a man asks her if she's going to go through with it, and she says something to the effect that 'she's going to kill them all.' We've seen some fanatical activity where this group seem to be ritualistically hanging and gutting people, what's the story there, I wonder.
Anthropological and historical stuff aside, I agree in really hoping that the next game explores the consequences of Joel's decision, both for the world and for his relationship with Ellie.
I would just be impressed if they took that into consideration and made it a deliberate psychological choice, especially when you take the number of enemies who were women from the first game into consideration.
And yeeeees I would love to see this. I REALLY hope that this cult-like group that's hanging and killing people doesn't turn out the be the Fireflies, thus completely absolving Joel in his decision to not hand Ellie over to them.