#we also learned from this experience that Riley draws almost every character off center by leaning them to the left

[poisonouspastels]

There's gonna be a big MC AU megaref update soon btw

[whatelsecanwedonow]

“Radical empathy”. I like it—I think. If I’m understanding what you mean by just those two words lol... I’m just over/about half way in (though I do know some details of what happens in the back half). Im very curious of your thoughts. Maybe you could answer in broad strokes before the cut then free for all spoilers... and pls tag so that I can come back to it!) I gotta finish, but rn I’m building up to facing the “rat king” or w/e bc I am a massive baby and am v scared lol.

Thank you for asking!! I’ll tag this for you and put it all under a cut, just in case:

Good luck with the rat king, lmao. Nasty ass motherfucker. But the game itself, my thoughts are that it’s built game ever. Every mechanic, every movement, every control interface feels so smooth. It’s all fluid and instinctual. You can feel the detail to creation in everything. My favorite thing may be the sound design, though... the score, the ambient sounds, the sound of gore, the way that different environments feel so naturally different... everything is so real. It’s mastery. I’m already thinking about what this game is going to look like on the PS5 remaster.

As for story, yes, radical empathy!! Not my original idea but it absolutely is what this is all about. This is the darkest, most emotionally distressing... media/art experience? Ever? Surely for me and perhaps objectively, for most people. This game is unrelentingly harsh. It’s physically taxing. It’s extraordinary deep and the detail at every single level is absurd. It feels so natural in the way you inhabit it and live within the world as these people that the line between observing and participating in something is so blurred... obviously that’s the trick of a video game of this caliber, but you feel truly as if you’re an active participant with agency to make decisions in TLOU2, instead of being limited to observing what is to come. The first game did this well, but this game takes it to levels that, again, blur that line so much... I think that’s storytelling taken to a new and profound level.

And there’s all that depth and darkness meant to take you on a journey that in the end, I think. is meant to communicate not just the futility of violence, the sickening reality of the cycle of violence and how it can consume anyone. It’s saying that the best thing we can do, the bravest thing we can do, is care enough to forgive those who have wronged us most. At least, see them as people, see them as people who are equal to you. In every person is a universe, and all people have their own motivations, their own pain, their own trauma. And if you acknowledge that and overcome violent impulses that’s a radical act of empathy that can save so many people. Not the least of whom is the person who may have right to vengeance.

I’ll get more specific here: I think a lot of people are upset that Joel was killed so early on. I think they’re upset that we played so much of the game as Abby (Who I don’t love by the end, but I understand, and care about and like well enough). And it also seems they’re upset that Ellie didn’t bash Abby’s head in, or choke her out in the ocean. Well if you can’t get over that Ellie didn’t murder Abby I don’t think you get ANYTHING this game is trying to do. Killing Abby would destroy Ellie, probably forever. Murdering all of Abby’s friends already took her to the fucking brink. I think Ellie’s villainous actions in Seattle are very much akin to what we never saw Joel do, in the 20 years between Sarah’s death and Boston. She’s been broken. She was broken before going after Abby in Santa Barbara. If she had killed Abby and left Lev to fend for himself and possibly die alone, do you think she’d ever again be able to look who she’d become? She would see herself as being just as evil as Abby was to her. As evil as Joel was before learning to love Ellie. And it’s the thought of Joel, the changed man, the man who changed for and because of her that compels her to take her heroic stand. To spare Abby and refuse to go down the same road and perpetuate the cycle of violent loss.

And I hope it doesn’t seem that I’m taking Joel’s death lightly with those thoughts, I loved Joel. Watching Abby brutalize him and literally beat his brains in was stomach-turning. I identified with him so much not just because he’s a dumbass but because he loves Ellie like I love Ellie as a character. He sees that Ellie is a spectacular, hilarious, wonderful person who has known almost nothing but pain and hurt in their awful world. All he wants is to give her a chance at a world of happiness. And in protecting her and caring for her, in trying to create the opportunity for that happiness to grow, he can find redemption that he thought would never come again after losing Sarah. "If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment...I would do it all over again." That fucking broke me to pieces. Even though I think Joel and Abby’s father are both guilty of taking Ellie’s agency as a person away from her - why did it never occur to either of them to ask the girl at the center of this procedure whether she thought she should die? She was 14, so it’s arguable that she would have understood the gravity of her decision, despite the guilt of what happened with Riley...  but Joel at least did what he did from a traumatized, if selfishly-born, place unconditional love. And the reveal that Ellie knew since two years prior to the main story, I think it proves that she was at least beginning to understand his motivation. As conflicted as she was, as much as it hurt that he lied, she loved him too.

I’ve read thoughts from a few people who have interpreted this the same way that I did, and this is just interpretation... clearly the game is completely ambiguous with the ending. Ellie is, literally, all alone in the world as she leaves the farm. She could be heading off to wander aimlessly as some sort of TLOU Mad Max/Road Warrior. But that would break my heart, lol, I don’t think I can accept that. She’s learned something profound in sparing Abby. I don’t think I can ever accept that she’s just going to drift as an empty shell of what she used to be forever. I think she wants to honor Joel by attempting to live the life both of them wanted to have: one of purpose and meaning, but also lasting happiness and love.

So I find hope in that the game begins and ends on that animation of the moths. At the start of the game it represents Ellie being draw into the fire, into the futile flames of vengeance and revenge. At the end the moths represent her being drawn towards the light - she’s been freed and has made peace with herself and Joel, and is leaving the farm to embrace the goodness inside her and honor the lessons she’s learned. The same growth Joel found by loving Ellie. The same growth Abby found in sparing Ellie and Dina, which is no small parallel to Ellie/Joel in the way that it was Lev that saved Abby from falling into a spiral of violence that she may never have broken free of again.

Ellie’s will always be traumatized, but she’s so much wiser. Two fingers lighter but so much wiser. And now she’s off to Jackson to hope that Dina can find the strength to forgive her. And Dina definitely went back there, by the way, she wasn’t about to try and survive on that farm by herself with JJ. Jesse’s family said she was always welcome, if you read Ellie’s journal you’ll see that was said. So I think, with time, they can work through the pain. It’ll take some unbelievable forgiveness on Dina’s part but Dina is emotionally strong and incredibly empathic. Did you notice the one thing Dina took from Ellie’s art room? She took the portrait that Ellie created of her. She didn’t let go, not entirely. And now I’m going to choose to believe that Ellie won’t ever again, either.

And she’s going to learn to play guitar pseudo-lefty with a pick and tear shit up again. 👌