The Last of Us Boss Answers Its Most Profound Question: Was Joel Right?

Yes, Joel was right. Ellie should be sacrificed only if she could cure video game discs rotting.

He made the right choice and I would have made the same one, my daughter means the world to me.

@j2c And what about Abby's side? food for thought.

I don't think it was the right choice, but it's one I would have made as well.

I would have made the same choice even if it was my cat that needed to be sacrificed to save humanity.

You can't underestimate the family bond and how much love means to people.

It might not be the right choice for humanity but it was right for Joel.

@j2c He did and especially when both Ellie and Joel weren't given a decision in this. If Ellie had been given consent along with Joel and THEN he decided to kill the fireflies because he couldn't handle losing another daughter? Then yeah he would 100% be in the wrong.

I don’t think there’s a definitive right or wrong answer it kind of just comes down to how you align yourself morally. As a cold hearted utilitarian I believe sacrificing Ellie for the greater good of mankind would have been the better option. Would I have been able to sacrifice my own daughter if I was in the same situation? Absolutely not.

People can debate about what's right and wrong unto eternity, I don't find that particularly interesting. The only question that matters to me is "would I have done the same?" Hell yes I would.

This is what makes the story of the last of us so great. Both part 1 and 2. It's not a story of good vs evil but about human emotions and how it affects the choices the characters make and how those impact others on the games world. Not either side is wrong and most of us would react in the same way. Especially part 2.

Joel was right. That doctor could have been a quack if chopping her up was his only solution. It's not like the hospital was over run and that was his only option?

I'd have done the same there would be no chance of saving humanity anyway and most of the people alive aren't worth saving tbh certainly not worth sacrificing your daughter for.

@z0d15g0d I mean, the growth is on her brain so no other option.

I think he isn't right but if I'm in the same position I'll choose the same as joel, that's why the first game is so great, it give you question where's every players will have different answer.

There's also the possibility the organization will use it wrongly, not to heal mankind but to gain power themselves.

@Czar_Khastik lol

No guarantee it would work or lead to a cure.

No guarantee that one side having a cure wouldn't lead to a worse future outcome.

I also don't think the average young male gamer who doesn't have a daughter/surrogate daughter are equipped to fully appreciate the decision either.

I'd imagine there is a strong division along political lines too. With the Right focused on the rights of the individual, and the Left considering individuals worthy sacrifices for the greater good.

So long as said individual isn't them of course.

Its a selfish choice, but i wouldve done the same without hesitation

Joel was wrong, but he made the choice we would all make.

I’ve vacillated on my thoughts about it, but have usually leaned toward justification for Joel’s decision, but part 2 changed my mind. Not only because of Abby’s story, but also because of Ellie’s opinion on it.

Although, like others have said, if we’re being realistic, I suspect had he let them go through with it, Ellie would have been sacrificed in vain. I don’t think the group of scientists were likely to have the means to do much with whatever information they thought they were going to get out of her sacrifice. I mean, we just went through an actual pandemic which was a lot less severe and with infinitely more scientific minds and resources working on it and it was obviously not as simple as an isolated group of people doing one procedure and magically coming up with a cure.

It’s always been a suspension of disbelief that has to occur when I play games or watch shows. The global solutions are often oversimplified because that’s what makes the other parts of the drama work.

Totally on Joel side.

From a parent pov, Joel is right. But from Fireflies pov, Joel is wrong and they're right.

So for me, there's no wrong answer here. Joel had a strong reason and it's very understandable.

Fireflies also not wrong. Human is a social creature who thrives in social group / communal. But the virus destroyed the society and Fireflies wants to rebuild it again by finding a cure.

Oh most definitely right , ive got 5 daughters and i rampaged through that level like a man possessed , nobody was spared, and those doctors didn't get a word out 😁

I'll say something that will probably sound stupid but I remember playing this about the same time I watched Interstellar which was the same time my daughter was was rushed to hospital after a seizure. Both the game and the film resonated with me because they both felt about a decision of whether you'd sacrifice the world for a life with your daughter. In LoU Joel does (in a sense) while in Intersteller he made the sacrifice to save humanity at the expense of a life with his daughter, who relative to him, basically dies in a very short time.
Without doubt I'd have gone the Joel route. However my daughter is now a nightmare teenager so doubts starting to creep in 🤣

The thing is as gamers, the idea was that we had no idea if the cure would have actually worked. So whether we agreed with Joel or not, it was always a risk to begin with.

Neil made this an issue by saying years after the games release, that a cure would have 100% worked had Ellie been sacrificed. Which is something I don’t feel he should ever have confirmed.

As the father of a precious little girl, if I were told her sacrifice could save humanity there would have to be 2 deaths: Hers. But after they killed me to get to her. Even if I 100% knew she was the cure I’d never just give her up. Joel absolutely made the right choice!

@Scoot23 very intuitive. Nice!

@naruball came here to say this.

Wrong choice, but would do the same.

+1

I killed the entire medical team without a second thought. I didn't even try to spare them and only felt relieved I could save Ellie.

I was really absorbed by the game, so I wouldn't see any other possibilities if it was happening in real life. Not to mention cutting her open wouldn't guarantee a cure. And I'm not sure a humanity so far gone could be saved even with a cure. So thinking about the repercussions of his choice would only make it right.

@GeeEssEff Agreed. The whole point of the game is that its an impossible choice, the second game addresses this and it's silly to consider their being a "correct" answer for the situation in the moment.

It's why the first game is so great!

@Cornpop76 The right is focused on the welfare of individuals like themselves.

Ofc he was right, the issue is where he should've lied or not.
I don't understand this new narrative that tries to pain Joel as a villain that surfaced on the last 2 years or so.

@Jacko11 I think it would have been a problem if he had revealed that when the game launched. By refraining from doing so, he allowed us to imagine whatever we wanted and then revealed what he had in mind.

It's not about right or wrong. It would never be "right" to ask a father to sacrifice his child, whatever the situation. This is what being a father is.

@Cornpop76 "With the Right focused on the rights of the individual, and the Left considering individuals worthy sacrifices for the greater good."
Weird, as while this may have been the stance of Right and Left 50 years ago, today it seems completely inversed to me.

Pre-Trump era, when the game came out (the first time) it would have been a hard choice. But now… humanity deserves to go extinct. Let the giraffes inherit the earth.

Joel was right but so was Abby. Joel is very much the villain and deserved what happened to him.

To me it was not only the right decision, it was the only decision. The chances of them finding a cure in that hospital, in those conditions from one sample is miniscule.
For them not to tell her the truth, and give her the right to sacrifice herself for the greater good makes them evil. Especially given the odds of it even working.
Joel did it right, the only villians were the fireflies and they got what they deserved.

I'll come from leftfield. A cure would prevent new infection, yes, but it still wouldn't prevent you from getting your neck ripped out by those already infected. Or killed as a result of the war to control that cure that will break out between the many factions that would still want power.

People won't ever give up power just because a solution to a universal problem is found. C*nts won't suddenly become hippies. And infected won't suddenly not want to rip you to shreds.

Alright so you got Ellie the only known cure to the infection and the first thing you do isn't test her or see any potential other way to get the cure maybe from her bloodstream but its to kill her. I know its a game but that doesn't make sense. If I was Joel I'd be pissed that was their first option. If they did kill her there is a giant chance the cure very quickly dies with her with zero results and his dead adopted daughter.

Joel was right to do what he did. There was no guarantee it would work, the fire flies just thought, oh she's immune so we'll cut her up and that's the cure. Just because someone's immune doesn't mean it'll cure people. The doctor might not even be a fully qualified doctor either. Not worth killing her for a guess. If Joel agreed and it hadn't have worked, maybe the 2nd game would've been Joel hunting them all down.

I would do what Joel did to save my dog so you can imagine how far i would go to save my child. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

@naruball fair point, but it still ultimately changes the story significantly.

@Oram77 Joel was right. Abby was right. Neither were right.

To me, that's the whole point. From each of their perspectives, they have valid justification, but from a dispassionate observer, violence solves nothing; "dispassionate" being the key word.

I would have given Ellie up personally. And I am on team global extinction event in general (humanity is fricken evil), but I couldn’t imagine denying the world a potential cure. Especially in a world that is survival only. But I would have talked to Ellie about it as well. Made peace with her.

Something that gets overlooked is that Joel and Ellie travel a long distance across America and there's basically no humanity left, just marauders, rapists and cannibals. (At least in the game, the TV series showed some more sympathetic survivors.) Based on Joel's experience you can understand why he might not consider humanity to be worth saving, especially not at the cost of his surrogate daughter.

Joel was heavily implied to be correct in the original game, where the hospital looked super dingy and iirc audio logs suggested the operation was something of a hail mary and not a sure thing.

In TLOU2 and to a lesser extent the HBO show it's heavily implied Joel is wrong because the hospital is depicted as clean in TLOU2 and there is far less ambiguity in the show over whether the operation will succeed. Druckmann himself, as others noted, has since said it would have worked for sure. Clearly that is the preferred reading at this time.

Personally I think the player was originally intended to believe the Fireflies were quacks but after TLOU2 it has been retconned to the Fireflies were competent because that was what the writers wanted to explore in a sequel.

Regardless of the greater question if it was right or wrong, I would choose the life of my child over all of you.

It never made any sense that they had to kill her to study her biology.

@Oram77 Brain biopsies are already common place and have been for a while. He was just a ***** doctor or might have been a vet claiming to be a doctor.

The cure would be passed on thru her offspring if she ever had any. There is no way of knowing if they could have been able to find a cure by killing her and removing her brain.

No guarantee that it would have worked. And even if it had, what's to say the cure would have been used for the greater good. Most likely would have been sold to the highest bidder or used to blackmail people rather than used for its intended purpose. World of the Last of Us teaches you that you can trust almost no-one.

I'm team Joel on this one

@Oram77 I honestly only played the second game for a few hours. I’ll go back to it again someday when I’m in the mood for it, jumping back and forth between the characters didn’t really jive with me.