Love the character attack on me to try and prove your point.
Ultimately my views on the narrative execution align with the Polygon and Vice reviews and they say it much better than I could ever articulate.
At this point I'm done talking about it because every criticism you make about the narrative (I don't think it is a bad game) gets met with accusations of being disingenuous or acting in bad faith or in this case have someone question your character itself.
I hope those that do like the game enjoy it. It's obviously not for me at the end of the day.
Edit: Confused the Vice review for the Kotaku one, but the stuff about the Polygon review is relevant.
They don't. The Kotaku critique was essentially that the game was too violent for the journalist, and that's perfectly fine. This level of violence, brutality and tension isn't going to be for everyone. There are people who hate Tarantino movies, Game of Thrones etc for these exact type of reasons. Not every story is going to be for everyone.
The Polygon critique however is for me more flawed, as it's not necessarily just the violence in the story she was criticizing, rather the fact that;
A.) The story didn't present humanity in a better, more loving, less violent light. The writer essentially felt it was an overly pessimistic and dark portrayal of humanity or what people are capable of, and I strongly disagree with that notion and feel it seems like it comes from a perspective of Western or White privilege.
And
B.) That Ellie wasn't exemplary of the writers own ideals, moral ethics etc. To me this is a poor critique and a misunderstanding of the media.
TLOU2 isn't an RPG, eg a game where your character is an avatar of sorts, who's personality, build and story is somewhat or largely shaped by player choices and decision making.
These games aren't about that, rather they're a specific or near specific take on characters in a way the creators intended them, and this manifests itself in design choices throughout the games.
Ellie is her own character with her own sense of morality, justice, convictions etc, and this is a game that explores that. This is a character study of Ellie and what happens to her in this game, and Ellie is not a morally pure character, neither is Joel.
In that sense it doesn't matter what the journalist or I would do in Ellie's situation, we are not Ellie, Ellie is not an avatar of us.
Not enjoying those decisions and story beats is one thing, questioning why they even exist and aren't a manifestation of player choice instead, is completely and utterly missing the point.
It's also imo one of the reasons these types of games tend to have the best executed stories and characters in gaming, since they're so much more focused and developed in that pursuit.
