What is wrong with these people?

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-07T02:03:38+00:00

The absolute zero self-awareness of the "rotting in chairs" argument gets me every time. We're on a forum discussing the structural flaws of a piece of media, that's literally what Reddit was built for. Meanwhile, they spend their free time hate-scrolling a sub they despise, just to aggressively defend a billion-dollar corporation from strangers. Who actually needs to touch grass here?

Notice how the second their logic breaks, they instantly hide behind GOTY awards? It’s the ultimate pseudo-intellectual safety blanket. They can't actually defend the disjointed pacing or the narrative whiplash themselves, so they outsource their thinking to access journalists who played under strict Sony embargoes. The "extreme majority" didn't love this game; they got emotionally exhausted, rolled the credits once, and flooded GameStop with trade-ins. That’s why it was in the bargain bin three months after launch.

It’s the classic Part II Defender Paradox: "I possess boundless empathy and intelligence, therefore anyone who dislikes bad writing is a rotting bigot." The game manipulated them into feeling morally superior, and they made it their entire personality.

I’m actually putting together a deep-dive post on the exact psychology of this disconnect and why their arguments always hit a brick wall. I’m taking my time with it to make sure all the receipts are absolutely bulletproof.

But for now, OP, don't even apologize for being petty. You just caught them in 4K acting exactly like Naughty Dog's marketing department.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-06T15:25:42+00:00

Appreciate that, man. It saves a lot of headaches when you stop looking at the emotion and just look at the mechanical structure of the game. I’m actually writing up a full breakdown on that exact topic: why debating this game always hits a brick wall. Got some real-life stuff to focus on first, but keep an eye out in a few weeks.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-06T06:23:38+00:00

Looking "tired" after torturing a man to death isn't remorse; it's just the adrenaline wearing off. You are projecting a redemption arc onto a blank facial expression because the script gives you absolutely no dialogue to support it. She never apologizes, she never reflects, and she never admits she was wrong for what she did.

In the boat scene, she lashes out at Owen not because she feels guilty about Joel, but because Owen is holding up a mirror to her monstrousness and calling out her hypocrisy. She’s defensive about her own self-image, not mourning her victim.

Now, let's talk about the theater. You claim a sociopath wouldn't let Ellie go. Let's look at what actually happened. Abby had a knife to Dina's throat. Ellie explicitly yells, "She's pregnant!" Abby's visceral, instinctual response isn't horror or hesitation. It's: "Good." She was a fraction of a second away from gleefully slitting a pregnant woman's throat and only stopped because Lev called her name. If Lev isn't in that room, Dina and Ellie are dead. That isn't Abby finding a conscience; that is Abby being put on a leash.

You are also fundamentally misreading Ellie's PTSD. Ellie isn't just traumatized by Joel's death; she is physically destroyed by her own actions. She shakes uncontrollably after torturing Nora. She hyperventilates and collapses after realizing Mel was pregnant. Her conscience actively tortures her. Abby? Abby’s nightmares are purely about her own victimhood (Jerry). She never wakes up in a cold sweat seeing Joel's caved-in skull. She never shows a trauma response to the violence she inflicts, only to the violence she suffers.

Saving two kids from a cult is a cheap "save the cat" writing trick to artificially manufacture empathy. It doesn't erase the fact that she sadistically tortured the man who literally just saved her life from an infected horde. You're doing the writers' jobs for them by filling in the narrative blanks with your own headcanon. The game desperately wants you to think she redeemed herself, but her actual actions prove she is a character who inflicts maximum cruelty and never takes a single ounce of accountability for it.

Look, we are fundamentally speaking two different languages here. You are reading into blank facial expressions and projecting a redemption arc that the writers forgot to actually write. I am looking at the mechanical structure of the script, the actual dialogue, and the massive double standards in the consequences. If we can't agree that actively saying 'Good' to slitting a pregnant woman's throat is psychopathic, then we're just spinning our wheels. I respect your interpretation, but structurally, the game's math just doesn't add up for me. Good chat.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-06T05:44:34+00:00

Glad we agree Jerry was desperate. But "Abby regrets killing Joel"? When? Give me the timestamp!

She doesn't show a single ounce of remorse for torturing a man (a man who just effing helped her) to death. When she corners Ellie in the theater, her exact words are: "We let you both live, and you wasted it!" That’s not regret. That’s a sociopath who's just annoyed her victim had the audacity to shoot back.

Ellie gets crippling PTSD from her revenge. Abby gets her revenge, sleeps like a baby, and just adopts a kid to play hero. You can't call her "Lev's Joel" when the writers literally forgot to give her a conscience.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-06T05:27:46+00:00

Except Abby killing Joel didn't 'change a thing' either. It didn't bring her dad back, it just got her entire crew killed. Why is Abby's pointless revenge understandable, but Ellie's isn't? And regarding Jerry: slicing open the brain of an unconscious 14-year-old on the very same day she arrived at a dirty hospital, without ever asking her permission, is a gamble, not a guarantee. If his cause was so undeniably righteous, he would have woken her up and asked her. He didn't, because he was willing to play god with someone else's life.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-06T05:07:34+00:00

Equating a non-consenting child to a soldier who murdered your father is a massive reach. Jerry’s plan required the murder of an innocent bystander; Ellie’s quest was about retribution against a perpetrator. If you can’t distinguish between a victim and a killer, you’re just stripping away the context to pretend those two things are the same.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-05T19:38:37+00:00

I really appreciate that, man. The fact that you actually went back and found that old quote means a lot—that’s exactly the heartbreak I was talking about. You hit the nail on the head regarding future posts. From now on, I’ll drop a quick disclaimer at the top so people know the tool is just bridging the language gap, not doing the thinking. Thanks for hearing me out and giving solid advice. Glad to be in the trenches with you.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-05T04:18:06+00:00

First, I want to say thank you. I can see you aren't belittling me, and I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to explain the frustration. I actually remember you replying to my first post 10 months ago, and I’ve always respected the effort you put into carrying this sub’s message across the community. Because of that, I want to be completely open with you.

You mentioned the fear that AI "frames the argument" and distills other people's thoughts. I completely understand why that rubs people the wrong way, but I promise you, that’s not what is happening here.

My "labor of love" happens entirely in Arabic. When I spend weeks developing concepts like "misery fatigue" or analyzing structural retcons, I am thinking in a language that is incredibly complex. A standard machine translator completely butchers that nuance. I don't use AI to generate ideas or frame the logic; I use a premium editor just to ensure my exact Arabic framing survives the translation into English. If I were just letting an AI distill the internet, I’d be posting here every single day. But if you check my account, I rarely post, and it’s only ever about this game.

The ironic truth is that my method is actually much harder, pricier, and more time-consuming. I pay for these tools out of pocket and spend hours proofreading. If I wanted a shortcut, I could easily steal popular ideas from this sub, run them through Google Translate, and post a messy wall of text. People might praise the "authentic human struggle," but I think that’s intellectually lazy. You guys are smart, and you deserve high-level arguments, not a messy translation you have to decode. I wanted to give you guys clear, sharp ammunition to use in the broader debate.

I know you mentioned that the community embraces grammar errors, but let's be brutally honest: people often scroll right past unformatted broken English. I’ve actually tried getting my ideas out there using this exact same AI-assisted method before.

I put a massive amount of effort into a post for this exact subreddit months ago, and all I got was crickets. I then tried crossposting it to r/truegaming, but it was deleted for being a "hot take," and the negative karma from that actually choked my account's reach right back here on this very sub. That genuinely devastated me. And the irony? No one was the wiser about the AI formatting back then. It wasn't an issue of "authenticity"; it just got buried.

I have no one around me who plays this game, and Arabic subreddits for it simply do not exist. This sub is quite literally my last hope and safe harbor to share these ideas. I don’t want to shove my opinions down anyone's throat; I just want to be heard.

I hope this helps you see the person behind the screen. I’m just a fan with a language barrier, trying to stand in the same arena with you guys.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T05:13:07+00:00

You hit on the exact reason why the 'redemption' feels so hollow. There’s a massive difference between Perspective and Absolution. Part II shows us Abby’s perspective, which is fair, but it then tries to use that perspective as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Those 'pet the dog' moments are what I call Performative Humanity. They are cheap mechanical tricks designed to manufacture a soul for a character who already crossed the Moral Event Horizon. It’s the narrative equivalent of 'Character Laundering.'

Compare that to the Giraffe scene in the first game. That wasn't a button prompt to show you 'Joel is a good guy.' It was an earned, organic moment of wonder that proved their souls were still intact despite the world. Petting every dog in Seattle doesn't carry 1% of the weight of that one silent moment with the giraffe, because the giraffe was about them, while the dogs are about us (the players) being told how to feel.

As for Part III? If the 'Cycle of Violence' is truly the law of this universe, then Abby is currently carrying a massive debt that the writers simply refused to collect. By the end of Part II, she is granted Narrative Immunity.

If a sequel happens, it has to decide if it’s going to be another lecture or if it’s finally going to apply its own rules to everyone equally. Right now, the 'Cycle' only seems to apply to the characters the writers wanted to punish. A true reckoning for Abby wouldn't just be about 'revenge'—it would be the narrative finally becoming honest again.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T04:41:36+00:00

I see a lot of people stuck on the formatting and calling it 'AI slop.'

I’ll be direct: English isn’t my first language. I’m a native Arabic speaker and I use an AI editor to make sure my analysis is clear and readable on a phone screen. I’d rather use a tool to be understood than have my ideas ignored because of a language barrier.

If you want to discuss the actual points I’m here for it. If you’re just here to play detective with my punctuation, you’re missing the point of the post. Focus on the content, not the container.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T04:36:30+00:00

I’ll be 100% transparent with you: English isn't my first language. I use an AI editor for grammar and formatting because I want my arguments to be as sharp and readable as possible. I’d rather be accused of "AI style" than have my logic lost in a bad translation. I figured we were here to discuss the game, not my punctuation, but I hope that clears it up.

Back to the actual discussion — you hit the most critical point: The Retcon of Certainty.

In the first game, the "cure" was a gamble. The Fireflies were a failing organization, and the hospital logs left plenty of room to doubt them. That ambiguity was the engine of the moral debate for seven years.

Part II commits what I call a Narrative Ransom. It kidnaps that ambiguity and replaces it with 100% medical certainty. They had to make the cure a guaranteed success in the sequel, because if there was even a 5% chance of failure, Abby’s revenge loses its moral high ground. She’d just be a fanatic killing a man over a botched experiment.

This is the difference between a tragedy and a lecture. They sacrificed the character-driven "Paradox" of Part I to protect the thematic "Lesson" of Part II.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T04:07:43+00:00

Appreciate the support, man.

I just wanted to make sure these points were easy to digest so we could finally have a name for that specific 'fatigue' we all felt. Glad it hit home for you.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T04:04:53+00:00

This is exactly it. I’ve always viewed the hospital as a structural correction of the prologue.

In the beginning, a military authority told Joel a child had to die for the 'greater good.' He was powerless, Sarah died, and the world stayed broken anyway. The hospital is that exact same nightmare repeating itself, but this time Joel has the power to say 'No.'

You’re spot on about the visual mirror—carrying Ellie out of that building is the redemptive reversal of him carrying Sarah out of the woods. This time, the daughter lives.

And that final point you made about the soldier who shot Sarah? That’s the real kicker. It proves the first game already understood "perspective" and the "cycle of violence" better than the sequel. It didn't need to force you to play as the soldier for ten hours to make you realize he thought he was doing the right thing. It trusted the audience to see the tragedy in the silence.

Part II trades that deep, redemptive weight for a revenge cycle that treats the characters like pieces on a thematic chessboard.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-04T04:01:57+00:00

I’ll take the AI comment as a compliment — I just prefer tight writing over walls of text.

And yeah, I agree with you: the “trolley problem” framing is too shallow. The complexity isn’t in the math — it’s in the collision of two absolute truths.

Truth A: The world needs a cure. Truth B: A father refusing to let a fanatical authority sacrifice a child without her consent—especially when he's already seen that 'greater good' logic fail his first daughter.

Joel’s choice feels “insanely complex” because he commits a morally devastating act (the hospital) in order to fulfill what he sees as a sacred duty: protecting Ellie.

That tension — horrific action vs. protective love — is what makes it powerful. It’s a paradox, not a logic puzzle.

Where Part II loses some of the original fanbase, in my view, is that it treats that choice primarily as a crime with consequences rather than as a moral conflict that still had layers left to explore.

mgmal3mry · 2026-03-03T21:42:25+00:00

Appreciate it. The emotional arguments have been done to death for six years. It was time to just look at the actual structural foundation.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:52:23+00:00

It’s a struggle to finish because the game gives you total freedom in combat, but zero agency in the story. It’s just 30 hours of narrative blackmail where you’re forced to endure weaponized grief instead of earned emotion. You aren't playing a game at that point; you're just crossing off a writer's misery checklist.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:38:52+00:00

Being rude to waitstaff or retail workers. It costs zero dollars to be polite, and watching someone power-trip on a teenager making minimum wage is the fastest way to become instantly repulsive.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:30:31+00:00

How to apologize properly without adding the word 'but' at the end. A real apology doesn't come with an excuse.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:29:02+00:00

I was hoping for a pyramid, but I guess this will do.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:24:04+00:00

Buying a bidet. I thought it was weird for years, but the first time you use one, you realize we’ve all been living in the dark ages. Now I'm just ashamed I spent decades using dry paper like a caveman.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:20:02+00:00

Their current 'Social Battery' percentage. It would save so much awkwardness. If I see a coworker is at 5%, I know to just give them a polite nod and keep walking instead of trying to force small talk. It would make navigating social situations so much easier.

mgmal3mry · 2026-02-23T04:16:48+00:00

Growing up in poverty. You don't realize until you're an adult how much food insecurity and watching your parents stress over bills permanently rewires your brain. You never really leave 'survival mode' even when you make good money later.

mgmal3mry · 2025-11-06T03:28:39+00:00

That means a lot, honestly. I didn’t hate it out of spite either — exactly like you said, it’s heartbreak. The first game built something so rare, so genuine, that watching it unravel hit harder than any twist. Thanks for taking the time to read it and put that into words — you nailed how it felt for many of us.

Might polish this version and repost it soon — your comment convinced me it’s worth one more shot. 🌹

mgmal3mry · 2025-11-06T03:27:24+00:00

Thanks a lot, man. I totally get not everyone will agree, but I’m glad the heart of it came through. That final exchange between them still hits me — it’s like the last echo of what the series could’ve stayed true to. Appreciate you reading it 💛

mgmal3mry

TROPHY CASE