mcree

How would choice work in an HBO show? Viewers vote like on Dancing with the Stars? And then in Part/Season 2, Ellie either is or is not in it based on their choice? Thought-provoking tales have been told for a long time without choice. Choice can make a game more interesting and enhance replayability. It can also be a trap -- Mass Effect, for example. In the game, TLoU goes the other way: making the player complicit in Joel's choice by forcing them to push a button to advance the story. It's telling when people fill in the blanks left by the story -- because surely that would have been compelling gameplay/drama, watching scientists performing tests on fungus -- to manufacture a scenario that makes Joel's choices more justified.

People are trying too hard. What is actually said? Ellie is “being prepped for surgery” The fungus “grows in (or in the game, all over) the brain” If Marlene said, “But don’t worry, it’s just exploratory” or a biopsy, “so she should be fine” (except that there is always a risk with surgery) and Joel “can stay and wait to see how it turns out”: would Joel have taken that deal? Does Joel trust the Fireflies enough that they won’t alter the deal? Would the Fireflies have wanted the deadly smuggler to hang around and not cause some kind of trouble in the future? No, it’s “thanks for delivering her, but you have to leave (and here’s a souvenir)”; “I don’t trust you enough that when it comes down to it, you won’t kill her for a cure”; and for both parties, “don’t ask Ellie because she might say the opposite of what I want”. And they both thought that if trouble broke out, they could solve the problem with a gun. The maximum number of sides that win such an argument is one. The minimum is zero. Here, Joel won.

That is entirely what the game expects and wants you to feel. And given your agency in the game, fuel your desire for revenge. Then when you act upon those feelings with extreme but "justifiable" violence, you get some measure of "justice". But also even more loss and misery. This need to make things right eventually compels violence against your better judgement. To make it more interesting, you might start to empathize with the "villain", or even change your mind about them entirely. Will they be able to replicate (or improve upon) this in the show? I have no idea. Sadly, some portion of the audience does not get this, and/or does not want this. And if it has been spoiled, you never get the true experience.

Marlene knows the lab/hospital is in SLC. As an active Firefly leader, she has up-to-date info, whereas ex-Firefly Tommy’s location in Colorado is old. Joel and Tess were supposed to meet in Boston (outside the walled Quarantine Zone) with the group that would take Ellie to SLC, or at least start the journey with actual Fireflies. Once Marlene was able to regroup and leave Boston, they went directly to SLC. They need just slightly better luck to get there before Joel and Ellie. There’s not much point in trying to actually follow them. She would want to get there as soon as possible in any case; they’re not sightseeing. It is convenient, but not contrived in any way.

Sad it's been ruined for you. Part of the value of experiencing Part 2 is to have the story unfold the way it is told. It's specifically structured in an interesting and sometimes exasperating way. You really have to play the game twice. How will they adapt that for TV? And POV matters a lot more in the game than it would on the show. More importantly, Joel is in Part 2 a fair amount. In the game, he's in the first scene, all the way to the penultimate. His relationship with Ellie is the overarching question over the entire game. Given the show's penchant for removing "all the killing" -- the hours and hours where you kill dozens and dozens -- his ratio might even go up in the show

Marlene was Ellie's guardian, and she stashed her in a FEDRA orphanage to keep her safe. And it worked, up until the point Ellie played hooky and got bitten. She doesn't think she'll make it just outside the wall, so she hands Ellie off to Joel and Tess. By luck and a bunch of dead fellow Fireflies, she miraculously makes it to Salt Lake City ahead of them. Maybe they drove around Kansas City instead of through it, or after Kathleen's group is wiped out. Unaware of any feelings Joel has developed for Ellie, Marlene consents to surgery. Although Ellie is underage according to current legal standards, she is more of an emancipated minor, but also quite traumatized and probably not in the right mind to make such a decision. The Fireflies does't ask, because Ellie might say no. Then what? You might consider this more humane. After doing some tests, the surgery that Joel is warned about and they are caught trying to start is not necessarily fatal brain-removing surgery. Maybe this is exploratory, and that might happen later. But Joel doesn't know, nor does he care. The Fireflies certainly don't want Joel "the smuggler" hanging around. They want him to leave, and this is his one chance to get her out.

No, Joel is carrying it in the shot of him walking after he discovers the bag with its purple trinket, along with the horse; before he finds Ellie at the end.

After Joel falls off the horse, the game gets some mileage out of “is he alive” before Ellie returns to the basement and we see him. It’s notable that the DLC is entirely separate, and you play it after; there is no option to weave it into the main game, which is what the show has done, and shows that Joel is Not Dead Yet immediately. Main game without DLC: Joel kills a dozen guys at university but is wounded Joel falls off horse Cut to black and start of Winter [stuff happens with Ellie] Ellie returns to basement with Joel Show: Joel kills one guy and is wounded Joe falls off horse Ellie is in basement with Joel As shown in preview, next episode [stuff happens with Ellie] The DLC happens between steps 2 and 3 in the game. It is set entirely in a mall in Colorado, with the flashbacks to the mall in Boston. Yes, they would not have gone to the effort and expense to create two mall sets — one was tough enough. In the DLC, the mall is an opportunity for Ellie to kill a few dozen men and infected. But that would be counterproductive for the show. In both the game and the show, Ellie as action hero will (presumably for the show) first happen during the [stuff] which has a whole story behind it, and not some generic combat. When you play the DLC, the player knows who these guys are, even if Ellie doesn’t (not that it matters to her).

While the show is in the zombie genre, these Infected are not undead. They don’t die and reanimate. Initially the fungus makes you crazy and homicidal, which is bad enough. And you bleed like normal. Sam had turned; you could see it in his face and eyes. Henry did the right thing by shooting Sam, but couldn’t live with himself.

Not weeks. They meet during daytime. They wait until dark. Stuff happens, and they encounter the sniper during the day, where Sam is bitten. It ends in the morning. Maybe 40 hours.

One of the last things Tess says is to take Ellie to “Bill and Frank”, now that the Fireflies they were to meet are dead. The game has several small hints you can find before this point that describe them, but I don’t recall a similar line/detail in the show. Of course, Joel knows who they are, and in the game he explains right after this point in the story where they are going and why, to Ellie and therefore the player. And maybe to the viewer at the beginning of the next episode.

She's horrified the attempt to activate the shutdown caused the explosion, which indicates some unforeseen design flaw that could affect other reactors. As various characters have said, it's supposed to be impossible for an RBMK reactor to explode. I imagine they will explain this further.

Ironically, he really is Stephen Strange, former neurosurgeon. So out of everyone (from Earth), not made up. Which makes it even funnier. Half the universe. For just earth, he could do it manually, the way he's always done it. It's also worth emphasizing that he's not choosing who lives or dies, perhaps with some very specific exceptions, like maybe Stark and Nebula. Even with all six stones, that seems like a lot of work. Nope: choose half at random -- as he says, it's fair that way. I wonder how many people have actually read the Infinity Gauntlet? They're not following the comic -- nor should they -- but how things get resolved in that story does color one's perceptions of the movie.

One of the effects of setting the movie in WW1 is that women didn't get the vote in the UK until shortly after. Etta has a line mentioning suffrage. (When first instituted, women had to be 30 years old. Ten years later, it was changed to 21 to match men.) The Act passed early in the last year of the war, and the first election was a month after it ended. A separate Act between those last two events gave women the right to run for and hold office. So in the first meeting the "what's a woman doing in here" murmuring makes sense. In the second meeting with the generals and the journal, it was more of a who is this random person, expressed as the more gendered who is this woman. But neither reaction is overplayed.

Where's the island: Steve flew from (what is now) Turkey in a biplane, and was able to get to London overnight by boat -- a small sailboat, but they "hitched a ride" and were towed most of the way. Even if the island is veiled by fog and invisibility, sailors would eventually notice a dead zone over a few thousand years in the heavily traveled Mediterranean. I suggest the island itself also moves. That also explains why it's difficult for Diana to return. The RT score is the percentage of "thumbs up". At the moment, it's 93% "you should go see this movie". In the small print right below, it says "Average Rating: 7.6/10" from 245 reviews, which coincidentally matches the 76/100 Metacritic score counting 49 reviews (probably a strict subset of RT's). Last week's Pirates movie is at 29% and 4.7/10 on RT and 39/100 on Metacritic. The audience score for WW is also 93% "liked it" -- so apparently the RT score is right on the money. They rated it higher at 4.5/5. For Pirates, 70% "liked it", which perhaps says something about somebody, but since I haven't seen it, I will refrain.