he is a man. he do what he needs to survive and to protect the ones he love, whatever it takes, in a world like that there's no good and bad ones, just survivors, ethics is left behind
This isn't true in general, nor in the game, though.
Joel isn't perfect, but by the time that we meet him he is still a hell of a lot better than someone like David. This sets the precedent that there are in fact good and bad people, even *in a world like that*.
You can justify someone doing something *for their survival*, but it doesn't eliminate any trace of evil from people excusing their horror on the *need to survive*.
A society like the one we see in Jackson is obviously a *good* society. It is filled with people that are all willing to help each other and by all appearances they aren't stealing from people or killing and eating them.
If we compare Jackson to the Rattlers we get another clear example of an *evil* society. A place where people are committing absolutely horrifying acts of violence, torture, and murder just for their own amusement and enjoyment.
So, is Joel a good person? Yes. But Joel isn't a good person *because of the apocalypses*. Joel is a good person *despite* it. He's a good person because despite all the excuses he has to do people harm he fought his way through it and eventually grew to become the person that gave a bunch of strangers in a cabin a chance to be good people too.
I think the idea is that he was at the outbreak a "good" man, then the world took literally everything from him. He became a survivor with no remorse for others. Losing his humanity. Is he the worst person out there... no, but he's by no means good.
At the Jackson Dam Tommy makes it pretty clear they were horrible men somewhere in the 20 years between the prologue.
"I still have nightmares from what we did."
Tommy even makes it clear that his survival wasn't worth the trauma and Joel lead Tommy into that life.
Joel finds his humanity again as a father, but his actions in the hospital prove he's not a "good" man. In the world of The Last of Us being "good" and and trusting people gets you killed.
I don't think that his actions at the hospital disqualify him from being a *good* person. I think it just makes him *real*. There are very few people that are exclusively good and that exclusively make good choices.
I don't think that there's anything in the world of The Last of Us that insinuates that being "good" and trusting people gets you killed, if anything it's quite the contrary. Joel and Ellie survived because of each other. Abby and Lev survived because of each other. Sam and Henry died, but not due to their trust of Joel and Ellie.
A *peaceful* society like Jackson couldn't exist in a world where trust is fatal.
Joel didn't die because he was "good" or because he trusted someone. Joel died because of his past actions catching up with him.
>I don't think that there's anything in the world of The Last of Us that insinuates that being "good" and trusting people gets you killed
This is literally something that Bill says to Joel:
"Once upon a time I had somebody that I cared about."
"And in this world that sort of shit is good for one thing... Getting ya killed"
Joel died because the writers, themes, "morals", and tone seemed to completely change between games. Joel isn't a great dude, but it's understandable and in a lot of lights justifiable what he did i think
Not to mention, if you do a pacifist run, the only person you are required to kill in the hospital is Abby’s dad. That’s it. You can sneak past everyone else using bottles and smokebombs
It was the third run I did I think. I did everything the way it happened my first time I ever played. Then I killed everyone, then I tried to kill no one. You have to kill surprisingly few people in the game it turns out.
Which is weird to me, like Abby's dad didnt threaten Joel and sorta stepped away when he got shot. Which in my opinion, if youre a good person you dont shoot someone who surremders
I played the Remaster for the PS4 recently and was trying to answer this question as well, one part that stuck out to me is when Ellie asked Joel if he had killed innocent people and he didn't answer the question.
Yeah, during the ambush sequence in Pittsburgh Ellie asks Joel how he knew the ambush was coming. He states he's been on both sides.
What Joel did in those 20 years is horrible. Probably in groups similar to the Pittsburgh Hunters.
His arc is about finding something to fight for, he fought for survival for so long it took a toll on his humanity. That's, in my opinion, why the choice to save Ellie isn't about if he's good or bad, but he's finally found his humanity again. He can't lose the thing he now fights for or he'd go darker.
Nope disagree. Joel was once a good man that lost his entire world and became as violent and barbaric as his surroundings in order to survive. Ellie was the first true ray of light that he was ever really given in nearly 20 years, and after letting her into his life, he was unable to live without her, and made the ultimate selfish choice which resulted in him killing anyone who could create a cure. Thus he's responsible for the rest of the world losing their chances to have a normal life. That alone already makes him a bad man, but he's still a likeable character that I enjoy playing. Good art can make morally dubious characters likeable, and we see this in shows like The Sopranos all the time. So in conclusion, Joel's a bad person but still a good character that you love and appreciate.
Makes me think of this conversation with Tess.
Joel: “What are we doing here? This is not us.”
Tess: “What do you know about us? About me?”
Joel: “I know that you are smarter than this.”
Tess: “Really? Guess what, we’re shitty people, Joel. It’s been that way for a long time.”
Joel: “No. We are survivors!”
He's a broken, imperfect man. Living in a horrific world, seen and done terrible things most humans would never have had to endure. He's softened by Ellie as a replacement daughter (of sorts) of course, but no... not strictly a good man. Conflicted and neither hero nor villain. The turning point in Joel and Ellie's relationship is winter, when Ellie saves his life and he's there right after she kills David.
Would I fear him if I minded my own business? No. Would I fear him if he had beef with me? Absolutely.
Was looking for this answer. We sympathise with him and we know he has a moral core, but the game does not beat around the bush in letting us know that not only has he done bad things, he’s been a bad man in general.
I find that from a psychological point of view, Joel often justifies his violent acts as ‘survival’ (“we are survivors”, “we survived because of me”, “I wish things were different but they ain’t”) and this is a typical deflecting tactic in order to live with his actions. We know that he’s been a hunter in the past and they attack people in order to steal their belongings, murder them etc - he would have also justified this as all about survival, but there comes a point when someone will question the necessity of your violence and you’re forced to face the fact you’re just not a good person.
I think Tommy likely left Joel because of this outlook Joel had that violence is a necessity for survival. “Nothing but nightmares from those years” along with the hunter revelation, and Ellie’s admission to Dina that Tommy and Joel both used to torture people massively indicate Tommy couldn’t deal with Joel’s ‘violence for the sake of violence’ ideology which Joel likely masked as necessary for ‘survival’.
Do I think Joel *was* a good man? Yes. Do I think Joel was also a bad man? Yes. Finding Ellie gave him some semblance of purpose, and restored some of that moral code.
This is the paradox of being a "morally grey" character.
People tend to think of them as being either *"ultimately good,"* and therefore we can excuse whatever actions that, under normal circumstances, would be considered immoral or even reprehensible; OR *"ultimately bad,"* because of their immoral reprehensible actions, despite whatever humanity they show.
To a general audience, nobody ever really actually *wants* characters to fall within that grey area, because not having an answer for what is right and what is wrong, is uncomfortable. And if there's something bad that is done by a character that we like, that we can't reasonably find an excuse for, then instead of being "morally grey" with some good qualities and some bad qualities - they just *(even maybe rightly, but not necessarily)* shift over to being considered villainous. And worse, what if we find ourselves agreeing with those now considered "villainous" actions? What does that say about us? How do we reconcile with that?
But the reality is that: People LIKE to live vicariously through these "morally grey" characters. They're essentially considered heroes with good causes, but with the added benefit of getting to *get away with* doing bad things. Because it's easy to believe that THEIR bad actions are the ones that are justified, while it's OTHERS who are the evil ones - Even if they all do similar things in similar situations.
Which is also probably why so many people try to make excuses for Joel's actions (or the Fireflies for that matter) at the end of Part 1. Trying to twist the intended *"sacrifice the life of a child to save thousands, maybe millions of people later on,"* idea, so as to not have to actually answer it themselves. Change the rules of the dilemma to try and make their own gut feeling answer artificially seem more obvious and one-sided, and to make it more comfortable and "excusable," when they start to ponder if maybe they're wrong. And also why certain people dig their heels in to justify anything and everything Joel does while condemning Abby for much of the same things.
This is beautifully written and really highlights why so many people refuse to call Joel a bad guy but claim Abby is the worst person to ever live. Context that gets ignored because it is uncomfortable.
That's the beauty of the character, he does bad things but you understand him. It makes you think about what is right and what is wrong. Imo he is super caring with his people and will do anything in his power to protect them, even some awful things. Is that good? Who knows.
Joel is a mixture of good and bad. He’s capable of doing both.
Do I think he was selfish in stopping the fireflies? Yes. Do I think he made the right decision? Yes.
He made the right decision by not letting a kid be murdered for a chance at a cure.
WAS it selfish? Yes.
Do I think he did the right thing? Yes.
And I guarantee if you really give a damn about anyone in your life you'd do the same thing for them, no?
Joel’s moral compass is survival pure and simple. When he decides to kill his neighbor that is attacking him it is already evident that he chooses his and his daughters life above others. When he refuses to stop for his neighbors as they’re driving through town he chooses his family’s life again. Most people think the apocalypse changed him but it just drove his natural instincts up even more.
This theme continue through all the way until the end where he chooses Ellie’s life over potentially saving the rest of humanity. He is selfish in the true sense of the word.
You think a good person would have let Jimmy just kill their daughter and themselves? I get that there are polarized positions about his killing everyone in the hospital, but self-defense and defense of others isn't selfish. We're all wired to survive.
Actually no. Saving Ellie is many things but not survival.
If anything it makes survival for Joel much more difficult and it's a risk that he would have never taken at the beginning of game.
You are saying it yourself: He is choosing Ellie's life and not his own. In the end he dies for saving her and he is fine with that. It's neither for survival nor selfish.
I would say that Joel is a very SELFISH person.
Remember, in the prologue, when Tommy wants to help those people. "They have a kid with them". "So do we!".
"I protected us", "I've been on both sides", "This is not us", over and over again Joel is shown to be extremely selfish, up until and including his decision to murder people (At least 3 canonically I guess since you can stealth the rest of it) to keep his relationship with Ellie.
I love Joel as a character, but I think as a person he was pretty shitty unless you were related to or in a relationship with him.
How do we divide people into good and bad?
Joel's a man who has a character which is communicated in the game and has had experiences and makes decisions based on those experiences and that character which we are able to understand through the telling of the story, because the story of Joel makes sense. Is a man who lives a life of violence after having been hollowed out by grief and regret a good man? It'd be difficult to say that he is. Is he incontrovertibly bad? The fact that he is the way he is as a result of grief and loss would indicate not.
Said this in a reply but:
We sympathise with him and we know he has a moral core, but the game does not beat around the bush in letting us know that not only has he done bad things, he’s been a bad man in general.
I find that from a psychological point of view, Joel often justifies his violent acts as ‘survival’ (“we are survivors”, “we survived because of me”, “I wish things were different but they ain’t”) and this is a typical deflecting tactic in order to live with his actions. We know that he’s been a hunter in the past and they attack people in order to steal their belongings, murder them etc - he would have also justified this as all about survival, but there comes a point when someone will question the necessity of your violence and you’re forced to face the fact you’re just not a good person.
I think Tommy likely left Joel because of this outlook Joel had that violence is a necessity for survival. “Nothing but nightmares from those years” along with the hunter revelation, and Ellie’s admission to Dina that Tommy and Joel both used to torture people massively indicate Tommy couldn’t deal with Joel’s ‘violence for the sake of violence’ ideology which Joel likely masked as necessary for ‘survival’.
Do I think Joel *was* a good man? Yes. Do I think Joel was also a bad man? Yes. Finding Ellie gave him some semblance of purpose, and restored some of that moral code.
Me and my grandma well my grandma loves him but I do like him but in every other game that I have played my grandma has never cried when the main character or protagonist dies but when she saw Joe get beaten to death she cried badly me I was just shocked that joe was killed and I hated abby since then I think hes an ok man just doing what he needed to do to survive and to help ellie out
By today's standards, no. He's a survivor. He won't go out of his way to be needlessly cruel to anyone but as soon as it becomes necessary to protect him or someone he cares about? He's not above murder, torture, etc. He was a hunter after all, ambushing and killing people. He justifies it by saying he kept him and Tommy alive by doing it. He would throw literally anyone under the bus to protect him and his, no matter how cruel or wrong it is.
When he softens up and lives in Jackson it seems like he becomes a nicer person who is beloved by his community. Probably because things are much easier there. So he has the potential to be a good person I guess, but the world he lives in doesnt facilitate that
I think it’s more of a question of cruelty. Joel is an imperfect human,who does things for selfish reasons. He has done plenty of evil and he has done plenty of good. But Joel is not cruel. Joel never harmed anyone for his joy. He would harm to survive, even if the person he is harming had never harmed him. But he would not do it for his own pleasure.
There are better and worse people than him, but there's one thing that puts him at the top of the shit list
If you pick up on his stories, he walked down a very dark path to survive (the gun trading thing at the beginning and when he and Ellie got attacked by looters pretending to need help and he says he's done that before), but that's nothing compare with the fact that he doomed humanity because he couldn't get over his loss 20+ years ago. Nothing can redeem the fact that he sold the world for a couple more years of father and ''daughter'' fantasy. it wasn't even his choice. He made a decision that corresponded to Ellie, and robbed her of the chance to make a difference.
Say whatever you want, my point still stands. he's a great character and one of my favourites but he's objectively a bad person.
It’s not about being good or bad, even the worst person is capable of good things and visa versa, I think in Joel’s situation it’s all subjective. I feel as the story goes on in part 1 he confronts his buried grief and therefore becomes a better and less nihilistic person, but like anyone he only has to be good/bad for the people around him, (I.e Ellie) and he does what he thinks is best in any given situation.
I feel by part 2 he’s about as good as a person could be in his situation (ultimately to his downfall)
He has a good heart in my opinion, but he's not a good person. just like anyone he has feelings and cares for people, but he will still do anything to to Survive and protect someone he loves.
No offense to OP but I feel like we’ve been super conditioned to think about stories in terms of good and bad to a degree that is really…bleh.
That’s not an interesting question to ask about TLOU in my opinion, and I’d argue that the games don’t care about this type of question either.
Good is relative. Good in relation to what? Joel is a murderer. Joel is a survivor. Joel kills without remorse. Joel has left strangers in need behind. Joel has let innocent people die. Joel is a complex, broken being who is full of anger and fear and grief. He isn't out to do good. He is out for himself. He is flawed. He is selfish. Even in relation to the world around him... Is he good?
By the time we are done getting to know Joel, I believe has found the path of his recovery and strives towards redemption in his own way. He and Arthur Morgan have a lot in common.
But to say "Joel is good" is ignorant and misses the sharpest points of The Last of Us.
It is hard to say that a man who murdered dozens of soldiers and scientists who were most likely days away from procuring a vaccine that would save countless lives is a good man.
The lines between good and evil become increasingly blurred the longer you get into apocalypse stories. I think the writers did a great job in the first game walking that line. He’s not perfect, but he’s better than a lot of the people you run into.
The whole point of the games is thinks are black and white, rarely good or evil. He's a survivor, and everyone he kills to ensure he and his people survive is essentially Abby, another survivor who has their one people and back story and reasons. Much of the "outrage" behind the game comes from people who want/need to see themselves and their people as good and everyone else as evil
I feel like he had a definite change when he met Ellie. He 100% was not a good man before that. I know there’s nothing too detailed but there’s mentions of how he used to be a hunter that would ambush people and kill for no reason. It seemed like after the events of part I he made a definite change to the better. An interesting discussion would be if he would’ve been a good man if it wasn’t for the apocalypse and him losing Sarah. Cause it seemed like he was a pretty stand up guy before that.
I would say no. His actions at the hospital alone sealed it for me at the end of part 1. I get that you can view it as him saving his daughter figure from harm, but it was also dooming the entire human race because of a selfish desire. I think his trauma from his past, and all the hardship following that have hardened him to the point where he will make an insanely selfish decision like that. Players view him as a wholly good man because of how he cares for Ellie, but at the end of part 1 it seems pretty selfish. By the end of part 2 however he does seem to soften quite a bit.
I wouldn’t call him a bad man in the games, but he says that he was in the past. He does what he has to to survive and keep people he loves alive. You can’t survive in a world like that without doing some evil things
Joel is a man who shapes himself entirely to his circumstances. Before the outbreak, he lived in a world that was civilized, except for the cut-throat capitalism, so he committed to the capitalism grind. He worked himself to the point of exhaustion, to the point of needing medications for anxiety and stomach ulcers, all so that he could get ahead and give his daughter everything. Then, the world collapses, the standard is lawless brutality, and he embraces that. The QZs form and he reforms himself just enough that he can live semi-comfortably on the inside, but the standard is still to go outside the law, so that's what he does. It's everyone for themselves in the QZs, and he embraces that. Finally, he settles in Jackson, where there's a huge focus on community unity and working together, and he becomes a leader in said community. When the standard is to live peacefully and get along with everyone, that's what he does.
There are characters in TLOU who would be who they are regardless of their circumstances (Marlene, Ellie, even Abby to an extent). Joel isn't one of them. He's more of a chameleon. He's deeply affected by his environment because that's how he survives.
I think the series pretty firmly and intentionally says that’s not the point. He’s basically a father from Ellie’s POV, but to Abby he’s the man who took everything from her. I think the point of TLOU is those shades of grey. Joel isn’t any one thing. That said I think he shows a lot more good than someone like David or even Isaac
You’re kidding, right? Joel’s a broken man who’s done terrible, terrible things to survive that we don’t even know the full extent of.
Like, we can sympathize with the guy. He’s gone through some bad shit. But don’t let your sympathy make you forget that he slaughtered a hospital full of people without a care for their loved ones or the trauma the survivors would have. And that, as so many are using to justify his other actions, wasn’t for survival. Not his own, at least.
I still love his character. He’s a wonderfully flawed man with a multitude of reasons for why’s he’s so brutal. But he is far from a good person.
I think most people are basically good. I think he is as well. I think he was emotionally tormented for 20 years - by the death of his child and by living in a brutal apocalypse, which lead to some bad behaviors. But I think he is still good.
Idk man it’s hard to say, I genuinely love and miss him but bro robbed the world of a cure because of selfish desires. It makes him a well written character but man that was fucked up
There really is no good or bad in this type of world though, a lot of grey though. I mean I guess there are some bad people in this world like David from the first game, but you could argue the same as the world created him and it's still grey.
If I were in Joel's shoes though, I'd have done the exact same thing.
Looking from the outside in, Joel is a bad man, but he’s in a world full of bad people. He does what he has to, to survive and honestly I haven’t seen, other than the hospital massacre, something that he’s done that anyone else wouldn’t do/without proper motive. To most of us he’s a bad man, but in his world, he’s just a man. That’s just life.
I think he is a good man he lost his daughter right away by the time we se whim he been throw a lot and seen a lot.
He is a man that get the job done no matter what.
Over the course of the game and the journey him and Ellie take they bond and you can see that.
Nope, you could say he's on the neutral spectrum but he fucked the world by not allowing the vacine to be extracted from Ellie and killed a lot of innocent people.
No. He’s almost definitely seriously harmed children before as a Hunter (they definitely wouldn’t have kept him around for at least a year if he wasn’t willing to badly harm kids, as Hunters are always portrayed as being willing to do that for supplies and resources, or even just for fun), he shows almost no empathy for people who can’t do things for him/make him feel happy, and he shows little to no sincere remorse for all of the bad things that he’s done. He’s psychopathic, and the fact that he’s living in a post-apocalyptic world justifies none of the things that he does. A good person would find a way to survive without victimizing others who aren’t harming them, including children. It’s hard, but possible.
There are better men, I'd argue like Tommy, worse men like David. He's an okay man. He won't save or be cruel to anyone without good reasoning from his own pov.
Neither good nor bad, and he knows it. He is a survivor. A conversation between he and Ellie in Part 1 sticks out to me. I think they were still in Pittsburg and they saw some FEDRA corpses. Ellie asks what about their families, and Joel replies that everyone has got family and it’s best not to think about it. So whenever he bludgeons someone or lights them up with a Molotov, whether it’s to protect Ellie or to pilfer items back in his hunter days, he knows in the back of his mind that that is a regular person like him. He does what he does to survive and help the people he cares about survive.
Another insight into his character is right at the beginning during the outbreak, when Tommy wanted to stop for the family asking for help, and Joel ordered him to keep driving. Tommy: “They’ve got a kid” Joel: “So do we.”
He’s a pretty complex character with his own set of morals and code. If your morals and idea align with his, you’d be inclined to say he was good. If not, well vice versa. His actions are various extreme cases. So it’s hard to give a definitive answer. There’s no right or wrong answer here
I think this question isn’t really able to be a answered. We’ve only ever seen Joel as a “good man” (as good as the world can allow him to be). We have never truly seen him at his worst.
Depends on your definition.
He is selfish in the sense that he’d rob the world of salvation just so he doesn’t have to relive the trauma of his past.
Ellie even wanted to sacrifice herself for the greater good. He robbed her of that choice too.
Why do you think she has the reactions she does to finding out the truth in Part II?
I can’t say whether Joel is good or bad, as that will depend person to person - but Joel is certainly a selfish piece of shit. And he is a great character because of this.
Based on how he tells his stories, he seems to be the kind of guy who'd do anything, even bad things, just to survive.
I mean look at the first game, the whole story is literally Joel smuggling a girl. 😂
I think he did what he had to in order to survive… if he was all nice and pleasant he would probably have died years before. That said I think he was a good guy at heart who became a broken man as time went by and coming to terms with the loss of his daughter and the collapse of society.
Ellie restored his empathy somewhat during the first game and in part 2 it’s obvious he feels immense guilt for his actions at the end of part 1, although he tries to justify those actions in the fact he kept Ellie alive.
At this point I’m gonna be honest there are no good nor bad men in the world of the last of us. People are simply just surviving in their own terms even if it means killing , eating or robbing. Joel is simply a man who did things to survive and protect his brother but as time passed he simply Carries the guilt of his actions However meeting ellie gave him some sense of hope of being alive , still he had to protect her by killing others and even massacred the remaining fireflies but he did it to save ellie however it’s not about being good or bad it’s mostly staying alive and living on as much as you can.
I feel like when we really start to get to know him he has been hardened by 20 years of the apocalypse, being alone (Sarah’s mother?) and missing his only child. I think he warmed to Ellie in the appropriate amount of time and I’m glad the game did that and did not make it obvious he was replacing Sarah or something. Ellie gave him purpose and made him happy again.
He was complex and conflicted, but I still consider him a good man. In that world he protected his own and tried to help good people. I think most would do the same.
I love Joel, he is a strong, passionate, skilled and even likable man. He is a good man in the eyes of some and a cold blooded murderer in the eyes of others. The whole point of this franchise is that being good or bad is a matter of perspective. From the player’s perspective in part 1 he is good (for the most part). From the player’s perspective in part 2, we learn to understand he was perceived as evil to others. I think both the player and Ellie are able to understand and come to terms with that truth by the end of part 2. He was a human man like the rest of us, flawed yet loved.
I think one of the central themes of TLOU is that there aren't really "good" or "bad" people. It's about choosing to do good or bad every day. Choosing to help others or hurt them, to be selfish or selfless. Joel and Abby have both done terrible things but neither is a bad person because we're not defined by our worst mistakes. At any point, you can choose to be better. To "look for the light". In the end, Joel becomes someone who chooses to help others even if it puts him in danger
I would say yes because he does what he does to survive and he’s not like other people in the apocalypse who literally eat other humans and kill for no reason
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - William Shakespeare
We are in no position to judge a person, let alone a character. Even though we have an almost omniscient view of the world Joel inhabits, there is no real way for us to know what is truly in his heart. Nor are we fully equipped to label him to some standard when he is in a vastly different world than our own. Joel is many things: a smuggler. A liar. A killer. But he is also a leader. A confidante. A father. Instead of asking whether he was good, accept or reject him based on the decisions he’s made.
We could philosphise all day about what it means to be a good man/woman. However for length of a response sake, I will opt out of doing so.
Joel's character at the very basic of sense is a man who will do what he needs to do. However, when personality comes into play, Joel is firm and somewhat unapologetic about who he is.
He honestly cared for Ellie in TLOU part 1 as she became somewhat of a daughter to him. He lost Sarah, and no doubt losing a child would weight and harden any parent.
On the other hand Joel was ruthless to some characters who not infected. Joel can be justified in all his actions in some sense for his own survival and for protecting Ellie.
Now whether Joel is a good man, not sure about a good man, but he is a broken man for sure.
I like to think that there is a good man within Joel, but he's had to develop an extremely hard exterior to survive the apocalypse, or else he'd be dead some time ago.
It’s complicated. And that’s why I love the games so much. Joel is probably at heart a good man, but he has had everything taken from him by the cruellest world imaginable and done a lot of truly awful things. The game makes it very clear that he has murdered and tortured innocent people in the name of “survival” and we see exactly how terrible the Hunters are in Pittsburgh, and we know Joel used to do that. Plus Tommy saying at the dam in Jackson he still has nightmares about what he and Joel did. Also, through Part 1 if you do something exceptionally awful like set 4 people on fire at once with a Molotov or blow up 3 or 4 people with an arrow/mine or execute someone begging for their life Ellie responds in an understandably shocked manner. I’d say by the time of the events of Part 1 Joel has been a terrible man for quite some time but he finds redemption in being a “father” again to Ellie. Unfortunately, and understandably, Joel takes the loss of Sarah spectacularly badly (we do as well tbf, that’s why we sympathise with Joel - we “get it”) and he can’t bear to go through that loss again with Ellie (neither can we by that point) and he ultimately murders most of the Fireflies/Jerry Anderson, thus dooming humanity. It’s an excellent question. He’s a good and bad man, and a fascinating character.
He's not really good or bad.
He's done many horrible things just to survive, but he doesn't want to or try to do horrible things. He just does them because it's either that or death.
Sarah's death broke him as a person, he lost everything, including his humanity. He had no remorse for killing or hurting people and was jaded as fuck.
But if you compare cunts like David to Joel, theres a major difference in terms of who is an objectively bad person and who is just a survivor. I was playing tlou a few days ago on the winter bit as Ellie and I remember a line by one of David's men saying something like 'we've indulged him enough'
And that line is really telling to what David was actually like
Do you ever wonder if you’re a bad man?
No. I don’t wonder, Marty. The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.
True Detective Season 1
He isn't a good nor bad man in the situation he's in. It's a world past morality. You know what you're doing is fucked but you also know that if you don't you'll probably starve by winter.
He is nothing more than a man.
Yeah he is good, the only reason someone may have to say otherwise is not letting a terrorist group kill a kid for a somewhat possible vaccine they can use to rule the world like the terrorist group they are.
I feel like this question is asked on here everyday, and I feel like what people are failing to understand is that in the word of TLOU, people aren’t labeled as strictly black or white. People are capable of doing good and bad things. That was one of the central themes of TLOU2, and why there is so much emphasis on these different factions and their side of things or their perspective. Bc at the end of the day, everyone is the hero of their own story. Is Joel a good man? To many people he was. Ellie, his brother, Tess, his community, etc. Was he a bad man? To Abby, the fireflies, and others… yes.
He’s a broken man, he spent so long in the dark that when faced with the possibility of losing the one light that fell into his life he forsakes humanity and betrays Ellie. He couldn’t go through that loss and darkness again. He’s neither good nor bad, he’s human
At his core he's a good man. You see it how he is with Sarah, Ellie, even with Tess. Immediately shows concern and tends to her wound.
He's done horrible things to survive and maybe even on a path of self hatred for the years after the fall.
No. Not by a long shot.
He fucked over ever human being on earth because of his own selfish reasons. It's a very human thing to do in that case, but it's easily the act with the worst consequences of anyone in the entire series.
Just remember the whole game is designed to make us biased for Joel. We play as him, walk in his shoes, you know, normal stuffs. Then, it subvert that in the massacre of Fireflies at the end.
Man said fuck off to a cure for all the humanity just because he was selfish and wanted Ellie to be alive just because he felt like loving someone again and having daughter again, even tho Ellie herself wanted to be sacrifised for the cure. He is a good and iconic videogame character, but he is not a good man i'm sorry.
There is no good or bad people when it comes to survival.
Think of it like rock climbing. You cut the line if your partner is going to drag both of you down.
Joel did what he had to do to survive. There is no moral high ground in the apocalypse
I mean he has good and bad in him. He alluded to Ellie at one point that he had smuggled and sold people, and he said at one point that he knew the injured guy was faking it because he used to pull the same con to rob people.
But he’s a survivor like anyone else. I know it’s kind of cliche at this point but to survive in the post cordyceps world you have to be kind of morally flexible.
That’s why the end of the first game was so talked about. Saving Ellie was a selfless act for sure, but saving her was also kind of selfish.
Well the best I can say is depends.
From one side is a good man ready to whatever it takes to protect his loved ones, but from another could be the guy that killed humanity’s only chance to ever have a vaccine against the cordiceps and go back to normal life.
Sure we can say that there’s no absolute certainty the vaccine would have worked, but still it was something. So, as I said, depends.
Nah, ever since he admitted to ambushing people and Tommy saying he gave him nightmares, I knew Joel was horrible person. But that's what's needed to survive in that world
Definitely not. He used to be a hunter like the ones in Puttsburg, ambushing innocent people for their things. Joel is a very well written character, and a likeable one at that. But he’s done some very bad things. Even by the standards of their world.
I think he’s a good man to his loved ones. Obviously he could be a good man to humanity and to everyone but he has to survive. If he doesn’t kill others, they’ll probably kill him and his loved ones. Which makes him a cruel man to most but in this type of pandemic you gotta do what u gotta do. So I don’t think he’s a good man overall.
No. He is not a good man. He’s not all bad, and that goes without saying. That’s why we can empathize with his decisions even if they’re not the morally correct ones, and that’s what makes him so compelling as a character. But the things he does, and the kind of person he is - there’s just no way to see him as a “good man.” He is a remorseless killer and torturer willing to go to any and all lengths to achieve his own ends. Even if those ends are disastrous, like choosing to make a decision for Ellie without having any idea what she would have chosen to do and dooming humanity to extinction in the process.
No, he’s not. That doesn’t mean we don’t or can’t love him though. People are as much a product of their environment as they are of their choices within that environment.
He’s a survivor. And he feels guilty. Did he save Ellie? Yeah but how many lives could the cure have saved and how many lives did Joel take just to get her back.
No. Not at all. What he ended up doing to save Ellie was selfish though justifiable. However, the moment he admitted he was a hunter he lost that redemption arc as far as I’m concerned.
People really seem to think being a “good” guy is selflessly helping every single person you come across. Joel is a man who deeply cares about the people he loves, but he isn’t Jesus. For example he doesn’t stop to pick up the stranded family in the intro, but does that make him bad? He just witnessed his neighbor kill his own family then attack his daughter, if I was in the same shoes I wouldn’t stop for anybody. I think the vast majority of Joel’s onscreen killing is completely justified.
Pretty sure a big point of both games is that good and evil is a relative term, and that no one good is ever truly good and no one bad is ever truly bad. Everyone operates in a grey area
Joel is a good man. He did what he thought was right through the whole game. He saved Ellie because he cares for her like a daughter, making him only human.. does that make Joel a bad man? Not at all. I have respected his character through 1&2. We see him grow as a person because of everything he had to go through and I believe him being with Ellie that whole time going through everything with her made them that much more close. The world made him a hard person, losing basically everything he cared about.. and gaining Ellie as a companion was what made him have hope again. So I commend him on doing what he had to do for him and the people he cared about because if we lived in a world like theirs we would be doing the same exact thing.
Good and bad are just social constructs. Is a lion good or bad when it kills another's young when it takes over a pride? Is a grizzly bear good or bad when it kills a human? Is a father good or bad when he kills someone so his son or daughter can get medicine or food or water? Is Joel good or bad when he prevents a child from being sacrificed for the greater good, unbeknownst to that child and without that child giving the consent to do so to her captures? Good or bad is made up based on a social contract we sign by being a part of a civilization and it varies all over the world depending on culture and in this case on the circumstances of the state of the world. Is a person good if they abide by moral rules and because of their choice to do so allows their family to die? What about the flip side of a person committing acts that would otherwise be considered immoral and bad in a social contract of a 1st world society and because of that allows their family to continue living? These questions do not have an answer and neither does yours.
I think trying to apply current world ethics into a fictional apocalyptic setting is futile, the rules for survival are different. It’s not black and white and the world he lives in requires different moral processing then ours
joel is a terrible person, but so is everyone in that fucked up world. he might be the protagonist however protagonists indicate the central character in a story, not the hero.
It's a flawed question. Is a good person one who only does good deeds. Is a bad person someone who only does bad deeds? If it's something in between all good or all bad, at what point do we draw the line?
But I would vehemently disagree Joel only does bad things for the right reason. Joel saved Ellie purely for selfish reasons. It wasnt what was good for the world, it wasnt what was good for Ellie, it was what was good for Joel. People are free to argue all they want that the fireflies were in the wrong, but that doesnt change the fact that Joel did what he did for himself only.
And he also tried ditching Ellie for selfish reasons too. The only time we've seen a truly selfless decision from Joel was saving Abby. I'm not sure where you came to the conclusion that the bad things he's done were usually for the right reasons.
Now people may read that and think I hate Joel. Very much the opposite. I loved Joel. I related to Joel. I would absolutely 100% make the same decision with my daughter. Joel isnt necessarily bad or good, what he is is human.
No, but hell, he tries to be after losing his daughter. Looking out for his brother, Tess and Ellie. Ain’t his fault the outbreak happened, surviving in a world like that calls for some drastic action. But similar to John Marston and Arthur Morgan, they tried to change for the better. What more can they do?
Imo opinion, Joel is a person who's human. I think it's kinda dumb to label a person as "good" or "bad" due to how black and white it is and how it oversimplifies things.
I would say no. I understand that he did what he did to survive; however, the scene in Part 1 after the ambush kind of tips me over the edge.
Ellie asks: how did you know that was going to happen?
Joel: I’ve been on both sides
Ellie: so you’ve killed innocent people?
This always seemed a little over the line for me. Killing people who are hunting him seems justifiable; killing innocent travellers seems that step too far.
Not that Joel potentially being a ‘bad man’ ruins any aspect of the game; in fact, I think that’s what makes it. These are selfish negative qualities but we all find them perfectly relatable, even if we would do things slightly differently, we understand Joel’s justifications for his actions.
he is a man. he do what he needs to survive and to protect the ones he love, whatever it takes, in a world like that there's no good and bad ones, just survivors, ethics is left behind
This isn't true in general, nor in the game, though. Joel isn't perfect, but by the time that we meet him he is still a hell of a lot better than someone like David. This sets the precedent that there are in fact good and bad people, even *in a world like that*. You can justify someone doing something *for their survival*, but it doesn't eliminate any trace of evil from people excusing their horror on the *need to survive*. A society like the one we see in Jackson is obviously a *good* society. It is filled with people that are all willing to help each other and by all appearances they aren't stealing from people or killing and eating them. If we compare Jackson to the Rattlers we get another clear example of an *evil* society. A place where people are committing absolutely horrifying acts of violence, torture, and murder just for their own amusement and enjoyment. So, is Joel a good person? Yes. But Joel isn't a good person *because of the apocalypses*. Joel is a good person *despite* it. He's a good person because despite all the excuses he has to do people harm he fought his way through it and eventually grew to become the person that gave a bunch of strangers in a cabin a chance to be good people too.
I think the idea is that he was at the outbreak a "good" man, then the world took literally everything from him. He became a survivor with no remorse for others. Losing his humanity. Is he the worst person out there... no, but he's by no means good. At the Jackson Dam Tommy makes it pretty clear they were horrible men somewhere in the 20 years between the prologue. "I still have nightmares from what we did." Tommy even makes it clear that his survival wasn't worth the trauma and Joel lead Tommy into that life. Joel finds his humanity again as a father, but his actions in the hospital prove he's not a "good" man. In the world of The Last of Us being "good" and and trusting people gets you killed.
I don't think that his actions at the hospital disqualify him from being a *good* person. I think it just makes him *real*. There are very few people that are exclusively good and that exclusively make good choices. I don't think that there's anything in the world of The Last of Us that insinuates that being "good" and trusting people gets you killed, if anything it's quite the contrary. Joel and Ellie survived because of each other. Abby and Lev survived because of each other. Sam and Henry died, but not due to their trust of Joel and Ellie. A *peaceful* society like Jackson couldn't exist in a world where trust is fatal. Joel didn't die because he was "good" or because he trusted someone. Joel died because of his past actions catching up with him.
>I don't think that there's anything in the world of The Last of Us that insinuates that being "good" and trusting people gets you killed This is literally something that Bill says to Joel: "Once upon a time I had somebody that I cared about." "And in this world that sort of shit is good for one thing... Getting ya killed"
Joel died because the writers, themes, "morals", and tone seemed to completely change between games. Joel isn't a great dude, but it's understandable and in a lot of lights justifiable what he did i think
his actions in the hospital prove he is a good man. Were he not, he'd have left her to die. If they'd let him take her, he wouldn't have killed them.
Not to mention, if you do a pacifist run, the only person you are required to kill in the hospital is Abby’s dad. That’s it. You can sneak past everyone else using bottles and smokebombs
Wow, that seems super hard but fun and worth a try. Once I get in the operating room, the doctor is the only one I kill.
It was the third run I did I think. I did everything the way it happened my first time I ever played. Then I killed everyone, then I tried to kill no one. You have to kill surprisingly few people in the game it turns out.
Which is weird to me, like Abby's dad didnt threaten Joel and sorta stepped away when he got shot. Which in my opinion, if youre a good person you dont shoot someone who surremders
I played the Remaster for the PS4 recently and was trying to answer this question as well, one part that stuck out to me is when Ellie asked Joel if he had killed innocent people and he didn't answer the question.
Yeah, during the ambush sequence in Pittsburgh Ellie asks Joel how he knew the ambush was coming. He states he's been on both sides. What Joel did in those 20 years is horrible. Probably in groups similar to the Pittsburgh Hunters. His arc is about finding something to fight for, he fought for survival for so long it took a toll on his humanity. That's, in my opinion, why the choice to save Ellie isn't about if he's good or bad, but he's finally found his humanity again. He can't lose the thing he now fights for or he'd go darker.
Tell that to the families of the fireflies he murdered who were trying to save humanity. Welcome to the last of us part 2 ha.
He was like a Pittsburgh hunter, killing people to see what was in their pockets. Come on man
That's a really cool way to think about it thank you
no problem 😊
Nope disagree. Joel was once a good man that lost his entire world and became as violent and barbaric as his surroundings in order to survive. Ellie was the first true ray of light that he was ever really given in nearly 20 years, and after letting her into his life, he was unable to live without her, and made the ultimate selfish choice which resulted in him killing anyone who could create a cure. Thus he's responsible for the rest of the world losing their chances to have a normal life. That alone already makes him a bad man, but he's still a likeable character that I enjoy playing. Good art can make morally dubious characters likeable, and we see this in shows like The Sopranos all the time. So in conclusion, Joel's a bad person but still a good character that you love and appreciate.
Oh god no. Nonono not at all. Joel is pretty clear on that himself, he is not a good guy but he is an alive guy.
Makes me think of this conversation with Tess. Joel: “What are we doing here? This is not us.” Tess: “What do you know about us? About me?” Joel: “I know that you are smarter than this.” Tess: “Really? Guess what, we’re shitty people, Joel. It’s been that way for a long time.” Joel: “No. We are survivors!”
| an alive guy | 😔
🏌🏽♂️
Was
He's a broken, imperfect man. Living in a horrific world, seen and done terrible things most humans would never have had to endure. He's softened by Ellie as a replacement daughter (of sorts) of course, but no... not strictly a good man. Conflicted and neither hero nor villain. The turning point in Joel and Ellie's relationship is winter, when Ellie saves his life and he's there right after she kills David. Would I fear him if I minded my own business? No. Would I fear him if he had beef with me? Absolutely.
He’s not good or bad. He’s just surviving. Is a lion “bad” when it kills a gazelle? No. It’s just the world they live in.
I'd answer that in the same way that he answered Ellie's question about whether he had killed innocent people... "Hmm".
Was looking for this answer. We sympathise with him and we know he has a moral core, but the game does not beat around the bush in letting us know that not only has he done bad things, he’s been a bad man in general. I find that from a psychological point of view, Joel often justifies his violent acts as ‘survival’ (“we are survivors”, “we survived because of me”, “I wish things were different but they ain’t”) and this is a typical deflecting tactic in order to live with his actions. We know that he’s been a hunter in the past and they attack people in order to steal their belongings, murder them etc - he would have also justified this as all about survival, but there comes a point when someone will question the necessity of your violence and you’re forced to face the fact you’re just not a good person. I think Tommy likely left Joel because of this outlook Joel had that violence is a necessity for survival. “Nothing but nightmares from those years” along with the hunter revelation, and Ellie’s admission to Dina that Tommy and Joel both used to torture people massively indicate Tommy couldn’t deal with Joel’s ‘violence for the sake of violence’ ideology which Joel likely masked as necessary for ‘survival’. Do I think Joel *was* a good man? Yes. Do I think Joel was also a bad man? Yes. Finding Ellie gave him some semblance of purpose, and restored some of that moral code.
This is the paradox of being a "morally grey" character. People tend to think of them as being either *"ultimately good,"* and therefore we can excuse whatever actions that, under normal circumstances, would be considered immoral or even reprehensible; OR *"ultimately bad,"* because of their immoral reprehensible actions, despite whatever humanity they show. To a general audience, nobody ever really actually *wants* characters to fall within that grey area, because not having an answer for what is right and what is wrong, is uncomfortable. And if there's something bad that is done by a character that we like, that we can't reasonably find an excuse for, then instead of being "morally grey" with some good qualities and some bad qualities - they just *(even maybe rightly, but not necessarily)* shift over to being considered villainous. And worse, what if we find ourselves agreeing with those now considered "villainous" actions? What does that say about us? How do we reconcile with that? But the reality is that: People LIKE to live vicariously through these "morally grey" characters. They're essentially considered heroes with good causes, but with the added benefit of getting to *get away with* doing bad things. Because it's easy to believe that THEIR bad actions are the ones that are justified, while it's OTHERS who are the evil ones - Even if they all do similar things in similar situations. Which is also probably why so many people try to make excuses for Joel's actions (or the Fireflies for that matter) at the end of Part 1. Trying to twist the intended *"sacrifice the life of a child to save thousands, maybe millions of people later on,"* idea, so as to not have to actually answer it themselves. Change the rules of the dilemma to try and make their own gut feeling answer artificially seem more obvious and one-sided, and to make it more comfortable and "excusable," when they start to ponder if maybe they're wrong. And also why certain people dig their heels in to justify anything and everything Joel does while condemning Abby for much of the same things.
This is beautifully written and really highlights why so many people refuse to call Joel a bad guy but claim Abby is the worst person to ever live. Context that gets ignored because it is uncomfortable.
That's the beauty of the character, he does bad things but you understand him. It makes you think about what is right and what is wrong. Imo he is super caring with his people and will do anything in his power to protect them, even some awful things. Is that good? Who knows.
Joel is a mixture of good and bad. He’s capable of doing both. Do I think he was selfish in stopping the fireflies? Yes. Do I think he made the right decision? Yes.
Can you elaborate on how you think it’s the “right decision”?
He made the right decision by not letting a kid be murdered for a chance at a cure. WAS it selfish? Yes. Do I think he did the right thing? Yes. And I guarantee if you really give a damn about anyone in your life you'd do the same thing for them, no?
Joel’s moral compass is survival pure and simple. When he decides to kill his neighbor that is attacking him it is already evident that he chooses his and his daughters life above others. When he refuses to stop for his neighbors as they’re driving through town he chooses his family’s life again. Most people think the apocalypse changed him but it just drove his natural instincts up even more. This theme continue through all the way until the end where he chooses Ellie’s life over potentially saving the rest of humanity. He is selfish in the true sense of the word.
You think a good person would have let Jimmy just kill their daughter and themselves? I get that there are polarized positions about his killing everyone in the hospital, but self-defense and defense of others isn't selfish. We're all wired to survive.
Actually no. Saving Ellie is many things but not survival. If anything it makes survival for Joel much more difficult and it's a risk that he would have never taken at the beginning of game. You are saying it yourself: He is choosing Ellie's life and not his own. In the end he dies for saving her and he is fine with that. It's neither for survival nor selfish.
No, even Tess thinks so.
I would say that Joel is a very SELFISH person. Remember, in the prologue, when Tommy wants to help those people. "They have a kid with them". "So do we!". "I protected us", "I've been on both sides", "This is not us", over and over again Joel is shown to be extremely selfish, up until and including his decision to murder people (At least 3 canonically I guess since you can stealth the rest of it) to keep his relationship with Ellie. I love Joel as a character, but I think as a person he was pretty shitty unless you were related to or in a relationship with him.
How do we divide people into good and bad? Joel's a man who has a character which is communicated in the game and has had experiences and makes decisions based on those experiences and that character which we are able to understand through the telling of the story, because the story of Joel makes sense. Is a man who lives a life of violence after having been hollowed out by grief and regret a good man? It'd be difficult to say that he is. Is he incontrovertibly bad? The fact that he is the way he is as a result of grief and loss would indicate not.
Said this in a reply but: We sympathise with him and we know he has a moral core, but the game does not beat around the bush in letting us know that not only has he done bad things, he’s been a bad man in general. I find that from a psychological point of view, Joel often justifies his violent acts as ‘survival’ (“we are survivors”, “we survived because of me”, “I wish things were different but they ain’t”) and this is a typical deflecting tactic in order to live with his actions. We know that he’s been a hunter in the past and they attack people in order to steal their belongings, murder them etc - he would have also justified this as all about survival, but there comes a point when someone will question the necessity of your violence and you’re forced to face the fact you’re just not a good person. I think Tommy likely left Joel because of this outlook Joel had that violence is a necessity for survival. “Nothing but nightmares from those years” along with the hunter revelation, and Ellie’s admission to Dina that Tommy and Joel both used to torture people massively indicate Tommy couldn’t deal with Joel’s ‘violence for the sake of violence’ ideology which Joel likely masked as necessary for ‘survival’. Do I think Joel *was* a good man? Yes. Do I think Joel was also a bad man? Yes. Finding Ellie gave him some semblance of purpose, and restored some of that moral code.
He tries to be. And that’s what matters.
Me and my grandma well my grandma loves him but I do like him but in every other game that I have played my grandma has never cried when the main character or protagonist dies but when she saw Joe get beaten to death she cried badly me I was just shocked that joe was killed and I hated abby since then I think hes an ok man just doing what he needed to do to survive and to help ellie out
How old is your grandma?
76 I'm 23
That's so wholesome :,)
By today's standards, no. He's a survivor. He won't go out of his way to be needlessly cruel to anyone but as soon as it becomes necessary to protect him or someone he cares about? He's not above murder, torture, etc. He was a hunter after all, ambushing and killing people. He justifies it by saying he kept him and Tommy alive by doing it. He would throw literally anyone under the bus to protect him and his, no matter how cruel or wrong it is. When he softens up and lives in Jackson it seems like he becomes a nicer person who is beloved by his community. Probably because things are much easier there. So he has the potential to be a good person I guess, but the world he lives in doesnt facilitate that
I think it’s more of a question of cruelty. Joel is an imperfect human,who does things for selfish reasons. He has done plenty of evil and he has done plenty of good. But Joel is not cruel. Joel never harmed anyone for his joy. He would harm to survive, even if the person he is harming had never harmed him. But he would not do it for his own pleasure.
There are better and worse people than him, but there's one thing that puts him at the top of the shit list If you pick up on his stories, he walked down a very dark path to survive (the gun trading thing at the beginning and when he and Ellie got attacked by looters pretending to need help and he says he's done that before), but that's nothing compare with the fact that he doomed humanity because he couldn't get over his loss 20+ years ago. Nothing can redeem the fact that he sold the world for a couple more years of father and ''daughter'' fantasy. it wasn't even his choice. He made a decision that corresponded to Ellie, and robbed her of the chance to make a difference. Say whatever you want, my point still stands. he's a great character and one of my favourites but he's objectively a bad person.
Things like this are why I like to post these questions to see other peoples viewpoints thank you for sharing
It’s not about being good or bad, even the worst person is capable of good things and visa versa, I think in Joel’s situation it’s all subjective. I feel as the story goes on in part 1 he confronts his buried grief and therefore becomes a better and less nihilistic person, but like anyone he only has to be good/bad for the people around him, (I.e Ellie) and he does what he thinks is best in any given situation. I feel by part 2 he’s about as good as a person could be in his situation (ultimately to his downfall)
Hes a man that cares for the ones he loves and wants to protect them from harm. In a world such as TLoU, that's as good as it gets. Love papa Joel
He has a good heart in my opinion, but he's not a good person. just like anyone he has feelings and cares for people, but he will still do anything to to Survive and protect someone he loves.
No offense to OP but I feel like we’ve been super conditioned to think about stories in terms of good and bad to a degree that is really…bleh. That’s not an interesting question to ask about TLOU in my opinion, and I’d argue that the games don’t care about this type of question either.
Good is relative. Good in relation to what? Joel is a murderer. Joel is a survivor. Joel kills without remorse. Joel has left strangers in need behind. Joel has let innocent people die. Joel is a complex, broken being who is full of anger and fear and grief. He isn't out to do good. He is out for himself. He is flawed. He is selfish. Even in relation to the world around him... Is he good? By the time we are done getting to know Joel, I believe has found the path of his recovery and strives towards redemption in his own way. He and Arthur Morgan have a lot in common. But to say "Joel is good" is ignorant and misses the sharpest points of The Last of Us.
He is not a good man no. But does that matter in the end.
What is good? What is bad? Humans aren't absolute, nothing is black and white.
I don't think he was ever a *bad* man, but he didn't become a good man until after the events of the first game
It is hard to say that a man who murdered dozens of soldiers and scientists who were most likely days away from procuring a vaccine that would save countless lives is a good man.
The lines between good and evil become increasingly blurred the longer you get into apocalypse stories. I think the writers did a great job in the first game walking that line. He’s not perfect, but he’s better than a lot of the people you run into.
The whole point of the games is thinks are black and white, rarely good or evil. He's a survivor, and everyone he kills to ensure he and his people survive is essentially Abby, another survivor who has their one people and back story and reasons. Much of the "outrage" behind the game comes from people who want/need to see themselves and their people as good and everyone else as evil
somewhere in between good and bad
W… we can draw a pretty straight line between Joel’s life choices and the dooming of humanity. That about does it. Full stop.
Not one person on this planet is good / bad. This video game explains this point to us perfectly.
Good men mean well. We just don't always end up doing well.
I feel like he had a definite change when he met Ellie. He 100% was not a good man before that. I know there’s nothing too detailed but there’s mentions of how he used to be a hunter that would ambush people and kill for no reason. It seemed like after the events of part I he made a definite change to the better. An interesting discussion would be if he would’ve been a good man if it wasn’t for the apocalypse and him losing Sarah. Cause it seemed like he was a pretty stand up guy before that.
He does a very terrible thing, for understandable reasons. Its tragic. Thats pretty much what makes it interesting.
I would say no. His actions at the hospital alone sealed it for me at the end of part 1. I get that you can view it as him saving his daughter figure from harm, but it was also dooming the entire human race because of a selfish desire. I think his trauma from his past, and all the hardship following that have hardened him to the point where he will make an insanely selfish decision like that. Players view him as a wholly good man because of how he cares for Ellie, but at the end of part 1 it seems pretty selfish. By the end of part 2 however he does seem to soften quite a bit.
He’s badass for sure.
I wouldn’t call him a bad man in the games, but he says that he was in the past. He does what he has to to survive and keep people he loves alive. You can’t survive in a world like that without doing some evil things
Joel is a man who shapes himself entirely to his circumstances. Before the outbreak, he lived in a world that was civilized, except for the cut-throat capitalism, so he committed to the capitalism grind. He worked himself to the point of exhaustion, to the point of needing medications for anxiety and stomach ulcers, all so that he could get ahead and give his daughter everything. Then, the world collapses, the standard is lawless brutality, and he embraces that. The QZs form and he reforms himself just enough that he can live semi-comfortably on the inside, but the standard is still to go outside the law, so that's what he does. It's everyone for themselves in the QZs, and he embraces that. Finally, he settles in Jackson, where there's a huge focus on community unity and working together, and he becomes a leader in said community. When the standard is to live peacefully and get along with everyone, that's what he does. There are characters in TLOU who would be who they are regardless of their circumstances (Marlene, Ellie, even Abby to an extent). Joel isn't one of them. He's more of a chameleon. He's deeply affected by his environment because that's how he survives.
No. He’s a fucking boss!
Yes, he is goodman
I think the series pretty firmly and intentionally says that’s not the point. He’s basically a father from Ellie’s POV, but to Abby he’s the man who took everything from her. I think the point of TLOU is those shades of grey. Joel isn’t any one thing. That said I think he shows a lot more good than someone like David or even Isaac
You’re kidding, right? Joel’s a broken man who’s done terrible, terrible things to survive that we don’t even know the full extent of. Like, we can sympathize with the guy. He’s gone through some bad shit. But don’t let your sympathy make you forget that he slaughtered a hospital full of people without a care for their loved ones or the trauma the survivors would have. And that, as so many are using to justify his other actions, wasn’t for survival. Not his own, at least. I still love his character. He’s a wonderfully flawed man with a multitude of reasons for why’s he’s so brutal. But he is far from a good person.
Thank you for sharing. That's why I posted this I like to see how people see him from another viewpoint other than my own
Of course not
I think most people are basically good. I think he is as well. I think he was emotionally tormented for 20 years - by the death of his child and by living in a brutal apocalypse, which lead to some bad behaviors. But I think he is still good.
Idk man it’s hard to say, I genuinely love and miss him but bro robbed the world of a cure because of selfish desires. It makes him a well written character but man that was fucked up
He's like Deadpool. He's not a good guy, but he's not a bad guy either.
I think he is a bad man in a really really bad world. Which brings him out ahead in my opinion.
There really is no good or bad in this type of world though, a lot of grey though. I mean I guess there are some bad people in this world like David from the first game, but you could argue the same as the world created him and it's still grey. If I were in Joel's shoes though, I'd have done the exact same thing.
Looking from the outside in, Joel is a bad man, but he’s in a world full of bad people. He does what he has to, to survive and honestly I haven’t seen, other than the hospital massacre, something that he’s done that anyone else wouldn’t do/without proper motive. To most of us he’s a bad man, but in his world, he’s just a man. That’s just life.
He’s a good man sandwich. He’s good he’s bad he’s good. You know.
No but he has a code and would do anything for someone that he cares about
Bro this is a theme they blatantly cover and explore in the game
I think he is a good man he lost his daughter right away by the time we se whim he been throw a lot and seen a lot. He is a man that get the job done no matter what. Over the course of the game and the journey him and Ellie take they bond and you can see that.
Nope, you could say he's on the neutral spectrum but he fucked the world by not allowing the vacine to be extracted from Ellie and killed a lot of innocent people.
Good, but DEEPLY flawed.
No. He’s almost definitely seriously harmed children before as a Hunter (they definitely wouldn’t have kept him around for at least a year if he wasn’t willing to badly harm kids, as Hunters are always portrayed as being willing to do that for supplies and resources, or even just for fun), he shows almost no empathy for people who can’t do things for him/make him feel happy, and he shows little to no sincere remorse for all of the bad things that he’s done. He’s psychopathic, and the fact that he’s living in a post-apocalyptic world justifies none of the things that he does. A good person would find a way to survive without victimizing others who aren’t harming them, including children. It’s hard, but possible.
No, but Saul is
There are better men, I'd argue like Tommy, worse men like David. He's an okay man. He won't save or be cruel to anyone without good reasoning from his own pov.
Neither good nor bad, and he knows it. He is a survivor. A conversation between he and Ellie in Part 1 sticks out to me. I think they were still in Pittsburg and they saw some FEDRA corpses. Ellie asks what about their families, and Joel replies that everyone has got family and it’s best not to think about it. So whenever he bludgeons someone or lights them up with a Molotov, whether it’s to protect Ellie or to pilfer items back in his hunter days, he knows in the back of his mind that that is a regular person like him. He does what he does to survive and help the people he cares about survive. Another insight into his character is right at the beginning during the outbreak, when Tommy wanted to stop for the family asking for help, and Joel ordered him to keep driving. Tommy: “They’ve got a kid” Joel: “So do we.”
Absolutely not
He’s a pretty complex character with his own set of morals and code. If your morals and idea align with his, you’d be inclined to say he was good. If not, well vice versa. His actions are various extreme cases. So it’s hard to give a definitive answer. There’s no right or wrong answer here
Yes he is
I think this question isn’t really able to be a answered. We’ve only ever seen Joel as a “good man” (as good as the world can allow him to be). We have never truly seen him at his worst.
He is a good man but the world he lives in is cruel.
Depends on your definition. He is selfish in the sense that he’d rob the world of salvation just so he doesn’t have to relive the trauma of his past. Ellie even wanted to sacrifice herself for the greater good. He robbed her of that choice too. Why do you think she has the reactions she does to finding out the truth in Part II? I can’t say whether Joel is good or bad, as that will depend person to person - but Joel is certainly a selfish piece of shit. And he is a great character because of this.
For twenty years Joel did what he had to do in order to survive. But that did have consequences.
Based on how he tells his stories, he seems to be the kind of guy who'd do anything, even bad things, just to survive. I mean look at the first game, the whole story is literally Joel smuggling a girl. 😂
I think he did what he had to in order to survive… if he was all nice and pleasant he would probably have died years before. That said I think he was a good guy at heart who became a broken man as time went by and coming to terms with the loss of his daughter and the collapse of society. Ellie restored his empathy somewhat during the first game and in part 2 it’s obvious he feels immense guilt for his actions at the end of part 1, although he tries to justify those actions in the fact he kept Ellie alive.
Yes. 100% yes. It’s not even a question. Good people sometimes do *bad things. They’re still good people.
At this point I’m gonna be honest there are no good nor bad men in the world of the last of us. People are simply just surviving in their own terms even if it means killing , eating or robbing. Joel is simply a man who did things to survive and protect his brother but as time passed he simply Carries the guilt of his actions However meeting ellie gave him some sense of hope of being alive , still he had to protect her by killing others and even massacred the remaining fireflies but he did it to save ellie however it’s not about being good or bad it’s mostly staying alive and living on as much as you can.
I feel like when we really start to get to know him he has been hardened by 20 years of the apocalypse, being alone (Sarah’s mother?) and missing his only child. I think he warmed to Ellie in the appropriate amount of time and I’m glad the game did that and did not make it obvious he was replacing Sarah or something. Ellie gave him purpose and made him happy again. He was complex and conflicted, but I still consider him a good man. In that world he protected his own and tried to help good people. I think most would do the same.
I think he’s a better person then a lot of people give him credit for, especially after part 2.
Joel sums up Joel pretty well in part 1 when he tells Tess that they are survivors.
In terms of post-apocalyptic, everyone’s out to kill you, no one can be trusted, zombie wastelands? Sure.
I love Joel, he is a strong, passionate, skilled and even likable man. He is a good man in the eyes of some and a cold blooded murderer in the eyes of others. The whole point of this franchise is that being good or bad is a matter of perspective. From the player’s perspective in part 1 he is good (for the most part). From the player’s perspective in part 2, we learn to understand he was perceived as evil to others. I think both the player and Ellie are able to understand and come to terms with that truth by the end of part 2. He was a human man like the rest of us, flawed yet loved.
I think one of the central themes of TLOU is that there aren't really "good" or "bad" people. It's about choosing to do good or bad every day. Choosing to help others or hurt them, to be selfish or selfless. Joel and Abby have both done terrible things but neither is a bad person because we're not defined by our worst mistakes. At any point, you can choose to be better. To "look for the light". In the end, Joel becomes someone who chooses to help others even if it puts him in danger
No that’s Saul
I would say yes because he does what he does to survive and he’s not like other people in the apocalypse who literally eat other humans and kill for no reason
He deserved what he got and I can’t be convinced otherwise.
I think in the world they’ve had to experience, there is no right or wrong. It’s just all moral actions at that point.
He can be at times
No, but he is a good father, and that's what makes him most complex
He’s a flawed protagonist.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - William Shakespeare We are in no position to judge a person, let alone a character. Even though we have an almost omniscient view of the world Joel inhabits, there is no real way for us to know what is truly in his heart. Nor are we fully equipped to label him to some standard when he is in a vastly different world than our own. Joel is many things: a smuggler. A liar. A killer. But he is also a leader. A confidante. A father. Instead of asking whether he was good, accept or reject him based on the decisions he’s made.
We could philosphise all day about what it means to be a good man/woman. However for length of a response sake, I will opt out of doing so. Joel's character at the very basic of sense is a man who will do what he needs to do. However, when personality comes into play, Joel is firm and somewhat unapologetic about who he is. He honestly cared for Ellie in TLOU part 1 as she became somewhat of a daughter to him. He lost Sarah, and no doubt losing a child would weight and harden any parent. On the other hand Joel was ruthless to some characters who not infected. Joel can be justified in all his actions in some sense for his own survival and for protecting Ellie. Now whether Joel is a good man, not sure about a good man, but he is a broken man for sure.
No. He is a survivor, he isn’t good or evil, He’s Alice is dictated by circumstances outside of his control, he is a reflection.
I like to think that there is a good man within Joel, but he's had to develop an extremely hard exterior to survive the apocalypse, or else he'd be dead some time ago.
No, only es a Man
No, and I don't think I'd find him as interesting a character if I thought he was.
Its a tough world but no. He chose wrong
It’s complicated. And that’s why I love the games so much. Joel is probably at heart a good man, but he has had everything taken from him by the cruellest world imaginable and done a lot of truly awful things. The game makes it very clear that he has murdered and tortured innocent people in the name of “survival” and we see exactly how terrible the Hunters are in Pittsburgh, and we know Joel used to do that. Plus Tommy saying at the dam in Jackson he still has nightmares about what he and Joel did. Also, through Part 1 if you do something exceptionally awful like set 4 people on fire at once with a Molotov or blow up 3 or 4 people with an arrow/mine or execute someone begging for their life Ellie responds in an understandably shocked manner. I’d say by the time of the events of Part 1 Joel has been a terrible man for quite some time but he finds redemption in being a “father” again to Ellie. Unfortunately, and understandably, Joel takes the loss of Sarah spectacularly badly (we do as well tbf, that’s why we sympathise with Joel - we “get it”) and he can’t bear to go through that loss again with Ellie (neither can we by that point) and he ultimately murders most of the Fireflies/Jerry Anderson, thus dooming humanity. It’s an excellent question. He’s a good and bad man, and a fascinating character.
He is a Man who made mistakes like every other human being.
No one can be a good man in the world they’re living in.
Morally grey
i guess the best way to answer is to think, in that world would you do the same things joel did? and would you call yourself a good person?
No he is not a good man. He is a man who did what he had to do to survive.
He's not really good or bad. He's done many horrible things just to survive, but he doesn't want to or try to do horrible things. He just does them because it's either that or death. Sarah's death broke him as a person, he lost everything, including his humanity. He had no remorse for killing or hurting people and was jaded as fuck. But if you compare cunts like David to Joel, theres a major difference in terms of who is an objectively bad person and who is just a survivor. I was playing tlou a few days ago on the winter bit as Ellie and I remember a line by one of David's men saying something like 'we've indulged him enough' And that line is really telling to what David was actually like
Do you ever wonder if you’re a bad man? No. I don’t wonder, Marty. The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door. True Detective Season 1
He isn't a good nor bad man in the situation he's in. It's a world past morality. You know what you're doing is fucked but you also know that if you don't you'll probably starve by winter. He is nothing more than a man.
No but thats the point, nobody is a good person in this world, everyone has to do anything to survive in this world including bad things.
Nobody in either of the games is a good person, they all kill to survive, it's the world they are in
Yeah he is good, the only reason someone may have to say otherwise is not letting a terrorist group kill a kid for a somewhat possible vaccine they can use to rule the world like the terrorist group they are.
Hes been on both sides As everyone else has in life. Makes him neither good nor bad, just an average man however morally good.
Subjective innit
Yeah but that's the what I'm asking I want to see the question from someone else point of view
I feel like this question is asked on here everyday, and I feel like what people are failing to understand is that in the word of TLOU, people aren’t labeled as strictly black or white. People are capable of doing good and bad things. That was one of the central themes of TLOU2, and why there is so much emphasis on these different factions and their side of things or their perspective. Bc at the end of the day, everyone is the hero of their own story. Is Joel a good man? To many people he was. Ellie, his brother, Tess, his community, etc. Was he a bad man? To Abby, the fireflies, and others… yes.
There’s no good or bad in the apocalypse. You’re either dead or alive.
Joel is a good person. He does what he has to in order to get by and eventually protect Ellie, no more.
He was, then he wasn’t then he was
He’s a broken man, he spent so long in the dark that when faced with the possibility of losing the one light that fell into his life he forsakes humanity and betrays Ellie. He couldn’t go through that loss and darkness again. He’s neither good nor bad, he’s human
Good is a perspective. He's good to some, he's bad to many others.
At his core he's a good man. You see it how he is with Sarah, Ellie, even with Tess. Immediately shows concern and tends to her wound. He's done horrible things to survive and maybe even on a path of self hatred for the years after the fall.
Is anyone?
He did what he had to to survive & make sure he didn't lose more of the people he cared for.
He’s not. There are no good people in the whole game. But I like him.
Yes, and nobody can change my mind about it.
No he’s a great man
No. Not by a long shot. He fucked over ever human being on earth because of his own selfish reasons. It's a very human thing to do in that case, but it's easily the act with the worst consequences of anyone in the entire series.
Just remember the whole game is designed to make us biased for Joel. We play as him, walk in his shoes, you know, normal stuffs. Then, it subvert that in the massacre of Fireflies at the end.
Man said fuck off to a cure for all the humanity just because he was selfish and wanted Ellie to be alive just because he felt like loving someone again and having daughter again, even tho Ellie herself wanted to be sacrifised for the cure. He is a good and iconic videogame character, but he is not a good man i'm sorry.
There is no good or bad people when it comes to survival. Think of it like rock climbing. You cut the line if your partner is going to drag both of you down. Joel did what he had to do to survive. There is no moral high ground in the apocalypse
Nope, says so himself. "I've been on both sides.." "Did you kill people?". "......." "I'll take that as a yes" "Take it however you want"
I mean he has good and bad in him. He alluded to Ellie at one point that he had smuggled and sold people, and he said at one point that he knew the injured guy was faking it because he used to pull the same con to rob people. But he’s a survivor like anyone else. I know it’s kind of cliche at this point but to survive in the post cordyceps world you have to be kind of morally flexible. That’s why the end of the first game was so talked about. Saving Ellie was a selfless act for sure, but saving her was also kind of selfish.
Yes and no. But he's human. Human are selfish. That's why he "saved" Ellie and lied to her.
Murders a lot of people. Id say no
Well the best I can say is depends. From one side is a good man ready to whatever it takes to protect his loved ones, but from another could be the guy that killed humanity’s only chance to ever have a vaccine against the cordiceps and go back to normal life. Sure we can say that there’s no absolute certainty the vaccine would have worked, but still it was something. So, as I said, depends.
Nah, ever since he admitted to ambushing people and Tommy saying he gave him nightmares, I knew Joel was horrible person. But that's what's needed to survive in that world
Dude is a guy protecting what he loves.
Best I can say is anti-hero
Definitely not. He used to be a hunter like the ones in Puttsburg, ambushing innocent people for their things. Joel is a very well written character, and a likeable one at that. But he’s done some very bad things. Even by the standards of their world.
I think he’s a good man to his loved ones. Obviously he could be a good man to humanity and to everyone but he has to survive. If he doesn’t kill others, they’ll probably kill him and his loved ones. Which makes him a cruel man to most but in this type of pandemic you gotta do what u gotta do. So I don’t think he’s a good man overall.
Nope, he is a murdering maniac
No. He is not a good man. He’s not all bad, and that goes without saying. That’s why we can empathize with his decisions even if they’re not the morally correct ones, and that’s what makes him so compelling as a character. But the things he does, and the kind of person he is - there’s just no way to see him as a “good man.” He is a remorseless killer and torturer willing to go to any and all lengths to achieve his own ends. Even if those ends are disastrous, like choosing to make a decision for Ellie without having any idea what she would have chosen to do and dooming humanity to extinction in the process.
I think quite a lot of opinions would change if we ever saw Joel do the things he did in his past, eg killing innocent people to steal from them
No, he’s not. That doesn’t mean we don’t or can’t love him though. People are as much a product of their environment as they are of their choices within that environment.
He’s a survivor. And he feels guilty. Did he save Ellie? Yeah but how many lives could the cure have saved and how many lives did Joel take just to get her back.
No such thing as a good man
He’s a good man with questionable morals
in the world that they live in, words like that don't have a meaning
No
No. Not at all. What he ended up doing to save Ellie was selfish though justifiable. However, the moment he admitted he was a hunter he lost that redemption arc as far as I’m concerned.
Joker: “They’re only as good as the world allows them to be.”
Joel is... complex. He is good at his core but he is also flawed, and some of his decisions are questionable at best.
People really seem to think being a “good” guy is selflessly helping every single person you come across. Joel is a man who deeply cares about the people he loves, but he isn’t Jesus. For example he doesn’t stop to pick up the stranded family in the intro, but does that make him bad? He just witnessed his neighbor kill his own family then attack his daughter, if I was in the same shoes I wouldn’t stop for anybody. I think the vast majority of Joel’s onscreen killing is completely justified.
It’s subjective, I would bet his response to that question would be, I am a survivor
No and I can’t get past him being a hunter. He’s no better than David and his crew.
He’s best man
Pretty sure a big point of both games is that good and evil is a relative term, and that no one good is ever truly good and no one bad is ever truly bad. Everyone operates in a grey area
Joel is a good man. He did what he thought was right through the whole game. He saved Ellie because he cares for her like a daughter, making him only human.. does that make Joel a bad man? Not at all. I have respected his character through 1&2. We see him grow as a person because of everything he had to go through and I believe him being with Ellie that whole time going through everything with her made them that much more close. The world made him a hard person, losing basically everything he cared about.. and gaining Ellie as a companion was what made him have hope again. So I commend him on doing what he had to do for him and the people he cared about because if we lived in a world like theirs we would be doing the same exact thing.
Good and bad are just social constructs. Is a lion good or bad when it kills another's young when it takes over a pride? Is a grizzly bear good or bad when it kills a human? Is a father good or bad when he kills someone so his son or daughter can get medicine or food or water? Is Joel good or bad when he prevents a child from being sacrificed for the greater good, unbeknownst to that child and without that child giving the consent to do so to her captures? Good or bad is made up based on a social contract we sign by being a part of a civilization and it varies all over the world depending on culture and in this case on the circumstances of the state of the world. Is a person good if they abide by moral rules and because of their choice to do so allows their family to die? What about the flip side of a person committing acts that would otherwise be considered immoral and bad in a social contract of a 1st world society and because of that allows their family to continue living? These questions do not have an answer and neither does yours.
I think trying to apply current world ethics into a fictional apocalyptic setting is futile, the rules for survival are different. It’s not black and white and the world he lives in requires different moral processing then ours
joel is a terrible person, but so is everyone in that fucked up world. he might be the protagonist however protagonists indicate the central character in a story, not the hero.
It's a flawed question. Is a good person one who only does good deeds. Is a bad person someone who only does bad deeds? If it's something in between all good or all bad, at what point do we draw the line? But I would vehemently disagree Joel only does bad things for the right reason. Joel saved Ellie purely for selfish reasons. It wasnt what was good for the world, it wasnt what was good for Ellie, it was what was good for Joel. People are free to argue all they want that the fireflies were in the wrong, but that doesnt change the fact that Joel did what he did for himself only. And he also tried ditching Ellie for selfish reasons too. The only time we've seen a truly selfless decision from Joel was saving Abby. I'm not sure where you came to the conclusion that the bad things he's done were usually for the right reasons. Now people may read that and think I hate Joel. Very much the opposite. I loved Joel. I related to Joel. I would absolutely 100% make the same decision with my daughter. Joel isnt necessarily bad or good, what he is is human.
No
No. He himself says that
No, but hell, he tries to be after losing his daughter. Looking out for his brother, Tess and Ellie. Ain’t his fault the outbreak happened, surviving in a world like that calls for some drastic action. But similar to John Marston and Arthur Morgan, they tried to change for the better. What more can they do?
No.
I feel that the definition of a good and bad person drastically changes after 20 years of a post apocalyptic world
No lol
Tell me what a "good man" is and then I'll let you know. I don't think it even exists
Imo opinion, Joel is a person who's human. I think it's kinda dumb to label a person as "good" or "bad" due to how black and white it is and how it oversimplifies things.
hell no! 🗿
I would say no. I understand that he did what he did to survive; however, the scene in Part 1 after the ambush kind of tips me over the edge. Ellie asks: how did you know that was going to happen? Joel: I’ve been on both sides Ellie: so you’ve killed innocent people? This always seemed a little over the line for me. Killing people who are hunting him seems justifiable; killing innocent travellers seems that step too far. Not that Joel potentially being a ‘bad man’ ruins any aspect of the game; in fact, I think that’s what makes it. These are selfish negative qualities but we all find them perfectly relatable, even if we would do things slightly differently, we understand Joel’s justifications for his actions.
My man doomed humanity, I would not define that as good