An interesting theory here to suggest that at least one level in the game is set in Seattle. So, is TLoU part II going to be the west coast expedition that I've wanted for a while? I'd love to see Ellie standing in the viewing gallery at the top the ruin of the Space Needle and murmuring to Joel: "There's another view that you can't deny!"

► Ellie is hunting down the Fireflies because either (a) they tried to seize control of Jackson or (b) threatened to destroy the town if she was not handed over to them;

Surely you jest! Ellie's seething anger is NOT because someone overran the town, and it's DEFINITELYnot because someone threatened to.

She is driven by hate, the mindless, evil kind. Even  killing Joel could not cause that terminal hate in Ellie.  The ONLY thing that could elicit that response would be if she became one with someone else (a girl), they were very very happy, and someone killed her other half—expecially if they tortured her to death in front of her just to make Ellie feel horrible.

THAT would motivate this kind of overwhelming, seething, singular hate.

►  Joel trying to reach her to get her to back off her vendetta

Look carefully. There is actually no indication that he's trying to make her back off her vendetta.  He just asks, "Are you sure you want to do this, Kiddo?"  He just would rather not see Ellie killed too, which is what I'm sure he thinks will happen. (And it damn well better not!)

Joel saw how much she loved her murdered GF, and he knows how fireflies killing her GF tore out her soul just like Joel's when Sarah died—only more so because it would be specifically the GF they kill, not just "everyone outside the military perimiter." 

He knows her revenge is legitimate.

And so will we. That's why we will enjoy being her when she finds more fireflies and kills them all in a murderous rage.

@Luxi,

Joel asked Ellie: "Are you sure you want to do this?" That certainly sounds like someone trying to get someone else to back off to me.

As for the "revenge for a murdered girlfriend" idea? Goodness, I hope not. That's so cliche and overused!

>"Are you sure you want to do this?" That certainly sounds like someone trying to get someone else to back off to me.

Well if so, it's an exceedingly mild way to do it. He's talking about Ellie kicking down doors and murdering dozens of people until she is certainly killed herself—probably sooner than later. If he was actually trying to talk her out of it, he'd be WAY more emphatic.

> "revenge for a murdered girlfriend" idea? Goodness, I hope not. That's so cliche and overused!

Not if Naughty Dog uses it. It would be the only thing powerful enough to make Ellie hate like that. And are you suggesting the alternative—equally cliché—that someone's best friend is killed and they get revenge?

Can you see playing 2: Joel is killed, and you spend the whole game finding and shooting  everyone in the group that did it? That's what would be lame, and it would not have the visceral emotional impact on your soul that Part 1 had. (Well, at least it had that effect on me).

In his playstation interview, Neil said they had to think for a long, long time to create a story worthy of Part 1. Joel dying early in the game and we spend the rest of it killing  people, that ain't it. 

If it was, Part 2 would  not only be unworthy of TLOU, it would be a crappy video game from 20 years ago with no suprises, no emotional import, nothing but shooting everyone you see, and it would be universally panned as extremely disappointing.

Plus, it's so drearily predictable, and Naughty Dog knows that everyone expects it. They even made a trailer that transparently says to expect it, with Ellie vowing to kill everyone and Joel walking out of the mist like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter. And not showing us his face?  If revenge for Joel is what happens in part 2, then the trailer was WAAY too obvious for Naughty Dog to make.

I'm sorry, that plot story jes' don't feed the bulldog.

Finally, if they did kill Joel:

a) It would also kill any further sequels, period.

b) If Joel dies we riot. That is, if he's killed—no matter what the reason— everyone will hate Lazy Dog.

They're misdirecting us so we won't expect something that truly kicks us in the head (or the balls. Guys and girls take their instructions from different parts of the body).

1) Yes, it's mild because Joel knows Ellie. Shouting at her or attempting to browbeat her into realising she's going down the wrong path would just make her dig in her heels and do it anyway. Joel knows his Baby Girl (Mk2) well enough to know how best to reach her is to do so gently over time. Besides, he isn't going to shed too many tears over a bunch of Fireflies and/or Hunters if it means getting Ellie back in one piece.

2) I don't think that it is going to be revenge for anyone but Ellie and her naive childhood dreams of the Fireflies being the white knights who were going to heal the world. For taking away her hope and her reason for being, she's going to kill them. The most vicious form of hate being the selfish hate created from broken hopes and illusions.

WOW, see, that's the kind of insight I come here for.

But—and correct me if I'm wrong—you think that Ellie will be overcome with seething, murderous hate, to "find and kill every last one of them" because they couldn't figure out how to find a cure?

Being the cure was not her childhood dream; she only knew about it for two weeks plus  the time she was with Joel. And even then, she was just going along with it ("Hey fuck you man, I didn't ask for any of this!")

Do you think that she'll turn to hate and mass-murder when nothing in particular happened to trigger it (like her GF or Joel being killed)?

Remember, we don't know which is true, but either:

1) Ellie believed Joel, in which case the Fireflies were nobel and tried their best but they just couldn't invent a cure for people turning into fungus monsters, or

2) Ellie knows the truth. But in that case, why would she blame the fireflies when Joel is the one who shot the doctor and prevented her from saving the world?

I think her sudden flipping from good to evil must be due to something very, very bad happening to tear her soul from her heart. And in the game, the only possible things THAT bad would be if they killed Joel or they killed her GF.

There's a third possibility, which is that Ellie knows Joel is lying, but doesn't know what exactly he or the Fireflies did. For all we know she might think Marlene is still alive. Marlene was her mum's close friend, after all.

Ellie's fury in the trailer indicates that she lost someone or some things close to her. Why would you go on a murder rampage at some merely threatening harm? Ellie is a survivor, not a terminator. Given her actions with Joel in TLoU 1 they'd probably flee and seek allies, not go on pre-emptive rampages.

I really don't like the "Joel is dead" theory, because the whole someone who follows you around but is *plot twist* revealed to be inside your head has been done to death and Druckmann specifically said they weren't making a TLoU 2 if there wasn't a story worth telling (so they'd hopefully be avoiding clichéd tropes?). The other possibility will be the loss of a person at the dam, or people at the dam, or maybe even everyone at the dam. 

I'm not sure the Fireflies will be the main villains in the game. For all we know the graffiti on the sign could be decades old, and the people she killed could just be hunters or cannibals or other survivors.

Joel MUST be alive because he was carrying a handgun. Ghosts can't carry guns and shoot people¹.  If they could, then they'd just be invisible live people. And in this case, Joel wasn't even invisible.

______

¹Well, except in High Plains Drifter.  And, arguably, Tom Riddle in the 2nd Harry Potter book.

► There's a third possibility, which is that Ellie knows Joel is lying, but doesn't know what exactly he or the Fireflies did.

Woh!

Not only "Yup, that's a third possibility", but "Yup, I'm pretty sure that's what happened." Thanx, Brainw.  And it provides a broader context to understand stuff in the trailer. Other possibilities put distressingly restrictive constraints on Ellie's overwhelming hate-motivation in 2.

But we still don't know what that motivation is.

►  For all we know she might think Marlene is still alive.

Ellie HAS to think Marlene is alive. See below.

►  Marlene was her mum's close friend, after all.

Yes, and her protector. But Marlene's death cannot be her motivation, for all kinda reasons:

• It's too weak to engender that kind of hate. In her whole life, she only saw Marlene intermittently. Frankly, I don't even think Joel's murder would do it—not that obsessive, evil, murder-everyone hate.  The last time I saw that kind of mindless, genocidal revenge killing was when the sand people killed Annikin's mother.

• A vendetta to avenge Marline—a peripherial character— would not be enough to drive a whole game for us fans. She doesn't have our emotional investiment like Ellie and Joel. Marlene tried to kill Ellie, and then kill Joel when he tried to stop her. Frankly, I was glad to see her die.  It would definitely not be a wortthy successor to part 1.

• If Ellie is avenging Marlene, who is she vowing to exterminate?

• I hate to sound like an AI inference engine, but if Ellie is on a revenge rampage to avenge Marlene, then she must know Marlene is dead. But she cannot know that because it is implausable for her to find out she's dead without also finding out that Joel killed her. However, if she knows Joel killed Marlene, Ellie has no reason for an avenging revenging rampage.

► I'm not sure the Fireflies will be the main villains in the game.

"Woh!" again. That hadn't occurred to me, and it would be a reeealy good misdirection by Naughty Dog. They imply it's a firefly house, we waste 18 months and 10,000 fan-years trying to figure out why she's in it, and then they hit us with something we totally don't expect.

Yeah, that sounds about right!

Plus, the way Naughty Dog fucks with our sense of right and wrong, Ellie herself may be the villian in part 2.

► the people she killed could just be hunters or cannibals or other survivors.

Yes. But we're already intimately familiar with the fireflies. I can't see how introducing a new David-like "gang" would do anything but dilute the story. On the other hand, Marlene was Queen of the Fireflies and Riley was one. I can't see her vowing to kill them all.

I'm usually good at seeing what willl happen because most TV and movies are made for stupid people. But with this trailer, Naughty Dog sure 'nuff managed to come up with a real  motherfuckah.

✍Lux  

In Dead Space, imaginary characters are seen and can even kill the player, only for it to be revealed later that it was caused from the player's own agency. In Spec Ops: The Line, you can kill and shoot imaginary soldiers and imaginary soldiers can kill and shoot you for the point of selling the big plot twist at the end. Joel (or his ghost) carrying a gun doesn't signify that he must be alive. He doesn't kill anyone in the trailer. For all we know he could be carrying a gun to sell the illusion (though, again, I really hope that he's alive).

Maybe Joel lied to Ellie and said that by the time he reached the hospital Marlene had been killed by Fireflies or clickers. It's a dangerous world. In such a scenario Ellie could both think of Marlene as dead AND not want to go on a revenge rampage. All I'm saying is that given the very limited info we're given from the trailer and other sources so far, there's very little we can concretely say MUST be true. 

If you look at the structure of TLoU 1, there were hardly any main villains. There were infected, cannibals, hunters, the government, and fireflies, but none are purely antagonistic and you can unnderstand (if not necessarily condone) their motivations. TLoU was first and foremost a story about the relationships between Joel and Ellie. TLoU 2 might follow that; the revenge thing might just be a red herring to throw us off.