Very different games but very similar bittersweet endings, which I both love very much.
In Prince of Persia (spoilers obviously), the Prince revives Elika by setting big bad god of darkness Ahriman loose again after spending the whole game trapping him, basically dooming the land because he couldn’t live without Elika.
In the Last of Us, Joel spends the whole game getting Ellie to the fireflies only to break her out and take away humanity’s only hope for a future, because he couldn’t live without Ellie (even the names are similar actually).
Both main characters had the realization last minute that the person they had grown to love over the course of the events of the game had to sacrifice themselves in order to (possibly) save the world.
Both characters decide they can’t live without their companion so start fucking up everything they worked so hard for. It’s love and it’s selfishness, it’s heroic and it’s tragic, but what makes these twists so good above all is because their choices are completely understandable.
Both games also make you act out the choice yourself as the player, which only adds to the power of it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never played TLoU part 2, but I didn’t feel there was much indication in Part 1 that the fireflies didn’t know what they were doing, nor that they did for that matter. It was left pretty much open as far as I remember. Did part 2 made it more clear then that the fireflies didn’t have a proper plan?
Part 1 itself makes it clear.
There are various audio logs and other collectible notes which indicate the organization as a whole is falling apart. Hell, one of them is technically unmissable: The researcher at the university which gets bitten by his test monkeys basically admits they don’t have any real resources or reach to do any proper testing.
Plus, if the Fireflies can’t get one single girl safely across the USA one way, they’re not going to be able to get the vaccine anywhere even if they somehow make one.
Fair enough, I don’t remember those details, it has been 7 years or so since I played the game. The netflix show has probably also warped my memories.