The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020) Review
A game that hurts, but not for the intended reasons.
There are times when I don’t want a game to end, the prime example being when I cried like a baby when I finished Earthbound because I knew I wouldn’t experience anything close to what it made me feel, and other times when I check a full game walkthrough on YouTube to see how much of it is left because of how fed up I am with it. In the case of The Last of Us Part II — just The Last of Us II from now on — I started to experiencing the latter halfway through.
I have several things to say about this game, as you may have noticed from the reading time. Many of them have to do with the story, which I’ll cover in a separate section, but I want to state up front that I was one of those who felt that The Last of Us I didn’t need a sequel. The Last of Us II continues the storyline in one of the least interesting directions possible, considering the multiple paths the title could have taken. It’s a mess full of hypocrisy, with a series of messages muddled by ludonarrative dissonance and retcons1 to cover up the plot holes and script inconsistencies that try to hide the writers’ poor and whimsical narrative choices. There is no justification for the second part to exist in this state except for economic reasons.
But before I go deeper into the story, I think it’s more appropriate to talk about one of my main complaints about the first installment that is still present in this title, which is the gameplay. For comparison’s sake, I highly recommend reading my review of The Last of Us I first.
About the gameplayAbout the gameplay
It carries over my main complaints from the first installment about how bare and shallow it was, along with the lack of introduction of new mechanics as we progressed through the story. The level design is marginally improved, as the larger zones with more enemies don’t feel as artificially reduced as in the first part, probably due to the higher processing power of the PlayStation 4. Character upgrades are slightly different, as while the pill mechanic is the same, the magazines now unlock new skill trees to invest the points in, rather than giving the player a new upgrade just by picking them up. This adds a bit more depth to the gameplay, although the new skill upgrades don’t offer anything particularly interesting to make the playable experience more tailored to each player, as they are in the vein of “+25% health” or unlocking craftable items, such as silencers — something essential in a stealth game that inexplicably wasn’t in the first entry — and explosive ammo, which makes complete sense for a stealth game. The weapons and their upgrades are practically the same as in the prequel, as is the flawed logic of making a Molotov cocktail without a bottle. It’s even more ridiculous in this second part, because there are containers as additional crafting materials. But who cares about common sense, right?
The most relevant addition, besides the silencer, is the ability to crawl, which some people might justify its absence in the first part by saying that Joel was too old for it. On the other hand, it’s baffling that we can’t drag and hide corpses, since this is an essential mechanic of any mildly polished stealth game.
One of the few gameplay innovations is the rope mechanic, which is also unfathomably the most wasted mechanic in the entire franchise. This Polygon article provides more information about the development of this feature, revealing that it took about three months to create. Are you really telling me that you put that much effort into an interesting mechanic that turns out to be an anecdotal, tiny part of the gameplay that has no substantial use other than a handful of simple puzzles? It has the potential to be used in a variety of scenarios, such as making it part of the actual combat system by creating traps or tying up enemies, or reaching inaccessible locations with more loot. This is an accurate representation of what The Last of Us II really is: a pool of potentially great ideas squandered by poor management decisions.
The annoying and time-wasting looting mechanic is completely intact from the first game, but it’s even worse here due to the larger areas that make resources more scarce in density, which make us waste even more time checking place after place.
Finding ladders and pressing △ for every interaction with the world also makes its presence felt, with the addition of opening safes. The way we open them is by collecting letters that also serve to tell the story of the people who inhabited or stumbled upon a location (another copy and paste from the first part), which could be seen as an incentive to explore the zones and somewhat alleviate the monotonous task of looting a house for a quarter of alcohol. However, they repeat the same stereotypical stories like “I’m going to die!11!!1!”, “My family is gone :(” or “Hey, I’m just checking in to say that there’s a super secret safe in the basement but I’m super into privacy and won’t explicitly give out the combination to the lock, though if for some reason you sneak into my sister’s room, you might find a clue” over and over again. As I mentioned in the review of the previous entry, I wish the franchise would handle this feature like the Fallout series does, where each building has its own compelling lore that engages the player in the story by providing more details about what happened through meaningful notes and implicit narration (remember the story of Vault 34 in Fallout: New Vegas?).
I finished the game on Survivor difficulty on my first playthrough and I found it easier than the first game because I always had enough bullets and supplies to deal with any forced violent situations. They felt more unfair than in The Last of Us I because they were inevitable and much more prevalent. It’s also ridiculous that listen mode is available on the highest difficulty due to the upgrades available for it in the skill tree, which would have to be restructured for higher difficulties without listen mode. Flawed gameplay design at its core.
Melee combat is still brutally simple, consisting of pressing ◻ to attack and L1 to dodge. Gunplay, on the other hand, is virtually the same as in the prequel, with the difference that the bow in the second part feels more challenging and satisfying because it doesn’t draw the trajectory of the arrow before shooting.
As I mentioned in my The Last of Us I review, many people justify the game’s bare-bones gameplay by saying that the story is the most important part. They also claim the same for the second part, although some people really believe that the gameplay of The Last of Us II is amazing. Such stances are detrimental to the medium, as the most important aspect of a video game (arguably) is its gameplay and how it interacts with the player. The way Naughty Dog — the game development studio behind the franchise — tells the story of both games is more akin to Hollywood blockbusters than to video games that try to take full advantage of the unique and powerful elements that video games offer over other media, such as implicit narrative and story development based on the player’s interaction with the world. They have popularized the introduction of cinematic elements into mainstream video games, iterating on ideas already presented in films (ever heard of Children of Men?) and making the video game medium seem insecure of its own tools to tell a compelling story without the need to introduce lackluster resources like quick-time event button prompts, cinematic scenes to tell crucial points of the story to prevent the player from spoiling the fancy presentation, and the outrageously artificial and fake dramatic scenes typical of Hollywood movies to manipulate the player’s emotions. For example, it’s insulting when a bullet hits a character and kills them, even if they were shot several times 30 seconds before that scene.
Of all the flaws I mentioned, I want to highlight the button prompts because they feel like a parody, to the point of being worse than a Quantic Dream2 game at some points. Are you about to get stabbed in the chest? Press ◻ several times! Want to get rid of the pipe around your neck that is slowly choking you? Press ◻ several times! Want to open that heavy metal door that Ellie probably can’t open, but it doesn’t matter because this is a video game? Press and hold △! Want to move this container to get to this window? Press △! Want to open this drawer? Press △! Oh, maybe you also want to take the quarter of sugar that is ins—PLEASE, STOP!
This whole button prompting mantra, along with looting and cinematics, probably took up almost half of my actual playthrough, which is an insane amount of time if you ask me. As good as a story can be (in this case, it’s not), it can potentially be ruined if the entire game is driven by linear, boring gameplay that feels formulaic and repetitive after the first two hours. The Last of Us II reinforces my idea that this franchise is just Uncharted in disguise, set in a different scenario with a more interesting story (not hard to pull off), heavily inspired by the aforementioned Children of Men film, and bland stealth mechanics.
I know that some parts of this review up to this point may seem like a copy, paste, and rewrite of my review of The Last of Us I, but it’s not that far off from what The Last of Us II is. It feels like an iteration with very few changes to the core of the first installment, except that the story has gotten significantly worse. It’s a shame that a video game with such an astonishing technical aspect and an immersive world, enhanced by the atmospheric sound design, the acoustic guitar of Gustavo Santaolalla and the oppressive, heavy dark ambient tunes of Mac Quayle, is spoiled by everything else. This franchise should have been a TV show instead.
About the storyAbout the story
Even though you can already tell that I have my differences with the first entry in the series, I appreciate its efforts to tell a meaningful story about humans in a post-apocalyptic and hopeless environment. It managed to accomplish one of the most difficult things to do in a video game, which is to make the player care enough about the relationship between the characters that it becomes the main reason to keep playing the game, since it offers not much else besides that and an appealing world design (NOT to be confused with its awful level design). The Last of Us II, on the other hand, failed miserably at this.
There will be spoilers in the following section.
ProloguePrologue
The game begins with retcons of what happened in The Last of Us I by distorting the image of Joel, a character who feels human (on an emotional level) and someone the player can sympathize with, into some kind of selfless, evil monster who apparently killed a faction of people who “wanted to save the world for the benefit of humanity, with no shady interests behind it”. The blatant image whitewashing of the Fireflies to make the player feel sympathy for Abby and her father is disgusting, and is something that this Reddit post addresses in more detail. Let’s not forget that the Fireflies wanted to kill Joel and Ellie, so to introduce the sequel with this interpretation of what he did is not exactly what you would call a start on the right foot.
In the next 2 hours of the game, we meet more characters than in the entire first game. The unnecessarily large cast is detrimental to the story The Last of Us II wants to tell for two main reasons. First, the more characters there are, the less fleshed out they are, making it difficult to care about any of them at all. Second, the writers seem more concerned with having a diverse and inclusive cast than with building an interesting story supported by well-rounded characters who are defined by their actions and abilities, regardless of their ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, etc. Instead, they feel derivative of typical TV show character archetypes. I don’t care that Ellie is a lesbian, that her girlfriend Dina is a bisexual Jewish orphan, that they smoke pot because it’s “cool”, that she’s pregnant by her Asian-American ex-boyfriend Jesse… All of these traits, along with the romantic relationships that also contribute the surprising amount of 0 to the plot, just add more noise to the story, to the point of diluting its main purpose for the sake of greater resemblance to a Netflix production following some agenda.
Among all the characters introduced during the said 2 hours, we get to know Abby, the other main character of the story along with Ellie. This is one of the main differences in the storytelling compared to The Last of Us I, as we’ll be playing with two characters throughout the game. The writers felt that controlling Abby, a character that is despicable right from the beginning of the game, was a positive and an appropriate way to tell their story. As it turns out, it just ends up feeling like a cheap and pathetic attempt to achieve their idealized story of violence and revenge, because she’s a poorly written character whose story doesn’t feel believable.
The first moment we control Abby, she ends up on the verge of being eaten alive, but Joel and Tommy save her just in time (what a coincidence!). She invites them to the house where she and her team are camping. Joel, a person who hardly trusts anyone, gives up his name as soon as he’s asked (that easily) to a bunch of just met strangers whose motives for being there are completely unknown. As soon as they hear his name, the team proceeds to immobilize him so that Abby can beat him to death without any explanation at all, while Ellie witnesses the scene as soon as she gets to the house. Up to this point, there is no reason why he is killed, but from a narrative standpoint, this has the effect of brutally killing off the main character of the first game, thus setting the bar of expectation far too high for the game to even come close to meeting. Furthermore, this action alone portrays Abby as a 1-dimensional character who doesn’t have the dignity to say a single word to Joel about her plight. By no means am I saying she should have made some sort of speech, but killing him for something he did 3 years ago without telling him why is a hell of a way to take revenge.
Abby and her team decide to keep Tommy and Ellie alive for no other reason than to keep the story going. Logically, Ellie wants to avenge Joel’s death, so she warns Tommy that she’s leaving Jackson tomorrow. However, the game makes yet another fraudulent decision to have Tommy go to Seattle without Ellie in order to construct a story arc where Ellie follows his trail with her obnoxious girlfriend. In addition to being unfair to how the writers make Tommy behave, it’s unrealistic, as a person traveling alone 1401 km (871 mi) in a post-apocalyptic world seems rather implausible. On the other hand, Ellie has the same right as Tommy to go with him to seek revenge, so there’s no justification at all for him doing this, not even for overprotecting Ellie.
Seattle, Day 1 (as Ellie)Seattle, Day 1 (as Ellie)
Once the characters are teleported to Seattle, the game decides to introduce an unnecessary open-world mechanic that ruins the pacing of the story and makes me wish for the linear, artificial design of the first game, because at least it keeps the story on track without deviating too much from the plot. Fundamentally, it doesn’t add anything relevant to the plot or gameplay, as it consists of the same dance of repeating puzzles over and over again, using the unseen and innovative mechanic of pressing △ to transport containers and help Dina reach high places. The only interesting introduction is the rope, which, as already mentioned, is unfortunately a wasted mechanic. There are no interesting elements scattered throughout, such as buildings or collectibles that give us meaningful insight into the story (mental note: I need to write a post explaining how much I loathe vapid collectibles in video games). Instead, the only relevant outcome we get from this entire arc is when Dina lectures Ellie in the synagogue about how much the Jewish people have suffered throughout history (how surprising that co-writer Neil Druckmann is Jewish!).
At the end of the first day in Seattle, Ellie reveals to Dina that she is inmune to the Cordyceps, to which Dina gives a fig. Let’s not forget that the entire plot of The Last of Us I is based on the extremely rare and unique case of an inmune person, with whom Joel crosses the country in search of a group that can supposedly make a vaccine from her. Indeed, a consistent continuation of the plot from the prequel. Out of the blue, Dina replies that she thinks she’s pregnant because her period is a few weeks late. Turns out she didn’t tell Ellie because she didn’t want to be a burden, so by that logic she’s not a burden at all now that her pregnancy is a few more weeks along, right? I’m no expert, but if I hadn’t had my period for that long and it corresponded to the last time I had unprotected sex, I would at the very least suspect that I might be pregnant and that it would be unreasonable to travel 1401 km (871 miles) in a world full of dangerous people and infected creatures that could kill me and my baby.
After this whole “dramatic” scene, the first of a handful of flashbacks that take place throughout the game is presented. In this one, Joel takes Ellie to a museum to celebrate her 15th birthday. It was a very special moment that made me sad to think about what this game could have been if it had focused entirely on Joel and Ellie. Without a doubt, the best parts of the game are the flashbacks that revolve around them, which if taken separately and put together like the video below does, could instead be turned into a fully fleshed out game with a proper story instead, as I suggest in the alternative stories section.
Seattle, Day 2 (as Ellie)Seattle, Day 2 (as Ellie)
Jesse suddenly appears out of nowhere to reiterate how useless he is to the overall plot. The most relevant part of this filler day is the introduction of a new class of infected called stalkers. They are very annoying because they can easily spot their prey and are difficult to kill stealthily. The apartment floor infected with these enemies was probably the hardest part of the game for me on Survivor difficulty, along with the Rattler mansion before the fight with Abby. However, it didn’t take me more than 5 tries to get rid of them by running through the window and leaving them there to rot, as it was pointless to kill them all for nothing.
Story-wise, a rage-filled Ellie kills Nora to find out where Abby is. We kill her through exciting quick-time event button prompts that, once again, kill any kind of momentum by dumbly interacting with the player, portraying the exact opposite feeling of rage and anger that Ellie experiences after seeing the first person alive of the group that killed Joel, leaving the player no choice but to violently torture her. The portrayal of Ellie as a badass in this scene is at odds with what we know about her. However, I can understand why she would act that way after what she’s been through, so it’s hard to judge her state based on the situation and to what the story shows us.
Seattle, Day 3 (as Ellie)Seattle, Day 3 (as Ellie)
Ellie eventually gets to the aquarium, where she kills Owen and Mel as a result of her failed attempt to confess to her where Abby is. Of course, the fight against both is another wonderfully executed quick-time event button prompt scene. After killing them, Ellie realizes that Mel was pregnant and has a breakdown at the realization that she murdered two people instead of one. Oh, no! The count is now potentially up to 318 people instead of 319 (the numbers are not made up, as you can check out in the video of the Santa Barbara section)! And what a coincidence that Jesse and Tommy show up right after Ellie kills them! This is one of many examples of why I hate the incorporation of Hollywood clichés into the video game medium (as if they weren’t bad enough in movies), like a poison that permeates any semblance of sanity in a triple-A blockbuster.
As if that wasn’t enough, the game makes yet another flagrant manipulation by having Ellie leave her annotated map for Abby to find it on the 3rd day, without giving the player any kind of option to pick it up. Maybe she didn’t think about that detail with all the adrenaline she was pumping at the moment (as if she hadn’t killed someone before), which might even be somewhat understandable. But what’s not rational is that she didn’t think about it once during the entire walk back to the theater. Are you telling me that they knew the way back by memory, without the need for a map?
After this scene, they are teleported back to the theater, where they plan to return to Jackson without killing Abby. Suddenly, strange noises and a scream from Tommy come from the entrance. Jesse and Ellie go to see what’s going on, and as soon as they open the door, Jesse gets shot in the head (what a surprise!), while Ellie, for some strange reason — to justify the game going on longer — does not. Abby takes Tommy hostage and holds Ellie at gunpoint, leaving the scene with a cliffhanger that lasts about 12 playable hours.
I can tell you that even though I disliked the game up to that point, if it had ended with Abby killing everyone, I would have “just” thought it was a wasted, bland and ineffective sequel, but little did I know the absolute nightmare that was to come after Ellie’s story arc. 15 hours of this joke were more than enough.
Seattle, Day 1 (as Abby)Seattle, Day 1 (as Abby)
The game shifts perspective and presents an analepsis of the past three days from Abby’s perspective. Her arc begins with a flashback of her with her father, to show what a noble man he was for saving zebras, and to make us develop some sort of empathy for him during the brief 15 minutes we interact with him in the entire game. Of course, that is enough insight and time with him to make us feel a tremendous sense of sorrow for his death.
Once that’s over, the game jumps forward to our first day in Seattle with Abby at the WLF headquarters. We go with Manny and Mel, an 8 month pregnant doctor, on a routine patrol in a zone surrounded by a lunatic faction that will kill us on sight. Dina and Mel make me think that maybe I’m crazy, because if not even a doctor can see that exposing herself and her baby to an extremely dangerous situation might not be the wisest decision, then who can? Just like the materials needed to make a Molotov cocktail: who cares about logic and consistency, right?
Apart from that, this whole day is full of dull and irrelevant parts revolving around the uninteresting love affair between Owen and Abby and the introduction of Lev and Yara, who repay Abby’s favor of killing the Seraphites who almost killed Yara by freeing her from the noose.
To end this painfully boring day after leaving Lev and Yara in an abandoned trailer, Abby and Owen argue and have sex for the sake of further mimicking the plot of a crappy modern TV show. As I write this, I’m laughing at myself for considering, at the time I played this part, that all these nonsensical arcs and filler would eventually make sense. Wishful thinking at its best.
By the way, goodbye to all the pills and parts I collected while playing as Ellie.
Seattle, Day 2 (as Abby)Seattle, Day 2 (as Abby)
In the midst of a nightmare, Abby, one of the most ruthless killer of Seraphites in all of WLF, suddenly feels the responsibility to save two Seraphite children to whom she has returned a favor and to whom she owes nothing. The glaring manipulation here is sickening, because if Abby showed any kind of empathy or glimpse of humanity, I could somewhat understand why she would feel this way. However, let’s not forget that Abby’s introduction involves killing a person who saved her from a sung death while showing no remorse, which underscores how soulless she is (even if she arguably has the reasons to do so). It’s insulting how the game expects us to believe that she would put herself in such danger for two children who belong to an arch-enemy faction she despises. Besides, she doesn’t even know why they’re being pursued, so she has no reason to sympathize with them.
Also, the conflict between the WLF and the Seraphites is never explained at all, and feels like a mere excuse to show what a good person Abby is by caring for Yara and Lev when they are supposed to be enemies.
Abby takes Yara to the aquarium with Mel and Owen to see if something can be done about her arm. Mel assures that it will have to be amputated, but she needs certain medical supplies for that, so Abby and Lev go to a WLF hospital to collect them. This is another dreary and repetitive part that adds nothing to the plot. I don’t care about Yara or Lev, less about killing more Seraphites and infected in exactly the same way as the previous 20 hours. The only slightly interesting part is the fight against the Rat King, which is just a tougher version of a Bloater. There are no new mechanics to make the fight more exciting than your usual encounter with a bunch of infected.
Seattle, Day 3 (as Abby)Seattle, Day 3 (as Abby)
If you thought the previous days of playing as Abby couldn’t be more irrelevant and boring, you haven’t seen the epitome of excitement and meaning that this day embodies.
Lev decides to make the plot even more soporific by having a sudden impulse to visit her mother on the Seraphite island. Yara, who just had her left arm amputated a few hours earlier, thinks it’s a fantastic idea to go to the island to stop her brother. The characters in The Last of Us II sure know how to take care of themselves and are well aware of their medical conditions and the risks of their actions.
Once again, Abby decides that it’s reasonable to risk her life for the third time in two and a half days to go with an armless child to an island full of Seraphites who would kill them in a matter of seconds. But hey, we all know how strong Abby is and how good-hearted she is in helping her new friends. The power of the amitié is surely stronger than any kind of rational decision, right?
The amount of cheap manipulative tricks to make Abby look like the good person of the story is beyond ridiculous. There are even more “subtle” details to make the player prefer her over Ellie, like having the best weapons (crossbow > bow, automatic rifle > hunting rifle), doing benevolent actions such as this one, making her look like the victim because of what happened to her father at the hands of an apparent psycho… It’s like if Neil Druckmann and Hailey Gross, the writers, hated Ellie and Joel to death.
Also, Abby, an model member of the WLF, decides to gun down WLFs without remorse just because she spent two days with two Seraphites. Most of those she kills seem to know her, and many were probably friends with her. They even ask her why she does it, to which the answer is not a single word from her mouth, but the sound of her gun, simply because the writers are unable to justify such an action, as they try to portray a horrible person and a horribly designed character as some kind of victim to sympathize with. This is the level of character design in The Last of Us II.
After Abby and Lev survive a sudden WLF attack on Seraphite Island and its burning, they return to the aquarium where they discover the bodies of Owen and Mel. Lev finds the map Ellie left with all the clues to get to her, causing Abby’s arc to converge with Ellie’s by teleporting them to the theater.
Once they are there, the cliffhanger scene from Ellie’s day 3 continues, showing Tommy getting shot in the head and Abby and Ellie fighting while Lev watches the exits.
During the fight, Ellie stabs Abby in the thigh, but she shrugs it off (+10 credibility). Still, Abby manages to take Ellie down, and as she’s about to beat her to death, Dina stabs Abby out of nowhere. Ipso facto, Lev shoots an arrow into Dina’s chest and Abby brutally smashes her head into the floor. Just as she’s about to kill her, another just in time moment happens when Ellie tells Abby not to kill her because she’s pregnant. Abby doesn’t seem to care at all about it, which makes sense according to her sense of revenge (Dina for Mel is a fair trade), but Lev tells her not to kill her either, so in the face of such a moral dilemma from his old friend Lev, she decides to leave them both and walk away with him.
There are many unbelievable elements in this scene. First, it’s inconceivable that Abby would make the same mistake of letting Ellie live again. After all she did to her friends to avenge Joel’s death, and given Abby’s ruthless nature (as much as the writers don’t want us to think that), it’s simply nonsensical that Abby would make this decision. If the ultimate goal is to once again show how superior Abby’s morals are to Ellie’s, this is yet another failed and poor attempt to convey that. Also, although I’ve already pointed this out, the “just in time” scenes are absolutely despicable, and this one is one of the worst in the entire game. The sequence of “coincidences” that prevent Ellie and Dina from being killed in order to artificially continue the unbearable plot is an insult to the player and enough of a reason to quit the game at this point.
FarmFarm
An ellipsis of about a year takes place. Ellie, Dina, and JJ, Dina’s child, now live on a farm, just as Ellie had wished during their time in Seattle. They don’t have any scars from the fight in the theater, as if it never happened. Let’s not forget that the damage they suffered would have killed just about anyone, especially Dina with the arrow in her chest.
When Ellie goes to corral the goats, a shovel falls and reminds her of Joel’s death, which is the first sign of her PTSD in the entire game. Dina has the nerve to tell Ellie “Haven’t had any excitement in a while, hmm?”, which is a rather unfortunate thing to say to someone suffering from such a disorder.
Then another unspecified ellipsis occurs, this time with Tommy visiting the farm to tell Ellie about Abby’s whereabouts. She refuses to go after her, to which Tommy reacts by leaving, chastising Ellie for not keeping her word and seeking revenge.
First of all, can someone please explain to me what kind of disgusting joke it is that Tommy is still alive after getting shot in the fucking head? I can’t even remember seeing that in a low budget action movie. I don’t think there are enough words to describe how much I hate the orchestrated series of manipulations the writers have made up to this point to forcefully shape the plot the way they want at any cost, simply because of their lack of ability to spin a consistent and cohesive story that does justice to the prequel.
By the way, did you notice how important Jesse was to the plot that Ellie and Dina say nothing about him, even though he is JJ’s father? They don’t even mourn his death at all, which is an accurate representation of how valuable he is to the narrative. He’s just an underdeveloped character who serves as an excuse to push the narrative forward. Speaking of irrelevant characters, did I mention that Manny died during a fight with Tommy? Wow, how careless of me to forget such a dramatic and important loss for Abby, who doesn’t even mention him in the rest of the game!
Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara
The rickety plot is again artificially inflated by another ellipsis, with Abby and Lev looking for Fireflies in Santa Barbara. They find them through a radio station, located in a house. When they leave it, the Rattlers — another faction — kidnap them for the sake of bloating and extending the plot once again.
After that, there is another change in perspective, as we now play as Ellie in Santa Barbara, following Tommy’s clues. She gets caught in a Rattlers’ trap, which causes her to accidentally get stuck on a broken branch and spill about 2 liters of blood while hanging inside out for an indeterminate number of hours, with no apparent negative consequences that prevent her from lucidly making a Rattler get bitten and consciously using his gun to shoot his partner in cold blood. Once again, a friendly reminder that the Hollywoodization of video games is the worst thing to happen to the medium in the last decade.
Naughty Dog always finds a way to damage a character in a cinematic scene, have the player kill a bunch of people with that character, and then, at their will, have the character resent the wound and suddenly be unable to continue, forcing a dramatic moment. This cliché is also present in Hollywood movies, but it’s even worse when applied to video games, because we actually have to play with the wounded character as if nothing happened, taking bullets that are much more damaging than, in this case, piercing the spine of a tree.
Also, the inclusion of another faction that comes out of nowhere to make up for ANOTHER plot inconsistency is the proof of how they fill potential plot holes with new factions with specific backgrounds to fit the way they want the story to go. This time, the little we know about the Rattlers is that they are another group of survivors who imprison non-Rattlers for forced labor. Abby tried to escape from the fortress, so she and Lev were tied up to death.
Now we come to the last playable scene, where Ellie, suddenly resentful of her fatal wound, and Abby meet on the beach. Ellie frees Abby and Lev, but she threatens to kill Lev if Abby doesn’t fight. She succumbs to her threat, prompting both to engage in a flurry of blows fueled by an mysterious energy, since Ellie should be dead by now and Abby should be unconscious from starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion. As you may have guessed by now, the fight is another fantastic, awesome, and wonderful display of quick-time event button prompts to force the player to do exactly what the game wants.
When Ellie is about to kill Abby, the very person who butchered Joel, she suddenly has an epiphany that wasn’t even brought on by an outside source like Lev begging for Abby’s life. She just thought of Joel through the second and final glimpse of her PTSD, which inexplicably makes her let Abby and Lev go. There is no excuse in the universe for letting this happen, not even a single reasonable one after ALL that Ellie has done to get to this point. Let’s not forget that just a few minutes earlier she had slaughtered dozens of Rattlers and cold-bloodedly shot Fat Gerault in the throat, watching him die as he begged for mercy. She didn’t even blink.
Ellie’s character development cannot realistically make me believe that she would feel any kind of remorse for killing Abby. In fact, the character of Ellie in The Last of Us II doesn’t feel like Ellie at all. In the first game, Ellie’s relationship with Joel was a significant part of who she was, but she was still a separate character from him. Core elements like her survivor’s guilt, her relentless optimism, her sense of purpose, etc. are barely explored in the sequel, which is a big reason why her character is so much less engaging. The writers wanted to portray Ellie as an extension of Joel and not as a person in her own right in order to emphasize how bad Joel and Ellie are and to frame Abby as the “angel” of the story.
A bewildering ending indeed.
On a related note, I was curious to know the exact number of people Ellie potentially kills during the game, so I did a quick Google search and found that a YouTube user was wondering the same thing too. According to the compilation, the number goes up to a whopping 376.
Sure, one can say that we don’t necessarily have to kill them all. However, the game FORCES the player into situations that can only be handled with violence, such as the car chases and the killing of secondary characters, because they are necessary for the development of the story. There’s no way for Ellie, or for us, to feel a sincere sense of remorse when she’s about to kill Abby after potentially killing 376 enemies, 186 of them human and 12 dogs, and all the travel and hardship she’s had to endure to get to that moment. In fact, a sudden flashback of Joel’s death during this scene should have encouraged Ellie to kill Abby with more fury at the thought of such an unpleasant and rage-inducing moment. Given the context that both the first and second parts present, Ellie’s decision is absurd and beyond rationality. This alone is not only another complete insult to common sense and another blatant manipulation to trick us into buying this breaking the cycle of violence and revenge is bad bullshit, it’s also a strategy to leave the door open for a future The Last of Us Part III to continue milking this franchise to death. It’s the culmination of the tawdry joke that is this game.
Also, everything about these scenes lacks the emotional impact that the first game had, because there is no personal attachment to the new characters of the sequel. Instead, there are just a lot of grunts and angry, sad faces. No one speaks when they should. For example, at no point does Abby realize that killing Joel was pointless because it didn’t change anything. No matter how you look at the plot, there’s no meaningful or powerful message being delivered to the player about revenge and violence being bad. It’s just a hot, bloody mess that aims much higher than the actual execution of its ideas.
Let’s pretend for a second that the plot actually delivered its message that violence and revenge are bad. What now? Aren’t we going to talk about all the potential families Ellie ruined by killing everyone in Abby’s group? Didn’t they have a story to tell, too? Even the game makes it clear that the NPCs are human beings, don’t you hear them being called by their name when they are killed?! Yet she only feels sympathy for Abby for no reason at all.
Revenge hardly seems meaningful in a game where hundreds of people get killed and nothing means anything, regardless of whether Ellie killed Abby or not.
Final flashbackFinal flashback
It’s important to underline the relevance of the last Joel and Ellie flashback, particularly on the last scene from which the screenshot below is taken, as it makes me wonder about what this game could have been.
The scene was unexpectedly gut-wrenching. Seeing Joel, a strong man who defended Ellie to the death, break down when Ellie says she would like to forgive him for the lie he told her at the end of The Last of Us I is absolutely painful. Surprisingly enough, the only scene that manages to have an emotional impact on me happens to be related to the first game. At the same time, it’s the least explored aspect of the sequel, which makes me think about what The Last of Us II could have been if it had instead explored the idea of forgiveness between Ellie and Joel and the evolution of their relationship over time. It’s sad to think about it because it’s something that we’ll probably never get to see because of the events of this second part.
On a side note, there is a track on the soundtrack that reflects how I felt at that exact moment, which also happens to be one of my favorite acoustic tracks.
Alternative storiesAlternative stories
As I said in the no spoilers section, this game took the worst possible route to telling a story based on the events of The Last of Us I. The few conceivable scenarios that could justify the creation of a sequel would be the idea of Ellie trying to find the cure for Cordyceps on her own, eventually finding out a way to stop the spread of the virus, and volunteering to sacrifice herself. There would be moral and emotional issues that would be more genuine than what this second part tries to convey.
If we were stubborn enough to introduce the character of Abby to the franchise, a game centered around her and her father would also make sense. This entry would end with a twist where Joel kills Abby’s father, making us feel similarly sympathetic to Abby as we do to Ellie, since we would have seen the perspectives from both prisms for long enough. It’s definitely better than abruptly presenting Abby as the apparent antagonist and then forcing the player to control her in order to (not) develop the sympathy that the game wants the player to feel for her.
After this presumed second part, The Last of Us Part III would be based on the events of the actual The Last of Us II, but with a different order, since the way they are presented is completely anticlimactic and has a ton of filler, as already mentioned. The main focus of the story would be Ellie and Joel, similar to the flashbacks in The Last of Us II. That way we would have a complete picture of the emotional process of Ellie asking about the Fireflies, hating Joel, and finally being on the verge of forgiving him. Then we would play as Abby to show her grief after the death of her father in the hypothetical The Last of Us II. At the end of her story arc, the player would be forced to kill Joel without any quick-time event button prompts, like in the operating room at the end of The Last of Us I, where we have no choice but to kill Abby’s father. Finally, we would play as Ellie and go to Seattle with Tommy to kill Abby, without any trace of ludonarrative dissonance. And yes, Lev, Yara, the entire Seraphite arc, Jesse, Dina, and such irrelevant characters would be completely removed.
It’s absolutely baffling that that at no point does The Last of Us II address how the virus came to be, which is basically the reason why the franchise exists and the motive behind all the spreading nihilism and loss of humanity in the world. In fact, as the story of The Last of Us Part II goes, they don’t seem to care about the Cordyceps at all, as if they’re fine living with the virus for the rest of their lives. This is ultimately asinine, and makes the post-apocalyptic setting seem like an excuse to have zombies and a messed-up world that allows anarchy to reign.
Where are we going?Where are we going?
Writing this review was at times as painful as playing the game. While it would have been easier for me to move on and tackle my extensive backlog of games waiting for my attention, I cannot let Naughty Dog get away with this sub-par gaming experience that also contributes to the trend that the mainstream gaming industry seems to be embracing — stories filled with Hollywood clichés that are poorly executed and nonsensical, all while carrying an agenda.
Unfortunately, I foresee this trend continuing unabated, especially given the significant popularity and sales of the game. If we want to transform the medium of video games into a kind of interactive movie or TV show, perhaps we should look back and see what were the main characteristics of the games that allowed the medium to take a step forward and reassert itself as a means of entertaining the player with enjoyable and fun gameplay mechanics, often accompanied by a compelling story without any trace of pretension.