This article originally ran under a different banner/website in July of 2020 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
Ok, Doomsayer, you can do this. It is just a game, you can talk about it. It doesn’t matter that the discussion behind this game has become so vile and toxic. So what if everyone has been up in arms since the plot of the game has been leaked? Yes, a lot of people have been enraged by the inclusion of LGBTQ characters, but surely those people have moved onto something else. It’s no big deal that the studio and many people involved with the title have been chastising anyone daring to criticize the game. It is also a shame one of the voice actresses is receiving hate for her role, but surely none of my followers would do or encourage that action. It is just a game. You talk about games all the time. You can do this.
OH, LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE! I was just psyching myself up to talk about the brand new game that hit store shelves: The Last of Us Part II. Now I generally try to talk around spoilers. My favorite example of this was the twist halfway through Wolfenstein: The New Colossus describing it as BJ Blazkowicz experiencing a New 52 comic-book-style reboot. However, I don’t think I can fully express my opinions on this divisive title without digging into the details. So if you are looking to experience this game or the previous title for yourself, I recommend you stop reading, play those games, then return at an appropriate time. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
Our story begins four years after Joel’s actions in The Last of Us, he and Ellie are living in a small gated community called Jackson. There are hints at the tension between Joel and Ellie, but they appear to be working through it. Unfortunately, all of this changes when a band of travelers led by a girl named Abby runs into Joel and his brother, Tommy, while on patrol. Upon learning Joel’s identity, Abby attempts to go for the most dramatic death with a golf club (a record still held by Bioshock) and kills Joel. Ellie attempts to save Joel but is ultimately too late as she can only helplessly watch Abby snuff the last breath out of Joel. This triggers Ellie to track down and enact revenge upon Abby for her crimes.
Right off the bat, I had trouble initially connecting with Ellie’s quest for revenge. In a title, like John Wick, I can sympathize with John’s quest for revenge. He had his one chance to grief and love again through a puppy provided by his dead wife, taken from him when he was most vulnerable. John has nothing, but the monster within him that he locked deep within himself for his wife. Everything was stolen from him but that monster. While Abby has stolen away Ellie’s relationship with Joel while it was at its most fragile, Ellie wasn’t left alone. She still had all her friends within Jackson. She still had Joel’s brother Tommy. She still had her girlfriend Dina.
Now, before I continue, I must state that I do not hate the inclusion of characters who do not fit the traditional gender and sexuality norms within games. I do not hate that Ellie is a lesbian nor do I hate Dina for being bisexual. I also do not hate the inclusion of the character Lev, who I will talk about later. While I can’t speak to whether these characters are good representations of their gender and sexual identities, I can say many of these characters are part of some of my favorite scenes with The Last of Us Part II. Scenes where the dust has settled and the characters can just chat among themselves like how Ellie and Joel did in The Last of Us. There is a moment where Ellie and Dina stumble into a Jewish synagogue. Dina, being Jewish herself, describing some of her history with her Jewish faith felt like a touching character moment. Ellie finding a guitar and playing “Take on Me” was also within the spirit of the first The Last of Us title.
Our story takes Ellie and Dina to the ruined city of Seattle. Early on, I was impressed at the environmental design that went into Seattle. Nature is starting to consume the city. The tree and vines grasping at the remaining concrete structures. Numerous bushes and fungi are caked over abandoned cars. Rapid rivers cut through the once busy streets of Seattle. I prefer Seattle in this mixture of forest and urban jungle, over many locations within Joel and Ellie’s first adventure.
Seattle harbors many locations where Ellie must fight the infected that are somewhat iconic to the series. The standard runner and clickers return and appear to be louder in this game, making encounters feel fresh even though fighting them hasn’t changed. The bullet sponge Bloater has been replaced with an equally bullet spongey Shamblers, and I struggled to find a difference between these enemies. The Last of Us Part II does add a couple of new variations of the infected to its stable. They add a stalker infected who is impossible to locate with the listening ability that allows Ellie to spot enemies behind walls and cover. Being unable to see the stalker as they are slinking around in the dark soon becomes frustrating, especially since stalkers hunt in packs. There is a variation of your standard runner that initially appears to be plastered into walls, but will soon break away from the walls and attack. It reminds me of Davy Jones’s crew in the Pirate of the Caribbean series, and they made this one hotel containing a large number of them a highlight of the game. You initially start at the top of the hotel and make your way down through floors that have become rotted and are swarming with infected looking to jump you. While moving through spaces like this is tense, actually fighting the infected and humans for that matter, is absolutely draining.
I, frankly, did not like the combat in The Last of Us. I honestly thought the guns were so clunky and stiff that firefights were a chore. The stealth and melee combat was functional but felt bare bones in comparison to other titles. However, I was willing to look past the basic combat from a 2013 game; a time when we had not been overwhelmed by third-person action sandbox games. I also recognize that combat wasn’t the focus of the game. The Last of Us was clearly focusing on the characters over the combat. However, I was really hoping Naughty Dog was going to use their time to improve the rather rudimentary combat systems. Unfortunately, disappointment seems to follow me wherever I go.
To be fair, The Last of Us Part II does include some small tweaks to the combat, but they are not enough to freshen up the rather stale combat. While the guns don’t feel as stiff as the original, they still don’t feel all that satisfying to use. The feedback from the weapons just doesn’t feel as powerful as they appear. Enemies will surely go flying when hit, but there doesn’t appear to be any kickback to these weapons. Making them feel kinda limp. The only thing that appears to rock Ellie is when she gets shot at. When you’re shot, there is a chance an enemy bullet will knock you down. While many might cry falling when shot is realistic, I would respond with having to watch Ellie slowly get back up as bullets continue coming her way is pure frustration. The stealth also makes me want to snap my controller as every enemy seems to know your location the second you’re spotted. They also added a dodge into the melee combat, but I believe it makes the melee combat worse. If you engage with the melee combat, you will find enemies will just continuously hit you until perfectly time a dodge, turning the melee combat into a series of quick timed events similar to the infamous knife fight in Resident Evil 4.
The upgrade system also seems to be copy and pasted from the original game. You scavenge for pills to upgrade Ellie and scrap to upgrade weapons. The personal skill trees felt more impactful, but that might have been due to the fact I sank enough points into the listening ability until it was on par with the same listening ability from the first game. Your gun upgrades are your standard stability, recoil, damage, and clip size upgrades. All with their own individual animations. Animations that frankly did not improve The Last of Us Part II, which is damning considering the allegation of crunch and overworking staff that has been leveled at Naughty Dog. Artists and animators spent countless hours creating animations that do not impact my enjoyment of this title. Just let that sink in.
To make matters all the more damning, I genuinely hated fighting human enemies within The Last of Us Part II. I honestly could have dealt with the imperfect combat, but the game’s obsession with making the violence as graphic as possible truly disgusted me. Throughout my time with video games, I have slaughtered thousands of virtual characters. I could be considered Thanos in these virtual worlds; erasing millions with a click of my mouse. I say this to show I revel in video game violence. I am not one of those people who believe the carnage in our games is unhealthy. I have no doubt the Doom Eternal, one of the goriest games I have played, will make it into my Games of the Year list because it is fun to rip cartoon demons in half. The Last of Us Part II is something different altogether.
This game goes to sadistic measures to make its violence as sickening as possible. Enemies don’t just fall to the ground like in most games. They’ll drop to their knees and begin to gargle on their own blood before slowly slumping to the ground. Blood will slowly seep out of their neck as Ellie performs stealth takedowns on them. Halfway through Ellie’s quest for carnage, The Last of Us Part II will introduce dogs as an enemy. The dogs will track your location and pin you down if they spot you. The game makes it clear that you need to dispose of this enemy. However, Ellie always stabs these dogs with such fury and viciousness, that I found it deeply uncomfortable. The fact The Last of Us Part II wants me to kill dogs almost makes me as furious when industry mouthpieces try to justify microtransactions. Dogs only want to please their master and to see them turned into weapons, even in a video game, makes me furious. If I had my way, I would fire the designer at Naughty Dog who initially pitched the idea of dogs as enemies.
Needless to say, I don’t like this game’s primary combat loop.
Now I can already hear the game’s defender swarm from on high. DOOMSAYER, they will cry, THAT IS THE POINT. THE COMBAT IS NOT SUPPOSE TO BE FUN. IT IS SHOWING HOW MUCH OF A MONSTER REVENGE CAN MAKE US. To that, I would reply, what a reductive statement in comparison to what the series has said in the past. The Last of Us showed us how much a monster Joel could be, not by slaughtering thousands of bandits, but by making the selfish choice to save Ellie. To now turn around and say killing for revenge is bad, just makes me wonder if Naughty Dog understood or even played the first game.
I would also argue that The Last of Us Part II does a really poor job of playing with the idea of violence makes you a monster. Some of the best games wrestle with that idea, tend to allow the players the freedom to choose acting out an easy violent option or a difficult passive option. Look at a title like Undertale, a role-playing game where you have the choice of talking down your enemy or killing them where they stand. Many characters encourage you to take the passive route and will turn against you if you choose to slaughter their friends. While you do have the option to sneak by all your enemies in The Last of Us Part II (as difficult as that can be with your limited tools), you will find in some key story moments you have no choice other than violence.
Some time into The Last of Us Part II, Ellie is able to track down Abby’s friend Nora. You chase her through a wartorn hospital until you finally corner her. You demand to know where Abby is, but she refuses to give up her friend. The game gives you control over Ellie with a simple prompt. I knew what the game was asking me to do, but I wanted to see if the game could surprise me. I waited, but nothing changed. The game made it clear. Ellie must torture Nora. I disinterestedly pressed the buttons knowing I had no agency over the situation. As the scene played out, I could feel the game quietly scold me. What a horrible thing to make Ellie do, the game would imply. There is no middle finger big enough to properly describe my anger. If it were up to me, I would have left Nora and wandered the streets for hours looking for Abby, because that is the right choice. The lack of choice in The Last of Us Part II just makes its violence is bad theme comes off shallow especially in contrast to the previous game’s themes.
As I slogged through this game, the only thing that was able to get me through, were these flashback scenes that show Ellie and Joel in the past. While initially, their relationship was going great, highlighted when Joel takes Ellie to an abandoned museum, she slowly starts questioning Joel’s story that the Fireflies didn’t need her for a cure. It all comes crashing down as Joel admits he lied to her and couldn’t live in a world that traded Ellie for a cure. While these were what I was looking for from The Last of Us Part II, they came so infrequently that I was often starved for them. I care not for Ellie’s bloody revenge; I want to know what happened between these two characters.
As Ellie continues to leave a trail of blood in her wake, we are slowly introduced to the two warring factions within Seattle. There is a militaristic group, the Washington Liberation Front (WLF or wolves) which Abby and her crew are a part of, and the Seraphites (commonly known as scars), a religious group looking to abandon all remnants of the old world. Ellie continues to slaughter wolves and scars alike. While ultimately unable to find Abby, she is able to locate her hideout where she murders her dog and two of her friends. One of which was pregnant. Again it would have been nice if we had any agency in this scene. I would even take quick time events to not kill these people, but no it is all done in a cutscene and the game tried to guilt us for it. At this point, I strongly considered snapping the disc in half.
Abby is able to track us down after discovering her friends had been killed. Just as an epic climax between Abby and Ellie begins, The Last of Us Part II puts everything on pause. At this point, publisher Sony told outlets reviewing this game, that they weren’t allowed to talk about the rest of the game with reviews. It was frankly, a cowardly move used to control the message behind this title. Fortunately, I am under no such obligation to hide important details of this title that could affect your purchasing decision. However, I am disappointed Sony forced these embargo terms on reviewers.
We experience a flashback to a few days before the final events of The Last of Us. We learn that Abby is the daughter of the surgeon who was working on a cure for the infection. The same surgeon that Joel killed when he was rescuing Ellie from the Fireflies. Ultimately, fueling Abby’s quest to kill Joel as he was the villain of her story. We are then asked the play the same days leading up to Abby and Ellie’s standoff through Abby’s shoes.
While Naughty Dog’s attempt to make us walk a mile in the game’s antagonist seemed good on paper, I initially found this journey exhausting. The visceral carnage and the constant disapproval from the game had left me emotionally drained and unable to care about Abby or any of her friends. I don’t care about the struggles of the wolves. I don’t even remember why they are at war with the scars. With all of her friends seemingly taking pleasure in murdering scars, I just couldn’t be bothered to care. There is even a cringe-worthy sex scene that comes after one of Abby’s friends scolds her when she claims she grew up when she murdered Joel. They begin to fight only to abruptly stop and start sloppily making out. At this point, I start to wonder if the same team that made The Last of Us was truly involved in this game.
As I began contemplating the best method to destroy my copy of The Last of Us Part II, I reached a turning point within the game. No, the combat didn’t improve. I found myself frequently sprinting to the end of combat arenas to avoid fighting. The turning point came when Abby was about to be hung by scars only to be rescued by two outcast scars, Yara and Lev. The three of them are forced to work together to escape, and soon Abby and Lev must go on their own adventure to find supplies to save Yara from compartment syndrome developing in her arm.
This adventure alone might have saved The Last of Us Part II for me. The relationship between Lev and Abby often felt similar to Joel and Ellie’s. We begin to see the more human side to Abby as Lev asks her why she is choosing to help them, only for her reply it is the right thing to do. They both begin to see the war between wolves and scars as petty and mindless bloodshed. We even get to see Lev help Abby deal with her fear of heights in a scene that literally gave me vertigo. We begin to learn that Lev has been outcast by the scars for rejecting his role within the community: a wife to an elder. It is revealed to Abby, as well as the audience, that Lev’s gender is not what we thought it was. However, Abby never pressed him about it. Never questions it or demands Lev to explain it more. She just accepts Lev as who he was. It was really refreshing.
However, the pleasantries don’t last as Abby’s story intersects with Ellie’s. Abby discovers Ellie has murdered her friends and dog. Our climax ensues as Ellie and Abby fight it out. Just as Abby is about to get revenge on Ellie by killing Dani, Lev by simply calling Abby’s name, makes her realize killing Dani would not give her peace. Both parties walk away bloody and bruised. You think this is a fitting conclusion to show that both Abby and Ellie don’t need the revenge they so desperately thought. However, The Last of Us Part II isn’t over.
We flash forward a couple of months. Ellie and Dani are living on a farm. Dani’s dream was to move out of Jackson and have her own little farm. Having made it through the nightmare alive and relatively unharmed, you think the two of them being able to enact their dreams would be enough, but it is not for Ellie. She is continuously haunted by Joel’s death. Rather than find a positive outlook for her grief, she is convinced that she must kill Abby and leaves Dani and her dream behind to do it.
Ellie is able to track down Abby but sustains some serious injuries along the way. She discovers Abby and Lev have been captured by a slave group known as the Rattlers. She is able to free the slaves from the Rattlers, but rather than assist them with their liberation, she threatens to kill the slaves if they don’t tell her where Abby is. They reveal Abby is at the Pillars, a form of torture to punish her and Lev for trying to escape. Ellie sets them both free but demands Abby fight her. A weary and tired Abby says she no longer wants to fight Ellie, and I couldn’t agree more. Ellie demands Abby to fight or she will hurt Lev. With no choice, a Resident Evil 4 style knife fight ensues.
As Ellie appears to be drowning Abby, we experience a flashback to the day before Joel’s death. The conversation between the astray Joel and Ellie ensues. Ellie states that she doesn’t understand why Joel saved her and why he couldn’t let her death mean something. A heartfelt Joel states he believed what he did was right by saying he saved Ellie and would do it all over again if he had to. While Ellie states she could never forgive Joel, she would like to try. This scene shows us the raw fury that fueled Ellie’s quest for revenge was formed when Abby robbed her of the opportunity to forgive Joel. The grief washes over Ellie causing her to let Abby go. As Abby makes her escape, we are left with a heartbroken Ellie, watching as her tears fall into the ocean.
Ellie finally returns to an empty farmhouse. All her stuff was placed in one room. Ellie fishes out her guitar and tries to play the same song Joel taught her at the beginning of the game. However, she is unable to properly play the song as she lost some of her fingers in her fight with Abby. That final broken song for me is a vast metaphor for the game as a whole. The needless quest for revenge does nothing but take characters and stories we love and breaks them. Leaves them as nothing but an out-of-tune song.
There was a rumor that The Last of Us Part II would not contain Ellie or Joel, and you could almost see what Naughty Dog had in mind. Have us play as Abby in The Last of Us Part II. Get us invested in her world. Her friends and her struggles. Have Abby and Lev go on an adventure similar to Ellie and Joel’s. Get us invested in her world and then pull the rug out with revealing Abby is haunted by Joel murdering her father. The climax of the game being Abby finally getting to hunt down Joel. Her friends can try to stop her but in the end, she’s so consumed by her hate for Joel, she finally kills Joel to the disapproval of all her friends. Leaving Ellie to wrestle with her unresolved relationship with Joel and her quest for revenge in The Last of Us Part 3.
If Naughty Dog wanted to make bold choices with The Last of Us Part II, this would be a bolder and better-paced story, but alas, I can see the Sony marketing team cowering in fear. A The Last of Us title without Ellie or Joel, I can hear them cry, what would we do with all of this Ellie and Joel merchandise? Instead, Naughty Dog is forced to marry these two stories in a story that is poorly structured, draining from its combat, and ultimately, unsatisfying to not all but many.
My Loyal Followers, I usually try to end these soapbox reviews, by concluding who I believe the game is for. It is with a heavy heart that I must conclude I am not sure who The Last of Us Part II is for. If you are a fan of third-person action, I would point you to Horizon Zero Dawn or Resident Evil 2 rather than The Last of Us Part II’s clunky combat. If you are looking for a game that criticizes violence, please go play Spec Ops: The Line, This War of Mine, or Undertale as those games make the violence the player’s choice. If you want a game that can show how monstrous humans can be, then go play the original The Last of Us’s as Joel’s selfish decision weighed on me more than Ellie’s quest for carnage. If you, like me, were looking to see where Ellie and Joel’s relationship went after Joel’s damning lie, you will get it, but it is buried beneath so much hate and misery that I am not sure it is worth the investment.
Some critics have brought up a quote from the Fireflies in The Last of Us: When you are lost in the dark, look towards the light. As much as I hated The Last of Us’s combat and cliche zombie setting, I always felt a glimmer of hope that Joel and Ellie would make it out ok. It was my light in the darkness. The Last of Us Part II only has short glimpses of light that are frequently swallowed with its darkness. Sure you might find some of these flickers heartfelt and satisfying, but The Last of Us Part II spends most of its time in the dark. Violently thrashing and clawing out of anger it doesn’t know what to do with it. Some might enjoy that, but I find it hard to recommend. I only hope Naughty Dog can find the light once again.
