My Very Late Thoughts on Last of Us 2
I remember not loving the first Last of Us. To be honest, I didn’t even really like it. I found their concept of zombies to be thematically interesting but really boring gameplay-wise. The combat systems just never clicked for me, but I finished it because I thought the writing was pretty good and I really like the performances. Pretty much exactly what everyone else liked about it. So, when Last of Us 2 got announced It passed me by with a “meh.” Well, I just finished it, only about a year late, and I sincerely did not expect to like it as much as I did.
I’ll be spoiling story stuff and some gameplay stuff, but I have a feeling everyone who cares about that stuff has already played the game.
My thoughts here are going to appear scattered and that is because they are. Much like this game, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and not all of them fit very neatly together. So, please bear with me.
The first big surprise for me was that I actually enjoyed playing the game. Well, most of it. I still find the zombie creatures boring and mechanically lackluster but at least the fighting them in melee has some nice animations attached to it. What I found genuinely great was the level design and how natural and free-flowing it felt. I’ll point to a section near the start of the game where you’re playing as Ellie. It’s the second day of your journey and you find yourself searching for another trespasser in the area that you heard about. You jump a wooden fence and you’re in what was once a very nice part of the Seattle suburbs. What you don’t expect is this mini-gauntlet the game throws at you as you fight through houses and backyards until just when you’re running low on supplies and ammo the game gives you a break and you find your friend. Maybe It’s my lizard brain talking but I found it to be some great game design. You fight one small squad to find another and another after that. It really helps this feeling that Ellie is probably way over her head here and she doesn’t care, and you don’t really care as the player. I think they try to make the character and player connect a lot in this game and they mostly fail, but I think this time it worked nicely.
The first half story is about what I expected. Some not so subtle talks of how revenge is a dish best served at the pike place market or something and Ellie kills a bunch of people looking for our villain. I think if I had to sum up the first half of the story it would go a lot like “subtly is dead but hey we’re all having fun right.” This half ends with our villain, Abby, finding Ellie. She kills one of her friends and is ready to kill Ellie when we cut to black.
Now we find ourselves in the shoes of Abby. This is the part everyone hated, so suffice to say I was pretty excited to see what was so bad about it. It starts with the same amount of subtly that the game has shown us so far. That being absolutely none. We help her dad free some Zebra from being trapped in some barbed wire and we all collectively swoon for how great of a guy he is. He gets killed by the first game’s protagonist and now we see why Abby is the way she is.
Maybe I read Count of Monte Cristo too early but I thought this was pretty cool. She got jacked and learned how to kill the hell out of people for revenge. I buy it and I dig it. I can also see why people hated this whole back half of the game, but not for the reasons you think. I think if you hated this segment because you’re playing as a character you don’t like it’s time to think about how you digest fiction, and if I can be mean here for a second grow up. I think it’s totally valid for you to say that the character switch comes at a bad time and you lose a lot of momentum to it. The characters around you are a lot less interesting than the ones you’ve been spending time with previously. These characters only seem to interest because of the fact that throughout the Ellie portion you slaughter them.
Where Abby started to get really interesting for me is when she begins to travel with Lev. Lev is a runaway from a zealot group that inhabits Seattle that is also at war with Abby’s group. He has a great story that unravels really naturally with their use of dialogue and environmental storytelling via the enemies you’re fighting. While Lev is a great character there's something a little less textual going on here that I find much more interesting.
Abby plays pretty differently from Ellie. She’s a lot bigger physically and she can take the melee weapons you find in the world and make them a lot stronger, but on the flip side, you need to craft something to kill the clickers you find in the world. Sounds a lot like someone else we may have played as in the previous installment does it not? The similarities aren’t just mechanical either.
Quickly you find Abby and Lev descending a massive skyscraper that is filled with infected and their relationship, though new, feels really comfortable on our end. Our player protagonist is showing a less experienced survivor how to survive. This is where I think it’s a really brave move on Naughty Dog’s part. Not only are you playing as a character you don’t like but they’re actively reminding you of a character you played as in the past that you probably loved. That’s where I think a lot of anger comes from and it’s great that it comes from such a seemingly unconscious level. You might not even recognize the similarities between Abby and Joel, but I think on a subconscious level you will.
The rest of Abby’s story plays out as you would expect. Which for me, is just a bit disappointing. It ends with everyone realizing that revenge is cyclical and blah blah blah. I don’t mean to sound dismissive but the end isn’t even close to interesting for me.
I don’t usually write about video games on this blog, but something made me really want to write about this game, so take that for what you will.
I’ll be spoiling story stuff and some gameplay stuff, but I have a feeling everyone who cares about that stuff has already played the game.
My thoughts here are going to appear scattered and that is because they are. Much like this game, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and not all of them fit very neatly together. So, please bear with me.
The first big surprise for me was that I actually enjoyed playing the game. Well, most of it. I still find the zombie creatures boring and mechanically lackluster but at least the fighting them in melee has some nice animations attached to it. What I found genuinely great was the level design and how natural and free-flowing it felt. I’ll point to a section near the start of the game where you’re playing as Ellie. It’s the second day of your journey and you find yourself searching for another trespasser in the area that you heard about. You jump a wooden fence and you’re in what was once a very nice part of the Seattle suburbs. What you don’t expect is this mini-gauntlet the game throws at you as you fight through houses and backyards until just when you’re running low on supplies and ammo the game gives you a break and you find your friend. Maybe It’s my lizard brain talking but I found it to be some great game design. You fight one small squad to find another and another after that. It really helps this feeling that Ellie is probably way over her head here and she doesn’t care, and you don’t really care as the player. I think they try to make the character and player connect a lot in this game and they mostly fail, but I think this time it worked nicely.
The first half story is about what I expected. Some not so subtle talks of how revenge is a dish best served at the pike place market or something and Ellie kills a bunch of people looking for our villain. I think if I had to sum up the first half of the story it would go a lot like “subtly is dead but hey we’re all having fun right.” This half ends with our villain, Abby, finding Ellie. She kills one of her friends and is ready to kill Ellie when we cut to black.
Now we find ourselves in the shoes of Abby. This is the part everyone hated, so suffice to say I was pretty excited to see what was so bad about it. It starts with the same amount of subtly that the game has shown us so far. That being absolutely none. We help her dad free some Zebra from being trapped in some barbed wire and we all collectively swoon for how great of a guy he is. He gets killed by the first game’s protagonist and now we see why Abby is the way she is.
Maybe I read Count of Monte Cristo too early but I thought this was pretty cool. She got jacked and learned how to kill the hell out of people for revenge. I buy it and I dig it. I can also see why people hated this whole back half of the game, but not for the reasons you think. I think if you hated this segment because you’re playing as a character you don’t like it’s time to think about how you digest fiction, and if I can be mean here for a second grow up. I think it’s totally valid for you to say that the character switch comes at a bad time and you lose a lot of momentum to it. The characters around you are a lot less interesting than the ones you’ve been spending time with previously. These characters only seem to interest because of the fact that throughout the Ellie portion you slaughter them.
Where Abby started to get really interesting for me is when she begins to travel with Lev. Lev is a runaway from a zealot group that inhabits Seattle that is also at war with Abby’s group. He has a great story that unravels really naturally with their use of dialogue and environmental storytelling via the enemies you’re fighting. While Lev is a great character there's something a little less textual going on here that I find much more interesting.
Abby plays pretty differently from Ellie. She’s a lot bigger physically and she can take the melee weapons you find in the world and make them a lot stronger, but on the flip side, you need to craft something to kill the clickers you find in the world. Sounds a lot like someone else we may have played as in the previous installment does it not? The similarities aren’t just mechanical either.
Quickly you find Abby and Lev descending a massive skyscraper that is filled with infected and their relationship, though new, feels really comfortable on our end. Our player protagonist is showing a less experienced survivor how to survive. This is where I think it’s a really brave move on Naughty Dog’s part. Not only are you playing as a character you don’t like but they’re actively reminding you of a character you played as in the past that you probably loved. That’s where I think a lot of anger comes from and it’s great that it comes from such a seemingly unconscious level. You might not even recognize the similarities between Abby and Joel, but I think on a subconscious level you will.
The rest of Abby’s story plays out as you would expect. Which for me, is just a bit disappointing. It ends with everyone realizing that revenge is cyclical and blah blah blah. I don’t mean to sound dismissive but the end isn’t even close to interesting for me.
I don’t usually write about video games on this blog, but something made me really want to write about this game, so take that for what you will.
To me, the end is easily one of the most interesting aspects of the game. If the themes and the writing succeed for the individual player, then the end feels like a perfect send off. In most games the final encounter or “boss” is what everything is leading to. It’s generally the most difficult, and tends to use as many as the gameplay elements as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhat I enjoy about this game is that if Naughty Dog has succeeded, then it’s one of the few games where the player has a ton of reluctance towards killing Abby. It’s the character Ellie making the decision, the player is completely disconnected from this and Ellie moves on from just being an Avatar of the player.
And I don’t think Ellie stops because she realizes revenge is bad or cynical, but because she realizes that killing Abby isn’t going to “do right by Joel.” The only thing she has left is her memories and if she kills Abby, that memory will always be associated with her misery.
To me, Part 2 and it’s end is really about the lengths people will go to find peace with their issues. No one necessarily learns “revenge is bad” but that it just wont bring them the peace they desire. We see a completed revenge through Abby, and it didn’t help her at all. Ellie is going on the exact same path, which is why both characters feel so vital to the story.
That's a really good read on the end
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