The Last of Us Part 2
This post will be spoiling pretty much everything on The Last of Us 2. We will also be talking about animal abuse and transphobia, but I've sandwiched the topic with Markdown separators (horizontal lines) if you want to skip those parts. There is talk of heavy violence throughout.
The Last of Us 2 is about the decision that doomed humanity and the personal conflicts that ensue from that decision. The Last of Us 2 has no interest in hope, rebuilding humanity or any kind of optimism. It's a game that lacks any kind of empathy and any positive message it tries to convey, it does so in a veneer of cynicism and arrogance. It's also pretty good.
A group of Firefly remnants are on the hunt for Joel after his actions in the first game. They succeed within the first few hours as Ellie watches Joel get bashed in with a golf club, officially marking the beginning of The Last of Us 2's uncomfortable relationship with violence. It's so far up the other end of the spectrum that I felt nothing but shock when Joel died. I didn't feel sad. The game doesn't give you any room to feel sad and neither does Ellie. Instead of trying to redeem your heavy conscious by saving a child and potentially providing a cure for the infection, there are no such noble goals here. Ellie explicitly makes the trip up to Seattle to kill those responsible. That's it.
This makes for an incredibly awkward first few hours. The goal here isn't to survive. It's to kill. Ellie is here to kill people. Instead of sneaking past enemies, you are now contractually obliged to kill everyone you see. Ellie and Dina (Ellie's girlfriend) don't deserve their light-hearted banter, because you're here to literally kill people. Mix this with the usual Average Naughty Dog gameplay at its worst and it made me question everything I had known up to that point in life. I considered Googling how to hotwire my brain to convince myself to like it or maybe just completely fuck the entire thing off for Persona 4 instead. I spent the rest of the day in fear that I was suddenly going to sprout horns, start a hate group on Twitter and leave a 2/10 Metacritic user review insisting that women aren't allowed to have big arms.
Luckily, it gets better after its Lost Legacy style open-world experiment and forces you into more situations where it's like "Okay, maybe Ellie sneaks past these guys and kills them later, canonically, or something. Maybe offscreen." because there are so many clickers around.
There's a lot to talk about in the first few hours. Naughty Dog is still king when it comes to environment. We are now fully divorced from the abstraction of game worlds. They seem to have found the perfect balance between nudging the player in just the right way without having to paint all climbable ledges in that really obvious yellow colour. Why did games in 2013 always seem to do that? We're no longer in that uncanny valley hell-scape of invisible walls and ledges with really obvious ropes on them. And the weenies? Phwoah, take a look at those weenies!
PHWOAAAHHHH!!!! (A weenie is a way of directing the player using light and geometry to where the game needs them to go)
While I've never been a fan of the Naughty Dog formula or their approach to gameplay, it's clear that they made some effort to make the bits where I pick up the controller somewhat engaging this time around. You can go prone now which turns the stealth sections into a rather enjoyable shadow of Metal Gear Solid V. There's a dodge button too which makes the melee combat more than just Square, Square, Square, Square, Square. As much as Naughty Dog tried to make me feel bad, I did have a lot of fun sneaking around, attaching Coca-Cola bottles to my gun and shooting the men in the head. Unfortunately, the side has been let down by some awkward rope puzzles that show off Naughty Dog's admittedly impressive rope physics, but still feels like it's just three ladder puzzles in a trench coat.
Since we're getting into some real nerd nonsense, let's talk about how Naughty Dog have fixed quick time events. Neil Druckmann sits at home in his slippers and dressing gown, chomping on a rather illegal Cigar, coming up with new ways to annoy Gamers around the world that I can only dream of. His mind drifts, as it is prone to do, to the world of quick time events, where you have to push buttons in certain ways in order for the character to do The Thing on screen. After God of War ruined everything in whatever year God of War came out (2006?) by having you mash Square to rip off a demon's head or whatever it is you did in the original God of War, many other games did the same thing. The Last of Us did it too, but for silly things like moving a cupboard out of the way or opening a door. Neil gazed at the stars (I guess he's outside during all of this) as a comet trailed across the night sky. That was it! Instead of forcing the player to mash Triangle to open the door, they could just, I don't know, hold the button instead? He found it! Neil Druckmann called up his (allegedly) exploited workforce and got them to put it in the game and the rest is history.
In all seriousness, it does make a big difference. Button mashing still exists, but it's for the really important things like Not Having Your Head Get Bitten off by a Clicker whereas opening doors are relegated to a leisurely hold. And it makes more sense that way, right? If I'm trying to open a door and I'm having trouble, I sort of just lean into the door. I don't repeatedly fling myself against it. Anyway.
At the end of the mediocre-but-gets-better Ellie sections, you are held at gunpoint by Abby, the main driving force behind Joel's death and the character you're trying to murderise the most. The game cuts three days prior and puts you, the player, in the shoes of Joel's killer. What follows is, at the very least, the most interesting section of the game and, for me, the best. The game goes Halo 3: ODST on you and gives you a different perspective of the game's events, leaving you to piece together bits you didn't quite get from Ellie's run. They have essentially put an entire game inside of another game - one that would bring up a comfortable 12 hour run into an almost-too-much 24 hour juggernaut. For a game of this kind, anyway.
The Last of Us 2 has a very oil-and-match relationship with the player. It perhaps relies too much on assuming what they are thinking. Or maybe it's just not interested at all on how you feel playing the women that sliced Joel's head open with a golf club. You might feel that the game is berating you by showing the deep and complex backstory of a character you're trying to get revenge on. I personally didn't. I was doubting Ellie's intentions a few hours in and was perfectly fine watching what I was about to see unfold.
The story is almost exclusively character driven. This is less about the consequences of humanity and more of a personal story of two characters and their three days in a war-torn Seattle. There isn't much background radiation to pick up. The only event worthy of note is the war between Seattle's two factions: The Washington Liberation Army, the group Abby is part of and The Seraphites, a death cult who's old teachings have been misconstrued after a generation. None of the major characters seem to have any real impact on the outcome of the war. The game doesn't even show you who wins at the climax of their final battle. It's not about that after all. All of this, of course, comes with a fresh dollop of "Killing is bad".
Abby's journey almost mirrors Joel's actions in the first game. After being saved from the Seraphites by a pair of Seraphite escapees, Abby adds more weight to her already heavy conscious and decides to return the favour, diving straight into the depths of ground zero to procure medical supplies to save the life of one of them. It's easily the greatest moment in the game and makes the infamous basement section from the game's predecessor look like child's play. The build up as you descend into the hospital's depths where some of the first infections took place is absolutely dripping in atmosphere. As someone who despises horror games and would nope out under any other circumstances, I still couldn't bring myself to stop. It's one of the few sections of the game where we learn more about the world and the hopeless confusion that the doctors and soldiers must have felt seeing the infected for the very first time. You move from supply room to supply room, unable to find any of the precious tools that you desperately need. Finally, you reach the parking garage at the lowest point. After searching a ruined ambulance, you finally find it! The supplies you have been looking for. Your relief is punched by a huge amalgamation of infected, larger than you've ever seen before. After your best efforts to make tracks, you're left with no choice but to fight it head on in what can only be described as a sincere apology for the bloater boss fights from the original game. It's like they took a slice of Resident Evil and put it straight into The Last of us and it is so. Good. I'm sure we'll be talking about it for years to come as a prime example of pacing, atmosphere and horror in video games.
Right enough of this nerd shit, let's talk about the dogs. As you may or may not know, I like dogs. They are very cool. Golden retrievers especially. Like, they can be absolute brainlets at times but you also know there is wisdom in those eyes that far exceeds your pathetic mortal lifespan. Video games have made many great strides in recent years when it comes to dog representation, the "can you pet the dog" movement being the most notable. My personal favourite is DD from Metal Gear Solid V who somehow manages to quietly bork when he spots an enemy despite it being a stealth game and all... and like... how is a dog barking meant to tell you where someone is? I don't get it. Anyway. The Last of Us 2 decides that we need the player to suffer and we need the deaths of several dogs in order to make it so. While it is true that you can avoid killing most of the dogs in the game (and it's probably the point for me where Ellie stopped killing everyone she saw) there is one section where you have no choice but to kill the dog. Luckily I was warned before-hand, but the surprised yelp as the dog gets thrown to one side really hit me more than anything else in the game. I'm not one of those people that places the protection of animals above humans at all costs or anything like that, but I like dogs. I don't like it when dogs get killed. And I especially don't like it when figureheads behind the game lie about you not having to kill the dog before making you kill the dog. And I especially, especially don't like it when the game forces you to kill the dog and then has you play fetch with said dog from Abby's perspective in a flashback in order to make you feel bad.
While this would ideally transition smoothly into the next paragraph, I'd feel a bit remiss at this point to not mention that one of the escaped Sephrites you help is transgender and the reason why he is on the run in the first place while I sit here dedicating an entire full-blown paragraph to Dogs. This character gets hunted down, abused and makes the decision to go back to the cult only to be attacked by his own mother because of who he is. If you're interested, I highly recommend you read the opinions of actual trans people rather than a cis white male who hasn't really got a clue. Laura Dale does a good job at expressing how a lot of the violence that this character faces is not really down to the game's themes of revenge, but because they are trans..
Let's get to the meat of the issue: The Last of Us 2 is excessively violent, with the characters taking the moral low ground for the majority of the game. How responsible is the player for the actions of the characters? Is the player an active participant into the decisions the character makes, or are they a hostage to what's going on? If you disagree with the actions of a character, are you obliged to stop playing the game? These are questions that The Last of Us 2 asks, but I don't think answers, or at the very best answers it with an uninterested shrug.
I think a lot of people conflate Spec Ops: The Line, a game where you use white phosphorous on civilians, with a critique of the player, when I don't think this is the case at all. Instead, I think Spec Ops: The Line is a critique of the player in tandem with playing modern military shooters. Call of Duty 4's already haunting AC-130 sequence looks even more so from the lens of 2020 and the leaked footage of real life AC-130 combat. The game isn't berating you for playing the game; it's berating you for playing games that glorify a system who's civilian casualties make up 90% of the total since World War 2.
The Last of Us 2 doesn't really get that excuse as a way of exploring violence or the player's actions in a video game. We're not turning into mushrooms and eating people (yet) and it's been proven time and time again that The Lord of the Flies is a load of bullshit and we'd probably start working together if the worst happened. So what is it trying to prove? The game goes great lengths to humanising your foes where the guards will call out their friends by name or make bloodcurdling cries if they take a shotgun to the chest or get set on fire. Naughty Dog has gone to such great lengths to detail horrific injury and I can't for the life of me figure out what it's for.
The times of reflection are marred by the onslaught of violence.
The player is innocent. Purchasing a £50 video game does not make them complicit in the carnage that these characters take. It is not the player's choice to go after Joel. It is not the player's choice to go after Abby. It is not the player's choice to go after Ellie. It is not the player's choice to go after Abby for a second time. In order to torture a character for information, it is not the player's fault if the only way to progress is to press the button prompt to make it happen. There is no option to turn back. In a quick time event against Ellie as Abby, if you fail it, it is considered a failure state and you have to try again. Later on when you're playing as Ellie against Abby, if you fail a similar quick time event, it is considered a failure state and you have to try again. The player is a prisoner to the whims of a story that is dragging them by the heels. The defense rests its case.
The game reaches its climax when the two characters meet on the third day, the player already understanding the lengths both have got to reach this point. A fight between the two characters breaks out and instead of taking revenge, Abby decides to let a beaten Ellie and Dina live. Skip to a few months later and Ellie and Dina are vibing with their kid on a farm, chilling and getting PTSD. Despite everything, Ellie believes killing Abby will fix it and leaves to track her down (hence the second time). Abby and Lev's (one of the rescued Seraphites) luck has taken a turn for the worst and are captured by slavers. You can probably guess that Ellie ironically ends up saving them, even taking them to the boats so they can escape.
In a similar way to the anger with Joel's decision at the end of the original, Ellie makes the so-frustrating decision to insist fighting with Abby in one of the most uncomfortable fight sequences in all of pop culture. The player is entirely removed of any decision making at this point. Turning off the console for a game that you have paid money for is not a decision at all. You are so removed from the experience that it's not you that's pressing buttons on the controller, it's Ellie. You do not want this. While Ellie is about to land the killing blow, she starts having visions of Joel and realises what is pretty obvious to the player: killing Abby won't bring Joel back and it won't make it any easier for her either. She stops. Abby and Lev boat off into the sunset. Ellie returns to the farm to find Dina gone and the house picked clean. Ellie has one last strum of Joel's guitar before leaving it behind. GCSE English students might take this as a sign that Ellie has moved on perhaps? Nothing like trekking across the country to kill a bunch of people to deal with grief.
While I see what the game is going for, I don't think The Last of Us 2 sticks the landing at all. Ellie's character motivations in the final act, whether intentional by the writers or not, are confusing and frustrating. At least with Joel you can understand why - he doesn't want to lose another daughter. I don't know what The Last of Us 2 is trying to say, or where it will go from here. Its commentary on violence makes no sense when control is firmly taken from the player. The short-lived flashback sequences with Joel and Ellie do nothing to soften the sheer onslaught of it all. There is no room for any other emotion but misery.
The Last of Us 2 is the bad ending. It's excellent. But I hope we can do better.