#i do GET IT because i think this finale was very risky and intentionally controversial so im not surprised/dont blame you if you hate it bu | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

destiny-smasher · 4 years

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“But I can't walk on the path of the right, because I'm wrong.”

So, The Last of Us Part 2 is out. It’s about 25 hours long. I’ve played it. I loved it, but it’s got its flaws. I think the hype buildup was overblown, and I think the zealous hate from the leaks was also overblown. This is a beautifully produced game that is trying to do much more than the typical AAA game tries to do, and in so trying, it’s messier, muddier, and more complicated than its predecessor. I love it for that, despite my issues with how the game ultimately resolves things.

I think Naughty Dog was either intentionally misleading audiences (which, given the marketing, is possible) or perhaps Neil himself has a different concept of the game he directed than what was actually delivered. Despite how it was advertised, The Last of Us Part 2 is not inherently about ‘hate’ or ‘revenge.’ It’s not just a revenge story.

It's a story about empathy, about how human beings and their interactions have layers, and how we are better when we extend blind empathy to others instead of blind hatred. I gotta talk about this. SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME to follow.

Seriously, final warning for SPOILERS.

This game is simply too big, too complex, and has too much going on for me to write a single piece going over everything there is to talk about, but there are some things I need to say that inherently rely on discussing the entire game in a spoiler-filled way.

Let’s start with the most noticeable thing that has hit me over this game’s reception: people like Joel way more than I would’ve expected. SO much of this game’s negative reception seems to be over Joel’s character and the circumstances around his death. I was not at all surprised that he died - I was a bit surprised at when and how he died, in the moment, but even by the end of the next scene, it had washed over me how much sense it made. He died in the same way everyone else dies in this series. He had it coming in the same way anyone else in this world has it coming. He was never a hero. If you truly look at Joel as a ‘hero’ figure but don’t extend that same logic to Ellie and Abby, you do not make sense to me.

I’ve seen a LOT of hate getting thrown at Abby, and frankly, I do not understand it, and if you hate her but do NOT hate Joel or Ellie similarly, then I inherently don’t respect your opinion? You’re being blatantly biased and unreasonable in exactly the way this game is arguing you should not be. Straight up. Get your transphobic jokes the fuck outta here. Get your homophobic takes on Ellie and Dina the fuck outta here. Get your xenophobic complaints about the MUCH more diverse cast of characters in this sequel the fuck outta here. The ONE case where I could see a reasonable thing to be conflicted about is Lev’s character, because they are a transgender kid who gets deadnamed by some NPCs. As a transgender person, I personally found this to just...make sense and feel organic to the world, and none of the actual characters in the narrative with names or roles in the story ever deadname Lev. Lev is fucking precious and I love him, and I think his inclusion adds inherently more to this game than otherwise, despite the understandable conflict some might feel about his backstory. To ME, the fact that all of what Lev goes through and how Yara and Abby do what they can to look for him, that says to me, “protect trans rights” and I am glad it is there. Trans people have to deal with that shit sometimes, I think it’s fine having it be PART of a wider narrative. It doesn’t define Lev’s story, it doesn’t dictate the plot of the game, it’s a spark that sets some events off and I think that adds more than it could potentially take away, as does the overall representation in the game.

Getting back to this element of bias, though, I get that you “went on a journey” with Joel and Ellie in the first game. I get that. But you spend about as much time with Abby in this game as you did with Joel in the first game. And I see a lot of people are SOMEHOW totally fine and chill and cool with Joel going on a murder rampage in the first game, specifically killing at least one man who was specifically trying to save humanity - they cite that Joel is a morally gray person who has done bad things and is trying to become a better person. Sure, cool, OK. And Ellie, sure, ya’ll will think her going on a bloodthristy revenge quest is cool, fine, A-OK, because Joel was murdered. But somehow they are physically incapable of extending that same empathy to Abby, even after the game bends OVER BACKWARD in every reasonable way it could. Why is this? One person tweeted at me the simplistic, reductive idea,

“ I know the sensible thing that naughty dog was aiming at was that we'd feel sorry for abby and eventually grow to like her, but for me I just don't. I loved Joel and I love Ellie. They didn't kill anyone who I loved as a character. Abby did. “

At least they’re being honest with themselves in that they literally missed the entire point of the game. You having personal bias you cannot remove yourself from does not make for “A DEEPLY FLAWED STORY” or whatever the fuck people have been tossing around.

I personally don’t buy any of that bullshit until we get into the final hours of the game during the epilogue, but we’ll get to that.

Everything in the first 20-ish hours of this game felt organic and believable and completely in line with the first game to me, and the fact that ALL OF IT happens as a direct after-effect of Joel’s selfish act at the end of the first game really contextualizes how/why it was called ‘Part 2.’ So honestly, all of this nonsense about this sequel being ‘badly written’ is just...bonkers. I will agree it’s not some master class in writing - neither was the original game. But both games are very similar in writing style, tone, and the world presented is consistent, while character motivations are realistically complicated. Naughty Dog has never been great at plot, but the real quality of their work comes through in how much effort they go to in order to present realistic feeling worlds and characters, and from the environments to the actors to the extra animations on top, I think the details and the context they create are where they shine.

To better understand where I am coming from with this game, let me lay this on you.

During the scene in that basement, when Abby shot Joel in the leg, and Ellie shows up...I realized what was about to happen. Ironically, it was exactly what I had originally predicted was the thing going on WAY back when the game’s reveal trailer was dropped -- that Joel was dead, and was motivating Ellie’s revenge quest. If you’ve read what I have written of Arcadian Rhythms, you will have some idea of my feelings on Joel and Ellie’s relationship -- in short, I think it is complicated, and just as damaging as it is good. That’s real life. That’s how reality is for many relationships, especially ones between parents and their kids, especially in my experience. When I realized Joel was about to be murdered, my feelings and thoughts were not jumping to ‘oh fuck what an asshole I wanna kill these people’ or ‘oh no not Joel’ but rather, my immediate gut thoughts were ‘yupppp Joel kinda deserves this, he literally did this to who knows how many other people, but why are THESE people, specifically, out to get him?’

When Ellie later cites to Dina that there’s ‘no point’ in speculating as to why these people murdered Joel, because it could be for one of many possible reasons, I found that to be interesting -- Ellie herself acknowledging that Joel had fucked over many other people, while still pursuing revenge herself.

I do think the theme of ‘the cycle of violence’ is very core to this game and arguably is its strongest central theme, specifically because violence in wholly integrated into its gameplay. But narratively and structurally, empathy is, I would argue, even more paramount. This game spends about 12 hours of its runtime (so about half of the entire game) actively trying to encourage you to understand, relate with, and empathize with Abby. The developers COULD have had you swapping back and forth between both characters, which might have resulted in better pacing, but I think it would’v taken away from what they were going for. It’s that long, slow burn that makes Abby’s side of the story work, in much the same way the long, slow burn of the first game does what it does, and the way the long, slow burn of Ellie’s revenge quest helps us see just how far gone she is.

But “arghh I hated Ellie she kept making bad decisions that made no sense” some of you say, “they did her DIRTY” some of you say.

No.

Joel did her dirty.

The Fireflies did her dirty.

And it’s this exact concept -- that our actions and choices have consequences and ripple outward beyond what we can initially imagine - that is at the heart of why I think I love this game so much. Most video games depict a pool of water that is either a constant whirlpool, a raging clash of waves, or stone dropped in the middle and the ripples spreading out. The Last of Us Part 2 is more like a series of ripples all happening simultaneously, and not all of them are as apparent or even important, but it’s just...a bunch of ripples all happening all over the place.

And it breaks my heart, during 2020, a year when human rights, systemic racism, a worldwide pandemic, late capitalism, and entire countries submerged in protests because their government is fucking them over...has people shutting off or refusing to turn on their empathy to anyone outside of their bubble. In 2020, when the world needs empathy more than any other year I’ve experienced in my life thus far, a game like this goes SO FAR above and beyond what most games try to do, in a very risky and controversial way, to actively invite its players to fucking STOP AND CONSIDER for a damn moment that there’s more to the world than JUST YOU and what you care about. That your actions have consequences beyond your singular perspective.

Ellie is fueled by rage for a number of reasons, and we don’t even understand all of them until literally the final moments of the game, which I found to be appropriate as it ends on a note of reminding us that there is ALWAYS something we don’t know, something we don’t understand, motivating someone else’s decisions.

Ellie was robbed of agency, of purpose, by both Joel and the Fireflies. Joel robbed both Ellie and the Fireflies of their purpose. And the Fireflies robbed Ellie and Joel of theirs. In return, Ellie is left without purpose, and all she’s really left with is a broken man who desperately wants to be a dad again, to the point that he will murder and lie to hold on to that. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t necessarily hold it against Joel that he murdered people to save Ellie. I will always defend the idea that it was a fucking selfish decision that would realistically lead to consequences. But in the same way Marlene points out to Abby’s dad, ‘What if it was your kid?’ ie ‘What if it was someone you loved?’ I get that, that’s the beauty of how the first game ended. It presents a zero sum game where there is no ‘correct’ choice that everyone can agree on, but in the back of our heads -- and Part 2 actually states this as a point of fact -- we all know Ellie would have CHOSEN to sacrifice herself, had she been asked.

So it was deliciously realistic to me to see Ellie grappling with the frustration, distrust, and anger of Joel having not only robbed that purpose from her, but having lied to her about it. And in the end, it was also wonderfully realistic that part of why she hated Abby so much was that Abby inadvertently robbed her of her chance to try and rebuild and repair that broken relationship.

But here’s the thing, though - the thing I see fucking NO ONE talking about, and I can’t decide if it’s because no one is picking up on it or what.

Both Ellie and Abby are haunted and driven by broken men making selfish choices. Their selfishness keeps both characters kind of locked in to desperately grasping at violent acts to justify a purpose.

Some will play the flashbacks with Joel and will feel warmth and nostalgia and admiration. Some will play the flashbacks with Owen and feel disinterest or disgust because ‘why should I care about these people?’

For me, I couldn’t help bu draw parallels to how both Owen and Joel were men trying to be good, you know, not being specifically evil people, but men who were a bad influence on the women around them, who were great and good and charming and all that until things didn’t go the way they wanted, pushing and prodding with passive digs and pressure to reaffirm their own hopes that despite their mistakes, they’re ‘good men.’ Owen is admittedly much less well developed in this regard, partly because his arc just isn’t as deep or interesting, partly because he didn’t exist in the previous game. But I still could not quite shake it. I grew up with men like Joel and Owen as my father figures, so there’s personal bias there.

I literally had an actual nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night partway through playing through this game because Joel was in it and I said or did a thing he did not like, and his reaction spooked me awake, in part because I LIVED that growing up. (not murder, but violence, passive aggressive manipulation) I absolutely adore the depth given to Joel’s character, that he has LAYERS to him, and I loved seeing Tommy similarly expanded upon. (him passively prodding at Ellie to try and make good with Joel felt a little manipulative, given that he KNOWS what Joel did; and even his wife’s prodding at Ellie at the game’s outside to ‘make good’ with some old jerk who seems all expectant about being rewarded for basic apologizing, ech)

Last of Us is a horror game, Part 2 even moreso, but it was the feeling of men like Joel who do bad things and then try to justify them after the fact that actually creeped me out more -- all the more creepy because I KNOW Ellie and Abby will give up on better choices to try and ‘do right by them’. I was relieved when Abby began to break free from these old, poor choices, even shortly after making more fo them during her half of the story. This brings me to another fascinating aspect of this game: how Abby’s story is a combination of both Joel’s and Ellie’s.

Dunkey (of all people!) recently praised this game and compared Ellie’s and Abby’s narratives to TLOU1 and Uncharted 4, and I agree with him in a lot of regards, there, but I think what the team was more going for was for Abby’s story to feel like a combination of Joel’s and Ellie’s while simultaneously being directly impacted by Joel and Ellie’s story.

Abby grew up in a military community, even though she expressed an interest in science -- just like Ellie. The death of her father drives her on a quest for revenge -- just like Ellie. She does some horrible shit to people all in the service of trying to protect a kid as some desperate attempt to feel better about all of the bad shit she’s done -- just like Joel. She starts to let herself be empathetic to other people and tries to become a better person because of the kid she takes under her wing -- just like Joel.

In a way, you could argue Part 2′s overall story is kind of repetitious. Ellie’s quest for revenge is a bit too narrow-minded and blind in her rage, and Abby’s story kind of recycles many components we have already seen up until that point. I think what’s there still generally accomplishes what it set out to do: get us to question and try to understand why people do what they do, and consider our own place in that cycle, in those ripples.

I think many aspects of this game that look circumstantial on the surface are not accidents.

I think the recurring imagery of water is an allegory for how we can let rage, anger, and hate drown us. The game’s title starts with a boat drifting in water, and the title changes after the ending to a boat that is beached. The Seattle arc shows a gradually increasing focus on water flooding the environments, culminating in a big rainstorm with crazy waves. The final fight sequence (which tbh I hated but we’ll get to that) takes place literally IN water, involves Ellie trying to drown Abby, and ends with the two of them going separate ways in their boats.

I think it’s no accident that Abby and Ellie’s desire for vengeance is ultimately caused by the same specific moment, and I think it’s interesting that many people seem to skip RIGHT OVER the idea that Ellie feels such a deep sense of rage at Abby killing Joel only because Joel made the decision that caused Abby to kill him in the first place -- and the good and bad that came from that. It’s just a brilliantly complicated web, I think, and that further highlights that none of these characters are inherently good or evil, which is pretty much the entire point of this world in the first place.

I think it’s interesting that both Ellie and Abby grumble insults all of the time over the people they’re killing, and both try to justify their violence with thoughts like “well we’re better then that, we don’t do THOSE kinds of things,” which is, ya know, literally the kinds of mental hoops actual real human beings jump through to justify doing bad shit to each other.

I liked the idea of the trading cards until fairly early on when I found the ‘Dr. Uckmann’ card, which...made me roll my eyes a little at first, until I read the description, which then made me feel more actively uncomfortable than maybe anything else in the entire game, to be quite honest. Partly because it rang of entitled self-importance, but partly because of the reports of Naughty Dog crunch culture.

And on that note, let’s talk about how this game arguably crunched its employees way more than it needed to while simultaneously making its story more bloated than it needed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I love indulging in more STUFF than it required. I can totally see the appeal of writing extra stuff to a story like because you can, because it’s interesting, because it’s fun to MAKE shit. But when you are a AAA game development studio who is potentially crunching your employees into burnout, maybe a fairly pointless epilogue on top of a game that is already arguably a bit too long in the tooth is...maybe not the best way to go?

On the upside, I enjoyed playing the Santa Barbara location, I loved getting some more Abby/Lev time, I liked seeing Ellie a bit older, I LOVED the scene at the farm with her, Dina, and JJ. I loved the gameplay challenge that was the Rattler’s base. I loved that this game had noticeably larger environments to explore.

But tbh a LOT of content could’ve been cut from this game to make a smoother, better paced experience while simultaneously putting less strain on the developers. I do think the extended flashback sequences focused on non-violent gameplay is important enough to justify itself, but I think a lot of the more violent or unnecessary parts of the game (like the entire sequence on the Seraphite’s island and the Santa Barbara sequence) all feel like...EXTRA? Which on the one hand is great because hot DAMN more beautifully rendered locations, content, etc. but on the other hand I’m not sure it adds as much to justify the real life pain and misery I’m sure some developers went through to create it all, and in a way, it doesn’t quite justify its own existence if we’re being critical.

I get what they were going for with the Seraphites and the WLF but neither group is developed enough to really accomplish the goals of empathy. I think focusing on specific members OF those groups is better, because that is ultimately how real life people break down their walls of bias, -isms, etc. -- they just interact with and befriend people from these groups and realize organically “oh hey we’re all...people, huh.” The game’s attempts at naming NPCs and dogs don’t do much when the game actively rewards you for killing them (speaking of which, I played on Normal and there were way too many items imo, we’ll see how that is on higher difficulties). We could get into the role of violence and gameplay but that’s a WHOLE other can of worms.

But the Rattlers in the final act are even worse. After this entire game of being actively encouraged to empathize with other people from other groups and let yourself consider they aren’t evil, the game just...shoves an objectively worse group of people at you, asks you to murder them, and then...discards the whole thing without a second thought. I found this to be fun from a gameplay perspective (sorry Neil, playing your game actually IS FUN when you put so much work into making the violence fun to engage with) but I found it weird and frustrating from a storytelling perspective, as if the whole thing was an undercooked, unfinished final act that they cobbled together because they just...wanted enemies with helmets and an environment depicting southern California. Hell, tbh I don’t even get why Ellie had to be there other than the developers didn’t think players would be OK just...letting Ellie live a life in peace on a farm or that players would be OK NOT playing as Ellie at the end and letting her beat the shit out of Abby.

I actually LOVED the farm sequence, it felt so...weird for a while. Like you’re just waiting for the hat to drop. And when it does...it’s just PTSD. And that felt right. That felt good, that even though Ellie was spared, after all the shit she did, because she let go and spared Abby in return, she got to live this peaceful life...except life’s not that simple and old scars can still hurt.

I loved when Tommy showed up and we got to see that darker side to him we KNOW has been there this entire time, but Ellie maybe hasn’t been forced to see it. All the way up until this point, I felt I could understand where the characters were coming from and what motivated their decisions.

And then Ellie decided “no, actually, maybe if I throw all of this away I can maybe get rid of this PTSD I got from throwing everything away before.” And then it got worse when after she breaks into this fucking slave house to free people, after she saves Abby and Lev from dying on posts, she STILL wants to fight. ANd Abby’s where I’m at -- that ‘fucking REALLY?’ feeling. I utterly disliked the fight scene in the water. It was the one time in the whole game that actually felt like misery porn to me. I was honestly going into it expecting that maybe Ellie’s stab wound from the trap would cause her to be too weak to fight, and she’d literally drown from bleeding out because of her own unrelenting pursuit of revenge. But nah, we’re put through a pointless, brutal fist/knife fight that...doesn’t really have purpose imo. WHatever you wanted to accomplish here, you could’ve done back in the theater in Seattle. (on that note I LOVED the Ellie boss fight, what a fun gameplay thing and also just tense all around since you really couldn’t tell what was going to happen, but I LOVE that Lev stopped Abby from killing Dina, even though she had every reason to)

I can imagine different versions of the Santa Barbara sequence that offer a more edifying conclusion while still working in the environmental and gameplay components they seemed insistent on working in. It’s the one major portion of the game that, now that I’ve had time to process, I feel the most conflicted about.

Neither Ellie nor Abby “deserve” a happy ending in much the same way Joel didn’t “deserve” a happy ending. This game has no true protagonists or villains (anyone who is presented as a ‘villain’ is minor, and we don’t find out much about them anyway). I think Joel was lucky to get the time he got to live in community once again, to rediscover his humanity (look at all of those flowers they left at his house, this man who fucked over humanity and murdered countless people had a chance to live a few years of peaceful life again), I think Ellie was lucky she got time to even live what she did on that farm with Dina and JJ, and was lucky to still be alive at the end of the story. I think Abby was lucky to have been able to break free from a life of militaristic bullshit and rediscover some of her own lost humanity.

I think a lot of people admire Joel as a hero when it’s clear he was never one.

I think a lot of people admire Ellie and try to idolize her as the smarmy kid she could never permanently exist as.

I think a lot of people hate on Abby for EXISTING (and being a woman -gasp- WITH MUSCLES) and I’m pretty pleased with Laura Bailey getting to play this role (and Ashly Burch getting a supporting role in this game, too, for that matter).

I think The Last of Us is not ‘about Ellie and Joel.’ I think The Last of Us is about humanity, and exploring it through different angle. Sometimes needlessly gritty and dark ones, but Part 2 gave us even more light-hearted, pelasant moments than I could have expected. I think people who look so reductively at this game -- now officially a ‘series’ -- as ‘Joel and Ellie 100x forever’ and literally anything outside of that being bad and a waste of time fundamentally missed the entire purpose of this game, ironically ignoring what it is trying to passionately to convey. I think Naughty Dog’s marketing of the game actively misled people in ways that are rare for the industry, and I do think that is a bit shady - but on the other hand, being misled actively improved my experience with the end product (which is arguably why they did it). I think the way Sony has latched on Joel and Ellie as ‘Playstation Icons’ and encouraged people to buy up TLOU merch depite there not being much TO turn into merchandise says something.

Also? Frankly?

I am SO FUCKING TIRED of “angry sad dad” games.

Like. I loved TLOU 1, I loved the new God of War, etc. etc.

But God of War took basically NO RISKS and had NOTHING TO SAY that countless other pieces of media have said to death. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next. But this game actually has challenging thoughts, complicated things, it is trying to get players to consider, and most everyone I see shitting on the game either hasn’t played it or doesn’t seem interested in games that exist for something beyond making them feel good about themselves? I dunno.

I think at the end of the day, TLOU as an entire series, and specifically the sequel, isn’t about Joel and Ellie, that was just the more focused lens the original game had. For its messier, muddier experience, Part 2 strives for nothing more than many pieces of media have but for something that is still rare in the space of AAA video games.

It takes some risks, it makes some missteps in getting where it goes, for sure, and it’s by no means some holy gift to mankid, but it passionately goes to GREAT lengths to explore and express a fairly simple idea:

empathy is a choice, understanding others is a choice,

and we are all inherently better off when we choose to blindly accept understanding than when we blindly choose hate and violence.

Just because we can’t walk ‘the path of the right,’ and just because ‘we’re wrong’ doesn’t mean we should let the phantoms in our lives continue to keep a hold on our future. Just because someone does some good things doesn’t erase the consequences and ripples of the bad they have done, and just because we do bad things doesn’t mean we can’t do good.

The way to end the cycle of violence is empathy.

It’s simplistic in concept, but if you look around at not just the reception to this game even before people could play it, but just the STATE OF THE WORLD IN 2020, you will see that maybe we still need such basic, simplistic concepts to continue to be explored in big budget media.

#tlou part 2 #tlou #The Last of Us #The Last of Us Part 2

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