I have quite a few Playstation 4 games in my backlog, but The Last of Us Part II became a priority for a brand new reason: I had to play and beat it before the TV show's second season premieres. That has never happened before, as usually videogames licensed to television or movies generally deviate in plot from the games they attempt to bring to live action. Not so The Last of Us, whose epic first season followed the first game in the series almost to the letter.
Of course, I was going to play it anyway. The studio, Naughty Dog, created a great formula years ago with their Uncharted series, and the Last of Us has simply been a new application of that gameplay and storytelling formula. This write-up will contain SPOILERS for not only both games in the series, but presumably the both seasons of the TV show.
So the formula I mentioned above works this way. The game is very focused on the story and characters, with lots of cutscenes, personal development, and small things that add texture to their tales. The gameplay is basically exploring, sneaking, and fighting against both the weird mushroom zombies and other survivors. The locations play out in a linear fashion, and the world in not an open sandbox to explore.
The two main characters from the first game return, living a relatively peaceful life but dealing with the ramifications of the first game, where Joel rescued Ellie from a medical team that he realized too late was going to kill her to get the cure out of her. One of those ramifications is a new character named Abby, who is the daughter of one of the doctors Joel killed during that rescue. Yep, it's a revenge tale. I was thinking it was weird that the player controls Abby for a moment at the beginning of the game before gameplay turns over to Ellie.
Abby gets her revenge but leaves Ellie alive and heads back to Seattle, where her brutal faction is fighting another. Ellie now wants her own revenge and sets out to find Abby. The first third of the game, then, is Ellie's battle find Abby and her cohorts in the ruins of Seattle. That section of the story takes place across three days in Seattle before Ellie finally confronts her.
I thought that this scene was leading to the big, final fight between the two. It had really felt like the game had been long enough at this point for that to happen, but then the game shifts to playing as Abby, and her own three days leading up to that confrontation. Okay, I thought, we are creating a sympathetic character out of the villain, I can go along with that.
Abby's story is pretty good, too, leading up to that confrontation, with lots of twists and backstory filled in. Finally, Abby catches up to Ellie and we get to play the boss fight as her, not Ellie. At this point, both of these revenge-driven characters have lost their own friends in their rage, but Abby stays her hand and warns Ellie to let it go and never show up in her life again.
I really thought the lesson was to let go of revenge, as both characters by now have made a journey where revenge had cost them more than their own lives to accomplish. Ellie goes back to her home where she and her girlfriend are raising a baby on an idyllic farmhouse, there is a beautiful scene where Ellie is sitting on a tractor holding that baby at sunset, and it seemed like I had finally reached the end.
But then Ellie gets a new tip on where Abby ended up in California, and still can't let it go. Thus begins a third act with Abby in California, where she gets captured by yet another savage gang of assholes, and then Ellie, hunting her down. I was pretty tired of the game by now and it felt like the lesson I thought was the whole point seemed washed away.
Oh, I thought, Ellie is going to see how horrible the savage gang of assholes has been to Abby and will free her and together, they will take them out and finally go their separate ways. I gave out an exasperated sigh when that did not turn out to be the case, and Ellie just can't let it go, leading to yet another final boss fight between the two.
I guess the point was that Ellie was so traumatized and suffering PTSD after Joel's brutal murder that she could not let go. There was a lot of unfinished business between Ellie and Joel before he died, and only a quick flashback in her brain at the last second of a positive memory of Joel brings her back from the brink. Abby goes her own way and Ellie heads back to her now-empty farmhouse, her girlfriend and baby long since gone.
I can't say the story did not make sense, as I have my own revenge issues, but damn that was depressing, dark, and bleak. It felt like Ellie had grown into a much different character after the first game in a trajectory that veered from where I thought she was going. Overall, after a few days to think about it, my complaints about the story are pretty minor, and really it's not my story to tell, it's Naughty Dog's.
As far as the gameplay part of the game, it was exactly like I expected. Sneaking and stealth kills, melee weapons and dodge moves, guns that can be upgraded, improvised bombs, and the player working their way through gorgeously designed areas that show the full glory of vegetation growing over everything - it's all there.
Resources and ammo are scarce, but were never too scarce that I got stuck anywhere without them. The combat was balanced and fun, the jump scares well timed, and even though the story seemed to drag on, the gameplay never got old. Each encounter and area that the player fights through is usually unique enough to avoid any tedium.
The old tropes persist though. Sudden sections where one is cut off from retreat, like falling through the floor into a horde of zombies, are common. The player can meticulously clear out a large area they are in, but not retreat back to it for stupid reasons, like doors that close behind the player permanently. Enemy AI runs the gamut from clever to stupid, as always.
At times the enemies seem to be smart, filling in patrol routes after the player takes out a few of them in an area. That also means that at some places, one can hold a corner and wait until the curious enemy wanders over the the same spot their friends got killed. You can also clear out part of a level where it seems every enemy heard the battle and joined in, only to find that one guy on the edge of the play area who heard none of it and is still wandering around in his own little space.
One glitch toward the end had enemies that were not that far away blinking in and out of existence as I was aiming at them. I am fully aware that there is a PS5 graphic upgrade available or coming that may have cleared that up, but I got the game for the PS4 so I was good to play that version.
The Last of Us Part II is another in a long line of great games from Naughty Dog, and even though the character motivations seemed to drift away from my own preconceptions, it was certainly an excellent storytelling experience, and a fun game to slog through. It is my sincerest hope that there is never a third game in this series, as the second part seemed to double the gameplay and game size and quadruple the depression. I'd be good with moving on after this chapter.
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