Platform: PlayStation 5
Date Started: January 31st, 2024
Date Finished: February 6th, 2024
Time Played: 16 Hours
"There was a sequel. Wasn't as good."
One of, if not the most important things about The Last of Us Part I is its characters. Not just the main focus on Joel and Ellie's incredible growing relationship and journey together throughout, but all of the supporting characters you meet along the way. Bill, Sam and Henry, Tess, Tommy and even David are incredibly impactful, memorable, well written characters that leave a lasting impression on both the player and the characters at each part of your adventure, helping them grow and bond. They are all compelling, and all play a great role in the story.
In The Last of Us Part II there are even more characters - some returning, most new. The returning cast are all fairly good - Ellie's journey, quest for revenge, anger, hate, transformation and brutality are all executed well, although her character feels completely devoid of what we already knew. Joel gets much less time, but what little we see of him is also great, every scene leaving a huge mark on the player and reminding you what could have been if the story took a better direction. Tommy, too, is brilliant, and easily one of the best characters in the game - I definitely wish he played a more prominent role - something I believe would have made this chosen story much stronger. Dina, Jesse, Lev, Yara and Manny, however, are all utterly unmemorable, bland, boring, uninteresting, utterly poor characters, none of them feeling real, most of them being irritating.
Abby is where things sort of take a massive step backwards, too, and where it gets a little muddy. Her motives are completely understandable, but, like how Dina drags down Ellie's sections, all of Abby's supporting cast make hers even more of a chore, too. She in and of herself is already an incredibly boring, dry character, though, so everyone around her just makes matters even worse.
While it isn't close to what I would have wanted from a sequel to The Last of Us as it strips away almost everything that made the first game a great time, I do still like the idea of this story in concept. In execution, however, it just isn't pulled off well whatsoever, and from what we know about writer and director Neil Druckmann's ambitions for the original game, and how Bruce Straley reigned him in and contributed the better aspects of The Last of Us, it feels to me as if that co-director's presence was sorely missed, and Druckmann just couldn't craft these memorable characters alone (or with new co-writer Haley Gross).
There is a lot of melodramatic, teeny style drama here all throughout, and it drags down both Ellie's potentially great segments and adds to the reasons why Abbys are far from ever being interesting. The moments where Ellie and Abby's stories overlap are great, and there are some outstanding moments scattered throughout the game, but by the second half they are very few and far between, and grand set pieces have no impact if I don't care about the characters in them.
On top of this, the non-linear timeline, which I also think is a good idea, is also one executed poorly. Because of the extreme length of Abbys section, the game feels like it completely loses track of the main story in favour of these filler side-quest moments with the new characters instead of fully focusing on what the player is invested in narratively, and as such completely lost me.
There are also just too many conveniences and changes to returning characters in the plot that are incredibly glaring and jarring and feel surprisingly glossed over and not well thought out at all.
The game-play and presentation, however, are aspects where I have less complaints. Everything feels incredibly fluid, from the gun-play to the stealth, although the melee can be a little janky, and everything looks ridiculously good, with insane attention to detail at every moment. This is one of if not the best looking and produced games I have ever played, such a shame it is then that other things pull the experience down so much so that I eventually resorted to running past enemies to get through the game quicker.
In the end, then, this is a profoundly disappointing game - one that has incredible moments, brilliant game-play and near unrivalled visuals, but all that is let down by its main draw, and the thing I care about the most - its story and characters. Nothing else can really make up for this, it is too hard to enjoy the game-play when you are in control of and surrounded by characters that bored me to tears, and when the game is hours and hours longer than it needed to be.
Date Started: January 31st, 2024
Date Finished: February 6th, 2024
Time Played: 16 Hours
"There was a sequel. Wasn't as good."
One of, if not the most important things about The Last of Us Part I is its characters. Not just the main focus on Joel and Ellie's incredible growing relationship and journey together throughout, but all of the supporting characters you meet along the way. Bill, Sam and Henry, Tess, Tommy and even David are incredibly impactful, memorable, well written characters that leave a lasting impression on both the player and the characters at each part of your adventure, helping them grow and bond. They are all compelling, and all play a great role in the story.
In The Last of Us Part II there are even more characters - some returning, most new. The returning cast are all fairly good - Ellie's journey, quest for revenge, anger, hate, transformation and brutality are all executed well, although her character feels completely devoid of what we already knew. Joel gets much less time, but what little we see of him is also great, every scene leaving a huge mark on the player and reminding you what could have been if the story took a better direction. Tommy, too, is brilliant, and easily one of the best characters in the game - I definitely wish he played a more prominent role - something I believe would have made this chosen story much stronger. Dina, Jesse, Lev, Yara and Manny, however, are all utterly unmemorable, bland, boring, uninteresting, utterly poor characters, none of them feeling real, most of them being irritating.
Abby is where things sort of take a massive step backwards, too, and where it gets a little muddy. Her motives are completely understandable, but, like how Dina drags down Ellie's sections, all of Abby's supporting cast make hers even more of a chore, too. She in and of herself is already an incredibly boring, dry character, though, so everyone around her just makes matters even worse.
While it isn't close to what I would have wanted from a sequel to The Last of Us as it strips away almost everything that made the first game a great time, I do still like the idea of this story in concept. In execution, however, it just isn't pulled off well whatsoever, and from what we know about writer and director Neil Druckmann's ambitions for the original game, and how Bruce Straley reigned him in and contributed the better aspects of The Last of Us, it feels to me as if that co-director's presence was sorely missed, and Druckmann just couldn't craft these memorable characters alone (or with new co-writer Haley Gross).
There is a lot of melodramatic, teeny style drama here all throughout, and it drags down both Ellie's potentially great segments and adds to the reasons why Abbys are far from ever being interesting. The moments where Ellie and Abby's stories overlap are great, and there are some outstanding moments scattered throughout the game, but by the second half they are very few and far between, and grand set pieces have no impact if I don't care about the characters in them.
On top of this, the non-linear timeline, which I also think is a good idea, is also one executed poorly. Because of the extreme length of Abbys section, the game feels like it completely loses track of the main story in favour of these filler side-quest moments with the new characters instead of fully focusing on what the player is invested in narratively, and as such completely lost me.
There are also just too many conveniences and changes to returning characters in the plot that are incredibly glaring and jarring and feel surprisingly glossed over and not well thought out at all.
The game-play and presentation, however, are aspects where I have less complaints. Everything feels incredibly fluid, from the gun-play to the stealth, although the melee can be a little janky, and everything looks ridiculously good, with insane attention to detail at every moment. This is one of if not the best looking and produced games I have ever played, such a shame it is then that other things pull the experience down so much so that I eventually resorted to running past enemies to get through the game quicker.
In the end, then, this is a profoundly disappointing game - one that has incredible moments, brilliant game-play and near unrivalled visuals, but all that is let down by its main draw, and the thing I care about the most - its story and characters. Nothing else can really make up for this, it is too hard to enjoy the game-play when you are in control of and surrounded by characters that bored me to tears, and when the game is hours and hours longer than it needed to be.