I have a lot of scepticism around the prestige gaming mould that typifies the modern Naughty Dog game, and later a great deal of Playstation first-party exclusives (I'm looking at you Norse-era God of War). So much impressive work is on display in nearly all these games; writing, visuals, cinematography, music, sound-design etc. All this stuff is amazing, and thus I usually enjoy these games on their own merits. However, I find these games bad, uniquely bad even, at using their medium effectively to convey their core ideas.

The gameplay portions in all these games serve as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none way to accessibly engage with a story. In both Last of Us games, all the light systems of combat, exploration, stealth, crafting etc. work in tandem to create the survivalist backdrop onto which the story's world is set. The game cannot be fully dedicated to these systems, as they can only exist to prop up the narrative onto which everything else is subservient. Thus, actual interactivity beyond these sections is severely limited, with all the tropes: forced walking, quicktime events, general non-interactability and scriptedness. Take the invincibility of your character's surrogate and biological child in The Last of Us and God of War respectively as examples. The children are invincible, and in the case of Ellie apparently undetectable. Why? To commit to the escort quest that is being a parent might cause the player some frustration with these characters that the story wants us to like, and thus the gameplay refuses to contradict this narrative aim, even when it undermines the core idea of building a parental bond.

As for The Last of Us Part II specifically, it has all the trappings of the first without the simple and effective narrative. This game is bloated and messy, and thus is definitely the weaker of the two titles, even with the gameplay improvements it brings to the table. However, I found Part II refreshing in the context of this style of game, as it made some relatively bold choices to convey ideas. While working within the trappings of the modern Naughty Dog game, some simple perspective switching attempted to address the ludo-narrative dissonance I felt during the game's first half. They're still not really using gameplay to achieve this, but still, for a blockbuster game it's taking a lot of risks. Compare this to blockbuster movies and it's no contest; I'll take this over anything the MCU has to offer. Do all the risks work? I think quite a few do to be honest. The ending especially I really liked.

So yeah, messy, bloated, bad at using its medium, but still pretty bold and impactful on its own terms. It'll probably make for a good TV show.