I was hesitant to buy this on release for several reasons—promotional material that made it look like a grimdark misery fest, notorious working conditions at Naughty Dog, the usual ignorant gamer outrage fueled by echo chambers and incoherent YouTube rants masquerading as critique—but the first game was important enough to me in 2013 that I legitimately wanted to see how Joel and Ellie's story would play out, so when Part 2 finally went on sale, I bit the bullet and somehow managed to free up 90 GB on my PS4 to install this beast. Anyhow, what follows is by no means a formal review and more of an assortment of quick thoughts on the game at hand.
Firstly, it goes without saying that on a technical level, this is every bit as spectacular as I was led to expect. The meticulous attention to detail, the stunning performances and animation work, the breathtaking set pieces, the tangibility of the game world, the almost complete lack of performance issues even on my humble PS4 Slim (I experienced one crash, one glitch, and only two areas with notable frame rate drops over my 20+ hour playthrough), all of this points to a developer staunchly committed to its premier spot at the industry's technical frontier. Unfortunately, this perfectionism comes at a human price, and I would have gladly waited three more years for this sequel if it had avoided the whole crunch issue. I'm not happy about rewarding this kind of work culture and increasing the dividends of Sony's shareholders, but I'm also skeptical of the idea of voting with your wallet and think that exploitative labour conditions need broad structural change more than my individual consumer choice. (That said, I don't view the sentiment that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism as a get out of jail free card to be a reckless consumer, I just think there are more impactful choices I can make.)
Moving on to the narrative, let me start by saying that everything related to Joel here was executed in brilliant and entirely consequential fashion, and that everyone of the 55k clowns who have signed that laughable petition for Sony to change this game's narrative from the ground up is a spoiled baby who wants nothing but lazy and toothless fan service. The most important thing a sequel can do is evolve past the first installment while also meaningfully reflecting back on it, and this is exactly what Part 2 is doing. There is certainly a lot of valuable, thoughtful criticism that can be leveled against this game, but the inane bullshit that Gamers (TM) will regurgitate to avoid having to engage with anything outside their tiny comfort zone only serves to drown out those legitimate criticisms. I know that mocking Gamers (TM) is low-hanging fruit, but jeez, this has to stop, this art form deserves so much better than that.
Anyway. On the level of a realistically told, uncompromising character drama and mood piece in a post-apocalyptic setting, both parts in this series are honestly about as good as it gets. Part 2 is certainly more flawed than the original, but this comes with the territory of being also a much more ambitious work, and at the end of the day, I am tempted to take ambition that largely succeeds over a shorter and tighter package, even if the former carries some uncomfortable flaws with it. TLOU2 is certainly not a literary masterpiece or anything, but it definitely is a lot more nuanced and layered than the countless online caricatures of this being a simplistic "violence is bad!!" morality tale. Granted, director Neil Druckmann talks a lot in interviews about how this game's central themes revolve around "cycles of violence", but Naughty Dog is known to be a highly collaborative studio with significant artistic autonomy granted to its developers, who often bring their own ideas to the table. Besides, although I'm someone who is considerate of authorial intent, I don't let it dictate my own experience with any given text, and to me, the whole cycle of violence thing feels more like a vehicle to drive home what is really at the heart of this sequel: the question of whether Ellie can forgive Joel for his lie at the end of part one. The ending makes this particularly clear, and when viewed from this lens, I started to gain a deeper understanding of Ellie as a character and why she made a certain choice in the final act of the game that I'm sure most people (including me) found baffling at first sight. (Not to downplay Abby's role in this game, whose section is arguably even stronger than Ellie's first half, but I don't feel compelled to write anything about Abby right now. No doubt a daring choice from Naughty Dog and one that largely paid off.)
So, while I think the character drama here is excellent, the real problem with this game lies more in the political subtext that this drama is embedded in. There is a great Vice article examining this game's problematic handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more detail. There are few things I appreciate more than the ability to examine complicated issues with genuine nuance and perspective, but I always have to roll my eyes when such an attempt at nuance reduces to a centrist "both sides bad" position, and this game is no exception with regard to its depiction of its two rival factions. However, while significant enough to be impossible to ignore, this aspect of the game still felt more like a side show to the character and mood-driven core of the game, which is why its impact on my overall reception is somewhat measured. Moreover, the lazy moral equivalence is largely limited to the aforementioned political embedding, whereas the juxtaposition between Ellie and Abby is definitely more principled than that. While initially both characters share a lot of similarities, their paths notably diverge in a way that makes it clear which path is preferable.
As for being a supposedly cynical, grimdark misery fest, here the game actually positively surprised me as well. While I'm not a fan of monolithically miserable works where characters suffer just for the sake of suffering (one thing I was very apprehensive about ever since I saw the first footage of TLOU2), I do think that a bleak narrative tone and atmosphere can have certain cathartic and therapeutic qualities under the right conditions. This game does indeed largely fulfill those conditions, as I do think it uses its overwhelming bleakness not as an end in itself but to foster empathy and humanity in a sincere fashion, plus it features just enough genuinely touching and earnest character moments to avoid being suffocatingly grim.
Another common criticism is that TLOU2 is a heavy-handed attempt at shaming the player for indulging in video game violence, but this indicates a lack of understanding of the different types of interactive protagonists that are possible in this medium, which I would roughly categorize as player-as-author and player-as-actor. Games that belong in the former category typically feature branching narratives and/or protagonists with sparse writing in order to let the player project their own fantasies and moral ideals (or vices) onto the character. However, the games in The Last of Us series belong firmly in the second category, telling linear (in terms of player choice) narratives with a fixed, canonical cast of characters, akin to traditional narrative media. Yes, you can do amazing things with player agency and interactivity that are not possible in film and literature, but not every game has to do that. If a developer wants to make a mechanically straightforward stealth TPS interspersed with absurdly high quality cinematics and a heavy focus on written characters, by all means, they should go for it. But this also means that this is very much Ellie's story (and Joel's, and Abby's), not the player's. So, no, the game is not trying to shame you for enjoying its very own gameplay (which is excellent) and the virtual violence that comes with it; it is critiquing its characters for the real violence they inflict in the fictional universe they inhabit (and whether there is value in that depends entirely on what the larger narrative wants to achieve). This has always been my understanding of games like The Last of Us, and accordingly at no point in my playthrough did it feel like the game was using its interactivity to question my moral character. This is something for each one of us to investigate for ourselves while reflecting on the story just witnessed, not from the act of playing it. Give me a stealth shooter in a different context and I am likely to consider a pacifist route for my playthrough. In this case, however, I was naturally compelled to play in-character as Ellie and go on a violent murder spree, because that's the story being told here, and I wanted to stay true to it and see where it leads.
I don't have much to say about the LGBTQ representation in this game; it certainly leaves room for improvement (with one particularly questionable narrative choice), but overall I'd still consider it a step in the right direction and a significant plus for the game. I don't see how unequivocal condemnation here is anything other than an attempt to keep up with this game's immense hype and toxic discourse. Yes, throughout fiction there is a long history of queer characters being condemned to horrible fates for being queer, but don't confuse the grimness of the world of The Last of Us with a continuation of that history. There is one (out of three) significant LGBTQ characters here who plays way too heavily into that trope, but the character itself is still written in a meaningful and reasonably layered way, not to mention that the final destination is a resolutely positive and affirmative one.
The pacing gets a lot flak, which is not entirely unjustified. Mechanically the game is super tight, but the core gameplay loop is indeed very repetitive and occupies a large chunk of the total play time. I still largely enjoyed the gameplay sequences because the game really succeeded in immersing me in its post-apocalyptic atmosphere and because I largely appreciated the meticulous level design, but even so I think this game could have been about five hours shorter (others might argue for ten hours).
Last but not least, Naughty Dog really went above and beyond in terms of accessibility options here, which is also covered in Game Maker's Toolkit excellent 2020 accessibility retrospective. This was actually the first time I realized that I could use some of these options myself for quality of life improvements, so I disabled all button mashing quick time events because that shit fucking sucks. Credit where credit is due, here Naughty Dog really did an unambiguously great job, raising the bar in a way that ought to become an industry standard (especially in countries that still lag behind in this area, such as Japan, which is a damn shame because they obviously make some of the best games).
I don't need a closing paragraph since this is not a formal review, but the tl;dr boils down to this: TLOU2 is a technical masterpiece and ambitious character drama that gets a lot of things right as a sequel to the original while also being bold enough to explore new territory, though it must be noted that the game is tainted with bad political subtext, moderate pacing issues and some mixed but still largely positive and valuable LGBTQ representation. Also, Gamers are babies, more news at eleven.
Firstly, it goes without saying that on a technical level, this is every bit as spectacular as I was led to expect. The meticulous attention to detail, the stunning performances and animation work, the breathtaking set pieces, the tangibility of the game world, the almost complete lack of performance issues even on my humble PS4 Slim (I experienced one crash, one glitch, and only two areas with notable frame rate drops over my 20+ hour playthrough), all of this points to a developer staunchly committed to its premier spot at the industry's technical frontier. Unfortunately, this perfectionism comes at a human price, and I would have gladly waited three more years for this sequel if it had avoided the whole crunch issue. I'm not happy about rewarding this kind of work culture and increasing the dividends of Sony's shareholders, but I'm also skeptical of the idea of voting with your wallet and think that exploitative labour conditions need broad structural change more than my individual consumer choice. (That said, I don't view the sentiment that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism as a get out of jail free card to be a reckless consumer, I just think there are more impactful choices I can make.)
Moving on to the narrative, let me start by saying that everything related to Joel here was executed in brilliant and entirely consequential fashion, and that everyone of the 55k clowns who have signed that laughable petition for Sony to change this game's narrative from the ground up is a spoiled baby who wants nothing but lazy and toothless fan service. The most important thing a sequel can do is evolve past the first installment while also meaningfully reflecting back on it, and this is exactly what Part 2 is doing. There is certainly a lot of valuable, thoughtful criticism that can be leveled against this game, but the inane bullshit that Gamers (TM) will regurgitate to avoid having to engage with anything outside their tiny comfort zone only serves to drown out those legitimate criticisms. I know that mocking Gamers (TM) is low-hanging fruit, but jeez, this has to stop, this art form deserves so much better than that.
Anyway. On the level of a realistically told, uncompromising character drama and mood piece in a post-apocalyptic setting, both parts in this series are honestly about as good as it gets. Part 2 is certainly more flawed than the original, but this comes with the territory of being also a much more ambitious work, and at the end of the day, I am tempted to take ambition that largely succeeds over a shorter and tighter package, even if the former carries some uncomfortable flaws with it. TLOU2 is certainly not a literary masterpiece or anything, but it definitely is a lot more nuanced and layered than the countless online caricatures of this being a simplistic "violence is bad!!" morality tale. Granted, director Neil Druckmann talks a lot in interviews about how this game's central themes revolve around "cycles of violence", but Naughty Dog is known to be a highly collaborative studio with significant artistic autonomy granted to its developers, who often bring their own ideas to the table. Besides, although I'm someone who is considerate of authorial intent, I don't let it dictate my own experience with any given text, and to me, the whole cycle of violence thing feels more like a vehicle to drive home what is really at the heart of this sequel: the question of whether Ellie can forgive Joel for his lie at the end of part one. The ending makes this particularly clear, and when viewed from this lens, I started to gain a deeper understanding of Ellie as a character and why she made a certain choice in the final act of the game that I'm sure most people (including me) found baffling at first sight. (Not to downplay Abby's role in this game, whose section is arguably even stronger than Ellie's first half, but I don't feel compelled to write anything about Abby right now. No doubt a daring choice from Naughty Dog and one that largely paid off.)
So, while I think the character drama here is excellent, the real problem with this game lies more in the political subtext that this drama is embedded in. There is a great Vice article examining this game's problematic handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more detail. There are few things I appreciate more than the ability to examine complicated issues with genuine nuance and perspective, but I always have to roll my eyes when such an attempt at nuance reduces to a centrist "both sides bad" position, and this game is no exception with regard to its depiction of its two rival factions. However, while significant enough to be impossible to ignore, this aspect of the game still felt more like a side show to the character and mood-driven core of the game, which is why its impact on my overall reception is somewhat measured. Moreover, the lazy moral equivalence is largely limited to the aforementioned political embedding, whereas the juxtaposition between Ellie and Abby is definitely more principled than that. While initially both characters share a lot of similarities, their paths notably diverge in a way that makes it clear which path is preferable.
As for being a supposedly cynical, grimdark misery fest, here the game actually positively surprised me as well. While I'm not a fan of monolithically miserable works where characters suffer just for the sake of suffering (one thing I was very apprehensive about ever since I saw the first footage of TLOU2), I do think that a bleak narrative tone and atmosphere can have certain cathartic and therapeutic qualities under the right conditions. This game does indeed largely fulfill those conditions, as I do think it uses its overwhelming bleakness not as an end in itself but to foster empathy and humanity in a sincere fashion, plus it features just enough genuinely touching and earnest character moments to avoid being suffocatingly grim.
Another common criticism is that TLOU2 is a heavy-handed attempt at shaming the player for indulging in video game violence, but this indicates a lack of understanding of the different types of interactive protagonists that are possible in this medium, which I would roughly categorize as player-as-author and player-as-actor. Games that belong in the former category typically feature branching narratives and/or protagonists with sparse writing in order to let the player project their own fantasies and moral ideals (or vices) onto the character. However, the games in The Last of Us series belong firmly in the second category, telling linear (in terms of player choice) narratives with a fixed, canonical cast of characters, akin to traditional narrative media. Yes, you can do amazing things with player agency and interactivity that are not possible in film and literature, but not every game has to do that. If a developer wants to make a mechanically straightforward stealth TPS interspersed with absurdly high quality cinematics and a heavy focus on written characters, by all means, they should go for it. But this also means that this is very much Ellie's story (and Joel's, and Abby's), not the player's. So, no, the game is not trying to shame you for enjoying its very own gameplay (which is excellent) and the virtual violence that comes with it; it is critiquing its characters for the real violence they inflict in the fictional universe they inhabit (and whether there is value in that depends entirely on what the larger narrative wants to achieve). This has always been my understanding of games like The Last of Us, and accordingly at no point in my playthrough did it feel like the game was using its interactivity to question my moral character. This is something for each one of us to investigate for ourselves while reflecting on the story just witnessed, not from the act of playing it. Give me a stealth shooter in a different context and I am likely to consider a pacifist route for my playthrough. In this case, however, I was naturally compelled to play in-character as Ellie and go on a violent murder spree, because that's the story being told here, and I wanted to stay true to it and see where it leads.
I don't have much to say about the LGBTQ representation in this game; it certainly leaves room for improvement (with one particularly questionable narrative choice), but overall I'd still consider it a step in the right direction and a significant plus for the game. I don't see how unequivocal condemnation here is anything other than an attempt to keep up with this game's immense hype and toxic discourse. Yes, throughout fiction there is a long history of queer characters being condemned to horrible fates for being queer, but don't confuse the grimness of the world of The Last of Us with a continuation of that history. There is one (out of three) significant LGBTQ characters here who plays way too heavily into that trope, but the character itself is still written in a meaningful and reasonably layered way, not to mention that the final destination is a resolutely positive and affirmative one.
The pacing gets a lot flak, which is not entirely unjustified. Mechanically the game is super tight, but the core gameplay loop is indeed very repetitive and occupies a large chunk of the total play time. I still largely enjoyed the gameplay sequences because the game really succeeded in immersing me in its post-apocalyptic atmosphere and because I largely appreciated the meticulous level design, but even so I think this game could have been about five hours shorter (others might argue for ten hours).
Last but not least, Naughty Dog really went above and beyond in terms of accessibility options here, which is also covered in Game Maker's Toolkit excellent 2020 accessibility retrospective. This was actually the first time I realized that I could use some of these options myself for quality of life improvements, so I disabled all button mashing quick time events because that shit fucking sucks. Credit where credit is due, here Naughty Dog really did an unambiguously great job, raising the bar in a way that ought to become an industry standard (especially in countries that still lag behind in this area, such as Japan, which is a damn shame because they obviously make some of the best games).
I don't need a closing paragraph since this is not a formal review, but the tl;dr boils down to this: TLOU2 is a technical masterpiece and ambitious character drama that gets a lot of things right as a sequel to the original while also being bold enough to explore new territory, though it must be noted that the game is tainted with bad political subtext, moderate pacing issues and some mixed but still largely positive and valuable LGBTQ representation. Also, Gamers are babies, more news at eleven.