This review contains spoilers
I don't think I've ever hated a game as much as I hate The Last of Us Part 2, which is ironic considering its intent is to make you hate the characters in it in the context of the story. Instead I hated the characters in it because they're part of an excruciating exercise in nonsensical violence. I can't rightly rank it 1/5 or lower, because there's some exceptional craft in the visuals as there always is from Naughty Dog, but these can and should be enjoyed in screenshots and trailers.
The premise alone would warrant immediately uninstalling this game if picked out of a bargain bin or on a deep PlayStation Store discount, sadly I paid more than anyone should and thus was compelled to at least be able to articulate what I don't like about this game.
A lot of people missed the point of the ambiguity at the heart of the end of the first game, I just didn't think one of them was Neil Druckmann. And yet here we are.
Instead of leaving well enough alone, what we get instead is a gargantuan retcon elevating the unnamed doctor Joel kills as he "rescues" Ellie in the closing moments of the first game to the pin on which the pendulum of an unnecessary story swings. His daughter subsequently hunts down and brutally kills Joel in front of Ellie, even though we're supposed to empathize with her later, and we're off to the races.
What follows is a profoundly tedious story of what would happen if you played through a choice driven game and purposefully made all the obviously bad choices. The amount of times this game has either Abby, Ellie, or an immediate companion in front of the obviously better choice - choices, mind you, that they textually express interest in making - only to divert them down the path towards disaster apropos of nothing is staggering.
Get there and it seems real dangerous? Nah, don't turn around. Friend gets sick? Nah. Friend is pregnant and another friend has shown up who can help you leave? Nope. Group of friends looking to gtfo of the hell hole that is Seattle? Nah. Found your surrogate dad's stupid brother? Nope. Just shot a pregnant woman to death and everything's going real bad? Let's hang out a bit longer. Said surrogate brother gets shot in the head, your other friend gets killed, and you get beaten to within an inch of your life but you came out the other side alive and with a family? Whoops, sorry, you have PTSD and bad dreams, time to leave everything good to go kill that bitch.
All of the game's nonsensical, contrived tilts towards knowingly self-destructive, pointless violence is layered on top of many of the previous game's existing narrative flaws, like its penchant for killing or brutalizing under-represented characters and being unable to problem solve within itself through any other means than killing or maiming characters.
The Last of Us gives you the death of a strong, charismatic woman, the death of a strong black woman in a position of leadership, the death of a young black girl who is Ellie's love interest in the DLC, the murder suicide of a black man and his infected kid brother, the graphic depiction of the aftermath of the suicide of the love interest of a character that is strongly suggested to be gay, and the suggestion of the threat of rape and cannibalism directed at Ellie (a gay co-lead).
The Last of Us Part 2 makes a sacred cow out of a young Jewish woman by making her pregnant, and refuses to touch her because that's what Niel Druckmann thinks of as purity, and then proceeds to do the exact same brutalizing.
TLOU2 kills an Asian character by shooting him in the head unceremoniously so that the game can justify a 1v1 fight between Abby and Ellie, constantly brutalizes a pair of atypical lead characters, crushes then amputates the arm of a young Asian woman and then kills her when a future story sequence needs to move faster than she reasonably could (wrapping up another lose end via gunshot within the same scene), kills a pregnant woman in cold blood, has the trans sibling of the maimed Asian woman get stabbed by their mother, and finally puts Abby and that trans child into the hands of slavers who brutalize them and tie them to stakes in the ocean to die.
And then the conclusion is that Ellie travels across the country, ruining her life in the process, to find Abby and Lev tied to those stakes, cuts them down and... still decides to fight a nearly dead Abby. In the process Ellie loses two fingers on her left hand, and the ability to play guitar as a result (aka the only thing she had left of Joel), and then somehow loses the will to kill Abby at literally the last second.
I yelled at my TV when the shot I'd called about Ellie fucking everything up and leaving landed almost an hour after I called it, and the game doesn't even commit to it. It still would have sucked, but to try to suddenly act like Ellie learned something at the brink of everything is as insulting as even going there in the first place.
And the point was what, exactly? What's The Last of Us Part 2 supposed to convey? The fallacy of hatred? The characters never seem to learn that, outside of Abby. And it doesn't line up with why Ellie goes to hunt Abby for a second time.
Was this really all for eye for an eye? Neil? Neil did you make a whole game to say "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? Cause that seems ridiculous when the source of inspiration for this story was the Israel Palestine conflict, and especially when none of that "inspiration" brings along the fundamental incongruity of that source with it.
And why does it take so long for anyone to learn that lesson when it's dangled in front of them constantly? If the goal was to inspire in me empathy towards an enemy, it might have been a better idea to make anyone, anywhere, make a decision that doesn't seem like it was steered by the invisible hand of the writers down the most violent possible path purely for the sake of reveling in the fidelity at which modern games can render various forms of pain.
I genuinely want to know what the point of any of it was. Because I could not divine it, have not found a satisfying explanation, and the alternative is that the violence in this game is something someone wanted to make simply for the sake of making it - an even more distressing and depressing possibility.
This game is bad, and I feel like an emptier person for having played it.
The premise alone would warrant immediately uninstalling this game if picked out of a bargain bin or on a deep PlayStation Store discount, sadly I paid more than anyone should and thus was compelled to at least be able to articulate what I don't like about this game.
A lot of people missed the point of the ambiguity at the heart of the end of the first game, I just didn't think one of them was Neil Druckmann. And yet here we are.
Instead of leaving well enough alone, what we get instead is a gargantuan retcon elevating the unnamed doctor Joel kills as he "rescues" Ellie in the closing moments of the first game to the pin on which the pendulum of an unnecessary story swings. His daughter subsequently hunts down and brutally kills Joel in front of Ellie, even though we're supposed to empathize with her later, and we're off to the races.
What follows is a profoundly tedious story of what would happen if you played through a choice driven game and purposefully made all the obviously bad choices. The amount of times this game has either Abby, Ellie, or an immediate companion in front of the obviously better choice - choices, mind you, that they textually express interest in making - only to divert them down the path towards disaster apropos of nothing is staggering.
Get there and it seems real dangerous? Nah, don't turn around. Friend gets sick? Nah. Friend is pregnant and another friend has shown up who can help you leave? Nope. Group of friends looking to gtfo of the hell hole that is Seattle? Nah. Found your surrogate dad's stupid brother? Nope. Just shot a pregnant woman to death and everything's going real bad? Let's hang out a bit longer. Said surrogate brother gets shot in the head, your other friend gets killed, and you get beaten to within an inch of your life but you came out the other side alive and with a family? Whoops, sorry, you have PTSD and bad dreams, time to leave everything good to go kill that bitch.
All of the game's nonsensical, contrived tilts towards knowingly self-destructive, pointless violence is layered on top of many of the previous game's existing narrative flaws, like its penchant for killing or brutalizing under-represented characters and being unable to problem solve within itself through any other means than killing or maiming characters.
The Last of Us gives you the death of a strong, charismatic woman, the death of a strong black woman in a position of leadership, the death of a young black girl who is Ellie's love interest in the DLC, the murder suicide of a black man and his infected kid brother, the graphic depiction of the aftermath of the suicide of the love interest of a character that is strongly suggested to be gay, and the suggestion of the threat of rape and cannibalism directed at Ellie (a gay co-lead).
The Last of Us Part 2 makes a sacred cow out of a young Jewish woman by making her pregnant, and refuses to touch her because that's what Niel Druckmann thinks of as purity, and then proceeds to do the exact same brutalizing.
TLOU2 kills an Asian character by shooting him in the head unceremoniously so that the game can justify a 1v1 fight between Abby and Ellie, constantly brutalizes a pair of atypical lead characters, crushes then amputates the arm of a young Asian woman and then kills her when a future story sequence needs to move faster than she reasonably could (wrapping up another lose end via gunshot within the same scene), kills a pregnant woman in cold blood, has the trans sibling of the maimed Asian woman get stabbed by their mother, and finally puts Abby and that trans child into the hands of slavers who brutalize them and tie them to stakes in the ocean to die.
And then the conclusion is that Ellie travels across the country, ruining her life in the process, to find Abby and Lev tied to those stakes, cuts them down and... still decides to fight a nearly dead Abby. In the process Ellie loses two fingers on her left hand, and the ability to play guitar as a result (aka the only thing she had left of Joel), and then somehow loses the will to kill Abby at literally the last second.
I yelled at my TV when the shot I'd called about Ellie fucking everything up and leaving landed almost an hour after I called it, and the game doesn't even commit to it. It still would have sucked, but to try to suddenly act like Ellie learned something at the brink of everything is as insulting as even going there in the first place.
And the point was what, exactly? What's The Last of Us Part 2 supposed to convey? The fallacy of hatred? The characters never seem to learn that, outside of Abby. And it doesn't line up with why Ellie goes to hunt Abby for a second time.
Was this really all for eye for an eye? Neil? Neil did you make a whole game to say "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? Cause that seems ridiculous when the source of inspiration for this story was the Israel Palestine conflict, and especially when none of that "inspiration" brings along the fundamental incongruity of that source with it.
And why does it take so long for anyone to learn that lesson when it's dangled in front of them constantly? If the goal was to inspire in me empathy towards an enemy, it might have been a better idea to make anyone, anywhere, make a decision that doesn't seem like it was steered by the invisible hand of the writers down the most violent possible path purely for the sake of reveling in the fidelity at which modern games can render various forms of pain.
I genuinely want to know what the point of any of it was. Because I could not divine it, have not found a satisfying explanation, and the alternative is that the violence in this game is something someone wanted to make simply for the sake of making it - an even more distressing and depressing possibility.
This game is bad, and I feel like an emptier person for having played it.
HazeRedux
1 year ago