This review contains spoilers
This was my third playthrough of the game, but my second time seeing it through to the end. I wanted to give this game an honest second chance since its release and see if maybe, just maybe, I was in fact part of the crowd that was upset at the story and setting and tone and decisions made by Naughty Dog, and that I hadn't yet realized that this game really is a masterpiece and achievement in storytelling.
But after spending another 20 hours with the game from beginning to end, my initial instinct still holds: This game is not a masterpiece, nor is it trash: it's just a bad story that's held together by high production values.
Firstly: A big, big problem I personally have with the game is how self-contained both the moments of tension and moments of levity or downtime are handled. After every single encounter the character even when alone has to blurt out that they killed all the infected. Every area is contained within hidden loading screens in the form of hopping over gates and squeezing through fences. I can't imagine playing, say, Resident Evil 8 and having the main character say "Okay that's all of them!" every time an area is cleared out a total of 100 times. And then the walk and talk sections while you're committing the tedious act of looting every nook and cranny is filled with usually banal dialogue, unlike the first game in which Joel and Ellie getting to know each other is the core of the game.
The absolute reality of the characters in this game is that they are superficially written. The relationship Ellie and Dina share is not deep. They smoked a joint and slept together once and now she's following her across the country to go savagely murder countless people, and put her life at risk? Or Jesse who is basically a plot point to get Dina pregnant and not much else. Did anyone truly enjoy the moment where on Ellie's Seattle Day 3, when a storm is brewing and you're zeroing in on Abby's location, Jesse decides to bring up his favorite bedtime story from when he was a kid?
The pacing is all over the place. It's not just playing as two separate characters. It's that you jump from Joel, to Ellie, to Abby, to a flashback, to Seattle, to more flashbacks, to Abby's Seattle, to Abby's flashback, to Abby's flashback within the flashback... To a timeskip to where you play as Ellie at the farm and you question if it's a dream... Back to Abby and Lev but just for 5 minutes, back to Ellie... Damn game, make up your mind. What story are you trying to tell me here? And that's not even taking into account that the partner you're with switches up constantly, or you're left alone. At what time are you supposed to bond with the characters? There are simply too many of them. The majority of the character introductions are actually well done for the most part, and some of the introductions are exceptionally handled (such as Lev and Yara in the woods) but that's where it ends for me. Don't even get me started on how so many of them are killed off unceremoniously.
I also feel the story is at odds with the main gameplay elements, that is, of the game being a third person shooter (and a good one at that). When I look back to Ellie hyperventilating after finding out she killed a pregnant woman, or shaking covered in blood after killing Nora, I can't help but to feel that it all falls completely flat given that when you're in control, the gameplay is basically viciously murdering a bunch of nobodies. Just imagine for a second the HBO adaptation reaching this point of the story, if the show continues past season one and decides to adapt the story of TLOU2. I 100% guarantee you that we will not see Ellie sneaking around in the jungle crafting multiple trap mines and molotov cocktails and shooting off the limbs of 100 people as if she were Rambo. The writers will have each and every one of her confrontations with the enemy be substantial one way or another. So when the core of the game is about love, forgiveness, understanding and empathy, that message just doesn't reach me the same way when you have a game that lets you craft explosive arrows and pipe bombs and to upgrade your shotgun to shoot incendiary shells.
And speaking of the HBO adaptation, another thing I can't help but to feel is that with TLOU2 Naughty Dog went out of their way to prove that they're capable of creating mature, complex stories, scenes and dialogue that are on par with some of the best films and TV out there. Even the sex scene between Owen and Abby felt like they were saying "See? Video games can be as mature as other mediums!" but they all end up falling flat. I could be severely mistaken but hey, it's the impression I got.
Just look at how Abby's state of mind is represented: nightmares about her dad even after killing Joel, a pleasant dream after helping Lev and Yara; a love triangle between two different sets of characters; a pregnancy storyline... is that really the best they could do?
The dialogue itself in many cases feels stilted and forced. Almost as if it were very much written by middle aged men in 2020 and less by people that grew up in a 2013 apocalypse. When one of the characters after fighting infected quips "This is better than getting drunk and watching anime" I can't help but imagine writers in the writer's room chuckling to themselves as they jot down ways to try to appeal to forums and social media.
Ellie's journal is another example. I guess you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept that she's writing poetry and sketching in a dark, fungus-ridden hostile area (which also contradicts her urgency in cutscenes and dialogue by the way) but to read things like "Abby, you did this to yourself, you deserve what's coming to you" below a lifelike sketch of Abby's face... I can't help but to roll my eyes.
The same thing happens with the notes that give glimpses of the hellish lives of other survivors. The story of TLOU2 has so much urgency and drive to keep moving forward at all times that it feels completely out of place to disrupt the mission you're on to read about Sally and Bobby worrying about Mike not returning from a day trip from a nearby stash-house to get provisions back in 2015. This type of world building was achieved with the first game, there's no need to continue this form of storytelling.
Worse even is when the documents are trying to contribute to the current game's story. The Rattlers—a new faction introduced way too late as a completely unnecessary addition to the story—have several notes littered around the final area. The finale is supposed to be a culmination of Ellie and Abby's story. Having the finale be set in California with the enemy being a gang that's completely unrelated to the previous 25 hours is just getting in the way of the story's resolution.
And all these notes do anyways is confirm the obvious that was already told by the environmental storytelling and brief dialogue you witness between the prisoners and the Rattlers. You already got the effective and intended effect of having the player realize who they are. A note written in plain English going "Hey Rattlers! Fuck you for enslaving us! My husband died picking tomatoes for you. We're coming back to get you!" is just more heavy-handed writing that can't help but to rear its head even in scenarios no player would have expected to even see in the game had they not been presented to us. Is that really how you'd send a death threat to your previous incarcerator anyways? What was it, sent via carrier pigeon? Come to think of it, I bet this note was included as a ham-fisted way of adding on to the revenge theme with yet another example of the in-game universe's brutality.
And speaking of ham-fisted writing... This was actually my main issue with the switch over to Abby. I didn't read the leaks prior to playing the game for the first time. I avoided forums and reviews the first week the game came out until I beat it. Everything was a surprise. I was okay with Joel dying early on. I was okay with the game trying something new and having me play as Abby. What I wasn't okay with was the insulting way the game decided to let me know early on just what it was that they were doing... trying to get us to understand what Abby went through. To run a mile in her shoes. They did this by showing in a span of 8 minutes (another flashback, hooray) that her father is a great guy. That everything he does, he does for his daughter and for humanity. The zebra scene was just so heavy-handed.
Why couldn't he just playfully tease Abby about Owen at the breakfast table to show us the bond they have? That would be a far more organic situation that can achieve the same effect. Why the hell is the one doctor in the world that's supposedly qualified enough to develop a vaccine running around without a guard anyways? God, I could write an essay dedicated exclusively to the death wish every character in this game appears to have, and how no-one employs any realistic survival instincts.
Anyways, back to this supposed empathy I'm supposed to feel. When the game has me play fetch with the dogs I had previously killed as Ellie... As if this were supposed to be an "Oh my God I can't believe I killed these innocent little creatures" moment... Yeah, no, I already have empathy towards animals Naughty Dog, thanks for trying. I don't need to play fetch with them to realize why hearing them cry out in a dying whimper because I shot them in the face with a revolver is so terrible.
My other problem with the switch to Abby, regardless of how one may feel about the story itself, is not just about interrupting the climax at the theater... it's realizing that everything you unlocked has now been reset. When looking through Abby's upgrade tree you see things like "25% health increase" and "extended listening mode" which you only just 7 hours ago upgraded with Ellie, then that's just taking a step back from a gameplay perspective for the sake of the story Naughty Dog wants to tell.
I see people state that the gameplay from Ellie and Abby's sections are entirely different, stating that Ellie is stealth focused while Abby is more aggressive. I don't really agree with that take as both playstyles are encouraged throughout the entire game regardless of the protagonist.
I mean, right off the bat with Abby you can craft a pistol silencer (previously an unlockable roughly 1/3 through Ellie's story) and your first branch upgrade is "covert ops" or, you know, another way to say "stealth". Really it's only the more action-oriented setpieces that force you to play more aggressively.
And on a related note to the character switch, going back to my flashback mentions, the problem with jumping around different characters and different parts of the story's timeline is that it just completely ruins the pacing and breaks up the flow. Going from the confrontation at the theater where Jesse dies and Tommy presumably does so as well, back to a flashback of Abby, and then to Abby's Seattle Day 1 is just a mess. And towards the end of Abby's Day 1, when she gets captured by the Scars and you rub your hands thinking "oh shit what happens next?" and then... oh look, a flashback. And what story does this flashback tell? Something that could have already been inferred by the dialogue and sexual tension between Owen in the present time. Great. Or when you finally reach the theater climax as Abby, it's over in a matter of minutes, and you immediately cut to Ellie at the farm.
In fact, it's not just the time skips that are jarring: It's the teleporting. Like, seriously, when you play as these characters they run into humans and infected every five steps. You're telling me Ellie went from Wyoming to California and back to Wyoming without any injuries other than what happened to her ten minutes into controlling her at Santa Barbara? Where is the sense of danger that was shown in the first game? Joel was scared shitless to go out there. In this game Ellie and Abby both feel like superheroes that are always, by the way, saved by a deus ex machina whenever they're in danger. Seriously, I can't even count how many times they were miraculously saved. At times the game felt more like Uncharted disguised as TLOU.
Anyways, that's more or less what I have to say about this game. I don't really see any point to bring up any more of the issues I had with it. As I prefaced this write-up with: It's not trash, but it's far from a masterpiece.
But after spending another 20 hours with the game from beginning to end, my initial instinct still holds: This game is not a masterpiece, nor is it trash: it's just a bad story that's held together by high production values.
Firstly: A big, big problem I personally have with the game is how self-contained both the moments of tension and moments of levity or downtime are handled. After every single encounter the character even when alone has to blurt out that they killed all the infected. Every area is contained within hidden loading screens in the form of hopping over gates and squeezing through fences. I can't imagine playing, say, Resident Evil 8 and having the main character say "Okay that's all of them!" every time an area is cleared out a total of 100 times. And then the walk and talk sections while you're committing the tedious act of looting every nook and cranny is filled with usually banal dialogue, unlike the first game in which Joel and Ellie getting to know each other is the core of the game.
The absolute reality of the characters in this game is that they are superficially written. The relationship Ellie and Dina share is not deep. They smoked a joint and slept together once and now she's following her across the country to go savagely murder countless people, and put her life at risk? Or Jesse who is basically a plot point to get Dina pregnant and not much else. Did anyone truly enjoy the moment where on Ellie's Seattle Day 3, when a storm is brewing and you're zeroing in on Abby's location, Jesse decides to bring up his favorite bedtime story from when he was a kid?
The pacing is all over the place. It's not just playing as two separate characters. It's that you jump from Joel, to Ellie, to Abby, to a flashback, to Seattle, to more flashbacks, to Abby's Seattle, to Abby's flashback, to Abby's flashback within the flashback... To a timeskip to where you play as Ellie at the farm and you question if it's a dream... Back to Abby and Lev but just for 5 minutes, back to Ellie... Damn game, make up your mind. What story are you trying to tell me here? And that's not even taking into account that the partner you're with switches up constantly, or you're left alone. At what time are you supposed to bond with the characters? There are simply too many of them. The majority of the character introductions are actually well done for the most part, and some of the introductions are exceptionally handled (such as Lev and Yara in the woods) but that's where it ends for me. Don't even get me started on how so many of them are killed off unceremoniously.
I also feel the story is at odds with the main gameplay elements, that is, of the game being a third person shooter (and a good one at that). When I look back to Ellie hyperventilating after finding out she killed a pregnant woman, or shaking covered in blood after killing Nora, I can't help but to feel that it all falls completely flat given that when you're in control, the gameplay is basically viciously murdering a bunch of nobodies. Just imagine for a second the HBO adaptation reaching this point of the story, if the show continues past season one and decides to adapt the story of TLOU2. I 100% guarantee you that we will not see Ellie sneaking around in the jungle crafting multiple trap mines and molotov cocktails and shooting off the limbs of 100 people as if she were Rambo. The writers will have each and every one of her confrontations with the enemy be substantial one way or another. So when the core of the game is about love, forgiveness, understanding and empathy, that message just doesn't reach me the same way when you have a game that lets you craft explosive arrows and pipe bombs and to upgrade your shotgun to shoot incendiary shells.
And speaking of the HBO adaptation, another thing I can't help but to feel is that with TLOU2 Naughty Dog went out of their way to prove that they're capable of creating mature, complex stories, scenes and dialogue that are on par with some of the best films and TV out there. Even the sex scene between Owen and Abby felt like they were saying "See? Video games can be as mature as other mediums!" but they all end up falling flat. I could be severely mistaken but hey, it's the impression I got.
Just look at how Abby's state of mind is represented: nightmares about her dad even after killing Joel, a pleasant dream after helping Lev and Yara; a love triangle between two different sets of characters; a pregnancy storyline... is that really the best they could do?
The dialogue itself in many cases feels stilted and forced. Almost as if it were very much written by middle aged men in 2020 and less by people that grew up in a 2013 apocalypse. When one of the characters after fighting infected quips "This is better than getting drunk and watching anime" I can't help but imagine writers in the writer's room chuckling to themselves as they jot down ways to try to appeal to forums and social media.
Ellie's journal is another example. I guess you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept that she's writing poetry and sketching in a dark, fungus-ridden hostile area (which also contradicts her urgency in cutscenes and dialogue by the way) but to read things like "Abby, you did this to yourself, you deserve what's coming to you" below a lifelike sketch of Abby's face... I can't help but to roll my eyes.
The same thing happens with the notes that give glimpses of the hellish lives of other survivors. The story of TLOU2 has so much urgency and drive to keep moving forward at all times that it feels completely out of place to disrupt the mission you're on to read about Sally and Bobby worrying about Mike not returning from a day trip from a nearby stash-house to get provisions back in 2015. This type of world building was achieved with the first game, there's no need to continue this form of storytelling.
Worse even is when the documents are trying to contribute to the current game's story. The Rattlers—a new faction introduced way too late as a completely unnecessary addition to the story—have several notes littered around the final area. The finale is supposed to be a culmination of Ellie and Abby's story. Having the finale be set in California with the enemy being a gang that's completely unrelated to the previous 25 hours is just getting in the way of the story's resolution.
And all these notes do anyways is confirm the obvious that was already told by the environmental storytelling and brief dialogue you witness between the prisoners and the Rattlers. You already got the effective and intended effect of having the player realize who they are. A note written in plain English going "Hey Rattlers! Fuck you for enslaving us! My husband died picking tomatoes for you. We're coming back to get you!" is just more heavy-handed writing that can't help but to rear its head even in scenarios no player would have expected to even see in the game had they not been presented to us. Is that really how you'd send a death threat to your previous incarcerator anyways? What was it, sent via carrier pigeon? Come to think of it, I bet this note was included as a ham-fisted way of adding on to the revenge theme with yet another example of the in-game universe's brutality.
And speaking of ham-fisted writing... This was actually my main issue with the switch over to Abby. I didn't read the leaks prior to playing the game for the first time. I avoided forums and reviews the first week the game came out until I beat it. Everything was a surprise. I was okay with Joel dying early on. I was okay with the game trying something new and having me play as Abby. What I wasn't okay with was the insulting way the game decided to let me know early on just what it was that they were doing... trying to get us to understand what Abby went through. To run a mile in her shoes. They did this by showing in a span of 8 minutes (another flashback, hooray) that her father is a great guy. That everything he does, he does for his daughter and for humanity. The zebra scene was just so heavy-handed.
Why couldn't he just playfully tease Abby about Owen at the breakfast table to show us the bond they have? That would be a far more organic situation that can achieve the same effect. Why the hell is the one doctor in the world that's supposedly qualified enough to develop a vaccine running around without a guard anyways? God, I could write an essay dedicated exclusively to the death wish every character in this game appears to have, and how no-one employs any realistic survival instincts.
Anyways, back to this supposed empathy I'm supposed to feel. When the game has me play fetch with the dogs I had previously killed as Ellie... As if this were supposed to be an "Oh my God I can't believe I killed these innocent little creatures" moment... Yeah, no, I already have empathy towards animals Naughty Dog, thanks for trying. I don't need to play fetch with them to realize why hearing them cry out in a dying whimper because I shot them in the face with a revolver is so terrible.
My other problem with the switch to Abby, regardless of how one may feel about the story itself, is not just about interrupting the climax at the theater... it's realizing that everything you unlocked has now been reset. When looking through Abby's upgrade tree you see things like "25% health increase" and "extended listening mode" which you only just 7 hours ago upgraded with Ellie, then that's just taking a step back from a gameplay perspective for the sake of the story Naughty Dog wants to tell.
I see people state that the gameplay from Ellie and Abby's sections are entirely different, stating that Ellie is stealth focused while Abby is more aggressive. I don't really agree with that take as both playstyles are encouraged throughout the entire game regardless of the protagonist.
I mean, right off the bat with Abby you can craft a pistol silencer (previously an unlockable roughly 1/3 through Ellie's story) and your first branch upgrade is "covert ops" or, you know, another way to say "stealth". Really it's only the more action-oriented setpieces that force you to play more aggressively.
And on a related note to the character switch, going back to my flashback mentions, the problem with jumping around different characters and different parts of the story's timeline is that it just completely ruins the pacing and breaks up the flow. Going from the confrontation at the theater where Jesse dies and Tommy presumably does so as well, back to a flashback of Abby, and then to Abby's Seattle Day 1 is just a mess. And towards the end of Abby's Day 1, when she gets captured by the Scars and you rub your hands thinking "oh shit what happens next?" and then... oh look, a flashback. And what story does this flashback tell? Something that could have already been inferred by the dialogue and sexual tension between Owen in the present time. Great. Or when you finally reach the theater climax as Abby, it's over in a matter of minutes, and you immediately cut to Ellie at the farm.
In fact, it's not just the time skips that are jarring: It's the teleporting. Like, seriously, when you play as these characters they run into humans and infected every five steps. You're telling me Ellie went from Wyoming to California and back to Wyoming without any injuries other than what happened to her ten minutes into controlling her at Santa Barbara? Where is the sense of danger that was shown in the first game? Joel was scared shitless to go out there. In this game Ellie and Abby both feel like superheroes that are always, by the way, saved by a deus ex machina whenever they're in danger. Seriously, I can't even count how many times they were miraculously saved. At times the game felt more like Uncharted disguised as TLOU.
Anyways, that's more or less what I have to say about this game. I don't really see any point to bring up any more of the issues I had with it. As I prefaced this write-up with: It's not trash, but it's far from a masterpiece.