This review contains spoilers
This is a great game until the narrative shifts and you start playing as Abby.
Then it becomes exceptional.
It comes at a point when Ellie’s story began to exhaust me (surely by design), as I watched her fall further and further yet into senseless, depraved acts of vengeance. In contrast, Abby has already commited her own heinous act from the outset, and we’re left to see her try to pick up the pieces. If Ellie’s is a story of losing her humanity, Abby’s is one of trying to regain it.
Naughty Dog is challenging us to hate a character we are supposed to love and love a character we are supposed to hate, and largely succeeds in doing so. Ellie is a hollowed shell of a person, a young woman traumatized by a collection of terrible experiences and even more so by the erosion of her trust in Joel, the one person in the world who had her back through the worst of times. When this sequel was announced, many (myself included) wondered how Naughty Dog would manage to carry on from the pitch perfect ending they had already achieved – from all the emotional complexity created by a lie, all the ambiguity captured in a single look. It’s amazing to see that this a true Part II in the sense that it continues exploring every implication left in the first game’s wake, the ripple effect of which is felt throughout the game and deepened by an ambitious, fractured narrative structure and healthy use of flashback, which gradually fill in our gaps and slowly build the story’s emotional core to an astounding degree.
This is not a perfect game, and even one where I was keenly aware of its flaws as I was playing. The difference is that they became less and less important as I began to see the complex tapestry that Naughty Dog has weaved here, less consequential in the grand scheme of what this game accomplishes. I just think it’s so rare for a AAA game to take such risks with its narrative as this does, and to pull it off at such a level of quality from almost every angle–acting, animation, direction, sound design and so on–is unbelievable.
Never in a thousand years would I have thought this is the sequel we'd get, and I love it for everything it has to offer. Warts and all.
Then it becomes exceptional.
It comes at a point when Ellie’s story began to exhaust me (surely by design), as I watched her fall further and further yet into senseless, depraved acts of vengeance. In contrast, Abby has already commited her own heinous act from the outset, and we’re left to see her try to pick up the pieces. If Ellie’s is a story of losing her humanity, Abby’s is one of trying to regain it.
Naughty Dog is challenging us to hate a character we are supposed to love and love a character we are supposed to hate, and largely succeeds in doing so. Ellie is a hollowed shell of a person, a young woman traumatized by a collection of terrible experiences and even more so by the erosion of her trust in Joel, the one person in the world who had her back through the worst of times. When this sequel was announced, many (myself included) wondered how Naughty Dog would manage to carry on from the pitch perfect ending they had already achieved – from all the emotional complexity created by a lie, all the ambiguity captured in a single look. It’s amazing to see that this a true Part II in the sense that it continues exploring every implication left in the first game’s wake, the ripple effect of which is felt throughout the game and deepened by an ambitious, fractured narrative structure and healthy use of flashback, which gradually fill in our gaps and slowly build the story’s emotional core to an astounding degree.
This is not a perfect game, and even one where I was keenly aware of its flaws as I was playing. The difference is that they became less and less important as I began to see the complex tapestry that Naughty Dog has weaved here, less consequential in the grand scheme of what this game accomplishes. I just think it’s so rare for a AAA game to take such risks with its narrative as this does, and to pull it off at such a level of quality from almost every angle–acting, animation, direction, sound design and so on–is unbelievable.
Never in a thousand years would I have thought this is the sequel we'd get, and I love it for everything it has to offer. Warts and all.