he Last of Us
The Last of Us still holds up and playing through it again I truly believe it deserves all the praise it got so many years ago. I won't go through the story in detail but just give some general thoughts. The first thing I noticed is how much nuance there is in the world. Naughty Dog has mastered embedded story telling here. In a similar way to BioShock, everything has its place and makes sense, serving the story and world to make it more immersive. In the very first city where Joel is reunited with Tess, his partner years after the apocalypse infected much of the population. You can talk to the inhabitants, and in one such encounter a guy steps up to you, telling you basically to fuck off. His companion quickly reels him back in "don't you know who that is?" "Sorry Joel" "No harm no foul Joel says". This encounter happens before combat even occurs and sets up the story. Joel has been surviving for over decade in this new world, whatever it takes, he's a hardened killer. Never have I experienced a game that from the offset addressed the fact that the character is a mass murderer. There's no disconnect like Naughty Dog's other title, a jolly treasure hunter Dad that's ended the lives of literally thousands. Here you feel the impact of every kill. Joel is brutal, his blue collar strength is put to work to put down anyone that threatens him or his loved ones. Ellie on the other hand is less certain, immature, weaker, more uncomfortable with killing. She and so many other characters represent the little innocence that remains in this world. Joel is not a hero, he's not a good guy, but at least he's trying to protect something in a destroyed world.
Playing on grounded difficulty is just, stressful. A few bullets means death, just like real life. There's no HUD and the raw beauty of the world is there for you to behold in full. You must count your bullets and use your eyes and ears to perceive enemies. This is without a doubt the definitive Last of Us experience, the most immersive, the most real. At times this feels brutal and broken, like you've been cheated, constantly seeing a death screen. But when it works and (most the time it does) you outsmart your enemy, it centres you in this world. Ammo is rare, I never had a full clip. Bricks and bottles became your greatest weapon, a well placed throw and follow up curb stomp meant one more bullet in the chamber for that clicker later. This level of immersion only enhanced the brutality as you feel the skulls of other survivors crumple under a brick or 4x4, or you hear the screams of someone beg for their life as you level your shotgun at their head. I love post-apocalyptic fiction. The Road, Children of Men, Roadside Picnic. The inspiration is clear and the realisation of what the world would be is absolute here - it's the main draw that puts human mortality into question when they're no social rules left and many revert to their animalistic ancestry.
The story is still the highlight of the game and ultimately the gameplay, the brutality serves this and the duos character arc. There are no good guys. Only grey and greyer guys. Even David - who tried to turn Ellie into his sex slave - and his community eat people, but do so so their families can survive. This journey into the heart of darkness, watching almost everyone you encounter die, Sarah, Tess, David, Henry and Sam - the many bandits and survivors that get in your way - all serve to show you as the player and Joel that humanity isn't worth saving. The gameplay and story is all about inhumanity. Animals who survive on instinct, absent of morality. So finally with a cure in his grasp, Joel personally and selfishly decides that humans will just find a way to screw it all up again. Humanity isn't worth saving and he just wants his daughter back after humanity clawed it from his bloody arms. Joel's initial journey is about a mission for survival. It's all he knows. But through that he finds his daughter again and by the end of it can't bear to lose it so much he chose to decimate the Fireflies, the last hope for humanity, betraying the wishes of his daughter. A truly a human decision. Many say they wouldn't have done the same, made such a selfish choice. But I question if those people are parents, and better yet have lost a child. That's what makes the ending such a truly human and real decision. If I had to use one word to describe The Last of Us it would be real. Everything just felt realistic. Not in the gritty shooter simulator like Arma sense. I mean the atmosphere, the gameplay, story, performances, characters, performances and decisions they make all feel genuine with weight and consequence, immersing you in a real world scenario. The game gives you the opportunity to live in this barbaric world, immersing you in it and question the horrors of men and what what we're all capable of in desperate times.
Part 2
Well here we are. Whenever a game I'm interested in is divisive such as Resident Evil 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 I often steer clear of the launch window and wait for the dust to settle. It usually helps with the bugs, provides a more polished experienced and often at a cheaper price to boot. Now we're here there's a lot to cover so lets start with the elephant in the room. The story.
The controversy was overblown, the majority of which I can tell comes from people regurgitating outrage and opinion and haven't actually played the game. I saw the Joel twist coming and to be honest, it did feel a little rushed to speed the story along and whisk Ellie away and make way for new characters. But this direction made sense, the cycle of hatred and revenge is an age old story and it can be retold in clever ways especially in a lawless world such as this. After the events of The Last of Us Ellie and Joel have setup in Jackson with his brother Tommy. This gives way to new characters such as Dina and Jesse who have an interesting love triangle going on and a bunch of other forgettable characters in the town. So Abby shows up to the outskirts with a bunch of friends and after Joel and Tommy save them from a horde, they reveal their purpose and murder Joel, with a golf club, in front of Ellie. Well that was quick but not unexpected, he's gone within an hour or two.... However Joel has made a lot of enemies over the years and it makes sense someone will want to see him pay. So the first 10 hours is Ellie and Dina setting up a base of operations in Seattle to hunt down the killers. Formerly run by FEDRA, the WLF deposed the authoritarian government in Seattle and has become taken it upon themselves to fill those authoritarian shoes - some would argue they're worse. WLF is at war with the Seraphites.
I don't mind this story. Delve into the heart of darkness and harden yourself like Joel, to kill the killers of our beloved character from the first game. It's a logical story. A long the way we're treated to some flashbacks of Joel and Ellie that remind us just why we're brutally murdering all these people. These are some of the best moments of the game, and remind you just how good their chemistry was in the original game. This I think reveals the biggest issue with The Last of Us 2 story: the pacing. If these moments had been at the start of the game we would have been reminded of both Joel and Ellie's chemistry, gotten a taste of the original game and the new characters wouldn't have felt so ham fisted over Joel's rushed death. More on that later.
I think the gameplay is a stellar evolution of The Last of Us. While Joel was brutal and straightforward, as per his blue collar background and strength, Ellie employs stealth, distractions and confusion to survive. The feeling of being a snake in the reeds adds to the story in the same way. Ellie is here, a sniper among the cattle to take down her prey. Joel in the first game was a brutal tornado, carving a path to the fireflies. The elephant and the mouse. This ramps up even more so by the 10th hour with crafted silencers and bows. The small addition of crawling is huge - under cars, holes in the walls and through long grass in a way that feels face lifted from Metal Gear Solid stealth mechanics. There were so many great moments that came from sleuthing around and surveying the environment to craft a plan of attack. Like using a boat to circle around a 3-story building and enemy encampment, before finding and climbing a monorail and using the rope to reach an unclimbable sniper haven, taking down a gang of Seraphites that are unable to climb or outgun me. I take out their snipers first so the best they can do is pot shots, hide and pray. The subway scene flooded with red lights as WLFs in pursuit have cornered you like rats. Clickers are dormant and all you need to do is lob a brick or sit back and wait for one of them to wander into a clicker and watch the havoc ensue as they tear each other apart. Or fighting in the dark against stalkers for the first time, running through an apartment building to escape onto a side-scaffolding, reminiscent of Will Smith in I Am Legend. A recurring encounter that is always terrifying. The AI is incredibly intelligent, the enemies always callout and outflank you, so do the infected with the tier 2.5 stalkers. As a result outsmarting them such as the moments above is always satisfying. Seattle is a character in itself, from the skybridge towering over the city to the flooded city. Using the boat or horse to explore and scavenge is always fun and leads to some great embedded storytelling. Such as the vault heist betrayal at the offset of the apocalypse going down. This was one of the best areas, it let you openly explore and scavenge in a mini-sandbox at your own pace, unravelling what happened in Seattle.
The low strum score of this soundtrack is awesome. The ominous humming tone is a horrifying backdrop to the horror of this world. Future Days is an ominous choice of song that fits the tale of grief, despair, hate and revenge perfectly. Pearl Jam is totally a band Joel and Ellie would have liked together, adding that extra meaning. Now we're at the end, the final confrontation between Abby and Ellie. If the game ended here I would have said it was a 9/10. The only issue I had was with the B-tier characters Dina and Jesse in their pointless love triangle. Ellie had murdered a pregnant woman, the die was cast and there was no going back. She had become a product of this violent animalistic world and it's Joel's fault. Was she really worth saving over a cure? Was I the bad (or greyer) guy? Abby has her boot under Tommy's head after killing Jesse out of nowhere, and bam, fade to black.
~
Um what just happened.... Just as you think the game is over it cuts to Abby and you get to experience everything all over again from her point of view. Abby's Dad was revealed as the surgeon to operate on Ellie, which Joel killed, and so the cycle of revenge was about to come to close. I liked this scene and the context it provided - but what followed is a different story. I was so disoriented with this sudden unexpected shift that I played the first 2 hours of this thinking it was a quick prelude before it cuts back. In other words I was in denial. When I realised this was not the case I was so exhausted I put up the controller and didn't play for another week. I've never done this before. You have to understand everything was just working so far. The skills, weapons and abilities you'd built up had been an in game reflection of Ellie sharpening herself to knock a one-way arrow at Abby - in the same way Abby had done to Joel.
Even the gameplay reflects this abrupt change in pace to a completely different playstyle after 10+ hours. Like the Jackson characters, the new WLF characters aren't that interesting. Manny is cool, a loveable and loyal wise ass to a fault - but nothing is done with him before Tommy domes him. While the same unnecessary love triangle between Abby, Owen and Mel had literally already been done in the same game 5 hours earlier. They're meant to be a group of firefly veterans and survivors grizzled like Joel or Tommy, they've seen more shit then most. But instead they feel like kids playing at wasteland warrior like the Wolverines from Red Dawn.
While jarring at first in the end I did like the dichotomy between Ellie and Abby playstyles. The former is smaller, leaner, stealthier. The latter bigger, upfront, aggressive, familiar to us in previously playing Joel. Of course a bullet to the head will still take her down so stealth is important to level the field, but much less so then Ellie, punching her way through problems. Stealth options are more costly (she has less guile I guess), health is cheaper and better and shivs, momentum (free instant kills), double pipe bombs and craftable ammo for shotguns instead of bows - the action orientation is clear. It's just so much fun to snap an infected neck or crush a skull with a brick in a brutal animation. I wish Joel was in this game so I could see what Naughty Dog could do with our boy now. I never understood the controversy of Abby being so big. I think it would make sense to pump yourself full of testosterone, steroids and hit the gym if you make your entire purpose killing your father's murderer. Especially when that killer is such a hulk like Joel. They even show gyms and people pumping iron at the WLF base, further evidence at lot of criticisms levelled at the game are trivial and from people who know little about it.
The loss of Joel is quite apparent. And not in a good way. Every scene Ellie is remembering Joel, you feel at home, it's like Christmas has finally come. It's clear that a huge part of what made TLOU so phenomenal is the journey of Joel and Ellie, and the execution of this chemistry between Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson in the game. This is something sorely missed in any of the character relationships of TLOU2. And why you care about next to none of them. I really wish Dina was Tommy in this game or the the journeyed together. Or even Ellie travelling alone would have been better and more unique if they were adamant about a solitary experience.
Lev and Yarra of course get a special mention as the exception to the new characters are bad rule. The night scene they're introduced is genuinely scary. Running through the dark woods, using fire to fend off infected and hiding. This speaks to all of the chase scenes whether it be that moment, running from gunfire or the initial horde are the most intense moments in this game and I loved every one. Clearly drawing inspiration from it's cousin Uncharted 4. Any other scene with Abby, Lev and the Seraphites is horrifying albeit completely unnecessary and felt like a different game.
Anyway. I could go on and on about my love hate relationship with TLOU2. But ultimately it comes down to this. For this last 15 years Naughty Dog has been masters of pacing. From story to gameplay to interactive scenes to set pieces to puzzles. With TLOU2 they dropped the master pacing ball, and they did so with the sequel to a game that had peaked that art of storytelling in games. As a result The Last of Us 2 is strong in parts, albeit a convoluted and bloated sequel overall.
To quote a man loved by many "you see there was a sequel... It wasn't as good"
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