Loss & Revenge During a Pandemic (My thoughts on The Last of Us Part II)

 *Okay - So first, sorry about the format issues, I tried my best, but I'm not liking Blogger/Blogspot when it comes to editing. Second I get the anger and resentment of this game. It’s a game with specific scenes that are made to get a strong reaction from it’s audience. I felt that when I saw the initial leaks. But if you provided death threats to Neil Druckmann or Laura Bailey, anything anti-semitic or homophobic, please go away, I don’t want your readership and I hope you find something that makes you happy in life and takes away all the hate in your heart.

Lastly - SPOOOOOOOOOOOILERS. Do not read if you haven’t played The Last of Us Part II. I basically recap the game.

“Everyone I have cared for, has either died, or left me. Everyone e- fucking except for you. So don’t tell me that I would be safer with someone else, because the truth is I would just be more scared.”

The above is said by the character Ellie, to her would-be adopted father Joel, in the 2013 PlayStation 3 game, The Last of Us. The Last of Us is probably my favorite video game of all time. Unlike the naysayers of it, I enjoy not only the story and the characters, as many do, but also the gameplay loop of survival. I enjoy the quiet moments of scrounging the environment for any bit of something useful, from shotgun shells to rubbing alcohol to the chaotic moments of being heard and then attacked by a Clicker, a creature who was previously a person and is now infected by the fungal cordyceps virus that plagued America and seemingly the rest of the world. Set twenty years after the initial outbreak, The Last of Us is a post apocalyptic game that is about redemption, the loss of humanity and the finding of it, through something we can all relate to, human connection. The depth of the relationship of the two main characters of The Last of Us, is rare for a video game really to this day. There are a few other attempts at this type of storytelling in gaming and few of them I found remotely as effective as The Last of Us. The original game pushed the boundaries of gaming forward and told a very well crafted story, with characters that you felt emotionally attached to and they were characters with depth. Usually in video gaming, it’s very easy to tell who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. This wasn’t so with The Last of Us, because the characters make choices in the game. Some are choices that the player would not make. But they are defined characters making choices that have vast consequences.

So the reason I brought that quote up that Ellie says in the first game is for one simple reason. I do not think that The Last of Us Part II makes good on that character beat. As gutsy as The Last of Us Part II is, it’s almost the easy way to tell this story. It’s expected Joel would die in the sequel. The harder thing to do would be to find a compelling way to keep this story going in an interesting way. This game takes a specific moment, the end scene and takes the consequences from that particular scene and makes good on that scene and does so fantastically, I might add, but Naughty Dog’s intention with this game is that it would be a direct continuation of the first game's themes and story beats. This is The Last of Us Part II. It’s in the title of the game. This is not The Last of Us 2, the bigger, bolder and more badass version of The Last of Us, the typical kind of sequel, it’s very title tells us to expect a continuation of the first game and maybe I’m reading too much into that, but I would include in that plot, characters and theming. 

Anyway, my time with this game has been the most conflicted I’ve ever felt about a game. I’m going to get my beef out with the game up top. Because by and large I think this is a fantastic video game. Ten out of ten, great graphics and gameplay, bro. So buy it. That aside, let’s get down to it. Let’s talk about the murder of Joel Miller by new character to The Last of Us Part II, Abby.

So the reason I have for not liking the death of Joel is not one I’ve heard really stated elsewhere. But I’m a new father, my daughter was born right near the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. For all of Joel’s faults, of which there are many, him and Ellie in the first game are as close to real people as I’ve ever seen in gaming. Their relationship feels real. They care deeply for one another, but Joel makes a decision at the end of the first game, to save Ellie’s life at the probable expense of humankind. Ellie is immune to the cordyceps virus that is plaguing humanity in the game and the enemy (?) of the first game, a group called The Fireflies, want to cut into her brain to find a cure. Joel finds this out and kills the doctor (who, let’s face it, is a no name character of no consequence retroactively made important by the sequel) who is looking for the cure and takes Ellie, a decision, which I’m not going to lie, all cards on the table, I would make for my daughter. Ellie, who is unconscious during this because of the surgery is unaware of this and upon coming to, is told by Joel that there are others like her and other opportunities for the cure. This is of course a lie and the final scene of the first game, Ellie questions Joel about this and he doubles down. The game ends with Ellie searching her thoughts, nodding and saying, “Okay.” which can be read in a variety of ways. I read it as Ellie, knowing fully Joel’s lying, but deciding to buy into the concept of father and daughter. The sequel starts, wiping away the ambiguity of the first game's ending and goes with the notion that Ellie knows and is disappointed in Joel and this has driven a wedge between the two of them.
All of this to say, their relationship, no matter how you look at it or read into it, is messy. But real. That’s how relationships really are. I’m sure there’s other examples in gaming out there that have this kind of complicated relationship, I’ve only played so many games, but The Last of Us is the only one I can think of offhand. 

So the reason Joel’s death angered me during the leaks was this; there are not a lot of examples of strong father figures in media in general. Most of the time, fathers are a joke in media at the expense of the smarter, wiser mother. Not that I disagree with this notion by any means, the women in my life are far wiser than I am, but I’m also not the bumbling idiot mass media would make me out to be. Like all life, things are complicated and that’s what I loved about Joel’s character in the first game. This game, at times, leans more into the bumbling idiot stereotype for Joel. Joel is supposed to be a hardened survivor, but is corralled by Abby into a building surrounded by people he doesn’t know, immediately his name is given and upon confirmation of said name, is at first tortured and then killed by Abby. I don’t have a problem with killing Joel. I have a problem with the execution. Joel is smarter than this. This is too easy. It is completely out of character for Joel and does nothing to help out Abby’s character.

Joel saves Abby from the infected minutes before she kills him and there’s nothing close to resembling a human response from her. There’s no confliction about Joel saving her and then her doing what she came to do. It all happens too fast and the only reason you can say that is because Naughty Dog was wanting to go for the shock value of the moment. With minor tweaks, you could see a situation where Owen, Abby’s ex, pulls her to the side to at least briefly have a conversation and Abby wrestles with coming to a resolution about what she came to do ie; “It can’t all be for nothing.”. I don’t know, I’m not a writer and don’t claim to be a writer of the caliber of Neil Druckmann or Halley Gross, but off the top of my head I can picture a scene like that playing better, planting some semblance of a seed of sympathy for Abby in the audience, before she does the deed.

I’ve listened to Druckmann and Baker talk about and defend this scene and their explanations for it just weren’t very satisfying for me, the idea is that Joel is a little softer with the four year gap between Part I and Part II, that while he is sizing the group up, he’s not on guard because they seem like normal people and least threatening to him is Abby, specifically because she seems to Joel to be the same age as Elly (why that would matter, I’m not sure, I’ve watched enough MMA to know there are plenty of women who could take me out if they needed to). It just doesn’t sit right with me. I mean, David, the cannibal of the first game’s story seems like a normal person, until he’s given an opportunity to show his true colors. There’s just too much there that makes it hard to believe that Joel would let his guard down this much. Moreover; going by the story, Joel is out on patrol, but just the night before was able to regain a foothold in his relationship with Ellie, so why would he put that on the line, taking such a big risk? I don’t know. Again, not to denigrate the writing ability of Druckmann, because all else told it’s a solid scene, I just feel this could have used a couple more passes to soften the weak points. 

So there, I said my peace with this. You know, maybe I’m right, or maybe everything I’ve thought of Naughty Dog tried and it just didn’t work. At this point, they’ve more than doubled down on the content of the game, short of retconning the game which I don’t think they should do, they’ve played their hand and the content is the content. So let’s look at the rest of the game, but start with my journey to the game.

So how I came to The Last of Us Part II, was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, while raising a newborn my wife and I had that was born in April 2020. The likelihood that I was going to play the game right away was very slim. I had pre-ordered the game at one point, but I think mid-way through the pregnancy I began to look at reality and ended up canceling the pre-order. So, I can’t remember where I was, Resetera, GAF or Reddit, but I saw that there were spoilers of The Last of Us Part II that had been uploaded. I thought that was curious, at this point, there was an unknown date for the game and I just found it odd that someone had played the game. Like Joel says in the first game, I struggled, “for a long time” deciding whether or not I wanted to see the spoilers, but knowing I wasn’t going to be able to play the game before release and knowing as tuned in as I was with gaming culture, I was likely to have the game spoiled before I had a chance to play it. So I looked.

I. Was. Livid. How could they do this to these characters that I loved. Ugh. So done with Naughty Dog.

Time heals all wounds. I love the first game so much, the meaning it has for me, especially now and knowing how much I have loved Naughty Dog’s games, I examined why I was feeling what I was feeling. I tried to think of what is it that Naughty Dog is aiming for. Have I played into their hands? Okay. I can’t monetarily support this company with the choices they’ve made, but I want to see what they’re doing. So I decided to watch a playthrough of the game on YouTube. I had liked some of YouTuber TheRadBrad’s content before and I saw he had a series of videos playing the game. I began to watch, holding my newborn daughter in my arms, just ready to go off. 

The first moment that hooked me was seeing Ellie’s reaction to Joel’s death. There’s a moment where Ellie goes to hug Tommy in the first scene after Joel’s death, for context, I lost my Father and Grandmother in 2019 and then Mother-In-Law within the first few days of 2020, so loss and grief is very real and raw to me still, but Ellie hugs Tommy and there’s this motion Ellie makes that’s just so real and it touched me.

The second moment is shortly thereafter, Ellie and Dina are talking about leaving Jackson, but Ellie wants to swing by Joel’s house before they leave. They walk up onto the porch, Ellie goes to open the door to Joel’s house and her hand begins to shake. The shake to me says, if I open this door, this is real. Joel is gone. This house will be empty. She goes inside and looks through Joel’s belongings and I thought to myself, some day this is going to be the daughter I’m holding in my arms, the same way I looked through my Dad’s belongings after he passed and they brought back memories. Some day my daughter is going to be looking at my belongings after I’m gone that hold meaning to her. How will she feel? Will she feel like Ellie feels?

I knew I wanted to play the game when they began to flash back to earlier moments that Joel and Ellie had shared. Things that resolve the first game and add depth to the loss of Joel. I watched TheRadBrad’s playthrough of the game and when I saw that they were headed into a museum, I quit watching. I knew I wanted to play this game. So, having most of my money going to newborn stuff, I waited for an opportunity that I would be able to afford the game and it was one of two brand (as in bought in the same calendar year that the game came out) new games that I got in 2020, the other being Final Fantasy VII Remake, which of course I had twenty plus years of emotional attachment to. So that’s how I arrived at playing this game.

All right, let’s get into the game. So The Last of Us Part II, begins seemingly not very long after the first game ends. Joel and Ellie made it to Jackson, the town they were headed to at the end of the first game. Joel is out with Tommy, his brother, seemingly on patrol and they have taken a break. Joel is cleaning and stringing a guitar and he confesses to Tommy about what he’s done, that he saved Ellie at the expense of the rest of humanity and then lied to her about this fact. The two of them head back to Jackson together (which was amazing, the ride back with the views and the horses - so good) and we get the title card of the game as they stable their horses and enter the town.

Joel then goes to Ellie’s house, a hint of where their relationship is at, they aren’t pseudo-father and daughter seemingly, Ellie lives alone despite being a teenager. Joel plays guitar for her, he plays “Future Days” by Pearl Jam. I’ve actually heard something funny about this, unless Joel was really keyed in to Pearl Jam, he shouldn’t really know that song. “Outbreak Day” the very first thing we experience in The Last of Us franchise took place on September 26th, 2013 and “Future Days” is on the Pearl Jam album Lightning Bolt, which was released on October 11, 2013, so therefore in the world of The Last of Us, Joel shouldn’t really have even known about the song. Anyway, Joel plays the song and then gives the guitar he had been working on to Ellie and promises to make good on the promise he made to her in the first game and teach her guitar. One important thing to note here is on the fret of the guitar is a moth, continuing The Last of Us franchise’s focus on winged bugs and their importance.

 

This kind of begins something that happens a lot in this game and that’s metaphors, what and who Ellie is and where she’s at in her journey and what a moth is and the comparisons between the two. After a cursory glance into moths, two things stick out to me that I want to point out. One and this is very interesting and that is that moths are seemingly very susceptible to a type of cordyceps virus called Ophiocordyceps sinensis. As we know, the virus that infected the world of The Last of Us is a mutation of a cordyceps virus that affects humans. Second thing I found interesting about moths is the most obvious thing about them and that is their attraction to light, even potentially at the expense of their own life. While that doesn’t necessarily come into play for Ellie in this game, it could hint at where they might go with her character in future games.

So Joel gifts the guitar, makes an amazing Dad Joke and then leaves. The scene cuts and then we come back in four years later to a knocking sound. Ellie wakes up, answers the door and it is her friend Jesse. We proceed to explore the town of Jackson and meet some of the characters. This is where we run into Dina. Not unlike the downloadable content for the first game, Left Behind, we go through a sort of mechanic training via a snowball fight. It teaches the player how to target enemies and disable them with objects thrown. Ellie and Dina then saddle up on horses and head out of town, to go on patrol and we’re led to…

An unknown and unnamed woman waking up, seemingly from troubled sleep. The camera pans to show a man standing in the background and the unnamed woman makes her way over to this person. These two people are obviously familiar with one another and the woman asks where the man has been. The man says to grab her equipment and lets her know that he has something to show her. A detail about this woman that’s made pretty clear in this scene, just physically you can tell that this woman is jacked. She has been eating her Wheaties. The duo head out into a snowy wilderness and while walking together we learn that the woman is named Abby and the man is named Owen. What Owen shows her is the town of Jackson and they reveal they are looking for a man who should be in that town. 

Abby wants to immediately head to this town, Owen wants to head back to their group and come up with a plan and both things end up happening, Abby begins to make her way to Jackson. The game begins to cut back and forth between Ellie and Abby. Ellie is out on patrol with Dina, you explore a watchtower and the two of them are making their way to a hideout for the night. You really begin to dig into some of the mechanics of the game at this point, you have the horse back riding, fighting the infected, you learn how to throw ropes to securely climb them. It’s all pretty good stuff. Dina and Ellie make it to the safe house and end up finding out that the guy who patrolled this area (before he died?) had been growing pot in the basement. Ellie and Dina smoke up and end up having sex together.

Meanwhile, as the game cuts back to Abby, she is attacked by the infected and they begin to overwhelm her. Just when things are looking bad for Abby and an infected is about to get her, she’s saved. From screen left, Abby is rescued by Joel and Tommy, who have been out on patrol. Joel is obviously a little older, his hair is a little shaggier than it was when we saw him at the beginning of the game, so we know that the time period we’re in is the same as Ellie’s. As the infected swarm the three of them, Abby suggests that the group heads to the cabin that she and her friends are staying at. Joel and Tommy know the place that she’s talking of and agree to head there with her. 

Okay, so we’re here. I talked about the setup of this scene, so let’s discuss the details. Abby gets back to the cabin with Joel and Tommy, the group takes care of the infected that were chasing the trio. Abby goes ahead of Joel and Tommy at this point as they enter the (garage of?) the cabin and knowingly looks at Owen. Tommy says something like the group should stop by Jackson on their way out of the area to get some supplies and introduces himself and Joel. The realization of who the two of them are dawns on the rest of the group and they look at one another. Joel realizes something is wrong and says simply, “Y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something.” to which Abby, who in the background has grabbed a shotgun, replied, “That’s ‘cause they have.” and shoots Joel in the leg with the shotgun. The group subdues Tommy as well, then tourniquets Joel’s leg. Abby grabs a golf club, calls Joel by his full name and calls him a stupid old man, telling him that he doesn’t get to rush this moment and swings.

We cut back to Ellie in the snowstorm, who is riding the horse and calling for Joel, knowing that she is in the area he and Tommy had been patrolling. She sees the cabin, sees that it is lit up and decides to check it out. Inside, she can hear screaming and rushes to the basement of the cabin and enters cautiously, to see Abby beating Joel with a golf club. Ellie is detained by Abby’s crew and upon knowing that there are people from Jackson who will now know that Tommy, Joel and Ellie are missing, Owen tells Abby to “finish it”. Abby proceeds to, yes, kill Joel and we have our inciting event for The Last of Us Part II.

I touched on what is by all means the funeral scene for Joel, seeing Ellie react to his loss and how touching I felt that scene was. So let’s skip to Seattle, Day 1. The forest, riding through on horseback with Ellie and Dina was amazing. The atmosphere, the graphics, all of it works so well, but getting to Seattle and you have a little section that is sort of a mini-open world style game play was just incredible. Ellie is hunting Abby and her crew through Seattle, you find a map and you explore as Ellie would, looking for clues about where they could have gone and while not the size of the map in say, a Grand Theft Auto or even a Assassin’s Creed city, the map or level they give you to explore is a pretty sizeable area .

Maybe the moment that flipped me on this game and one of my favorite moments of the game is a moment that is completely missable if you’re someone who just pushes forward through levels and doesn’t explore them. So in Seattle - Day 1, there’s a music store. Most people probably stumble into it, but there’s an upstairs section. If you go upstairs, Ellie finds a guitar and there’s an icon over the guitar that lets you know that you can interact with it. Ellie sits down and tunes the guitar and begins to sing “Future Days” by Pearl Jam to herself, but is interrupted by Dina. Ellie and Dina have a conversation about a night they shared around a campfire and Ellie begins to sing “Take on Me” by A-ha. The moment is very clear to me, Ellie is saying to Dina, look, I’m messed up, I’m missing pieces of myself and I’m damaged. If you want me, know that you’re taking all of this on. The song is clearly setting up the rest of Ellie and Dina’s relationship, at least for the entirety of The Last of Us Part II. “Talking away. I don’t what I’m to say, I’ll say it anyway. Today’s another day to find you. Shying away, I’ll be coming for your love okay. Take, on me. Take, me on. I’ll be gone, in a day or two. Needless to say, I’m odds and ends, but I’ll be stumbling away, slowly learning that life is okay. Say after me, it’s no better to be safe than sorry. Take, on me. Take, me on. I’ll be gone, in a day or two. In a day or two.” The realization of all of this is beautifully drawn onto Dina’s face and this is probably the scene where I became invested in Dina as a character. The moment is raw and powerful because of the performances. Ashley Johnson, is a very talented actress and singer, but she’s not polished. In the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite, one moment I love is at the very end of the game there’s an outtake of (funnily enough) Troy Baker who plays the protagonist of that game and Courtnee Draper, who plays the main female character and the two of them are practicing a song they’re going to sing in the game. Not denigrating Courtnee Draper either, she’s a talented, polished singer who even in this behind the scenes footage has an amazingly beautiful and polished voice. You could take her practice vocals and place it into a single. Ellie singing “Take on Me” is the opposite of that, it feels weirdly enough, more real. There’s cracks in her singing and just so much raw emotion. But I love that this amazing emotional moment that deepens this very important relationship, is rewarded through exploring, that’s something only video games can provide.

In that area, you get to a subway. The Wolves (not sure if I’ve said the different factions of the game or not, but you have the WLF, the Washington Liberation Front which is the group Abby is with. You have Fetra, which is the government/military group we saw in the first game and they’re only minimally part of this game and you have the Seraphites or Scars and we’ll mention them in a bit) have lit the subway up with flares so there’s this ominous red lighting in the area. In the area there are wolves, clickers and new types of infected and the atmosphere of the subway in Seattle was incredible. How the red lighting reflects on everything and there was almost a puzzle aspect in trying to figure out how to deal with the variety of enemy types in the area, do you take them out by stealth, set them on one another etc.,

Eventually, Seattle leads Ellie and Dina to a theater where they end up making a makeshift base to work from while they figure out where to go next. We learn here that Dina is pregnant with Jesse, her ex's child, so she’ll need to rest in this location while Ellie continues to look for the Wolves and Abby. Ellie finds a guitar here, which leads to the best scene of the game. The game cuts back in time to a post The Last of Us Part I Ellie and Joel. Joel is leading Ellie to a surprise he made for her and that surprise is; a science museum. This part of the game is exactly what everyone wanted from a sequel and when I saw this area in TheRadBrad’s playthrough is when I quit watching and knew I wanted to play this game for myself. The interaction between Ellie and Joel is absolute perfection, it’s very fun and playful and the two of them have settled into their father and daughter roles here. The area is filled with dinosaur fossils and…

A lunar section. This is key, because it’s a reminder that in the first game Ellie revealed that if she could be anything, she would have been an astronaut in another world, another reality where the cordyceps virus did not take over. They find a lunar rover and eventually, a capsule of a ship. Joel tells Ellie to get into the capsule and climbs in after her closing the door. Joel gives Ellie a cassette tape (!) to listen to and it’s recorded audio of the Apollo 11 mission taking off from space. He tells Ellie to close her eyes and she imagines being there. This is an amazing callback to the DLC of the first game, where Riley, Ellie’s childhood friend and romantic interest, when unable to play an arcade game, has Ellie close her eyes and describes playing the game to Ellie. Just great, touching stuff here and a reminder of what was lost. They get out of the module and explore the rest of the area, which ends in an ominous moment, where Joel is standing in front of a graffitied word, “LIAR.”

Back to the present day, they get a lead on where the Wolves might be and it’s a neighborhood in Seattle called Hillcrest. Gameplay wise this through the end of this first section of the game is the best part of the game. The variety of enemies and the amount of ways to tackle those enemies is the most varied in the game and the AI is pretty good, though there are ways you can cheese your way through this section. Ellie runs into Jesse in this section, when she was expecting to run into Tommy. Jesse tries to talk Ellie into going back to Jackson and Ellie pretty much agrees that’s what would be best. 

Not quite sure if this is where these are at, but we get three more Ellie and Joel flashbacks. She’s a little older in each one. The first Ellie confronts Joel on what happened at the hospital in the first game and Joel basically skirts the issue. The second, Ellie goes to the hospital and finds out the truth, that she was the last chance for a cure (how they know that is a plothole issue I have with this game, you don’t know if anything Ellie would be able to provide would work etc,.) and Joel shows up, because Ellie had run away from Jackson and they have a falling out. The third takes place in Jackson, there’s a community gathering going on and Ellie and Dina kiss, so this is the night before the game begins. This leads to a guy confronting them about their public display of affection and Joel intervenes and is subsequently told off by Ellie.

During this part of the game, Ellie is tracking down members of the Wolves and killing them, getting one step closer to Abby, but beginning to lose herself. This is underlined when she tracks down Nora, there’s a chase and Nora refuses to give up Abby. This infuriates Ellie and Ellie brutally kills Nora, echoing the brutality of the killing of Joel. This section though, Day 3, is another one of my favorite moments in the game. Not unlike Day 1, there’s a really large open section and you’re allowed to tackle it in a variety of ways. 

It begins to rain though, a clear parallel between Ellie and the storm that is brewing inside her. The deeper you get into the level, the more rage Ellie develops, the more the storm outside is brewing, until you get a full-on monsoon as Ellie tracks down the location of Abby and the remaining Wolves, the Aquarium. Ellie arrives and hmm, no Abby. A scuffle ensues between Ellie and the remaining group of people with Abby, a man and also we come to find out, a pregnant woman and Ellie kills the two of them, just as Jesse and Dina arrive and the three of them retreat to the theater, along with Tommy, who Jesse found along the way.

At the theater, the group is attacked, Abby shows up, shoots Jesse in the head, killing him and wounds Tommy. As Abby holds Dina hostage, Ellie tries to convince her that Ellie is the one she wants. Abby replies back with a sort of desperation, “We let you both live and you wasted it”.

The game hard cuts here. And suddenly we’re in an Abby flashback. What? You’re seriously going to make us play more as the woman who brutally murdered Joel? How. Dare. You. I can’t lie, my memories of the early part of this, I was just wanting to get through it. The flashback deals with Abby and her father, the unnamed Doctor of the first game, now named Jerry Anderson. Jerry is a good guy seemingly, who helps hurting zebra. This scene feels a little contrived, a little too try hard to get you on the side of Abby. The way the rest of the game slowly introduces you to Abby and her friends is far more effective and I feel this scene would have been better placed some place else in the game. You eventually find out that this is the group that is at the hospital that Joel and Ellie were working toward in the first game, Jerry is the Doctor who while conflicted, ends up wanting to operate on Elly. This whole thing is maybe another scene that could have used another pass or two, it’s not a terrible scene, but the player probably has no sympathy for Abby at this point, no matter how much they like or dislike Joel and saving a zebra and Abby giving her approval to operate on Ellie, doesn’t make you sympathize with her any better. The scene ends with the first of three dreams that Abby has about her father. This indicates to us that while she has at this point got her revenge on Joel, it didn’t satisfy her grief over her father. 

So we cut to Abby - Seattle Day 1. If the previous scene didn’t make itself clear enough, this is this games Metal Gear Solid 2 moment. In MGS2, the player thinks they’re going to be playing as the protagonist from the first game, Solid Snake the whole game. A couple hours (at most) into the game, the carpet is pulled out from underneath the player and you find out that you’re actually going to be playing as a new character named Raiden. This is pretty similar, although at the point we’re at in this game, we’ve already pretty much played a full length game; as three characters; Joel, Ellie and Abby. Abby wakes up in Seattle though, having a nightmare about her father. You find out quite a bit about the Wolves in this section of the game, they have a community they’ve built in the football stadium in Seattle, you get to know some of the crew that you’ve already killed as Ellie at this point which retrospectively makes you examine Ellie’s actions. My favorite of these is Manny, which I found shocking, because Manny spits on Joel’s dead corpse earlier in the game, but he’s a very loyal guy. The point of this section, to me, was a little more effective than Abby’s flashback scene and that’s, these people aren’t necessarily bad people, they’ve just done bad things. You get quite a bit of backstory for Abby in this part of the game, you learn her ex Owen (the man that Ellie kills last in her section of the game) is missing and Abby knows where to track him down, at the Aquarium in Seattle. I think you begin to like Abby during this section. Or at least, you begin to like her if you have any chance at liking this game. This is underlined, when Abby meets and runs into Lev and Yara.

Lev and Yara are runaways, from the “Scars” as the Wolves call them, or Seraphites as they call themselves. The Seraphites are a local fundamental religious group or cult, one that does not subscribe to the modern day society of The Last of Us, or even our own society. They believe that the cordyceps virus came about because of mankind's sin and is punishment for such. They are led by a now deceased female prophet. Late at night in Day 1, Abby is captured by a group of the Seraphites, who are at war with the Wolves and is hung by her neck. Just as she is about to pass, she’s saved by Lev and Yara and the three escape together. They find a place to sleep for the night and we get the second of three dreams, this one a nightmare, instead of seeing her father’s dead body in the hospital, she see’s Lev and Yara hanging.

Day 2 of Abby’s campaign, Abby leaves Lev and Yara and makes it to the aquarium to meet Owen. Abby finds Owen there and Owen is on the run from the Wolves, he had a scuffle with and then killed a fellow Wolves member and Owen begins to question things, who they are becoming, what their mission is and is it something he wants to continue doing. Owen is pretty much immediately likeable and by proxy, the player warms up more to Abby. There’s a flashback in here, with younger Owen and Abby finding the Aquarium. I had a really weird glitch around this point, there’s a boat that Owen is hiding out in, when I went to enter the boat, the game zoomed me out into water, I could see various objects hanging out in the air, which let me know this was not something that was supposed to be happening. Abby mentions something about her looking like a wet seal and then I reset the game and it loaded fine.

Abby eventually goes back to the place she had stayed the night before with Lev and Yara and along the way, Yara is injured. Abby brings them all back to the aquarium and then with Lev, sets off back to a Wolves encampment to get medical supplies to help with Yara. Everything here, through the end is probably my favorite section of the game. When I think of replaying this game, this section is the section I think about and am excited to go back through the most. I believe this is where it’s revealed that Lev is a transgender male and you discover this is why Yara (the older sister) and Lev (the younger brother) have left the Seraphites. Lev had been assigned to be a wife to one of the Seraphites elder’s and in response, Lev revealed his gender, shaving his head. This was seen as sin by the Seraphites and Lev and Yara escape. The moment you find out is actually a pretty sweet interaction between the two characters, during combat, one of the Seraphites yells out Lev’s deadname (the name a transgender person was born with but no longer uses). After the battle, Lev asks Abby if she heard what that person said. Abby replies that she did, Lev asks if Abby wants to discuss it and Abby asks Lev if he wants to discuss it, to which Lev replies no and that’s the moment. It’s not a big, showy, shoving trans politics in your face moment that the detractors of this game would want you to believe moments like that are in this game. It’s an honest, human conversation and I think handled very well by Naughty Dog.

So Abby and Lev have to go through a section of the city to get to where the Wolves are, but Lev knows an easier path. The Seraphites, unbeknownst to the Wolves, have a way to get around Seattle sight unseen. Above the city, they have built walkways and paths between buildings. The only hitch with using these pathways, which are high in the air, is that Abby has extreme vertigo. There’s a specific interaction between Abby and Lev that is the moment I knew I not only liked this game, but actually really liked Abby (and Lev) as characters. Lev goes jumping between some steel beams and Abby tells Lev, “You know I can’t do that, right?” and Lev replies back, “It’s not that hard.” and Abby replies back sarcastically, “Uh huh.” I’m not sure what it is, but the interaction made me smile and I knew at this point that I loved this game. 

The two of them go higher and higher into the skyscrapers, when finally, they come to a HUGE bridge, which is a makeshift bridge made out of beams, between two of the skyscrapers and Abby begins to freak out. Her character model literally begins to shake at this point. Adding a picture here, because words cannot describe this scene accurately. 

Yeah. Heights generally don’t bother me, but I’m right with you on this one Abby. Lev does his best to calm Abby down and the two begin to slowly make their way across the bridge. They almost make it, but Abby slips close to the end and as Lev attempts to grab her, the two of them fall, falling through a glass dome below and landing in a swimming pool in the building below. YouTuber The Last of Us Strategist points out this moment, equating it to a baptism. Abby goes below the water and comes out renewed, a new person. Gone is the person who was hung up on revenge, the person who emerges from the water, having seen this other person put their lives on the line for Abby, realizes the connections she has with the people around her, her loved ones, is what she is going to live for now.

Abby gets to the Wolves hospital and it turns out that Isaac, the current leader of the Wolves is unhappy with how Abby has handled Owen, so he goes to put her in a cell of sorts. Her friend Nora, however, frees her to get the medicine and provides a cover, saying that Abby attacked her and got free. Nora leads Abby to the basement of the hospital, where the supplies she needs for Yara are and Abby descends. Metaphorically, the is Abby descending into hell before her redemption can be completed. Literally, the lower levels of the hospital are ground zero, where the cordyceps virus began. Upon finding the medical equipment she needs, Abby is attacked by the “Rat King”. Supposedly, not unlike the cordyceps virus, the concept of a rat king is a real thing. To make themselves bigger and more threatening to attackers and prey, rats will interlink their tails together, to form one big animal as opposed to the many separate animals they actually are. So yeah, a bunch of infected cordyceps creatures have fused together to become one gigantic infected creature. Gameplay wise I had a lot of fun with this boss, as you attack the creature, the various infected that were fused break off and you have to find them individually. It’s a pretty creepy area, no electricity and it’s just fun tactically.

Abby emerges into the light of the day after defeating the rat king, effectively a different person than when she left the aquarium. We get the conclusion of the dreams here, instead of a nightmare, Abby walks into the hospital room where her father was killed and he's standing there, smiling at her. Owen has decided he’s going to leave and head to Catalina Island and he wants Abby, Lev and Yara to go with him and Mel. Owen and Abby were, intimate with one another, in spite of the fact that Mel is pregnant with Owen’s child and the new Abby is conflicted about this. Meanwhile, when Abby had gone to get the medicine, she learned that the Wolves planned on attacking the Seraphite’s home island, using an incoming storm (!) for cover. Upon hearing this, Lev wants to go back to the island to warn his and Yara’s mother and no manner of convincing from Yara or Abby is able to dissuade him, he runs away to the island and with the looming deadline to get out of Seattle before the Wolves catch up to them, Abby and Yara head after Lev.

The Seraphites Island is another really cool level, I do wish it were a little less linear, though I understand for plot reasons why they have to limit where you can go on the Island. The deeper you go into the island the more the game intersects with the plot ie, you can see the boats with the Wolves arriving. Abby and Yara find Lev at their home and it did not go well. Their mother, unhappy with the choices Lev has made, attacked Lev to the point where Lev was forced to kill her. The three of them attempt to escape the island, but run into a group of Wolves with Isaac at the lead. Sadly and shockingly, the Wolves shoot Yara during this exchange, but before she dies, she takes out Isaac. Abby and Lev escape, Lev shocked, saddened and angry tells Abby that “Your people did this!” Abby grabs Lev by the shoulders, looks him in the eye and says just an incredible line, “You’re my people.”

Abby and Lev return to the aquarium, to see the carnage that Ellie has wrecked and it quickly becomes obvious to Abby who was responsible for the carnage and where they might be (the theater). So now we’re back to the end of Ellie’s portion of the game, Abby and Ellie have a huge, brutal fight in the theater and Abby gets a hold of Dina. Before Abby can slice Dina’s throat, Lev interjects, reminding Abby that this life of revenge isn’t what they’re about any longer and Abby and Lev leave the theater, leaving a beaten, bloody and defeated Dina and Ellie alive.

We cut to some period of time later, Dina has had her child and is raising him along with Ellie on a farm. This is the perfect life for Ellie in spite of all she has gone through. She’s with a loved one, in a safe and secure area. Unfortunately, Tommy shows up, having lived through the attack in the theater, but he’s in a bad place. He’s in the same place Ellie was when she originally left Jackson to look for Abby. He’s been searching and believes he has a lead on where Abby’s whereabouts might be. Dina wants no part of this and makes Tommy leave, but the memories of Joel’s death come back in an incredible scene. Ellie is tending to chores around the farm, goes into the barn and has what can only be described as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) flashback of Joel’s death. She has a full on panic attack and is comforted by Dina, but doesn’t think that she can rest knowing Abby is still out there. Dina begs and pleads with Ellie not to leave what they’ve built, but Ellie is so consumed with revenge that she does leave.

Abby, who is much skinnier, losing a lot of the mass that she had now that she is not consumed with revenge and Lev is searching for the remnants of the fireflies, the group her father was a part of. They've followed up on Owen's thoughts and are headed toward Catalina Island. They think they have a lead, but are tricked by another faction, the Rattlers and are captured by them. It’s kind of unclear what the Rattlers motives are, in such a long game, this late into the game, I think this is kind of a flaw in the game, introducing a new faction without any real clear motives. But they have a compound, they keep infected chained up for sport, they put people in cells and for some reason they essentially crucify people, leaving them up on posts on a beach for birds to peck at, while the people starve to death. After making her way to and through them, this is the situation Ellie finds Abby and Lev in. Ellie cuts a very malnourished Abby and Lev down from their posts. The three of them make their way to some boats on the beach, but before they can leave, Ellie tells Abby that she can’t let her leave. Abby does not want to fight Ellie, but Ellie grabs Lev and puts a knife to his throat and says she’ll kill him if Abby won’t fight her, so Abby does. This is a brutal and painful fight, especially given the circumstances of what had just happened. The sky is overcast, it’s early evening, there’s a fog in the air and these two women are just beating each other viciously. Abby bites off two of Ellie’s fingers and finally Ellie gets the upper hand, shoving Abby under the water and holding her there. As Abby struggles and Ellie sobs, Ellie has a flash of a vision. Joel playing guitar on his porch. Ellie lets Abby up and tells Abby and Lev to go. Abby and Lev row off and we get the final scene of the game.

Ellie returns to the farm, Dina and JJ, their child are gone, the farm has been emptied and abandoned. Ellie finds the guitar Joel gave her left behind and tries to play it, but can’t because of her missing fingers. Revenge has cost her everything. She has a flash back to the scene she flashed to on the beach, it’s the night before Joel is murdered, the same night Ellie and Dina were confronted for kissing at the gathering in Jackson. Essentially Ellie is there to apologize, without apologizing, for treating Joel the way she did at the gathering, when Joel was just intervening to help. There’s some small talk, Joel is drinking coffee he traded for (nice callback to the first game) and Joel asks if Dina is Ellie’s girlfriend. Just some amazingly charming moments. Ellie tells Joel she had things under control and that she doesn’t want him interfering in moments she can handle, in essence, she’s not his little girl anymore. He agrees to give her some space.

Then the real subject is broached. The choice Joel made to save Ellie at the hospital in the first game. Ellie tells him that Joel took that choice from her, that had she been died at the expense of a vaccine for humanity, that her life would have mattered. Joel simply replies back, “If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.” signifying that no matter what happens, what has happened, every bit of it is worth it to Joel to be able to have spent time with Ellie. Joel learned what Abby has learned throughout the journey of this game, our loved ones, our people is what matters to us. It’s what Ellie has lost, it’s what Joel lost in his quest for revenge after the death of his daughter Sarah. It’s what Abby lost in her quest for revenge after the death of her father. Ellie tells Joel that she knows, but she doesn’t ever know if she can forgive him for his choice, but adds that she would like to try. Joel heartbreakingly says, “I’d like that.” and the two agree to resume their relationship. Ellie, in the farm house, heads off, leaving the guitar Joel had given her behind, into the sunset as the camera slowly zooms into the fretboard of the guitar which shows a moth. 

So yeah man, this has turned out way longer than I anticipated when I sat out to write this. I didn’t plan on recapping the game, but getting to think about these moments has cemented my love for this game. It’s a masterpiece. I don’t know if I can ever love it on a personal level the way I love the first game, but I love it in a different way. Like the first game, I really enjoy playing this series, the visceral nature of the violence and in this game, the violence feels like it has real consequences. The people you’re fighting wail in pain as you kill their friends and loved ones. It all, along with the story are just some of the best that gaming has to offer, in my opinion.

Maybe I’m getting this wrong, but thinking about the message, this is kind of what I gather from this game, but granted I took something very different than most people who played the first game. Who’s the bad guy and who’s the good guy is a matter of your perspective. To quote Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, “From my point of view the Jedi are evil.” and I know this isn’t what they were going for, I can tell by their social media where most of Naughty Dog is politically, but I can’t help but think about this game through our current political climate. I won’t tip my hand as to where I am politically, but I can tell you where I started and that’s in the middle. Call me old fashioned, but I have a very 1990’s view, a distrust of government and political parties. But, in this current climate, no matter what side you’re on, the other side is the most evil thing imaginable. 

You know, Neil Druckmann has said that the 2001 video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was a huge influence on him, particularly with The Last of Us Part II and I can’t help but think of something that’s said in that game in a very prophetic way. That game, years before even MySpace took hold and definitely before Facebook took off, towards the end, warns of the dangers of the internet. It warns against the isolation the internet will bring, it warns of the bubbles people will put themselves into. Where you used to hash out disagreements among other people, now when you hear an opinion you don’t agree with it’s so easy to mute or ban that opinion from your life. And seeing and understanding other viewpoints is one of the ways we grow as human beings. Not saying you have to agree with the viewpoint, but understanding on a human level where someone is coming from is such an important thing that is largely missing from modern day society.  The creator of Metal Gear Solid 2, Hideo Kojima, made a game last year called Death Stranding and one of the themes is how bad isolation is for humanity.

And I see that now, even on my own social media, No matter the political side one has chosen, I see them vilifying the other side as the most evil thing on the planet. As always with these things, there’s your truth, there’s my truth and then there’s the truth that is in the middle. And one thing that The Last of Us Part II shows us is, without context we can see someone make a horrible decision and it can fuel our hate and our rage towards that person. But if we stopped to  try to understand that person, you know, you might just end up liking that person and maybe the differences could be worked out from there. I’m a pretty big fan of YouTuber Tim Pool and one thing he talks about is the dangers of making people isolate themselves into smaller bubbles because of bad behavior. This isn’t going to cure or change their bad behaviors, it’s going to make them double down on these bad behaviors and resent you from cutting their access to public discourse. 

And just overall, be careful of who you vilify, thankfully we still have a society that largely punishes wrongdoing, but people can do desperate things in desperate times and not everyone who does a bad act is a bad person. Bad choices don’t conflate into someone being evil. I know that’s something that I’m really trying to be more conscious of in this politically divided world and how I think about and react to these things as a father now. I know, like Joel, maybe I’m not always going to make the right choice. But when I make the wrong choice, I hope the people around me have the grace to forgive, rather than ostracize and discard me and I hope I have that same grace when my loved ones make choices I disagree with. We should all be in this together, so we don’t end up making choices that make us The Last of Us.