How To Divide A Fanbase - The Last of Us 2

the last of us part two is the last jedi of gaming i don't think there's ever been less of a consensus on whether a game's good or not than this one on one hand i totally get why some people love this game because it takes ballsy risks and dares to be so depressing and on the other hand i totally get why some people just hate this game because it takes ballsy risks and dares to be so depressing but one thing that i think we can all agree on is that naughty dog has divided its fandom all you have to do is scroll down and look at the several thousand arguments going on in the comments section to see proof of that and what is really clear is that naughty dog did something wrong they had to otherwise this game wouldn't have alienated as many players as it did the purpose of this feature-length video essay is to fully and comprehensively explain why this game cleaved its player base into two with about half of this game's players thinking it's a brilliant piece of art and the other half thinking it's a hot pile of garbage and in order to do this i've settled on having three parts the first will be a short one all about the main terrible mistake that naughty dog made that caused this divide in the first place and funnily enough it has nothing to do with whether or not this game is of good quality or not but part two is the autopsy this is a full deconstruction of the story where i'll highlight the mistakes made in terms of writing everything from why the story felt like a drag to play in some places to why some players had a really hard time connecting with certain characters despite how hard naughty dog tried to make us like them and part three is all about how it could have been done better in part three i'll pitch an alternate story for the last first two which addresses the issues i raise in this video so do stick around for that and with all that out of the way let's move on to part one druckmann's biggest mistake there's nothing objectively wrong with having a game story be as well let's not mince words here as overwhelmingly depressing as the last of us part two but when it comes to the negative backlash that this game is getting even though not all of it but a good amount is coming from the personal preference of players not liking depressing stories i firmly believe that neil druckmann and naughty dog deserve the vast majority of the negative backlash they're getting let me explain why one thing that the last first part 2 demonstrates really quite well is it's possible to develop such a tunnel vision as you focus on serving a specific target audience that sure you please that audience but at the same time you alienate everyone who isn't in that audience and with the last verse 2 it was clearly aimed at people who love and enjoy stories with bleak depressing tones the kind of story where there is no hope that the protagonist might overcome their demons and where every step of the journey is all downhill with no light at the end of the tunnel and normally i'm an advocate for that i know most of you watching the closer look of writers and to you all here's some advice it's a great idea to choose a specific audience and write just for them as the age old saying goes if you try to please everyone you please no one but neil druckmann the creative director of the last of us two made a terrible mistake because he believed that this philosophy applied to him and why didn't it apply to him because he was making a sequel the first game is all about joel the cynical old man meeting ellie the naive optimistic girl and the story follows them both as they fall in love as they grow to trust each other and both of them improve the other that's what the first game was all about this heartwarming tale of paternal love but if the last of us won wasn't about that and was instead about a miserable man struggling to survive in the apocalypse meeting a girl and then dragging her down to his level then making her equally as depraved a person as him if the first game were far darker and far bleaker than what we got the response to this second one would have been immeasurably more positive why because in that theoretical version the target audience was consistent what neil druckmann did here was a mistake not in terms of actual craft but in terms of managing an audience as a creator because he had two options he could either make the last of us two not the same as the first it's got a new plot new characters and it takes creative risks but it fully embodies the first where it has the same tone explores an equally as positive theme and is a natural continuation of the first game story and in doing that druckmann would have pleased the vast majority of the people who enjoyed the first game however he chose to tell a depressing tale knowing it went totally against why people loved the first game and sure some people who loved the first game loved the second after all there's always an overlap between target audiences but he knew it would result in roughly half of the people really excited to see this sequel hating this sequel story what kind of creator actively chooses to disappoint their fans and i know what some of you might be thinking but it's not a question of creative liberty because i hate to say it but when you make a sequel you just can't have as much liberty as you did when you made that first story because that first story set a precedent and it's one you have to stick to otherwise you'll stray too far from what made people like the first one otherwise you'll create the last of us part two personally in my undeniably biased opinion as a writer myself i think jacqueline telling one story where the tone is filled with such hope has such a positive theme and tone and then making a follow-up that is the total opposite in those respects was a terrible creative decision not because it had any effect on the actual quality of this game but because that's just not how you manage an audience as a creator because it creates preventable disappointment and division in your fanbase anyway now that i've entered my rather harsh feelings let's move on to a proper traditional breakdown of the last of us two's writing from now on i'll be building up a short list of all the flaws and mistakes this game's narrative makes hopefully i'll be shining a light on any issues that you noticed but couldn't quite be into words and then in part three i'll use all of these mistakes i noticed to create that pitch for an alternate story so part two the autopsy [Music] it's worth saying that none of these issues i'm about to bring up alone will ever ruin a story but when you have multiple and in the last verse 2's case when you have 11 main flaws they multiply on top of each other and come together to take a great big cumulative hit on how engaging the story is and it's worth saying that every story in the world has flaws nothing is perfect i loved interstellar i'd say it's my personal favorite film but christ some of the dialogue in that film was really on the nose and that space library scene was just head scratching on a first viewing every story has flaws this is just me pointing out what this ones are and it just so happens that there are so many of them that i've had to make this video as long as it is to properly explain them so i often get questions from writers asking how i'm able to break down stories the way i do and what's my secret for analyzing a plot or a character and my answer is always the same it's no more complex than spending a lot of time consuming other people's stories writing your own and quite importantly filling your head with as much knowledge as you can about creative writing now when it comes to that second one of actually writing stories i can't help you there because that one's up to you but when it comes to finding great stories to enjoy and learn from and finding a ton of non-fiction material all about storycraft i can help you there because a fantastic place to find both is audible who i can happily thank for sponsoring today's video now most brand deals feel really impersonal where the youtuber just reads off a checklist of talking points and it's clear that they don't actually care about the brand that's not the case today because i truly believe that audible is a fantastic place for writers to be because they have so many great stories to learn from as well as audiobooks specifically on how to write great fiction that i found invaluable like i'm not kidding when i say that i use audible every day because i find their service just so convenient and useful if you're interested in writing i cannot recommend stephen king's on writing enough the book is essentially king's memoir but it has a ton of tips and advice on writing sprinkled in throughout the entire audiobook which i found really useful and also it's narrated by stephen king himself which is a lovely bonus like very few writers bother to narrate their own books and if you want to check on writing out all you have to do is either click my link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or takes closer look to 500 500. if you do either of those you'll get a free 30-day trial plus a free credit that you can use to buy any audiobook you like on their platform like and if you want to use that credit to buy some absurdly thick fantasy book like the way of kings i i i can't blame you because you basically be getting like almost 50 hours of really good entertainment totally for free but i think that getting stephen king's on writing would be a really good way to spend that credit and all you have to do to get started is click my link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or take closer look to 500 500 and get your free audio book today okay so ad breakover where better to start than what's one of those complained about and what i feel is the single most problematic issue with this game a sloppy structure so i've seen a lot of reviewers saying that the non-linear narrative was just too hard to follow and that's the cause of this story's pacing issues but i wholeheartedly disagree because 100 you can have a story full of flashbacks and multiple timelines and still have it be really engaging so for those of you who haven't played it this game has two main timelines between ellie in the present day and then abby three days in the past not to mention that the whole thing is interlaced with dozens upon dozens of flashbacks the truth is the fact there are multiple timelines is not the problem here a dunkirk for example is a film with four separate plots following four protagonists and all of these plots happen hours or days apart from the other and while that film structure was undeniably complex and it has twice as many timelines as the last of us too nolan still told a well-structured engaging story and yes in case you couldn't tell i had a bit of a man crush on christopher nolan but the real cause of why the structure of this game just doesn't work is the rising action for those of you who don't know rising action is basically the narrative tension it's the way conflict builds as the story goes along in any well-structured plot the rising action will look like this the story starts off pretty calm then the inciting instant happens and kicks off the plot and from here the conflict builds like a snowball rolling down a hill until the tension is so high the climax happens and then there's a gradual wind down as the story ties up its loose ends rising action is a universal thing in storytelling like it doesn't matter what your genre is or what your target audience is or hell what medium you're telling the story in your story simply needs rising action on this there's a reason why when you watch a movie with two plot lines you'll have a scene or two with frodo then a scene or two with aragorn then back to frodo then aragorn and so on like that until the story ends because if you spent the entire story following just frodo and sam all the way up until halfway through the trilogy when they've reached mount doom and then you suddenly stop go back and then we see what aragon was doing the whole time and we spend essentially the rest of the trilogy following just aragorn until he catches up with frodo at the end there's a reason why you don't see that happen very often in fiction because it's almost impossible to do that and maintain a good rising action i say almost because i really hate to say that anything's absolute in writing but i've yet to see a story that attempts this and actually pulls it off okay so if we had to plot the rising action of the last of us 2 it would look like this honestly the first half of the game with ellie is pretty decent we have a quiet opening as we introduce all the characters then wham joel dies there's our inciting instant which makes ellie go out on her revenge mission and then as she goes out the narrative tension rises as she gets close to abby then after stabbing plenty of cuddly dogs we finally meet abby and it feels like the climax is just about to happen then the rising action goes down so fast it's literally a vertical line we have now switched protagonists to abby and the next 10 hours of gameplay is following just her in the days before ellie's plot even started and this is a point we'll look at in a moment but because abby's half of the story isn't working towards an overall objective rather she's doing what feels like a series of side quests all placed back to back abby has no real sense of rising action in her story because she doesn't actually have a goal she's working towards so for abby because her story is so directionless the narrative tension is mostly just a straight line for about eight hours of gameplay until she finally finds the bodies of her friends that ellie killed then it finally shoots up she almost immediately fights ellie we have a climactic fight and then we have our epilogue where things wind down but oh no ellie still wants abby dead so then the rising action goes back up again and then we have a second climax and then it goes down when the story ends um what you're seeing on screen is an abomination of story structure what would have been a far better execution of this story was to do what books and movies have been doing for hundreds of years until the two stories in parallel where we have an hour as ellie then an hour as abby then ellie then abby and so on back and forth until the climax happens and resolves everything which removes the need for that second climax and then the story ends if they did something like that it would have made the structure look far closer to the ideal one i just described earlier as both plots harmonize together and both build to the same climax at the same time instead of feeling like two completely different stories told back to back but in traditional structure there's a moment called a midpoint which funnily enough happens at the middle of the story uh the midpoint is the moment the dynamic of the story shifts uh this narrative beat twists things up and keeps things fresh in captain america throughout the beginning of the movie he's been extremely passive and has done nothing but react whenever something happens in this movie's midpoint steve finally becomes an active character seeks out the red skull and begins to fight on the front lines as a soldier in the dark knight the midpoint is when the joker is finally captured and the film stops being all about catching the joker and it becomes him enacting his evil plan in gladiator the midpoint is when maximus removes his helmet reveals his identity to the world and this begins the emperor's scheme to kill maximus off the midpoint is a staple narrative device used so frequently that if you were to open up your favorite film and skip to the middle there's like a 90 chance that you'd land on a midpoint where the whole dynamic of the story changes up and that's not to say it's a cliche that you should avoid it's a genuinely useful beat to add in to stop your plot from stagnating and with this game druckman added in a midpoint but at the same time fundamentally misunderstood what a midpoint actually is with all these examples i just listed they use the midpoint really quite well by changing something about the status quo but they do it by continuing the story not restarting the story the whole idea behind the midpoint is it's supposed to be like shifting gear like allowing the rising action that's been jogging along so far to really build up speed in the final sprint towards the climax and as you can see from the structure on the screen the midpoint in the story is actually self-defeating because it does the opposite of what it should be doing and i did just say that we touched on it so let's talk about abby's plot not her character we'll talk about that later but what her character does in the story when i was playing a zabi it was when she was fetching medical supplies with the woman with the broken arm which was at this point in the game a point where any story should be building up towards the climax this was when i finally realized that there is something horribly wrong with abby's plot she doesn't actually have a plot so really quick let me summarize abby's story first abby's messing around in her home base with no real direction then she goes on patrol for about an hour of gameplay and then she meets isaac the leader of her faction then she hears that her friend owen's in trouble so she goes up to speak to him and then we have a half hour long largely pointless flashback that only serves the purpose of giving exposition about abby's relationship with owen then we spend a long time going through the city to reach owen but oh no abby's been ambushed and kidnapped then we have another flashback to owen this one tells us nothing the first one didn't already tell us then we go back to see abby nearly die but she gets saved by a girl and her little brother then we have this grand escape scene then after all of this abby finally finds owen they have a romance scene or what i guess passes to romance these days and then she goes back to check on those two people who saved her life do you get what i'm saying in that abby has no plot it's a common complaint the abbey story felt like a drag to play well this is the reason abby doesn't have a goal she has no overall motivation all we do is see her bumbling around seattle for about 10 hours doing a string of side quests and once all of her side quests are complete she then bumps into ellie and it's like an entirely new plot begins as she hunts ellie down when before she wasn't even remotely interested in hunting ellie down abby's story would have been overwhelmingly more fun to play if she were actually doing something if her faction's leader had given her an impossible yet also a highly important mission where the stakes are high and abby's story is her axing out this mission and getting closer to her end goal with every passing second and then we can have ellie get in the way of the final step of her mission so that's why abby fights ellie in the end where it feels like it's a natural culmination of everything abby's been doing in the story and not something she decides to do on a whim when she finds her dead friends because of this lack of direction abby's story has an unbearable amount of filler and that drags the pacing way down like at one point that woman who saved abby needs her arm to be amputated to save her life so then abby goes on a detour to get a simple bag of medical supplies to do the procedure as she goes through the city then climbs a skyscraper then crosses two cranes then climbs down on a skyscraper killing infected all along the way where she finally reaches the hospital but tricks you because it's not that easy because the only place they can find them equipment is in an overrun basement so then she has to go through an infected basement she finally finds the supplies then she has a great big boss battle and then finally she gets the equipment back to the nurse so she can do the procedure this entire section of the story was a glorified fetch quest and all in all how long did this fetch quest take two hours which is longer than most movies and do you want to know the best part in the very next mission that woman who you spent so much time trying to save gets shot and she dies and i try to be unbiased with these videos but i i really can't i have to let my rather aggravated opinion slip through just a little bit when this happened i wanted to punch clean through my monitor because it felt that the game had just wasted two hours of my time when a movie has one or two scenes that don't add to the overall plot it's a little annoying and has a small negative effect on the pacing but when it's a story driven game and that pointless section is two hours long it's unbearable for the player because there is such a total lack of a sense of progression in the story people have been complaining that abby's story is a drag to play well this is the reason why because if you were through abby's section of the game which is about 10 hours long you could cut it down into being four hours long and the story would still make total sense with no holes in it because that's just how much time was wasted doing redundant side quests i'm not saying that they should have made abby's story four hours long but i am saying that abby's story her motivation what her objective is throughout the whole game needs a fundamental overhaul and it's one that i'll endeavor to address in part three of this video one thing that's also worth bringing up is how there is no sense of urgency in this story whenever there's some form of ticking clock when it's a situation where the protagonist has to get involved in the story because if they don't do this x terrible thing will happen it inherently adds another level of suspense to a story as this dreadful thing is getting closer to happening the further we go along in the story with ellie what's the rush to hunt these people down oh she could hunt abby down now or she could wait for two years and get revenge then and if a lead turns out to be a dead end why should we care why can't ellie just calmly bide her time for about two or three months until another lead comes up and then she pursues that one where is the sense of urgency also the exact same applies to abby here granted at the end of her story there is a little bit of urgency where lev goes back to his island puts himself in danger and then she needs to go and save him but for the most part abby's story doesn't have this so that's another point on the list and finally on the matter of plots don't worry there's still so much more to say about the character in this game but finally on the matter of plot we have to talk about the pointless flashbacks that add nothing to the story here's the thing flashbacks are a little bit like spice with a dish it's nice to have some every now and then especially when it complements the overall story but too many flashbacks just like too much spice is a bad thing for the overall meal the reason why is because in a perfectly structured story every scene should be indispensable to the plot every scene should have a knock-on effect where the events of one scene directly cause the next and so on until the story ends the problem with the last of us two's flashbacks is the majority of them don't do any of the above now don't get me wrong some of them do a good job at advancing the themes of the story some of them do a good job exploring joel's and ellie's relationship but almost none of them have anything to do with the plot itself the only one that i can think of that does is with abby where it tells us about her father and her motivations for killing joel yes some of the flashbacks if you look at them just on their own are lovely and really fun and heartwarming but when you take a step back and look at them in light of the overall plot most of them are largely redundant and some of them are entirely redundant and the fact that there are so many inconsequential flashbacks means that the pacing of this story takes a big damaging hit now let's move on to character going on from what i said about flashbacks a lot of them heavily feature ellie and joel so let's address the elephant in the room this is not a fresh point but if we're breaking down this game it simply needs to be addressed joel's death so to summarize the average argument between people debating if joel dying in the beginning of this game was bad or not the first person will say i think it was dumb and then the second person literally every single time says oh you're just annoyed because they killed a character that you loved get over it and from there the argument devolves to a point where if i had to say the next parts aloud i'd probably get demonetized but standing back putting personal opinions to one side there is a compelling argument for why killing joel at the beginning of the game was a bad decision and it goes like this yes druckman wanted to tell a revenge story yes in order for that to happen ellie needs a reason to want revenge but that doesn't change the fact that because joel is dead it severely undermines how good this game can be as a sequel the last of us won was ellie's and joel's relationship at the infection the fireflies the hunt for the cure the trek across america all of that was secondary to ellie and joel specifically joel because he's the protagonist and the one who undergoes the ark the dynamic between ellie and joel is the foundation of the first game's story and the reason why what they did to joel was a mistake wasn't because they killed off a beloved character it's totally fine in fiction to kill beloved characters but because if dropping were to assemble a list of the absolute must-haves for the last of us too the things that no matter what this game can't be a good sequel not necessarily be a bad story but be a bad sequel if they aren't thoroughly explored the relationship between ellie and joel would have taken the number one spot but it can't be explored because joel's dead yes some of the flashbacks did help to alleviate this issue but they only give us a minimal exploration of ellie's and joel's relationship certainly it's nowhere near deep enough exploration to satisfy what so many players were craving and as i said earlier they bogged down the pace of the story the reason why is because these flashbacks only explore ellie's and joel's relationship that's one thing that that's one purpose when really any good scene should be doing far more than just one thing if instead joel were alive throughout the last of us two that would have actually helped cure a lot of this game's pacing issues because now we can dispose of most of those flashbacks as we can explore their relationship while at the same time advancing the plot and giving the story far more of a forward momentum on joel dying if instead of him dying at the start joel dies at the end of the last of us too if throughout the lengthy game we have a chance to see the fallout from the first how ellie finds out what joel did and then she pushes him away and hates him completely and then we see their relationship degrade and progress over the story as ellie struggles to forgive him a joel as he struggles to regain her trust and then at the end of this full exploration of their relationship when they finally resolved their angst and ellie's forgiven him then joel dies almost nobody would have had a problem with that this is why people pulling out the argument of oh you're just annoyed because they kill the character you love doesn't hold much water because joel could have been killed in a totally different way and the very people complaining about joel's death would have absolutely loved how it was done whether or not that's my opinion i'll put to one side and not say but it's definitely an interesting argument nonetheless so it's definitely an issue worth putting down for the rewrite so when the final fight between ellie and abby came along when i was made to play as abby by pure instinct i snuck along the cover to go and hide but then i realized hold on i actually want abby to die i'm not even slightly engaged with her character so i stood up and let ellie kill her in some vague hope that it would change the narrative and make ellie win the fight and it wasn't just me who tried to sabotage abby here a pewdiepie did this h2o delirious did this so did the radabrat angry joe as well also team martin and gold glove despite playing as abbey were actually cheering on ellie in the fight whenever she heard abby and they voiced several times how much they wanted the person they were playing as to lose one thing that this really clearly shows is that naughty dog failed to get a large portion of their audience to care about abby's character despite how much they tried the question is why why did the audience just have a bloody hard time rooting for abby well if you ask me it's because abby is a poorly handled unlikable character and also ellie is as well so we might as well kill two birds with one stone and address both of them at the same time with ellie she goes around murdering people throughout the whole game as she kills floofy dogs and threatens to murder an injured unconscious child really okay not even slightly closer to the ellie we remember in the first game okay fine she even murders a pregnant woman at one point like during her whole portion of the story ellie does some despicably evil things and when we learn a little more context as we play abby's side of the story we see that actually the people ellie were murdering like aren't really that bad as people it's safe to say that ellie is an unlikable character and with abby do i need do i even need to explain why she's unlikable nice shot in this game ellie and abby are unlikable but that's not actually the problem because you can write the most asshole-ish character in all of creation and still make them work really well as a protagonist but the real trick to pulling this off lies in motivation when writing a protagonist who does evil things the best way to execute this is to make the motivation as sympathetic as is humanly possible a character who does evil things purely because she hates a group of people and loves watching them scream and die in ankeny and on top of that we know that those people aren't actually really that evil it's inherently unengaging for the audience because it's just hard for such a detestable hateful destructive motivation to resonate with us as an audience not impossible just just really hard but an [ __ ] who does the most evil things murders so many good people not out of hate but out of love because her son's life is on the line or her best friend is in dire need of help or she truly believes that she's making the world a better place and she's being an unlikable prick in order to achieve her end goal that's positive in nature now that's an [ __ ] i can get behind and please don't quote me on that one out of context but that's the key to writing unlikable protagonists a thoroughly relatable sympathetic motivation don't believe me look at joel in the first last of us i'd argue that he's one of the best unlikable protagonists in all of gaming like in the final mission of the last of us joel murders the people who up until that point in the story we've been led to believe we're the good guys like we as the player know that the fireflies in this building are just people like not bandits like none of them have actually tried to kill you and an argument can be made that that doctor is actually a good person simply forced into a difficult decision and he's a guy with humanity's best interests at heart and joel massacres them and it totally works like the player isn't alienated they're still engaged with joel's story despite how reluctant they might be to do these evil things because why is joel murdering all of these soldiers and doctors he's doing it out of love because ellie is the person that he loves the most in the world and if he doesn't kill these people ellie dies he's already lost one daughter he's not losing another how can the player not sympathize with joel in this moment and with ellie and abby i'm not saying it's impossible to be engaged by their characters because clearly some people really were but it's just so much harder to be engaged with their story because they're being monsters for the sake of a monstrous motivation and talking further about motivation if your story has two protagonists who are supposed to care about but they're both pitted against each other and are fighting the other there are many kinds of stories you can tell with a dynamic like that a revenge story is i don't want to say not one of them but it's just not a good fit for that dynamic and the reason why is a revenge story only works if there's a bad guy to get revenge on someone that the protagonist and the audience really wants to see dead because they're just such a bastard in john wick the guy who killed his dog is the bad guy nothing more nothing less and when john aims at theon but chooses to spare him because death by bullet is just too quick we as the audience get a great big grin on our faces because we want to see what kind of horrific slow death jon has in mind because the bad guy is just so detestable like imagine if in an alternate universe as john wick after theon greyjoy kills jon's dog we have five scenes showing how nice he is as a person he's giving money to the homelessness generally being a lovable guy the film makes an active effort to really get you to like him as a character well i feel sorry for that universe because their version of john wick is infinitely worse because if we did start to like the bad guy it would undermine how much we want to see jon get his revenge therefore it would undermine the audience's engagement with the story therefore the story would be less entertaining and if you're thinking that that universe's version of john wick sounds really familiar well there's a reason for that because that is the last of us part two yes neil druckmann tried to make us like abby in an attempt to spoil our engagement with ellie's revenge story but here's the problem that creates it causes us to not be engaged with ellie's revenge story anymore the reason why revenge plots just don't work in stories with two protagonists pitted against each other is because if we start to like character a we become disinterested in character b because all they want to do is kill character a whom we like and vice versa why would we give a damn about abby's mission to kill ellie in the climax when we likely more than abby that's why so many people try to sabotage her in that part of the game funnily enough like my novel which i'm writing right now has a similar dynamic to the last of us too in that it has two protagonists both of which are the others antagonists and i'm not bringing this up as some sort of like shameless plug but because in writing this story and workshopping it and giving it out to beta readers i've learned a really valuable lesson if you're telling this kind of story by far the best way to do it is to make the audience truly root for and sympathize with both protagonists have it so we really care about and want both to succeed and this creates a kind of tragic irony because the audience is invested in both characters but their goals are incompatible we know that one of them will lose in the end it's just a question of which an example of what they could have done we can still have abby be ellie's villain and vice versa but instead have it so neither of them want revenge instead they want something else something more sympathetic i do realize that this would have been a completely different story to be honest but it's a story with the exact same dynamic that would have been far easier to be invested in like what if abby's plot was all about assisting the greater good by helping society as a whole and ellie's plot is all about her achieving a personal good like helping someone she loves like we really understand where both characters are coming from ward is guided by a strong sense of responsibility the other by love for a family member we sympathize with both however these two motivations are at odds with each other and it's impossible for both characters to win in the end if they told that story far more players would have been engaged with both protagonists because even though they're unlikable pricks what they both want is so relatable in nature that we can't help but be engaged by their journeys also another one ellie has no character arc now it's not a death sentence to have a static protagonist in a story but any writer who takes on that undertaking is fighting an uphill battle because part of the reason why we love stories in the first place as humans is to see characters learn lessons and overcome their internal demons if your character has no character arc you're removing part of the base reason why people enjoy stories in the first place there is one moment in the very end of the game where eli's shows change as he chooses to spare abby but because this moment had no build up it feels more like ellie just suddenly decides to not want revenge anymore and in light of this happening after a full game's worth of wanting nothing but revenge calling this an arc is extremely generous and if you think i'm done pointing out issues with the characters in this game like god i haven't even started yet a lot of people are saying that this game has lazy writing and i think this next bit is what they're referring to it's a flaw that i like to call poor character verisimilitude or in less pretentious terms characters routinely making decisions and mistakes that are inconsistent with who they are when you're writing a story with an outline where you have your plan for the whole plot set out in stone it's possible this can have a disastrous effect on how good your characters are because sometimes if you stick to your outline you'll force your characters to make decisions and mistakes they would have otherwise never made because that's the only way to advance the plot and when a character does this well they act out of character for the sake of the plot they feel fake and the audience sees clear as day the strings of the writer as they manipulate the characters to do their bidding simply put at an unforgivable amount of points in the story characters don't feel like people they feel more like puppets at the whims of the writer and make decisions inconsistent with either their character or basic common sense because the plot demands for that thing to happen for example joel is a man who is desperately cynical if there's anyone in the world of the lustrous that would be untrusting of strangers it would be joel in the first game when joel sees that man injured in the street begging for help his first instinct is to assume that it's a trap and he was right and when joel a veteran survivor outnumbered seven to two by complete strangers doesn't stand in a tactically advantageous spot like in a corner or by a doorway with an easy escape route but rather stands in the open with a relaxed posture as if everything's fine also on top of that he says his name out loud when he knows that a lot of people in this world are outgunning for him when joel just trusts that these random strangers have no ill intentions it's entirely out of character the reason why this happened druckman wanted him to die and in order for him to do that joel needed to forget his survival instincts otherwise he would have survived a few people have been saying as a counter argument for this that well joel spent four years living in the safety of jackson he would have therefore forgotten his survival instincts after not needing to rely on them for so long unfortunately that's not how storytelling works like if that were the angle druckmann were going for in order to do that right he'd need to add in more foreshadowing that this is the case he would need to show that joel is rusty before this moment perhaps he makes a rookie mistake earlier in the game and then tommy comments about how he's losing his touch unfortunately they didn't add in any foreshadowing that joel was losing his survival instincts and so this moment comes across as lazy writing and when you start looking for them like the amount of moments like this where characters are inconsistent for the sake of the plot it's mind-blowing how many there are another example abby has proven throughout the story that she is someone who takes revenge and has no qualms about killing there's a reason why she traveled all the way across the country to kill joel because hate and anger are just a fundamental part of who she is i mean there's a point in the story where abby is forced to kill people on her side in order to survive like the group she's been a part of for years she slaughters them in the dozens like people who were her friends and allies less than a day ago and abby doesn't give one remark not one passing line of oh no what have i done she acts like a total psychopath like killing dozens of her own allies is just another day at the office abby is the most bloodthirsty remorseless protagonist i've seen in gaming like even kratos showed restraint in the last game when boulder started threatening him while abby in that same situation would have taken the chance to test out her new nine iron on boulder's cheek and when abby has a knife to dean his throat near the end of the story this happens she's pregnant good and this makes abby the most unlikable prick in the world but it's consistent with her character and then the kid says her name and gives her a look and the simple act of a look is enough for abby to completely defy her personality like the one she's consistently shown throughout the game and she spares both dina and ellie despite the fact that they both just murdered all like like literally every single friend she had earlier that day and despite the fact they both clearly want abby to be dead too and like her sparing them is just begging for them to try and kill her again which funnily enough is exactly what happens if at least she'd expressed guilt just one time over any of the hundreds of life she's taken that would have made this moment light years better only abby is consistently remorseless throughout the entire story and has never once expressed guilt so this doesn't come across as an authentic moment where she's learned a lesson as a person it instead comes across as dina and ellie both have plot armor because druckman wanted them to be in the epilogue with the baby in the very end ellie set out to kill abby so she finally finds her all crucified all nice and vulnerable with no way to fight back but instead of just shooting her there and then ellie cuts her down and then lets abby escape what why why is ellie actually helping abby escape when the whole purpose of her coming there was to kill the woman and even better it just it just gets worse from here on out when they're in the water and ellie goes up to abby to finally finish it she chooses to do it with a knife but here's the problem ellie has guns in her backpack the one she just put down in the boat like she has dozens of guns all of which would finish abby really very quickly but instead she puts her life in extreme danger by challenging abby to a hand-to-hand fight why does ellie do all of these things and act as illogically as she does because neil druckmann wanted a quick time fistfight event in the water and that wouldn't have been possible if ellie showed a modicum of common sense and just shot abby while she was all tied up okay there are so many more examples like so many more one more example tommy begins the story by saying no revenge is bad ellie you have a good laugh here don't ruin it by seeking revenge and then he ends the story by saying yes revenge is good ellie you have a good laugh here but you should ruin it by going for revenge and on top of that tommy actually has no character arc presented to explain why he's changed his opinions so it makes no sense and then there's another one where ellie conveniently forgets common sense and leaves behind her map on top of the corpse of one of abby's friend's bodies which abby very easily conveniently finds later on and then she uses it to track ellie down but you get my point that so many things in this story are contrived when you're a writer you need to strike the perfect balance between plot and character where it feels like the characters are the ones pushing the plot not the plot pushing the characters otherwise it will destroy the audience's suspension of disbelief and it makes the characters feel fake and this game without a shadow of a doubt failed to achieve this so now we're coming towards the end of part two and gearing up for the rewrite but as one final flaw to sign it all off we need to talk not about ellie or abby but about the characters that surround them it's a common complaint that dina and jessie just don't work and the new characters they introduce in jackson like dina they're okay but mostly uninteresting the supporting cast in this game fails at doing what it needs to do and the game does try its best to make me care with snippets of their history but that was nowhere close to being as riveting as the tension of joel and ellie's complicated relationship the supporting cast doesn't work and to answer why dina was added in almost as if to be the sam to ellie's frodo and then you throw jesse into the mix to make a trinity it just feels natural to compare them to frodo sam and gollum and ask why that entourage works so well and why the one with ellie deena and jesse well didn't when a supporting character is a good one it's because they bring utility to the story there are many ways of doing this and the more each supporting character brings to the table the better they get they might assist the themes of the story they might introduce conflict or have a direct effect on the plot and one that i think is a really good use is when they influence the protagonist's arc if you look at lord of the rings frodo's whole journey is about him fighting the evils inside of him and sam and gollum are pretty much perfect companions for this as sam acts as the angel over frodo's shoulder and gollum is the devil sam is the personification of all that's good in frodo gollum is all that's bad this fits frodo's internal struggle like a glove and not only does this add in lovely conflict which is something that any good entourage needs which is something that early sporting cast doesn't provide but it adds a whole other layer to the story as what each character does signifies frodo's internal struggle in that moment when gollum first appears that signals the start of frodo's temptation and fall to the darkness when gollum spreads the elven breadcrumbs over sam and tricks frodo into kicking sam out of the group that signifies the dark inside of frodo overpowering the light people have called both dinah and jesse poorly written characters but i disagree because their dialogue is honestly pretty authentic rather they're poorly chosen characters if dinah and jesse were replaced with characters better suited to generate conflict inside the party and influence ellie's arc it would have made the supporting cast so much more compelling jesse does none of these things and dina barely achieves one of them because she challenges ellie at the right at the very end of the story but doesn't challenge her at any point before then so the only purpose dinas and jesse's characters really serve is to be bouncing boards for ellie to have dialogue with so it isn't totally lonely the problem is a good supporting character does that but they also do so much more the first last of us didn't have this issue joel's and ellie's relationship was full of conflict and their personalities meshed really well as they constantly challenge each other tommy serves the role of helping joel in his character because he enables joel's temptation to abandon the quest by ditching ellie on him and being rid of her an option that joel seriously considers marlene is the face of the fireflies she has a big effect on the plot as she gives ellie to joel in the first place and creates the inciting incident and she's also there in the end so again she plays a role in the plot by telling joel what they're doing to ellie and so giving him the chance to rescue her the roster of supporting characters in part one was pretty much perfect but the roster in part two needs a total overhaul and now with all of that out of the way it's time to move on to part three a better story so before you hear my rewrite let's have a recap on all the issues that i'll be fixing it's made for the wrong target audience specifically tonal issues a bad rising action a poorly used midpoint abby's story lacks direction there is no sense of urgency largely pointless flashbacks ellie's and joel's relationship is poorly explored abby and ellie need more sympathetic motivations ellie has no arc poor character very similitude and finally the supporting cast doesn't work okay that list is extremely daunting now that i see it all written down i might have put a little too much my plate here but i will do my best also i might as well plug it here but if you've been liking this video so far please do support me on patreon if you support me there you're helping me create more videos just like this and making my dream come true because i can keep making these videos as my full-time job and not to mention there's a ton of cool rewards like early access to all of my videos and a neat badge on my discord server there is a link to my patreon in the description okay so shameless plug over on the rewrite there's something i need to say i tried really hard to find a way to fix all 11 issues while keeping this story intact at the end of the day if you just redo an entire story from the ground up it stops being constructive criticism and it becomes more like fan fiction but the ugly truth is i've realized that it's impossible to fix all 11 issues and keep in line with the vision that druckman had for this story the hang up is joel it's easy enough giving abby a better plot and making her more sympathetic replacing the spotting cast is again fairly simple giving the story a midpoint that actually works all of that's fine but if joel dies at the start of the story his relationship with ellie can't be explored and that's one of the main things that this game needed to do but the issue is there's no way of having joel not die yet still have the same revenge story so i'm making a hard choice it's unfortunate but it's also the only way so in the middle of the game as is we get a flashback to ellie discovering the truth about what joel did at the end of the first game but i can't help but feel that this is a poorly placed flashback so instead let's rearrange this so this new game doesn't begin in jackson but in an abandoned saint mary's hospital and what happens here is largely identical to the flashback we got ellie goes through the hospital and finds proof of what really happened joel arrives the next morning she confronts him with the evidence and reluctantly he says the truth making a vaccine would have killed you so i stopped them then ellie breaks down and she cries out that he's a monster that he murdered marlene and that she never wants to speak to him ever again and as ellie storms away her relationship with joel truly destroyed we roll the opening titles and then after the titles we see saint mary's hospital again but this time it says two years earlier we see an unconscious joel lying on a hospital bed then abby as she looks down at him and this flashback is telling abby's origin and it's very similar to the one we got we see abby talking to her dad then she finds his dead body as joel killed him on his rampage with this game we aren't going to make the mistake of having one whole first half dedicated to one character than the next half dedicated to the other in this flashback we set up that abby knows who joel is and what he looks like because she saw him while he was unconscious and she knows who ellie is but not what she looks like only her father the other doctors marlene and a handful of firefly guards have ever seen ellie because she was kept under a strict lockdown the second she arrived in the hospital but in joel's escape he killed everyone who'd ever seen ellie marlene her dad the doctors and the firefly guards as the story begins abby knows that in a town called jackson there's a girl called ellie who's immune to the cordyceps and she travels with joel while she doesn't know what ellie looks like she at least knows what joel looks like this will be important later so now we play as ellie in jackson and in the game we got it betrays ellie's and joel's relationship after the first game as kind of rocky you know elite distrust joel and there's a little bit of friction between them that's not good enough in this new story we show in the jackson section that ellie hates joel proper fully fledged despises him more than anyone else in the world kind of hate he enters the room and she leaves it everyone in the town knows that the worst thing you could possibly do apart from take a hearty breath of spores is to put ellie and joel in the same room and then we have that barn dance scene in the game that older guy has a go with ellie for kissing dina but now we're changing it so the person that does this is a guy called kyle and he is dina's older brother dinas and kyle's parents both died when dina was a baby so kyle's looked after her ever since and he is extremely protective over her and kyle hates ellie like he thinks she's vulgar disrespectful and is completely unworthy of his sister and her kissing dina in this dance just sets him off so he rips ellie away from her and lays into ellie about how she's just a trash human being who should find someone else to drag down to her level then joel steps in and pushes kyle away telling him to leave her alone but now ellie just goes ballistic in the scene we got ellie is a little annoyed at joel here and tells him that she doesn't need his help but in this story she tears into him while the whole town watches she says openly how much she despises him how her life could have meant something and he stole that from her it's not possible for someone to tear another soul apart more than ellie does to joel here and then as joel's heart breaks behind his eyes he leaves without a word now finally we play as abby and this section of the game is identical to what we got with one change she wakes up in the cabin goes out with owen to a ridge and they look down at jackson and abby mentions what horror she plans to inflict on joel but owen stresses get your head straight we didn't come here so you can settle a grudge and we hear about abby's evil plan which adds a ton of suspense as we dread what she's going to do to him later on but also we throw in a few hints that they have something far more in mind than simple revenge then there's a cut scene after the dance as ellie and dina have a private moment and we sell the player on how much they love each other and how good a couple they make and they're comparing scars like they do in the game ellie points at her wrist where she was bitten where she masked it with a chemical burn and a tattoo and judging by the way they speak there's a clear subtext that ellie told dina the truth about her immunity a long time ago so dina knows all about the events of the first game but then dina looks incredibly insecure and tells ellie that many years ago when she lived under federer in a military qse she had a girlfriend but they had a pretty toxic relationship so dina broke it off however her ex went full psycho the second dina broke it off and then turned her back to leave her ex's apartment she smashed of ours on dina's head and knocked her out and then dina woke up to the military pounding on the door and then she noticed a great bite-sized bloody chunk missing from her arm and she'd lost a lot of blood it took her a while to figure out what the hell happened but it turns out this was all a scheme by her ex as she knew that if she just killed dina outright as she would have been found guilty of murder and been executed but if she bit dina and then ran straight to the military saying that a click had slipped through the city walls and that was what bit dina and dina then stumbled into her apartment afterwards begging for help then the military would go in their guns blazing and kill dina for her and essentially she'd get away with murder it was a creative plan but it didn't work out because dina and her brother escaped the place and then made their way to jackson so the next morning there's a patrol ellie heads out with tommy and dina's with joel and each pair is given a sat phone and it's said that the local tinkerer found these old phones in a radio shack and he rigged them all up to communicate with a geostationary satellite in orbit above mexico one of the few that's left over from before the outbreak and they say that using these special phones they can instantly communicate anywhere from canada to venezuela not that they'd ever need to so all the scouts don't use radios rather these sat phones to talk to each other so then for a while we forget about ellie as joel is the player character and he patrols with dina we established that dina's new to all of this she's never been in a fire fight and she's pretty naive to the ways of the world after clearing some infected joel finds a toy dinosaur and arstina if she thinks ellie would like it but dina says she's a grown woman why would she want a toy and then joel just crumbles and buries his head to the floor and the player really pities joel because we see how much he loves ellie and wants to have a relationship with her and it's obvious that that will never happen later they find a dead infected but the body hasn't frozen it's still warm and seeing as the last patrol came through over a day ago that means there are other survivors in the area uh joel calls in on his sat phone saying that he needs backup and for everyone to go on a learn adina insists that they'll be fine the last 20 groups who came to jackson were all nice enough people but joel insists that they want backup so tommy replies saying that he and ellie are on their way then joel and dena follow the tracks to find abby's group in that lodge joel says they sit on their hands and wait for the next 10 minutes until tommy gets here and once they have more manpower then they go speak to them and see what they want but dina's naive she defies joel and approaches abby's group with a wide friendly smile and says she's from the settlement at the bottom of the valley and she asks if they need anything so they talk back and forth for a bit and abby says that her group's looking for a new place to call home and she's wondering if jackson would take them in uh dina says it's not that easy like first you have to build up trust and then you go through this whole interview thing we don't let just anyone in and abby asks so how long does it usually take maybe a few months then manny mumbles to abby that's too long and dina says well i don't make the rules but then she looks confused because manny said that to abby not to dina why would they say that's too long to each other it's almost like they're planning something and then the fear enters deena's eyes and she finally realizes just how much she screwed up and this tense conversation goes long as dina tries to hide how terrified she is by forcing a smile and hiding her shaking hands behind her back and she asks how they heard about jackson in the first place and abby says a girl told us about it a while back you don't know someone called ellie do you dina freezes she lights up with understanding then bolts for the door but they grab her beat her and rough her up for information joel calls in he says exactly where he is what's going on and that he needs backup asap because dina's about to die and tommy answers saying he's on his way the justification we got in the game of them knowing that abby came from seattle because of her badge feels really quite contrived so instead while they're torturing dina she's keeping her mouth clamped shut and owen says something like they'll know she's missing soon then they'll send out a search party we have to go back the mission's blown and then manny says we go back to seattle you know what happens next we can't go back empty-handed and then they bicker back and forth about whether they should abandon the mission but then owen says hold on we spotted how many patrols since yesterday three so says abby so every patrol was in a pair these people don't travel alone and then they realize that dina must have a partner someone who's probably in the balcony above readying for the perfect opportunity to kill them so then abby puts a knife to dean and shouts her partner to show themselves all their gutter and then with no other choice joel surrenders but as he steps out with his hands raised abby locks eyes with him and oh no abby recognizes him instantly so then they beat the hell out of the both of them and demand to know where ellie is and joel glances at dina because she's screaming as they hurt her and then abby looks at dina then gives a double take as if she's come across a great revelation because she doesn't know what ellie looks like but she knows she's a girl who travels with joel a girl about dina's age and with a bite scar on her arm abby rolls up deena's sleeves and sure enough we see the great ugly scar that she showed ellie earlier yes i know that this is a bit of a coincidence but there are so many good stories out there which have coincidences as their inciting incident and it's fine i promise this will be the only coincidence in this entire story uh so then they demand nodina's name and they torture some more and act like a real bunch of [ __ ] but then joel gives dina a look and dina understands exactly what that look means if you don't say what they want to you're going to die then dina gulps and says ellie then they cuff her and put a bag over her head abby turns back to joel and she goes all tiger woods on his ass and like beats him within an inch of his life then she grabs a shotgun ready to kill joel and it really looks like he's about to die but instead she calms her breathing the rage leaves her face and she says that she's better than him but if she just lets him go he'll only come after her so abby lowers her shotgun then shoots his kneecap joel rides around groaning out a scream he'll have a hard time chasing after dina with only one working leg so then they leave with dina and then ellie finally arrives with tommy and after a bit of hesitation she applies a tourniquet while tommy goes out to chase after abby joel passes out from blood loss and everything fades to black joel wakes up he's in a makeshift hospital bed and his face is dark purple with the biggest bruise that you've ever seen he grabs the railing and is about to haul himself up when he looks down confused then he pushes the bed sheet away to see that his left leg is gone and joel's face drops as he realizes that he'll never walk again it's at this point that ellie becomes the player character tommy says to her that he tried his best but as he was finally closing in on them they got in their van and drove away there was no way he could chase after that on foot and tommy tells ellie the bitter truth that he can guess why they took dina because they falsely believed that she's ellie but the second they realized that dina is an ellie deena's dead and tommy says that he wants nothing more than to rescue dina but he isn't an idiot not only do they have no idea where they went but the second they scan her brain they'll see that she's not immune and that will be the end of her and that'll happen long before any rescue party even finds out where she is dina is as good as dead but ellie is having none of it she loves dinner with everything she has so she gathers her gear and reads to set out on her own on this hopeless mission and tommy sighs and says fair enough if maria was the one who was taken he'd already be out there he'll give her one of the horses but in return ellie has to take one of the sat phones and give him an update at the end of every day ellie agrees but before she goes she gives joel one last visit and it's the opposite of pleasant joel tells ellie she overheard the mentioning that they'd come from seattle that gives ellie her heading and almost immediately she goes to leave the room and joel blurts out that she saved his life that has to mean that she cares about him at least slightly and then he says that she doesn't want him to die but that's about it she's just here to make sure he's still breathing now she's found that out so now she'll be off and the conversation is cold harsh and when joel tries to get close to her and tell her how much she means to him ellie grows angry and ends bitterly with ellie storming out joel reaching out to her begging for her to stay and her slamming the door in his face and i know what you might be thinking how are we going to explore elise and joel's relationship if he's bedridden the whole game well you'll see soon enough so ellie mounts the horse and is a second away from leaving when someone runs up behind her she turns to see kyle dina's older brother and he says that he'll rescue dina then gut the people that did this even though ellie and kyle hate each other seeing as kyle's the only other person in jackson willing to go out on this suicide mission they set out together and now we have a time change we play as abby one week in the past long before this jackson section even started and everything is explained we see her stadium but it's more run down in the game the stadium is made to look like some kind of survivor paradise well now the atmosphere is a lot more miserable there are people starving plants are wilting and it's got this very oppressive feeling about it she's going along doing her chores when alarm sounds and then she looks up to see a fleet of helicopters fly low and fast up to the stadium and it's like a gas attack in world war one as a siren wails and everyone scrambles to find the nearest mask and put it on the helicopters hover over the stadium with the word federer painted on the side in bright yellow and there are great massive shipping containers dangling beneath each one and the containers drop one after the other into the middle of the stadium and then the doors open to reveal that each one is jam-packed full with infected and then these infected charge around and wreak havoc biting and mutilating everyone in sight and the player plays as abbey as she kills them all desperately to try and save her people this whole section serves as a brutal introduction to abby's world and introduces the faction that's the bane of her existence fedra but it's not the same fedra that was in the original game but we'll get to that later so once abby's killed the infected she hears a woman sobbing and abby goes towards the noise to see someone crumpled on the ground her palms over her eyes crying like her life is about to end and then abby sees a great bite mark on the person's shoulder and then she sees another person with a bite stunned with shock then another then another then dozens of people all bitten in this attack and as abby is overwhelmed trying to process the horror of this attack someone screams that the wheat fields are on fire abby goes out and sees that smoke's coming from the crops outside the stadium someone's burning down their food they're being attacked from every angle all at once and then abby rushes out to douse the flames and save what food she can all the while fighting back against the people who clearly aren't federal soldiers rather their scars an entirely different faction and that's confusing because why are the scars working with fedra and well i would really love to flesh everything out and to tell this story as if you're the player where you start off confused running what the hell was going on but progressively you piece together more and more as abby's plot goes along but for the sake of time let's summarize abby is part of the fireflies they're still around they haven't disbanded and they hold control over the stadium in seattle however they're at war with the local federer faction federer being the remnants of the u.s military in this world the thing is up until about a year ago the fireflies actually had fedra on the run in this city they and the many other factions in the seattle area such as the scars and the rattlers and all of these other unique factions we'll see later on were successfully beating fedra in this war for control over seattle but then federer created the cure the cure to the cordyceps but it's not a vaccine that's an important difference it works more like antibiotics when someone's infected they'll take a dose of the stuff and it wipes out the cordyceps in that person's system it cures them but it's a one-time thing like if you take antibiotics your body doesn't suddenly become immune to all bacteria for the rest of time are the same with this for every time you get bitten you need to take another dose so in order to stay immune you need a constant supply and here's the thing federer has total control over its supply and they've used this cure as a power play by saying to all of the factions in the area that in return for having a steady supply of the cure they had to submit to federer's rule effectively becoming puppets and the offer of having a cure to the infection was so tempting that every single local faction capitulated and became subservient to federer all except for the fireflies and why the fireflies holding out because here's the thing federer essentially is a military dictatorship they're led by a man will call general redgrave someone who before the infection was actually a general in the us army and served in iraq what's really terrifying about this guy is he doesn't give monologues he doesn't have an ego he won't order people tortured just for the fun he is purely tactical logical and is a ruthlessly brilliant commander like he was crushing insurgencies in the middle east long before the outbreak started and he's remembered all of his dirty tricks for crushing them he is bringing back law and order to a world ruled by anarchy and he's doing it by being a true dictator you do exactly what he says or you get shot you so much as steal a loaf of bread you get shot if you publicly criticize him you get shot and the fireflies quite understandably would rather not have this guy be their leader thank you very much and that's why federer was dropping infected into their stadium and getting the other factions to burn their crop fields because it's all part of a combined effort to weaken the last holdout faction in the area and force them to surrender that's why abiante crew went to jackson because if they can use ellie to find a way to create a permanent cure like one way you take a single shot and that's it you're immune from the quarter steps forever it will break general red gray's grip and all the other local factions as his cure which is what's giving him all of his influence will suddenly be worthless doesn't this version of abby sound so much more compelling as a character compared to the one we got like she does evil things she hurts people she tortures people but it's all in the name of protecting her people creating a cure and taking down this tyrannical military that's oppressing her people all of a sudden she has a noble goal and she's a far more engaging protagonist for it if you ask me that's how you do an unlikable protagonist so with ellie she's out in the road at night and calls up tommy saying that she's about a day out from seattle and it's a pretty short inconsequential talk where he gives her a little bit of advice but nothing more then the next day comes and they find the van that abby escaped in and it's riddled with bullet holes and this whole section plays like a mystery because clearly they were ambushed and a firefight went down so ellie and kyle look for clues on where they went next and then they see that dina's jacket is on a pole out in the open it seems that dina's leaving behind a breadcrumb trail for someone to follow ellie's convinced that dean is leaving behind these clues for her but kyle's scoffs because she's clearly leaving the bind for him he's always been the one who protected her ever since she was a baby she knows to expect that he'll come out to save her also dina is just too clever to believe that some trailer trash like ellie would care about dina's safety let alone have the decency to come out and save her and as you can guess this doesn't go down too well with ellie we reinforce how much they hate each other's guts in this bit she gives kyle a boost over a ledge but then he doesn't lift her up and says that she'll have to find her own way round ellie sees a badass looking gun and we get the player really excited about guessing this and playing with it and they have to do a puzzle to access it and then once the player completes the puzzle and goes to claim it kyle beats them to it and then he claims it for himself and this really pisses the player off and also they constantly bicker out who should be the one who rides the horse all of a sudden kyle is a far more compelling supporting character than dina or jessie ever were even if he's an absolute [ __ ] and during this period kyle understandably asked why they kidnapped dina in the first place and ellie explains to kyle that she's immune deena's identity was mistaken and that's why and naturally this is a nice tense scene where he accuses her of being responsible for dina being kidnapped and for once ellie agrees with him and showing how guilty she feels that she's pushed dina into this horrible situation and during this section ellie and kyle stumble across some of the local factions under federer's thumb and also they both discover that this cure exists so at the end of the first day in seattle ellie slumps down exhausted and opens up her sat phone she calls home sighs and says tommy you there and then a voice talked back hey kiddo it's joel and ellie's confused angry she asked what the hell he's doing where's tommy and joel explains that tommy's fine but joel can't walk anymore in fact he can't do much of anything anymore but he can still talk so now he's in charge of communications he's taken tommy's job of organizing all the scouting missions and ellie will be talking to him from now on not tommy and ellie is the opposite of happy like their conversation is harsh angry and it ends with ellie hanging up while joe's still talking she's unable to stand the idea of speaking to the man who ruined her life and now the flashbacks with abby are over now we are in the present day with abby and telling our stories truly in parallel and doing away with the whole multiple timeline issue because it's not really necessary for this story um abby's speaking to dina and she has just a hint of doubt that dina is who she says she is this plays out for a while until we have this conversation where abby brings up marlene and asks if tina ever met marlene's son no i don't think so says dina are you sure her and adam were inseparable like you never saw one without the other dina slowly nods right no i i do remember him yeah and abby's face almost imperceptibly twitches and all of the forced joy on her face succumbs to the snarl a dog gives a rat there's a long pause and abby says marlene never had any kids and as i be build up with the rage and look like she's about to strangle dina to death finally realizing that she is an ellie abby breaks she falls to the floor overwhelmed by grief and sobs she's got the wrong person her missions failed by the time she got back to jackson found a way to lure ellie out of the safety behind its walls then kidnapped her and then came back her people would have already given in to federer it's all over and abby loses all hope that she might ever save her people in the game we got there was a moment in a flashback where i had a great big smile on my face because it felt like a really nice check of his gunner that introduced and i was really excited to see it fired but it never was i think it's a crime that happened so let's fire it here when ellie's having a flashback with joel this happens put your mask on ah do i have to it's just us what if we run into someone you gotta be smart about this you start wearing that mask kiddo and eventually you're gonna slip up in front of someone you shouldn't i've never slept so now let's have a nice payoff for that ellie's hot on abby's heels but then abby slips into a spore nest a kyle puts on his mask but ellie didn't bother to bring one herself because she never needs one like kyle has a go at ellie saying how can she breathe in this stuff and she bats it off saying that she does it all the time she'll be fine but then after a bit of action as they chase down abby kyle and ellie stumble right in front of abby and her crew and abby sees clear as day ellie walking through a spawn nest with no mask on at all and abby's eyes burst wide with shock then scowl with understanding that's the real ellie that's the girl she's been looking for all along oh crap but sure enough abby and her crew lose ellie and kyle now we're about a quarter of the way through the story and it's time to have a nice turning point the story is no longer about ellie hunting abby it's about abby hunting ellie and ellie trying to survive as the fireflies chase after her and even worse she has dina as a hostage someone who clearly ellie loves otherwise she wouldn't have come out this far to save her and this whole cat now section goes on for a while until it ends in a standoff in another spawn nest um ellie and kyle have their guns aimed to abby abby who has deemed there as a hostage and a gun to her head one thing that i thought the last of us two didn't do very well is it portrayed ellie as a total cynic and it just feels a little bit inconsistent with the ellie that we saw in the first game well in this exchange ellie still has that fierce optimism to her there's a tense back and forth and ellie insists that if she lets go of dina and surrenders they'll let abby go free they'll forgive what she's done and let her go no one else has to die today and kyle says [ __ ] that i'll kill you and his anger just ruins ellie's efforts to defuse the situation but then abby has the most creative and terrible thought she grabs dina's mask and rips it off dina breathes in lungfuls of spores and coughs madly they both scream no and charge forward but abby presses the gun back to dina's head and they stop she says only the cure can save her now and it just so happens that federer keeps every last vial and a strict control meaning dina will never get a dose from them but the firefly stole a case of the stuff it's the only sample of the cure in the whole city not under federer's thumb the only way for dina to survive now is if she comes back to the firefly stadium and is given the cure there otherwise she'll be a runner by tomorrow evening and abby plays their love for dina like a fiddle and gets them to lower their guns surrender and go with abby back to the stadium on the way there ellie corners abbie and puts a knife to her throat and abby says go ahead you kill me and your girlfriend never gets the cure you kill me you kill her so they trek back to the stadium with a massive amount of conflict between the four of them and on the way there eddie stops to see a worn weathered poster for a dinosaur exhibit in a museum and as ellie stares at it lost in the thought we have a flashback to ellie and joel years ago just after the first game back when they loved each other and that flashback we got in the actual game where ellie and joe go to that museum and get in that space capsule we have that here exactly the same as it is in the game we see how much they enjoyed each other's company but as the flashback comes to a close it ends with the younger ellie smiling at the dinosaur statue and then it fades in a transition from the statues outline to the warm tattered posters outline of the dinosaur and ellie looks at it with longing in her eyes and we see how much ellie misses those days how nostalgic she is for them just like the player is in this story that flashback does more than just act as a moment of levity in a dark story it reminds the player exactly what ellie used to have and it tells us exactly what's going on inside her head that secretly deep down ellie misses her days with joel and she yearns to have those days back again that's how you do a flashback not by having it be a nice thing on its own but by having it weave into the overall story and assist in the plot and the character's journey also as they go along kyle's warming up to ellie he starts laughing at her terrible puns and in terms of gameplay he's no longer a liability as he helps ellie out then that gun that he grabbed before ellie could well now he gives it to her saying that she's a better shot than him anyway and we see that kyle's beginning to respect ellie just a little bit and he confesses that maybe ellie isn't totally unworthy of his sister after all we give kyle a nice little redemption arc where he stops being ellie's enemy and he becomes more of a friend so then they reach the stadium and abby looks dina in a cell she says that she has the cure but she's not giving it to dina not yet ellie has to go with abby to the hospital that's controlled by fedra in there the lead doctor is a firefly sympathizer and they want to help make a permanent cure to take down fedra ellie says you want me to let you kill me and abby says that her father was the firefly doctor that was going to do surgery on ellie before but he was a heart surgeon before the outbreak he was a good doctor but he knew very little about brain surgery and next to nothing on pandemics but the guy in this hospital used to work for the cdc before he was one of the world's foremost experts on fungal infections in fact this is the guy who created the cure that federer has been using if anyone in the world could find a way to reverse engineer what's inside of ellie and not kill her in the process it would be him there is hope there's a way for ellie to get what she wants and have her quiet life with dina and also a way for abby to get her cure and take down federer this is the moment of great hope as it seems everyone can win but ellie says by the time they get back from wherever it is they're going dina would turn she'll die give her the cure now then ellie will go with her and abby looks confused she says what you heard me says early and then abby finally understands you don't know do you and then abby gives a rather gruesome revelation if you give a runner or a clicker the cure it works it kills the fungus and the infection leaves them and they return to the person they used to be but this means that when you get infected you don't actually die and the accounts of the people who survived it are haunting because they all claim that they were awake for every second of it they say that the cordyceps stole control over their motor functions but it left their brain intact even clickers even bloaters who have been infected for over a decade still have the person they used to be locked inside of them in permanent pain as the fungus sprouts and irritates every nerve ending in their body unable to move their arms and legs because the infection did that for them nothing more than a spectator in their body now that is purely my addition but i think it would have been a bloody brilliant revelation it would have made the idea of being infected so much more terrifying and i think it would have been a lovely reveal anyway abby says that dina will be fine like even if she becomes a runner she won't die she could be left for years and become a clicker and the cure would still turn her back at that stage so kyle gets locked in a cage next to dina and ellie and abby set out together to this federer hospital and now ellie opens up her sat phone to speak to joel and she cracks finally the stress and the strain on her is just too much to stand and she tells joel everything that she's been blackmailed that dean has been infected and ellie's never felt more alone and afraid in all her life and joel consoles her without skipping a beat telling her what to do to not trust abby because people like her always go back on their word to remember all the lessons he taught her and to leave these people and their politics alone and come home with dina the first second she can and ellie finally asks after all this time she finally asks how he's doing and if he's feeling better and joel says that the local tinkerer made him a prosthetic leg it's uncomfortable damn near impossible to walk with and it's unbelievably painful but he's been practicing with it now in this part of the game ellie and abby are having a lot of tense conversations as they begrudgingly work together and abby explains her side of the story that her people are desperate that if they can find a permanent cure they'll weaken fendra and kill the golden goose that is their cure it'll be the key to saving her people and abby tries really hard to convince ellie to join her side but ellie doesn't care she only wants to keep dina safe and nothing more they reach this hospital and it's a house of horrors it's slowly unraveled bit by bit this isn't actually a hospital it's just called that because before the outbreak it was one and it has the words general hospital above the entrance it turns out that federer's repurposed it for research and development on the cordyceps they're weaponizing it and some of the lawbreakers and firefighters they capture they aren't shooting them they're dragging them here to this nightmarish place where they're intentionally infecting them with new strains of the cordyceps are strings that make them more docile or more aggressive strains that mean the infection is asymptomatic until they fully turn meaning they can infect someone release them into an enemy camp and there won't be any signs they're infected until they suddenly turn and start biting everyone in sight it's like a trojan horse and in case you haven't figured it out yet i find body horror morbidly fascinating so i love the idea i really think this is cool that ellie comes into a room and she finds an ex-clicker tied to a chair someone who's been brought back from being infected and she doesn't have a face no eyes no nose just a great big gash where her face should be but ellie stumbles back in shock as she notices this thing she knocks over something and the woman's ears perk up this is what a cured infected looks like and it's beyond terrific ellie has a brief talk with this poor woman and she nods with what ellie says so clearly she can still hear and ellie says that her friend's infected she needs to find the cure so she can help her where can she find it and the woman shakes her hand around with her fingers pinched ellie gets the message she wants to write the location of the cure down so ellie grabs a pen and paper gives it to the woman she scribbles something down and ellie looks at the paper to see the words kill me god i am so messed up as a human being like i am not right in the head but that would be bloody horrendous and bloody lovely at the same time like not just because a bit of body horror is always nice but because it adds a real sense of urgency here this is what will happen to dina if ellie doesn't get the cure fast and then after the cut scene ends the player is given the option of whether they want to grant this poor woman her request so ellie and abby split up and ellie stumbles across general redgrave's office and she sees his battle plans for the future and we see that this guy knows exactly what he's doing and he's very organized but here ellie learns about what his master plan is he wants to take control of the seattle area and then once he has a firm foothold he'll build and train a proper army then using it he'll expand his reach and retake america all by the means of ruling like a tyrant and killing anyone who gets in his way they either surrender to him and join his faction or they die ellie realizes that this is a war that she can't ignore because if this guy is allowed to grow his influence unchecked it's only a matter of time until he reaches jackson and destroys her home and now ellie finally agrees with abby like she still hates the [ __ ] but ellie understands where she's coming from and she agrees that a permanent cure needs to be found because that's the only way of ruining this guy's plans but then as ellie's going around the room and finding all these clues the door opens and in walks general red grave they both stare at each other surprised that he scowls and slams the door shut before she can get a shot off she runs up to the door and tries to bust it down but she can't he's tipped a vending machine over on the other side and the door to his office only opens one way as she tries to scramble through a window but it's just too narrow and she realizes that there is no way out she's trapped so ellie does the only thing that she can do she gets out her sat phone and calls joel and explains that she's about to die that this general's insane and he's planning to invade the entire country and joel gets erratic and tells her she needs to run then sure enough soldiers come and throw tear gas into the room and gas ellie out ellie scrambles to grab her gas mask but she can't find it because that's right she doesn't bring a gas mask because she never needs one if only she'd listen to joel's advice they subdue her and as joel screams ellie's name through the phone one of the soldiers comes along and stomps on it breaking the thing into little pieces so now as ellie's hung up in a prison alongside some captured fireflies the general comes along and she tries to goad him but he blanks her not stooping to the level of replying to her insults with cold passionlessness he interrogates them all and figures out that they're all fireflies all except for ellie who is an outsider he says that that sat phone she was using was too advanced for someone just roaming the country we see that he's really quite perceptive because he accuses her of being part of a larger group outside of seattle and he demands to know where they're based and now ellie gets tortured for information and this goes on for two whole days we get the player to just hate this federer faction as ellie is deprived of sleep and not so nice things are done to her as they wear down her willpower and press her for information eventually abby comes to ellie's rescue and they reach this doctor who is trying to make a cure after they have a chat and scan her brain ellie is told that abby's father was right the whole infection in her brain needs to be removed in order to create a vaccine there truly is no way to create a permanent cure without killing ellie and this puts ellie in an impossible position because does she sacrifice her life for the greater good or does she act selfishly and save herself funnily enough for all her hatred of joel she never once actually thought what she'd do if the choice were hers and maybe that was because deep down she was afraid of the answer that she might pick and the doctor starts to ramble away saying that the firefighters have had to execute their own once they've gotten infected but ellie will put a stop to that she will save so many lives it's a very heroic thing that ellie's doing but then ellie finally asks a good question if the fireflies had a shipment of the cure why would they put any aside and not use it for treating their own people and abby stutters giving a fairly weak and uncompelling answer about how they need it for research then there's a tense silence then ellie reaches for a gun but abby grabs her and chokes ellie out with her superior strength as a team effort abby cuffs ellie to a radiator while the doctor injects her with anesthetic and then they step back while ellie writhes around the tranquilizer's slowly taking effect ellie screams out how abby betrayed her and abby says you're right if i had the cure i'd use it on my people not yours and ellie begg saying please please save dina and abby not wanting to tell a lie says you'll both be together soon and with the drug muddying her thoughts it takes ellie a while to figure out what abby's trying to say but when she does she screams angry heartbroken grieving all of these things coming out in one gut-wrenching noise and while this is going on we do parallel cuts as well this cutscene is playing out we cut back to dina and kyle in their cells and dina looks incredibly sick then she twitches and then we see the horror on kyle's face as she starts throttling at the mouth gives a devolved scream and clambers to grab kyle through the bars her face inhuman and savage we really go all in to make the player depressed here everything is looking downhill ellie's about to die dean deena's turned and she's about to die along with kyle there truly is no more hope and then we play as abby as she travels back to her stadium and regroups with a squad of fireflies the doctor's about to vivisect ellie and reverse engineer a vaccine she hears news from this group of fireflies that they've retaken a portion of the city that they thought they'd never be able to retake apparently last night a firefly scout went through to find the entire group of scars who were holding the area just dead and then the fireflies walked in to claim the place without any resistance although funnily enough they had no idea who attacked them because there weren't any infected or any bodies from any other faction there oh that's curious but anyway this is good news for the fireflies and they walk along when out of nowhere one of their heads just explodes and a gunshot sounds like rolling thunder and we have that whole sniper section as abi squad gets picked off one by one and it plays out like it does in the game abby crawls through these tight spots spends ages chasing this sniper down then charges through the door and we reveal the sniper is joel and they fight for the gun joel and abby lock eyes and they recognize each other and they juke it out as they bite each other and they try to gouge each other's eyes out and it's this desperate dirty fight and during this we see that joel now has a prosthetic leg the one he mentioned in his call with ellie but obviously this puts him at a massive disadvantage because his footwork is really shoddy this is experimental i'm not sure if the game's ever done this before but i think it could honestly work quite well here as they fight abby gets the upper hand and she gets closer and closer to killing joel and when he's on his back having his ass kicked the camera stops being over abby's shoulder and it turns to be over joel's shoulder and in a seamless transition joel becomes the player character i've never seen the game do this in the middle of a fight before but i think it could honestly work really well and after this intense fight joel by the skin of his teeth grapples abby and throws her through the railing and into the water and now we finally reach the midpoint of the story and the thing is abby dropped her backpack so now joel picks it up and he inherits her supplies so the player doesn't have to start from scratch like they did when they had to switch to abby as every gun the players picked up as abby and every upgrade they've made with her it all transfers to joel as he now has all of her gear not to mention all the guns he did in the first game like the el diablo revolver and all of that has a nostalgia trip and now we have a flashback to joel's perspective in jackson three days earlier when ellie called him up and we see the pure horror in his face as ellie screams and the phone cuts off into a drone and this flashback explains that joel immediately grabbed his gear and stumbled through the snow then fell flat on his face and found it insanely difficult to walk on his new leg and he falls over again and bashes his head but he grits his teeth and forces himself to get up each and every time pure determination on his face then he gets on a horse and races to seattle so now joel's the player character and he makes his way to the hospital because ellie said that earlier that was where she was in the cool climbing is slow and difficult and he runs with a limp and is in constant pain on his way to the hospital he sees fedra soldiers moving a shipping container with a crane then a tremendous terrifying roar comes from inside as the container thrashes around joel mumbles what the hell is that and the guards around it say that at least they finally found a use for all of those captured fireflies and another one says that last week one of the new recruits saw this thing in its cage and she's woken up screaming every night since so joel bats it off goes to the hospital rescues ellie and kills the doctor without any hesitation echoing the first game showing how deep down joel hasn't changed one bit and he's still the exact same guy and this is when the rising action of the story is really ramping up because we overhear the federal soldiers saying that the next morning they're launching a massive assault on the stadium every last faction in the city and every fedra soldier will all take part it'll be the single largest operation that they've ever done and they plan to take out every firefly they find leaving no survivors ellie eventually comes to and joel tells her this and ellie says that dina and kyle are there they'll be stuck in the middle of that whole attack they have to go save them so joel and ellie grab three vials of the cure for dina because that's all they can find and they make their way there and here this is full-on nostalgia because it's just like the first game as ellie and joel are repair again they're traveling on joel's horse and making their way through the ruined city but it's not the same that banter they had before that father-daughter dynamic it's gone joel asks her questions tries to get her to talk and she never gives off more than a hum or a one-word answer their relationship is clear on display and it's her shadow of what it used to be ellie explains to joel that abby plans to kill dina and kyle so joel comes up with a plan they'll find a way to send a message to the fireflies if they can tell them that ellie is free they won't kill dina and kyle because they'll lose their leverage but here we have a really tense moment as abby makes her way towards the stadium and says to the guards at the front gates that it's time to execute the two prisoners she doesn't need them anymore then we play as either ellie or joel are going to a firefly outpost and massacring their way through then ellie uses the radio sends her message out and stops abby from killing her friends just in the nick of time and then she gets abby on the other line and they talk ellie goes all liam neeson on her ass and gives a creatively worded terrifying threat about how abby is as good as dead all the while joel holds ellie's shoulders to console her and ellie doesn't shake him away so after that they get away from the outpost and they have a talk and all of ellie's angst joel's choice in the last game it all gets openly discussed ellie says that joel stole her life then murdered marlene but joel counters back saying something like what federer is doing using the cure to manipulate these people it's exactly what the fireflies would be doing if i didn't stop them if i'd let them have their way it would have played out the exact same just the other way around and ellie looks at the floor but that's not why you did it doesn't change the fact it's true shut the [ __ ] up joel she cries who are you trying to convince because we both know that you never gave a [ __ ] about the fireflies or federer no why and there's a long long pause and pain enters joel's eyes do i really need to tell you that and after hashing it out some more ellie says back in the firefly hospital i understand why you did it i i can't forgive you but i understand but just because you care about me that doesn't make me your property just leave me alone from now on ellie swear to me swear to me that you'll treat me like an actual adult not some kid that can't make decisions for herself and joel gives her a long hard look i swear and they look at each other for a long time their looks soften there's an awkward hesitation in the air as it looks like they're considering going for a hug but they don't and then they move on so now ellie and joel are making their way towards the stadium and they're talking and ellie makes her terrible puns and joel chuckles back and it's just like the first game they're having banter and they're back to being the iconic duo as their relationships visibly improved but as they make their way towards the stadium helicopters fly overhead and then the streets become packed with a war party heading in the same direction that they are the assault on the stadium is about to begin so now the climax the final battle is underway as they have a three-way fight between federer their goons versus the fireflies versus joel and ellie as they slip into the stadium at some point ellie and joel are separated in the chaos with ellie on the inside and joel in the stands a helicopter flies over then lowers down a great big cargo container the very same one that joel saw earlier in the hospital thrashing around the doors open and out comes a monster an abomination the rat king in this it didn't congeal in some basement but it was a byproduct of federer's unbelievably inhumane experiments with the cordyceps and this thing tears through every firefly there and joel has a great big boss battle as he fights to kill this terrifying thing then we play as ellie she finds kyle and dina exactly where they were but her heart stops as she sees that dina's turned nonetheless she frees kyle ellie sees that each vial contains two doses of the cure so with a bit of teamwork they inject dina with half of one of the vials they step back but before they can see the effect kick in abby comes in and knocks out kyle causing that cure vial to smash on the floor and ellie and abby have a great big fight with ellie as the player character like lol imagine if the game made you play as abby when we actually like ellie as a character more like imagine if they did that oh i'm glad that didn't happen and ellie does her best but abby gets the upper hand she starts pummeling ellie with every punch ellie's life flashes before her eyes she sees riley from the first game's dlc then joel playing his guitar then dina and just as ellie's about to succumb to the darkness abby stops handcuffs her and is about to drag ellie away as her prisoner when kyle comes in and attacks abby saying leave her alone and kyle's ark comes full circle as he started the game hating ellie's guts but now he's trying to save her life ellie watches helplessly as her hands are cuffed behind her back and the two of them fight abby gets the upper hand then stabs kyle in the neck ellie screams and kyle drops to the ground stone dead ellie tears in her eyes runs away and hides with a hand still tied behind her back and this whole section of the game plays like alien isolation for a bit as ellie's totally defenseless and trying to find somewhere to hide but sure enough abby finds her and drags her away again about to make off with her in this truly miserable all hope is lost moment when joel finally arrives and scares abby off forcing her to retreat joel frees ellie they go back to dean the cell and see that she's nothing more than a shivering wreck in the fetal position on the floor ellie goes up to her and dina looks up to reveal her quite sane eyes the three of them escape the stadium and make it somewhere safe ellie's concussed and exhausted but seeing as there are two vials of the cure left and she doesn't need them herself for obvious reasons she gives one to joel and one to dina they both pocket them and then she collapses too exhausted to keep her eyes open anymore so now things are come the battle is over ellie's unconscious on a table with dina caressing her head but joel's standing over them both and he has the most terrible idea he looks down at the vial of the cure in his hands and dina asks what he's doing and joel says that first there was the firefly doctor then there was the fedra one it's only a matter of time until someone else comes along another doctor another faction looking to create a vaccine one day maybe in a month maybe in five years ellie will have to choose if she wants to die to create a vaccine is confused and joel says but she doesn't have to there's another way he looks down again at the cure in his hands there's a benign quadricep infection in her brain that's what makes her immune best i can tell this thing wipes out all cordyceps inside someone so if i give her the cure she won't be immune says dina finally understanding joel looks down at the vial then clamps his eyes shut a look of pure shame on his face then we do a hard cut to later ellie wakes up and dina's by her side dina says that joel's out on the roof keeping a lookout and he's been saying that once ellie's better the three of them should hunt down abby and get revenge for kyle they both mourn kyle but ellie's head throbs and the screen pulses purple ellie has the most horrible headache worse than any hangover then dina lowers her voice and says she had it doubly as bad when she had the cure ellie looks at her and dina says the truth that joel injected ellie with a cure while she was out to take the choice away from her to save her life in the future and that joel threatened dina to keep it a secret after the fact but she couldn't keep it a secret from ellia she might walk into a sparnist without a mask again not knowing any better so then ellie stumbles up to the roof to speak to joel he's visibly relieved to see her and gives a wide smile and asks how she's holding up but she lays into him saying how she trusted him that he promised to change and joel is beyond confused then ellie accuses him of injecting her with the cure and now he gets even more confused he says he meant that promise he'd never break it you know i'd never lie to you and ellie says right because you've never done that before and ellie is heartbroken as she says it they're done that they just are she was making so much progress and learning to trust him again and he just had to ruin it by going behind her back ellie says go kill abby do what you want go die for all i care but if you survive never come near jackson and ellie implies that if she ever sees joel again she'll probably kill him and then she runs off at a speed that joel can't hope to match because of his bad leg and she takes joel's horse and rides away with dina abandoning joel in the middle of the city so now with nothing left to do with nothing left to live for joel goes after abby on a mission of revenge i i didn't entirely abandon the revenge plot we still do get a little bit of revenge plot here and we have this epilogue section where he's tracking abby down and we see the aftermath of the climax with all the dead fireflies um but just before joel engages abby in the final fight we have a cutscene of ellie and dina making their way back to jackson and dean is consoling ellie hugging her from behind on the horse whispering words of sweet comfort but saying that she should have known better she should have seen it coming a leopard never changes its spots and ellie agrees she was an idiot to trust joel a second time and the heartbreak is clear in ellie's voice but as they go along they come across a man who's been bitten and left for dead by his friends he begs for them to shoot him and end it quickly but ellie says that she can do one better than that she turns to dina and asks her to get her cure out to help this poor guy but dina says she'd rather save it someone in jackson might need it after all and ellie's baffled she says again to get it out and dina says no and they get into a really heated confusing argument ellie overpowers dina steals her backpack and sifts through it to see the cure vial that she gave dina and it's half empty ellie asks when did you have a chance to use this and dina stumbles over her answer saying that she accidentally spilled it when she was going through her gear and ellie freezes her face drops she finally realizes that it was dina who used the cure on her and she pinned it on joel knowing that she'd buy it hook line and sinker because of his track record joel was the perfect scapegoat ellie realizes that joel kept his promise joel had in fact changed for the better because she asked him to and in return she basically told him to go kill himself so ellie takes the horse leaves dina and charges back to seattle so now we have the final fight between joel and abby a rematch of their first encounter in that sniper section it's brutal horrific there's eye gouging and biting and scratching and it's just the most ghastly fight abby finds a gun flails it around wildly and shoots at joel joel rips it out of her hands then gets on top of her and begins drowning her in the ocean after a while of her kicking and fighting back she stills abby is well and truly dead but then joel looks down and he sees blood in the water he's confused for a bit he looks down to see two bullet holes in his gut during the fight joel was so worked up on adrenaline that he didn't even notice that he'd been shot twice by abby he stumbles towards the shore trying to hold the blood in with his hands then collapses against a rock at first he's panicking to try and stop the bleeding but then he realizes the damage is just too great joel gives up flops his hand to the sand and stares off at the sunset and just as his eyes begin to drift away a horse charges down the beach with ellie on top ellie runs towards him and immediately tries to stop the bleeding begging for him to hold on she says it was dina who did it and she begs for his forgiveness joel forgives her instantly and he makes her promise to be strong to look after the people at jackson because he can't anymore he tells her to remember all of the lessons that he taught her and she promises to that's my girl he says weakly and as his eyelids shut ellie tears welling in her eyes cries out dad but it's too late for him to hear joel's hand falls to his side his body still as a rock ellie buries her head into his chest wailing as she mourns for him so we skip time ellie's dug a grave for joel and she says some final words she plays to something on the soil and lays her hand on it tenderly her hand stopping us from seeing what it is ellie walks off towards her horse and the camera pans down to show joel's old watch beneath the cross the one his daughter gave to him at the very start we see dina walking along the road slowly making her way back to jackson when ellie appears behind her at a trot dina looks at her relieved and says i was so worried about you but she rides the horse straight past her ignoring the fact that dean is there and she leaves dina to walk the rest of the way and so then on that bitter note the credits roll and as one final post-credit scene we see the federal soldiers walking over all the bodies of the fireflies in the stadium then general redgrain looking at the remnants of the battle and saying something like let's get to work and this way we set up a natural villain for the next game as this unstoppable federer army and this ruthless general will be the antagonists in the last of us part three it's hard to rewrite a story when a lot of people loved the original one but i think a story like this would have divided the fan base far less than the one we got but what do you think i'd love to know what you would have done differently in the comments down below anyway thanks for watching and i'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,042,209

Rating: 4.7843986 out of 5

Keywords: the last of us, the last of us 2, the last of us part 2, the last, of us, the last of, last of, last of us, video essay, video, essay, the closer look, closer look, the closer, review, abby, ellie, joel, writing, structure, neil druckmann, star wars, tommy, rewrite, part 2, gameplay, walkthrough, walk through, creative writing, lev, dina, joel death, ending, explained, reaction, rant, trailer, full, zombie, cinematic, cutscene

Id: MvTFF-E5wkw

Length: 108min 30sec (6510 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/quod-vox]

This is the one of the best video critiques I’ve seen on TLOU2. I think it should be added to the pinned posts to anyone who asks “Why do to think the writing is bad?”

[u/Schneemaa]

"When you make a sequel, you just can't have as much creative liberty as when you made that first story because that first story set a precedent" - 4:53

THANK YOU! That's why I've been saying all along. If you want to make a game like that, have it in the same universe, but with different characters. And especially don't promote the game making people expect to get an experience like in the first. The worst thing you can do in a sequel, the cardinal sin of sequels if you will, is to ruin and disrespect all that was built in the first. Because a bad sequel is just a bad game; nothing happens, you can always go back to the first. But a sequel like TLOU2 makes me enjoy the first game less since I already know that all the characters I love fight for and achieve, ultimately will be for nothing. If you, as a writer, reopen a closed chapter, you have to treat the material very carefully

[u/HolyChickenNugget]

I’m watching it right now, and he’s seriously telling all the reasons why I don’t like this game. I love The Closer Look.

[u/DynamicBaie]

I really love The Closer Look's videos! He doesn't hold back on the areas that disappoint or frustrate him while also seeking out the positive elements. He also offers alternative ideas that not only are far more compelling but also simultaneously incorporates the original's strengths and fixing criticisms . He's a wonderful and fair reviewer!

I do low-key wish someone posts this video onto the r/thelastofus because I'd be curious to hear their reactions!

[u/simplemiserablehuman]

Watch the fanboys try to defend it with bigotry and petty insults, instead of actually using the story to defend it.

[u/AeroAviation]

The chad Redgrave vs the virgin Isaac

[u/Player_010]

This is phenomenal, and perfectly articulates in way better words than I'm capable of, the issues I have with the game.

[u/MarioCop718]

Not gonna lie, that alternate story was so goddamn good

[u/tommydlbass]

Good video