Content warning for suicide, lynching imagery, discussions of transphobia, and graphic imagery involving humans, animals, and moldy zombies. Spoiler alert for The Last of Us, The Left Behind DLC, and at long last, The Last of Us II. Seriously, I'm spoiling everything. As always, these videos are just my opinions and art is subjective. Did you know I bought my first gaming console, a PlayStation 4, back in 2017? I bought it in no small part because the sequel to The Last of Us was in development and coming out...soon. And so was the third Kingdom Hearts and I wanted to play those. Most of the games I've played in my lifetime, I've played at friends houses or on roommates' consoles. If you're getting ready to ask if I've played [insert title here] the answer is most likely no. I am not what you would call 'an experienced gamer.' [Me] "Who's shooting at me? Turn around. Joel? Joel. Joel!" This might be the only game I ever cover on the channel, unless I decide to try and make content about the glorious shit-storm that is Kingdom Hearts. [Sully panting] [Ding] That franchise is the hottest mess. But also Donald and Goofy are Sarah's cartoon dads, and they love him So Much. It's so beautiful. My first experience with The Last of Us wasn't even playing it. I didn't have access to a console when the game was rocking everybody's world back in 2013. But I was curious and I had heard a lot of stuff, and there were 30 billion playthroughs on YouTube. So I looked up the opening. [Joel] "Shit."
[Gunfire] And I cried. "I know, baby. I know."
[Sarah cries out in pain] Like a lot. And from there, I was hooked. I watched one of those 16 hours silent playthroughs that's just the game with no commentary. Then I watched playthroughs where people yelled at all the dramatic parts of the game because I wanted to yell about this game, and I didn't know anybody who gave a shit about it. [Hana Hayes gasps]
[Troy Baker] "Yeah. To the face." [Hana Hayes] "Oh!" A year or so later, I lived with some roommates who owned it and I got to play it for the first time and be like,. [Me] "YEAH! Did you see that? We just HIGH-FIVED." [Me] "Ellieeeee, my daughter. Hello, daughter. I'm Dad." Now I own both games and a console to play them on. So I get to do things like pet this good boy. What a good boy. So...let's talk about The Last of Us. [Ellie] "Okay." The first game follows the character of Joel, voiced and motion capture performed by Troy Baker. In the opening 10 minutes of the game, we meet him on the night of the zombie apocalypse, which is also his birthday. and that's really sad when you think about it. Over those opening few minutes, we meet his daughter Sarah. We see they have a pretty sweet relationship. [Joel] "Where did you get the money for this?" [Sarah] "Drugs. I sell hardcore drugs." [Joel] "Oh good. You can start helping out with the mortgage then." Then we watch everything go to shit. [Joel] "Jimmy, I am warning you. Don't"
[Gunshot] For this first segment, we actually play asSarah and get to experience the fear of this child as the world is falling apart. [Sarah] "Dad?" So we follow Sarah, Joel, and her Uncle Tommy through the early stages of chaos, with buildings on fire and streets full of people running for their lives. Also this.
[Crashing sounds] From here, Joel takes the wheel. Pardon the pun. Sarah's been hurt, so you play as Joel. You carry your daughter, follow Tommy, and narrowly avoid several of what we will come to know as The Infected. Until finally, you find a soldier, a soldier who holds you and your daughter at gunpoint. [Joel] "Listen, we're not sick." [Soldier] "Sir, there's a little girl." [Joel] "Oh Shit.."
[Gunfire] We've just met Sarah and Joel, and we get to watch as Joel's daughter dies in his arms. "Baby." It's gut-wrenching. It's horrifying. Welcome to The Last of Us. From there, we skip ahead to 20 years later. What is left of humanity is run under intense military authority, or divided into factions spread out across the country. There is also a group of resistance fighters called the Fireflies. We find Joel as a hard edged smuggler who is out for himself and his own, and nothing else. He works with a woman named Tess. And one day a gun running operation goes a little sideways and they end up working with Marlene, the head of the Fireflies. She has their guns, and is willing to hand them over in exchange for one simple job. That job is,. [Ellie] "Get the fuck away from me." [Tess] "Hey hey hey." Ellie. [Joel] "What on earth do the Fireflies want with you?" Ellie, played by Ashley Johnson, has been bitten by the Infected, but she never turned. She's immune. If they can get her to the right doctors, they might be able to reverse engineer a vaccine from her immunity. Or at least that's the hope. [Ellie] "Whatever happened to me is the key to finding a vaccine." So Ellie could basically be the savior of humanity. But mostly she's just a bratty teenager who steals magazines and reads you the worst jokes ever. [Ellie] "A book just fell on my head. I only have myself to blame." "Oh, wait, I said it wrong. Hold on, let me read it again." "A book just fell on my head. I only have my shelf to blame." Initially, Joel and Ellie aren't exactly buddies. Of course, there is a protective instinct. Ellie is not that much older than Sarah was when she died. But also, Joel doesn't want to feel anything like that again. This world has convinced him how dangerous it is to get close to people. Hell, the only person he's gotten even remotely close to in 20 years is Tess. [Tess] "Guess what, we're shitty people, Joel. It's been that way for a long time." [Joel] "No, we are survivors."
[Tess] "This is our chance." [Joel] "It is over, Tess!" And that does not end well. [Joel] "Oh christ." What follows is a series of encounters, each cautionary tales in their own right. Tess, Bill, Henry, and Sam are all reminders about what will happen if Joel let's Ellie in. David is just a version of Joel that went down an even darker path, which is saying something because we get a lot of hints that Joel's life in the last 20 years was dark. [Ellie] "How did you know?" [Joel] "Know what?" [Ellie] "About the ambush." [Joel] "I've been on both sides." And Joel did some nasty shit to survive. [Tommy] "I got nothing but nightmares from all those years." But with Ellie, well eventually he can't help but care. And for Ellie.... [Ellie] "Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me. Everyone fucking except for you." She's been alone for a long time. She's lost everyone who mattered to her in one way or another. So once she finds Joel, once that bond is solidified, she fights like hell to keep it. And we get to play as Ellie as she fights that fight. I'm probably not saying anything new at this point. Everybody has either played this game, or listened to people pontificate at length about it. But let me real quick talk about the main two characters. Why I think they work, as well as what tropes they fulfill and subvert in this first game. First there's Joel, and let me just preface this with Joel is the kind of fictional character I am going to like most of the time. Like he's a type. Let's call that type 'Gruff Dads.' Other gruff dads would include Wolverine with Rogue in the first 'X-Men' film, or Wolverine with Laura in 'Logan.' There's also season two of Netflix's 'The Punisher.' Not to put too fine a point on it, but this trope is my shit. Don't really know why, it just is. I do think gruff dads are a subgenre of gruff bad man who is secretly a sweetheart. These characters are also often my favorite. So when we talk about tropes that are just playing into personal tastes, here is exhibit A. Gruff dads are usually action-oriented, macho, hyper-masculine types who tend to be cut off from their feelings due to personal traumas or just because of the violent action-filled life they lead. Then they end up pseudo-adopting a child who brings them more in touch with said feelings. Usually it's a girl, but not always. Often this will bring about some redemption or growth for the character, and Joel does fulfill a lot of those same characteristics. But we also get to see him at his most vulnerable, needing to be protected by Ellie. We also see that this attachment brings up a lot of his darker side too. And then there's Ellie. When we're talking about young girls who are capable badasses, there are some, but it's not exactly a long list. It's shorter still if we add in having a consistent, well-developed personality and not sexualizing them in any way. What's cool with Ellie is, as I just mentioned, and loads of other people have already, she is never sexualized in her design or behavior. She dresses comfortably and like a young girl would. She's practically a tomboy. On top of that, she is not afraid to express herself. [Ellie] "Fuck you, man. I didn't ask for this. "How about, 'Hey, Ellie. I know it wasn't easy. Thanks for saving my ass'." "Let go of me, you chicken shit." Although Ellie is young, she's not helpless. Ellie will actually help you in a fight sometimes, either by jumping on an enemy's back and stabbing him or by throwing stuff from a safe hiding place. It really adds to the sense that you two are a team. Also, she's just a really lively character. When the two of you are walking around, sometimes she hums or stops to make a weird observation. [Ellie] "Gnomes." [Joel] "Yeah. Those are gnomes." [Ellie] "Man. I had an art book filled with these. I always thought they were super cute." "Not fairies, though. They creep me out." It's not necessary. It doesn't further the story. It just makes Ellie feel like a real person you're traveling with. When these two form that father-daughter bond, it is literally the most gorgeous thing. Druckmann actually points out in the commentary that a lot of their bond is based around trust. The more Joel trusts Ellie, the more she opens up and so does he. Of course, in an apocalypse that means bonding over guns. [Ellie] "I sort of shot a rifle before. But it was at rats." [Joel] "Rats?" [Ellie] "With BBs." And that's also sad. But their relationship really hits me where I live, like when Joel calls her baby girl for the first time. [Joel] "Oh, baby girl." You bet I cried. The part that's interesting is that once this bond forms with Ellie being all of herself and Joel finally opening up, the game asks, "How far are they willing to go to save the other?" Ellie puts herself through a lot of hell to keep Joel safe and alive in winter, which we see both in the game and the Left Behind DLC that does culminate in this, [David yelps in fear] [Grisly chopping sounds] which I do think is a little foreshadowing for what would come next, because when they reach that hospital at the end of the game, it's revealed that the vaccine, which would save humanity. [Marlene] "The doctors tell me the Cordyceps, the growth inside her is somehow mutated," "it's why she's immune. Once they remove it, they'll be able to reverse engineer a vaccine." [Joel] "But it grows all over the brain." [Marlene] "It does." Extracting the vaccine would kill Ellie, and so Joel has to choose between all of humanity or Ellie, and he chooses Ellie, and that is a very bloody decision, but let's table that for now to talk about game-play. So these are stealth slash survival horror video games, and as I previously mentioned, I'm not really great at video games. [Me] "Wait. AH! Shit! Didn't mean to do that." Across both games, that would occasionally lead to really stressful moments where even though I was playing on normal or easy. [Me] "Shit oh sh--What the fuck?" "That clicker just like grabbed me out of...Oh no." These games are hard to play sometimes, whether it's trying to sneak past non-player characters or getting swarmed by a pack of clickers, these games are hard, at least they are for me. ['Benny Hill' theme] [Me squeaking] "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit" "Shit! Shit!" [Me squeaking incoherently] "Stop hitting me, stop hitting me, stop hitting me." [Me giggling] "ah...ah...ah...HA!" "Stop shooting at me I am a baby." My favorite weapon was always the bow because it was one of the few weapons you could use from a distance without alerting all enemies in the area to your presence. [Me] "Here we go. And one, and two! ...YAAAAY!" But when I wasn't getting murdered all the time. I have to tell you, I'm a bit of a gremlin when I play video games. Show me a rock I want to climb it, show me a body of water I want to swim in it. Show me breakable bricks, bottles and windows. [Me] "Also..." [Hatsune Miku's 'Levant Polkka' plays in time with the sounds of bricks bottles and windows breaking] [Me giggling] Honestly, my biggest pleasure while playing these games aside from progressing the story was just the chance to fuck around for a few minutes. Anytime these games allowed me to do something like pet a horse or play fetch with a dog for five minutes. You bet I spent five minutes playing fetch with that dog! With the first game in particular, I really enjoyed investigating all the little nooks and crannies, finding every collectible, unlocking every door, reading every comic. I would describe my play style with the first game as. [Me] "What's over here?" "What's over here?" "What's over here?" "What's down here?" "What's in here?" "Hey, what's over there?" "...What's over here?" "Hey, what's in her--Woah shit! Oh shit! Oh, oh, oh okay!" Like given the circuitous way I played the first game, maybe I would have been a little less silly if I didn't know the story because I would have been focused on getting to that ending, which is how I was while playing the second game. Although even then I did find opportunities to be an idiot wherever I could. [Me giggling] [Me] "Oh no." "...back...aaaaand gone!" You know, I just think it's neat when the game glitches out. Listen they're articles talking about the crunch at every video game company ever and as far as I can tell, Naughty Dog is no exception. And one could say, I have a rudimentary grasp on how difficult games are to make and so finding the seams is neat. It gives a little glimpse into all the problems the developers must have solved to get us to these gorgeous, expansive games. Basically, when it comes to the actual gameplay...I don't know. Like with the five other games I've played, it's always a slight learning curve as I learn how this game wants me to do things and then once I've got the hang of it, it's as easy or hard as that point in the game wants it to be. Most of the game play moments I had issues with, were either really hard or I hadn't planned well up to that point. So I was going into a difficult scenario with half my health and no supplies to make a health pack. [Me moaning] "I hate winter" What can I say? I have many talents and video games aren't one of them. But you know what is crawling around in this tall grass, hell, yeah, I'm invisible. So with that, let's constructively throw a little criticism at these games. I said constructively. I've said before that no media is perfect and The Last of Us is no exception. There are a few issues here, some of which I think are more serious than others. First off, The Last of Us parts 1 and 2, like many post apocalypse and zombie narratives, show an anti-social environment. A lot of post apocalypse narratives tend to come to the conclusion that maybe humans with a real societal ill all along, and like whatever we were all angry middle schoolers once. At this point, it's such a staple of the genre that I'm not going to criticize The Last of Us specifically for falling into such familiar tropes. The Last of Us shows a fragmented society with small areas under fascist military rule and other areas of total lawlessness where people have turned to cannibalism and actively harming anybody they come across for fun or personal gain. And there are studies that show in times of crisis, humans can often turn towards pro-social behaviors rather than anti-social. While there will be a minority that is selfish and buys all the hand sanitizer to resell at an inflated rate or an unfortunately large minority that refuses to wear masks and has tantrums outside of a Red Lobster. Those people aside, humanity can often be pro-social and form positive movements to help rather than harm one another. Basically, I view The Last of Us as a zombie fiction and I don't hate it or love it for using these tropes. It's just there and doing the genre things, these stories so often do. My bigger issue with these games has to do with its treatment of people of color, as in none survived the first game and only one survives the second out of half a dozen or so. Okay, two survive, if you count the cutest baby, JJ. It's here that I should probably remind everybody that I'm very white, so take this entire section with as many grains of salt as you like, especially if you're a person of color who wasn't bothered by all this. But of the major characters in part 1, we have Henry and Sam, the two brothers that Ellie and Joel stumble across. Sam, the younger brother gets infected and Henry ends up having to shoot his own brother before he hurts Ellie, he then shoots himself in the head. It's an upsetting sequence, but in a vacuum it is in keeping with the game's overall tone. There's also Riley who exists strictly in the DLC. [Ellie] "Her name was Riley and she was the first to die." Riley is a fun and vibrant character and we know from having played the main game that she isn't going to make it. Then we get to Marlene. At the end of the first game, Ellie and Joel find Marlene and we learned that making the vaccine will kill Ellie. [Joel] "But it grows all over the brain." [Marlene] "It does." There's actually some really cool extra content about Marlene. If you really hunt around, including a recording she left to Ellie's dead mother trying to work through her feelings about this choice because it's not when she came too easily. [Marlene] "They asked me kill the smuggler." "I'm not about to kill the one man in this facility that might understand the weight of this choice." "Oh I miss Anna." "Your daughter will be with you soon." And like. whether or not you agree with Joel's choices here, and I'll get to that too, as this scene is framed, Marlene is now the antagonist. Later on, we get to the scene where Joel kills Marlene. [Marlene] "Let me go." [Joel] "You'd just come after her." Based on what we know of Marlene, crossing the country with a stomach wound and losing nearly all of her people in the process, we know she's tenacious. We know this is her cause to fight for, and on the promise of keeping Ellie safe, shooting Marlene makes sense. It also means seeing a white man shoot a Black woman in the head with the framing telling us he's justified in doing so, this is a problem. One that I hope The Last of Us Part II would rectify by just having some more people of color who get to be positive and proactive and leave the game alive and well, Lev survives, and that's radical. The best baby ever is also okay, and I'm glad. But in the meantime, we have Isaac, a secondary antagonist who get shot by Yara who also gets shot...like a lot... We've got Jesse who get shot in the face by Abby. Manny gets shot in the head by Tommy. There's this gal, who... I had to Google her name, it's...Whitney. She dies like this. Then there's Nora who the game makes you viciously big, as she chokes on spores and bleeds out. I understand what the scene is trying to say, but at the same time, I'm not sure we can call this a win for representation when an overwhelming amount of people of color die in this game. Also, of the human mini bosses you face, there's this guy who definitely gets the most graphic and disturbing boss fight. In essence, this game uses people of color as narrative fodder to further the story of white protagonists, and that just isn't great. It's all the more troubling considering how much Part II uses the imagery of lynchings as window-dressing. I know Part 1 had some of this too, but it's way more prevalent in the second game, which seemingly just wants to use this imagery for the sake of atmosphere. And honestly, for that alone, the timing of the release couldn't be worse. Like...America has kind of a loaded history with this sort of thing. This game is set in Seattle. Maybe don't do that, or just leave it to this bit with Abby, which is pretty important. I do think the game is being critical of violence in general, but they're still showing some specific violence in graphic detail. Also, I think some of these characters that died could have survived and made the story more interesting in the process. There are a few scenes that bleed into violence for the sake of shock value. In the first, I tolerated the violence as part of the genre, although I found it troubling that you could beat a person until they began to beg for their life, and then the game would not allow you to walk away. [NPC] "Oh shit. Don't me kill me, man. Please, let me go. Come on, man." [Me] "Can I?" [NPC screams]
[Me] "No. Apparently not." In the second game, they take it up a notch, and now every NPC has a name. "Andrew." "ELI!" "Maggie!" If you try to shoot somebody in the legs, they will still die, but they'll do it cursing you all the while. I began to long for the zombie interactions because those were at least fairly straightforward. While this game wants you to feel complicated about the act of killing, it is abundantly clear that the zombies are mindless monsters that you must kill to progress in the game. It felt really strange that the zombies were so ancillary in this zombie game. I did, at times, wonder why they were there at all except to spice up long sections of walking through these big, big borderline open world sections. Like, there's a whole conversation we can have about graphic violence in video games, and I'm not really interested in that, in the grand scheme of things. Films also often depict graphic violence and sometimes films just ask you to ignore murder on a massive scale because have you ever considered how many people Luke Skywalker has killed? The answer is loads considering he blew up a Death Star. But we don't mind in Star Wars because we don't see those people dying or they're wearing helmets, so we don't see their faces. Even in a movie like John Wick, we delight in watching this man mow down hundreds because hey, they killed his dog and that dog was super cute. Violence is often inextricable from the action genre, and so I was willing to accept a fair amount of it without feeling too iffy about it. I have more to say about all of that, but I want to hold off for a minute and talk about the ending of The Last of Us Part I and expectation. The Last of Us Part I is by and large a conventional game with well-written characters against a zombie backdrop. It has all the tenants of its genre and largely plays out the way you might expect with a few sub-versions here and there. For most of the game, the biggest surprises are the lighter, more beautiful moments, as well as the intensity of violence when it occurs. This game will not only let you stab, shoot, explode, and inflame your enemies in graphic detail, it also lets you stop to take a moment with nature. Ellie finds some giraffes in a later sequence of the game, you stop and you pet them. Nature has taken over this world. The Cordyceps virus that created these zombies is based off a real fungus that infects ant colonies. In essence, the zombies are of the natural world as much as the plants which are slowly breaking down concrete brick and pavement. And as much as these giraffes, and for Ellie, the giraffes are a moment of peace, a moment where she gets to feel little joy again after winter ground down her spirit to the extent that it did. Then we get to the end of the game and we learn that making the vaccine will kill Ellie and Joel makes his choice. I've danced around this point for a long time because I'll be honest, I have a hard time judging it, at least in the moment. I, as the player, also really like Ellie and don't want her to die. I didn't want to kill this doctor, but I also wanted Ellie to live. So when Joel decides to literally murder a hospital full of fireflies to get her out, I was more or less onboard. I mean, yeah, it was very violent, excessively so. I've already talked about my issues with Marlene's exit from this series and all of that, but I couldn't find it in me to judge Joel for this choice, especially because it's impossible to say what I would do in his place. Weighing on the morality of it seems besides the point, at least to me, but it is important to understand why he does it emotionally because he doesn't want to lose another daughter, as well as the ramifications of that decision. Because it is a horrific choice, not only for all of humanity who he is dooming in this moment, to the extent that if you wanted, you could blame Joel for literally every death in the second game and you wouldn't be wrong. But it's also horrifying for Ellie herself. Ellie was ready to be the cure. She spent the whole game saying. [Ellie] "After all we've been through, everything that I've done," "it can't be for nothing." She may not have known that it would mean her death, but Joel takes her away while she's still unconscious, kills the last man in the world who was capable of engineering the vaccine and deprives her of her agency and her choice in the matter. In fact, everyone chooses for Ellie at the end of part one, they all decide what she wants. [Marlene] "It's what she wants." That includes everyone's fav video game. Dad Joel. Listen, I love the bond that forms between Ellie and Joel, but it's not perfect. Joel spends a lot of the first game talking down to Ellie. [Joel] "I'm glad I didn't get my head blown off by a goddamn kid." [Ellie] "You know what? No." [Joel] "Lastly, you do what I say, when I say it, we clear?" [Ellie] "What you say goes." Even when they've begun to bond, Joel will still shut Ellie down when, for instance, she wants to talk about Henry and Sam's death. [Joel] "Things happen, and we move on." [Ellie] "It's just." [Joel] "That's enough." [Ellie] "You're right." And then there's the scene where Ellie tells him point blank that he should not be projecting his issues with Sarah on her. [Ellie] "I'm not her y'know." And Joel responds by lashing out. [Joel] "You're right. You're not my daughter. And I sure as hell ain't your dad." I think their relationship is gorgeous, but it's also deeply, deeply flawed even before we get to this moment. So with all that said, after Joel gets Ellie out of the hospital, she wakes up in a car he stole for them and when she asks what happened, Joel tells her. [Joel] "Turns out there's a whole lot more like you Ellie." "Ain't done a damn bit of good neither." "They've stopped looking for a cure." Not only does Joel takeaway her right to choose, he then lies to her about what happened. At the end of the game, they go back to Joel's brother Tommy and Jackson. Joel is very sweet here, talking about Sarah, making jokes until Ellie decides to speak her mind. [Ellie] "Hey wait." And it's here we learn for the first time how Ellie discovered her immunity. She had a friend named Riley. They both got bit and Ellie survived, but Riley didn't. [Ellie] "I'm still waiting for my turn." [Joel] "Ellie." And Joel tells her what is essentially the central theme of this game. [Joel] "You keep finding something to fight for." And then we get to this. [Ellie] "Swear to me that everything that you've said about the Fireflies is true." [Joel] "I swear." [Ellie] "Okay." And that's the end of the first game. The ambiguity of it was so haunting. How much did Ellie know? How much did she suspect? Was she okay with choosing Joel over humanity the way he chose her? For a time, we were already to just live in that uncertainty with our own personal theories. In 2014, they released a DLC called Left Behind, which I don't feel a need to cover in great depth because, I'll be honest, it's not my favorite. It feels structurally odd in that every time I began to engage with the section I was in, we would jump to the other timeline, but it does give us the scene that showed us canonically without any doubt that Ellie is gay and she was in love with Riley. This was both praised for being positive gay representation and being another example of that old bury your gays trope, a trope I do not have time to unpack, but I'll leave some links in the description if this is the first you're hearing about it. Around the release of the DLC, they floated the possibility of developing a second game, but made the official announcement in 2016 with this trailer. [Ellie] "I'm going to find and I'm going to kill every last one of them." And from there, we all waited and wondered, where would a second game find Ellie and Joel? What would be the rest of their story? And now, I have to talk about expectation because I will tell you right now, the second game is not really the game I wanted, at least not all of it. A lot of fuss has been made lately about subverting expectations and sometimes this leads to dumb shit like the last season of Game of Thrones where...yeah I guess we subverted expectation by throwing logic and character development out the window. When we try to subvert expectations, sometimes creators make ridiculous choices in order to try and shock or outsmart an intelligent audience. But on the other end of the spectrum, there is an audience, an angry, volatile audience, who feels ownership over a piece of media and is furious when the creators make choices they didn't want, when at the end of the day, it isn't necessarily about what an audience wants, it's about telling a story. A creator who listens too much to what an audience wants, well... they give you the Rise of Skywalker. So when I say this game is not what I wanted, I say that knowing what I want doesn't necessarily matter in the grand scheme of things. And I know from what I've seen and read of other reactions that mine were a bit unusual compared to the average gamer anyway, but this game wasn't made with me in mind or you for that matter. Just like movies and TV shows aren't made with you or me in mind. It's okay to have complicated feelings about a piece of media or disagree with it. It's not great to send an actress death threats on Twitter because you're mad about the ending. As the reactions to this game have grown increasingly toxic, I've been sitting here musing on my own complicated feelings. If you asked me straight up whether I liked the second game or whether I recommended playing it, I would tell you, I don't know. If you came here hoping for me to say this game is either good or bad, you came to the wrong place. If everything I tell you in this video makes you not want to play this game, I would understand. I thought the experience of playing Part 2 had value even if it made me unbearably sad. I'm not really out to convince anybody with this essay. I am expressing my own personal feelings about this game and you can do what you want with that information because I think the creators of The Last of Us navigated a difficult tightrope in this era where you can indeed harass actresses or directors on Twitter for being artistically involved in a thing you don't like. But in the end, it's not about the audience. It's not about subverting their expectations or giving into their every want. It's about telling a story. Druckmann said in a GQ interview, and say what you will about Part 2, I do think they were successful in that for better and for worse. So with all that said, finally, let's dig into The Last of Us Part 2. I came into this game ready to love it and with very little notion of what the game would be beyond the trailers, which gave me the impression that this game was going to be about Ellie's no-good, horrible, terrible, very bad day or...three days as it turned out, I had my theories, of course. Although I avoided all those leaks, I had considered the possibility that Joel might die. I just didn't expect it here, like this. Joel dies in the opening of the game at the hands of Abby, played by Laura Bailey. She's a character we don't know very well beyond the fact that she has some as yet unspecified reason to be hateful towards Joel, and so do all her friends. So when Joel and Tommy are out on a patrol and find this girl about to get murdered by zombies, they help her out and all three of them end up heading for Abby's base camp because she seems chill, right? We actually play as Abby for this section, which is an interesting choice because it turns out she is not chill and we won't learn why for a while. What we know is that Abby murders Joel in front of Ellie while she begs them to stop. [Ellie] "Joel, fucking get up. Please stop!" "Please don't do this. Joel, please get up." "NO!" [Ellie sobbing] It's really horrific. I wish I could say the game got less upsetting after this, but spoiler alert, it doesn't. From here, we go on a journey with Ellie and her girlfriend Dina through Seattle trying to hunt Abby down to get revenge and also to find Tommy who went off on his own for the same reason. Oh, and by the way, Dina is Ellie's Jewish bisexual girlfriend who still pray sometimes and like has mezuzahs on her doors later in the game and; [Dina] "I like coming from a long line of survivors." Dina is genuinely great. I love her relationship with Ellie. I thought this scene was really good. [Dina] "We could share mine." [Ellie] "No, no, no don't take this off!"
[Dina] "What?" [Ellie] "Dina, stop."
[Dina] "No. Ellie, no!" [Ellie] "Stop! I'm not infected. I'm immune." And also this one. [Dina] "How bad do I smell?" [Ellie] "Like a hot pile of garbage." [Dina] "Oh...okay." [Ellie] "Ugh"
[Chuckling] Basically, in the first half of the game, we spent three days in Seattle with Ellie and Dina and later on with Jesse, who was Dina's ex-boyfriend and a friend of Ellie's and an all around good boy who deserved better. [Ellie] "Thanks for coming back for me." [Jesse] "My friends' problems are my problems." Over those three days, we watch Ellie get increasingly more violent taking on traits and tricks she learned from Joel and she is affected by that violence, but it doesn't stop her from enacting more of it to get what she wants. And I will tell you, I almost stopped playing in this part of the game, like on day 2. I began to think for the first few days of playing this game about a line from Hbomberguy's encyclopedic review of the video game Pathologic. [HBomberGuy] "Survival horror RPG, lies." "You are playing a pain simulator." Because I was miserable for a large part of this game. Something I began to say a lot while playing is that 'there's too much game in this game?' I don't necessarily mind the amount of cut scenes in the story, but there were times when I spent 30 minutes fighting my way through a whole area of humans and clickers and whatever, and then I would get on a roof and see how far I still was for my objective and I just felt exhausted. I still took my time to enjoy the beautiful landscapes and break lots of windows. But for a while, I was just playing because I was hoping the game would change my mind, and it did....sort of. Basically, by the end of Day 3, Ellie has gone off on her own to find Abby at this aquarium. Dina staying behind because she's actually pregnant with Jesse's baby. This bit is not a soap opera-y as it sounds, but Dina is in a bad way and in no condition to be out running zombies. So Ellie goes off on her own and doesn't find Abby. Instead, she finds Mel and Owen...and a dog... who she stabs. The situation gets out of hand really quickly and Ellie ends up murdering Mel and Owen and then freaking out when she discovers Mel is pregnant. Up to this point, Ellie seems to view her actions as a justified means to an end. She's upset by them, but largely steadfast in her decision to avenge Joel. This is really what seems to make her change her mind and I was glad because I wanted her to Stop! I guess some people were so upset about Joel that they really experienced these moments from Ellie's perspective. But I was just like, I don't want this. In the first game, there is violence. Most of it is done in self-defense up until the end, and like, I don't know, I didn't feel a lot of sympathy for the cannibal cult. I said before, there is violence in video games and so I tolerated it in the first game, but the second game did make me feel deeply uncomfortable and they were trying to. I understood even as that was happening, cycle of violence, actions have consequences, etc. But I really hated the first third of this game. There is a review in Kotaku Magazine by Riley MacLeod which says towards the end, And for a while, I was feeling like this, like maybe this game had valuable lessons to teach, but not for me or that maybe the lesson was simply poorly taught because how can we meaningfully critique violence if all the game is, is violence. So I was miserable and then Ellie goes back to the theater where Dina is waiting for her, now with Jesse and Tommy because Jesse went and found Tommy while you were off murdering folks, it was a whole thing. So at the theater, you go from having a relatively calm moment with your good buddy Jesse and your uncle Tommy when this happens, and this. [Abby] "We let you both live, and you wasted it." And then the game basically stops in its tracks, because now it's time to play as Abby, Joel's murderer. [Abby] "Dad?" [Me] "Oh my God. Oh my God. Baby Abby. Oh, no." "I'm not ready for this." When we first went back in time to play as Abby, I didn't realize how hard this game was committing to the bit. I went a little light on the usual scrounging and foraging you need to do to progress in this game because I figured this was just another flashback. We had several extended flashbacks with Ellie and I didn't forget about them, I will get to them. But the perspective shifts here and we follow Babby Abby, five years ago in Salt Lake City. We meet her father who seems, I don't know, nice enough if a little lackadaisical, and we meet her young friend Owen. There's actually a nice bit here that I think was intended to mirror the gorgeous giraffe sequence from the first game, Abby's dad found a zebra caught on some wire and with Abby and Owen's help, the zebra is set free and we see it finding it's family and it's nice. Then we see that Abby's dad is a doctor and I went, [Me] "Oh Fuck." Abby's dad is the doctor Joel stabbed at the end of the first game. We learn that this is the doctor who could have developed the vaccine and Joel killed him. We see Abby finding her murdered father, and that's a hard scene to watch. [Abby] "DAD!...No!...No!" Then we come back to the present on Seattle day 1 where Abby is swole as fuck by the way, like, I'm a simple woman with simple needs and thank you Naughty Dog for Abby's biceps, Amen. Anybody who wants to complain that this is unrealistic, you are wrong. Anyways, in the present, Abby and her friends are a little shaken by what happened back in Jackson, but they're going about their life. The game takes the time to show you this little patch of civilization they carved out for themselves here. Much like what we saw at the beginning of the game in Jackson, the parallels between Ellie and Abby don't stop here. We also get to meet all of Abby's friends, like Nora and Manny and Mellon, Owen, and Whitney. Basically, Abby, Mel, and Manny go on a scouting mission and Abby hears that Owen is missing and he might have shot another member of their crew. I haven't really dug into the Washington Liberation Front, aka the WLF or the Seraphites yet. As Ellie, you bump into members of both factions and mow them down because they're in the way of your goal of getting to Abby. Although a detail I found very interesting is that each side has a nickname for the other. The Seraphites called the WLF, Wolves and the WLF call Seraphites, Scars. It's a casual thing, but you get the sense that it's part of how they dehumanize their enemies so they aren't sympathetic to them. Ellie casually adopts these terms and so do her friends as they learn more about the factions on their path through Seattle. [Ellie] "This must be the Scars." "Fucking wolf serves you right." It's interesting to watch them adopt the language of hatred for a conflict they aren't even a part of. But Abby is. Abby is part of the WLF. She hates the Seraphites who are a religious group, who seem to reject modernity as part of their belief that the modern world is at fault for the zombie epidemic. They even call the zombies demons. And the WLF have been fighting them for years or so it seems. Both sides employ horrific tactics. Seraphites like to hang people and disembowel them. The WLF likes to lock people up and torture them for days on end, leaving people like this just out and about for any casual observer to see. Yikes. Over the first day or so, it feels like we're all just biding our time knowing that Ellie is going to eventually come and tear Abby's life apart, and in the meantime, we watch the ongoing conflict between these two sides play out. It's exhausting. I kept watching her interact with her friends and just felt sad. He seems nice. I can't wait for Ellie to murder him. You think this dog is cute? I bet Ellie is going to stab this dog later. [Sigh] And then Abby goes off alone to track down Owen. To find out whether or not he really killed this other guy, Danny, and why. She wants to resolve whatever happened, so Owen will be allowed back into the fold and not be murdered by her own people. Because, hey, guess what? Owen and Abby were kind of a thing. They kind of still are in spite of the fact that Mel is pregnant with Owen's kid. And we get these cute flashbacks of a younger Abby and Owen fucking around in this aquarium which apparently had become Owen's special hideout. So Abby is heading for the aquarium, when she gets captured by some Seraphites and then she gets strung up by those Seraphites. [Seraphite leader] "They are nested with sin." At the same time, this girl, Yara, gets pulled out of the forest. [Seraphite Leader] "Where is the other apostate?" "Clip her wings" And then this happens, [Hammering sound and Yara screaming] and this. And Abby takes the opportunity of all this confusion to kill their leader. Yara helps her do it too. Then the archer, Lev, comes out of the forest. He's Yara's brother and at her insistence, he cuts Abby down. And these two kids are Seraphites by the way, and they just saved Abby's life. So...what does Abby do? [Abby] "Watch your backs." She kicks some ass to help get them out of there. She kicks a lot of ass actually. This sequence is another favorite of mine. The lighting is so moody and dramatic in this first section. This scene is truly tense and compelling. Then watching these three form a tenuous alliance over the next hour or so of gameplay was the first time I really sat up and got invested while playing part 2. Also, this bit made me laugh a lot. [Abby] "Are you wearing my back pack?" But basically, at every point they're wary of her and she's just as wary of them, but they're kids. By the end, Abby is literally carrying Yara to safety and splinting her arm. And the game has shown us prior to this moment that Abby doesn't really see an issue with violence against Seraphites, even children. [Manny] "And they strung up an entire squad." [Mel] "That was in retaliation to us shooting those kids" [Manny] "Okay but...those kids attacked our guys." [Mel] "Manny, they're kids. It's not their fault." [Abby] "Not our fault either. Those deaths are on them." She believes like the WLF leader Isaac, in justice at any cost. But it is that same sense of justice which also brings her to help these two kids. They saved her life, she owes them. Eventually, she tells Lev it was guilt that motivated her, and later when Yara asks her, she says. [Abby] "I guess, you don't deserve this. But I also I needed to." But initially, she leaves them to go track down Owen and ends up having this dream because she just can't seem to move past these kids because. [Abby] "They're just kids." Even if they're from a group she hates. It's here that I finally started to vibe with what the game was doing with all that violence. Not all the time. I think it's still a lot and maybe not always in an effective way. I wasted a lot of time as Ellie trying to hide from or outrun enemies and even on the easiest setting, that was usually impossible. With Abby, I began to realize that I had no choice because the characters have no other choice. Both Abby and Ellie see no other option except to kill anyone who gets in their way, and at various points, the game gives you no other option. As Ellie, you kill people and also dogs and it sucks because it sucks to be Ellie right now. Her journey's not a good one, why should it be fun? This game isn't trying to critique violence in video games, or at least I don't think it's trying to. It's critiquing the actions of these characters and their culpability in furthering a cycle of violence. It's asking the player to question themselves if this. [Ellie] "I'm going to find and I'm going to kill every last one of them." Made people go, "Hell, yeah." I still feel there is a huge disconnect in how this game treats its human characters and it's zombies who we are encouraged to murder freely and without guilt. Plus, there's a batch of dudes at the end who just seem unambiguously horrible. No humanizing or redeeming qualities here and I didn't have a lot of qualms about mowing them down. I still think there are huge issues with violence against people of color and excessive use of lynching imagery. But about halfway through Abby's run, I decided to make decisions the way I thought Abby would. I tried to spare Seraphites when I was running through their town with Yara because why would Abby wantonly murder people in front of this kid if it could be avoided. Later when Abby and Lev have to fight their way out of this hell. [Abby] "We don't let anyone stop us." I didn't let anyone stop them. I don't think the game was ever judging me for being part of the violence, it just asked me to feel discomfort because this is a game about empathy, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before all of that, Abby brings Lev and Yara back to the aquarium. [Abby] "Lev lower the bow, it's okay...Can you take a look at her?" [Mel] "What did this?" [Abby] "A hammer...It wasn't me." Yara's arm has compartment syndrome and it will need to come off and they need some decent medical supplies if Yara is going to survive the procedure. [Abby] "Make me a list, I'll go to the hospital. I'll get whatever you need." [Mel] "It will take you all day to get there." [Abby "I don't mind." [Mel] "It's not about you Abby, she doesn't have a couple of days." [Lev] "What if I can get you there in two hours." So Abby and Lev go and get them those medical supplies in an extensive and grueling section of the game featuring this really difficult balancing act. Abby is afraid of heights by the way. [Lev] "What's going on between you and your friend Owen?" [Abby] "Oh my God Lev, now!?" [Lev] "It seemed really awkward." [Abby] "Just go." Also I had to fight this fucking monstrosity and I died [Can can music] that many times in the process. Good Lord, I was playing on the easiest setting, oh my God! Oh and by the way, Lev, Abby's companion for this section of the game is transgender. When Abby and Lev bump into some Seraphites, they call Lev by his dead name. This refers to the name he was given when he was born and recognized as a different gender, and then Abby and Lev have this exchange. [Lev] "Did you hear what they called me?" [Abby] "Yeah." [Lev] "Do you want to ask me about it?" [Abby] "Do you want me to ask you about it?" [Lev] "No." [Abby] "Okay." Which I thought was very sweet because Abby was so respectful. And with all that being said, friends and Twitter followers were very kind to respond when I asked how trans people felt about Lev as a character, and the responses I got from them and from just reading articles online ranged from: this is amazing representation to, I hate it. A lot of debate is about the fact that there aren't many narratives about trans characters for a start, and those that exist often highlight the suffering they face due to being trans. And often those narratives have trans characters played by cisgender actors. The Last of Us did hire a trans actor, Ian Alexander to play Lev. You might recognize him from The OA. And most people seem to agree the concept for this character came from a well-meaning place, but a lot of Lev's character arc is built around his suffering for being trans. His mother and his entire people disowned him for shaving his head and coming out as a boy, according to Yara, their mother would literally kill him if she could, and she does indeed try to later on while the rest of the Seraphites try to kill him whenever they cross paths, all the while referring to him by his dead name, which many trans people find deeply triggering. Basically, some people feel that there is positivity simply in having an overtly trans character in a mainstream game and portraying transphobia as a bad thing. Especially since none of the characters we're supposed to like ever disrespect him in regards to his gender identity. But on the other hand, some feel that Lev's struggles could have been due to the zombie post apocalypse he lives in or the civil war that his people are embroiled in, rather than having it revolve around his gender identity. He could have just been a character who happens to be trans and struggling to make it in a difficult environment. At least this is what I got from talking to trans people about this. A friend of mine said that overall Lev's inclusion in the game as a trans man was a net positive for representation, even if she was exhausted by the tropes employed with the character. But at least it seems we can all agree that Lev is a likable, nuanced character outside of his gender-related struggles. I love how empathetic he is, I really like the bit when love tried to coach Abby through her fear of heights because they ended up traveling across this monstrosity. [Abby] "Oh fuck! Oh fuck!" [Lev] "Focus on me." [Abby] "I can't do this Lev, I can't do this." [Lev] "Yes you can." [Abby] "I can't." [Lev] "You're going to, come on, true strength." Just A+. I liked watching Abby and Lev grow closer and help each other time and again throughout this section of the game, I found it deeply compelling. Eventually the pair do get back to the aquarium and the medical supplies they found are enough to successfully amputate Yara's arm. One of my favorite moments in this section actually comes when Abby has another dream of that hospital hallway in Salt Lake City after Yara's surgery. This time she walks down the hallway and opens the door to the operating room to find her dad is just standing there, smiling at her. It feels like somehow through all of what she's gone through with Lev and Yara, this is what finally allowed her to move on, not the revenge she got on Joel, but this. Meanwhile, everybody is talking about traveling south to Santa Barbara, where it's rumored there might be some fireflies gathering again. Owen will need to go since the WLF want him dead, Mel wants to go since she's pregnant with his kid, although she tells Abby not to go because, that whole thing. She takes Abby to task for some of her actions. [Mel] "I haven't always done the right thing." [Mel] "You're a piece of shit, Abby!" Afterwards, Yara comforts her. [Yara] "Mel is wrong you know. You're a good person." [Abby] "You don't know me." [Yara] "I know enough." It's a good bit. She also asks Abby to help her find Lev and it turns out Lev has run off back to the island where the Seraphites live because he wants to try and convince their mom to leave the Seraphites and come with them. And as I mentioned before, their mom is a die hard believer who will kill Lev on site. In spite of the odds, she and Yara go to the island to get him back. It's another arduous section of the game as we discovered the WLF is mounting an attack on the island, so Abby's arrival unfortunately coincides with that and it ends up bloody. [Abby] "Yara!" I don't like any of this, but I do continue to find it really heartwarming how Abby protects Lev, literally putting herself between him and Isaac. [Isaac] "You have three seconds to get away from that, Scar." [Abby] "I'm not fucking moving." In the end, the pair of them do escape. It's one of the most hellish and spectacular sections of the game as the pair navigate a literal war zone. At one point, Lev, in his despair over the loss of his sister tries to push Abby away. [Lev] "Those were your fucking people." [Abby] "You're my people!" I like how far Abby has come as a character in just three days. Then they come back to the aquarium to this and to this. [Abby.crying]
[Lev] "Abby.." [Abby sniffling] [Paper rustling] [Abby breathing shakily] So Abby goes to find Ellie. [Abby] "You still with me Lev?" [Lev] "Yes." And now we're back to this. [Abby] "We let you both live, and you wasted it." In some ways, both Abby and Ellie's journeys in this game mirror Joel's in the first. In the 20 years between Sarah's death and meeting Ellie, we know that Joel went down a darker, violent path, one that alienated the people in his life, like his brother, Tommy. Even his selfish choice at the end of the first game would eventually alienate the most important person in his life. Ellie's journey follows that arc. Her stubborn search for revenge does eventually push away people in her life and back in The Last of Us Part One, Joel met Ellie, a kid who reminded him of his own humanity through the growth and depth of their connection, he found a path towards light. Even if that path was a dark and bloody one, which is not dissimilar to the journey Abby goes on with Lev. By the end of the game, they are all the other has and they fight tooth and nail to keep the other safe. Okay. Quick spoiler alert for these films. Skip ahead a few minutes if you want to okay? Video games can basically be machines for empathy because they ask us to literally walk in a character shoes. It's our actions which control the character, our pressing of buttons that progresses them through the world and their story. And in the first game, we did all that with Joel. We walked in his shoes, we mourned Sarah, and in a familial way, we fell in love with Ellie. I think Joel's death hurt many players including myself, because not only did we lose the character, we spent so much time identifying within the first game, but we were denied any catharsis for that loss. There are no final words of love for Ellie. There is no closure and that is part of what lets the audience and Ellie thirst for that revenge because she wants that catharsis, and so does the player. When father figures die in media, it is often in a blaze of glory or they die to protect their child. We are sad to lose these characters, but it feels like their death meant something and Joel's death didn't. He died for the misfortune of being kind to the wrong person, a person who happened to be holding a grudge, it hurts. But I read this review in Forbes Magazine from critic Paul Tassi, which pointed out Now let me talk about those flashbacks with Joel and Ellie. We get four pretty sizable ones throughout Ellie's section of the game and two more in the back half. The first flashback is actually the opening sequence where Joel tells Tommy about the events of the first game and Tommy promises to keep Ellie's immunity a secret. The pair of them go back to Jackson, and Joel, having once promised Ellie he would sing for her. [Ellie] "I swear to God, if I get you out of this, you're so singing for me." [Joel chuckles] He shows up to fulfill this promise. And I find this scene to be really interesting because it almost feels like a renewal of sorts. Like now that their journey has ended, Ellie and Joel could just allow themselves to drift apart or remain as the makeshift father and daughter that they've become. Joel clearly wants to remain close with Ellie and Ellie seems on the fence, understandably so, given that she's still unsure about whether Joel was honest with her regarding the events of the first game, and they're both just a little awkward with each other in this domestic setting where they are running for their lives. [Joel] "Promise me that you won't laugh." [Ellie] "I won't laugh." So Joel plays this song for her, it's called "Future Days" by Pearl Jam. The lyric say, And the intent is clear. Joel is asking Ellie to stay in his life, and it's so earnest, I swear, it's like looking directly at the sun. I thought I was going to go blind watching this. Ellie accepts this for what it is. Verbally, she agrees to start taking lessons on the guitar, but in a more subtle way, and unspoken contract has formed. For all intensive purposes, they have made an agreement to remain in each other's lives as a family. The second flashback comes at the end of day one, it's three years earlier and Ellie's birthday, and Joel has a surprise for her. [Ellie] "Oh, my God, it is a dinosaur!" [Joel] "That it is." [Ellie] "Joel!" He found this old science museum that's got dinosaurs. [Ellie] "I'm climbing a dinosaur." [Joel] "Yeah, I can see that, just don't die falling off one." [Ellie] "Look at me, I'm on a motherfucking dinosaur!!" There's a whole space swing in it because- [Ellie] "I would have wanted to be an astronaut." [Joel] "That a fact?" [Ellie] "Yeah. You imagine being up there all by yourself? Would've been cool." And its a gorgeous sequence with some much needed lightness. [Ellie] "Oh, hello. Sorry, the dinosaurs are busy right now." "Oh, wait, one of the dinosaurs is here." "Joel, it's for you." Oh, and also, can I get a hell yeah for HATS! ON! DINOSAURS!!!! [airhorn sounds] Anyways. It's also a bit of reminder of what we just lost, seeing how Joel is with Ellie here, and how comfortable they are with each other, it's so sweet. [Joel] "If you're going into space, you're going to need a helmet." [Ellie] "Right. What was I thinking?" There's this little shuttle, and for Ellie's birthday, Joel was able to get a recording of some rocket launch on a cassette tape. [Joel] "Happy birthday, kiddo." So Ellie sits in this capsule with Joel and just gets to be a kid for a few minutes, imagining that lift off, it's adorable, and the first time I cried during this game. [Joel] "I do okay?" [Ellie] "Are you fucking kidding me?" [They both laugh] [Joel] "You're welcome, kiddo." The third flashback starts with Tommy and Ellie casually picking off zombies from an incredible distance. Again, a little reminder of how normal violence is in this world. This is basically just a fun day out with Uncle Tommy. Also, it turns out the guitar that Joel gave Ellie, needs some new strings, so the pair decide to raid an old music store. It goes really badly and we get a reminder of how scared Joel is of losing Ellie. [Joel breathing shakily] [Joel] "Come on." [Ellie] "Shit." [Joel] "That was too close. But we also get a reminder that Ellie still doesn't completely trust the account that Joel's given of those events back in Salt Lake City. She tries to ask yet again and Joel street up gas lights are here. [Joel] "There was no cure." As sweet as he can be, he's never been perfect and it feels like their relationship is starting to break down because he just can't be honest with her. The fourth flashback is two years earlier, Ellie actually went back to the hospital in Salt Lake City to get answers and she finds all that truth that Joel's been withholding for years. [Voice on recorder] "Even if we found her or by some miracle, find someone else that's immune," "it'd make no difference." [Rewinding sounds] "or by some miracle, find someone else that's immune," "it'd make no difference." So when Joel shows up scared and wondering why the hell Ellie ran off alone, she delivers an ultimatum. [Ellie] "Tell me what happened here. If you lie to me one more time," "you will never see me again." "But if you tell me the truth, I'll go back to Jackson no matter what it is." So finally, after two years of lying, Joel tells her. [Joel] "Making a vaccine would have killed you." "So I stopped them." Ellie takes that information as badly as you might expect. [Ellie] "Don't you fucking touch me." "I'll go back, but we're done." This means that throughout Ellie's entire journey, she knows exactly why they killed Joel, which is of course further highlighted with this moment. [Ellie] "There is no cure because of me, I am the one that you want." It seems that Ellie is in need for a greater purpose, to be the cure. [Ellie] "It can't be for nothing." That morphed into this twisted sense of obligation for vengeance. She fully understands what Joel did, even if she doesn't know the specifics of who he killed to do it. She knows what he did was horrible, but he was her dad, and she can't let this go unanswered. A critique I've heard a lot is that Ellie's motivations in part two don't make sense, especially once it's revealed that she knew the whole time what Joel did at the end of part one. People seem to ask, why does she continually choose to go down this darker path? Which...[sigh] Trauma doesn't have to make sense. Like real people with trauma don't go around acting in ways that are neat, and tidy, and easily explainable. People make progress and then fall back into bad habits. They act irrationally and sometimes obsession outweighs sense, and people do things for reasons they can't even verbalize. Complaining that Ellie's motivations don't make sense after seeing her father gruesomely murdered in front of her, I think that's missing the point because in the two years that passed between this, and the present, she had time to reckon with this, to absorb this information and cope with it to some degree or another. Maybe she was even beginning to accept it and move on. I spent a long time while playing the game wondering if these words [Ellie] "Get up, Joel fucking get up," Were the last thing they ever said to each other with any emotion or affection? Like if that had been the first bit of care shown in two years because it seems their relationship was utterly fractured by this point. I kept waiting for the flashback that would give us that night before everything started. The one we heard about back in the beginning. [Jesse] "You kissed Dina?" [Ellie] "She kissed me." [Jesse] "Which triggered Seth to call you a, not so nice word?" [Ellie] "Yeah." [Jesse] "Then Joel decked him?" [Ellie] "More of a push." [Jesse] "Then you got mad at Joel? That part confused me." The game made us wait for that, and I'm going to make you wait a bit more. Basically, the end of the game comes in three more sections. The first is Ellie and Dina. They faced Abby at the theater and that section actually played out from Abby's perspective as she fought Ellie, and eventually got the drop on her and Dina. Lev was the one who stepped in here and got Abby to listen and let them both live because after everything, that boy is still all heart. Abby said, "Don't ever let me see you again, " and left. We come back and I would guess it's been about a year. Ellie's had a haircut and Dina has had her baby who looks at least a couple of months old. We spent some time with Ellie and the baby who Ellie calls Spud, and 20 out of 10, this baby is cute as hell, I love him. Thank you game for this. Ellie and Dina are now living on this gorgeous, idyllic farm away from Jackson. It's almost too perfect except for the fact that Ellie is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress. In the middle of rounding up sheep, she has a full on PTSD episode, flashing back to a nightmarish version of that stairway she ran down to find Joel back in Jackson. The next day, Tommy comes to visit. He's pretty messed up from his encounter with Abby, and apparently he's still trying to hunt her down. He says there's word she might be in Santa Barbara, and when Ellie tries to say she's done with all that, Tommy berates her for moving on, which really sucks. From there, we finally get to see that last night in Jackson, Ellie kissing Dina, this guy being a dick, and Joel trying to come to Ellie's defense. [Ellie] "What is wrong with you?" [Joel] "He had no right." [Ellie] "And you do? I don't need your fucking help, Joel." In the present, Ellie starts to pack her bag to go to Santa Barbara. Dina says, if Ellie goes, then she's done and gone. It's pretty understandable when you consider what Dina went through and lost on the first go around of this revenge quest. The ultimatum she gives is not unlike the one Ellie once gave Joel, but it's clear that Ellie can't move on, even if she can't fully verbalize why, she still needs some closure. At this point, I was genuinely hoping it could come through a non-violent encounter with Abby, but...well. From there, we flip over to Abby who is in Santa Barbara, looking for the Fireflies. Her and Lev have these adorable interactions because Lev still doesn't get a lot of her references and idioms. [Abby] "2417. Getting warmer." [Lev] "I Hope not, I'm sweating all ready." [Abby] "You are such a goober." Also, because apparently Abby's an optimist now, if only because it feels like she's decided to be one, and Lev is a bit of a pessimist. [Lev] "No way that guy saw Fireflies over here." [Abby] "Stop. I feel good about this." [Lev] "Well, I don't." Their interactions have the feel of a brother and sister now, and it's lovely. [Lev] "You were right." [Abby] "What was that?" [Lev] "Why do you make me repeat whenever I'm wrong?" [Abby] "Because it makes me feel better." Eventually, they find an old Firefly hide out, and a radio with a series of frequencies. Abby tries them one by one and eventually gets a response. [Abby] "We're looking for Fireflies, I'm a Firefly." [Voice on the Radio] "Where were you stationed?" [Abby] "I was part of the Salt Lake outpost." [Voiceon Radio] "Who ran that facility?" [Abby] "Dr. Jerry Anderson, he was my dad." [Voice on Radio] "Well, about that." It turns out there's a small Firefly contingent on Catalina Island. [Voice on Radio] "Good luck, Abby, from Santa Barbara." Then the pair step outside, intent on heading there, and immediately get captured by this group known as the Rattlers. Then we hop back to Ellie in Santa Barbara looking for Abby. At one point she gets caught in a booby trap that's apparently been set by the Rattlers who caught Abby and Lev...a few months ago. What follows is Ellie breaking into their stronghold. It's another long and difficult section, especially because Ellie is in such bad shape, but nevertheless, she works her way through their facility to get to Abby. [Abby] "You..." It's been a rough few months by the looks of her. Ellie cuts her down and passively watches as she goes and gets Lev who isn't even conscious at this point. Then Ellie follows the pair of them to the shore, which you might recognize as the menu screen, and that gives you the feeling that it was always going to end up here. For a minute, Ellie is ready to just grab a boat and go. But.... [The sound of ocean waves] after all of this, as messed up as they both are, Ellie demands a fight with Abby. [Abby] "I'm not going to fight you." [Ellie] "Yes you will." She even holds a knife to Lev's throat to make Abby give in. [Abby] "He's not part of this." [Ellie] "You made him a part of this." [Abby] "Okay.... "okay..." And I hated this fight. It's just this knock-down-drag-out, awful fight that goes on forever. At one, Abby bites off two of Ellie's fingers, but eventually, Ellie gets the drop on Abby and begins to drown her. This moment felt like forever but in the middle of it, we get this brief cutaway of Joel, just a little piece of a memory that is enough to make Ellie release Abby. [Ellie] "...Go...Just take him..." And Abby does leaving Ellie alone and crying in the water, and even here, after all that, I had hoped for reconciliation, but again, this game says, fuck your catharsis for better and for worse. Ellie goes back to the farmhouse and Dina is truly gone, just like she said she would be. Everything that was once warm and sun drenched is now cold and gray. Ellie goes upstairs and finds Dina left her things there for her. All of it neatly packed up, including the guitar Joel gave her. She tries to play it, but well. [Quiet guitar strumming and some of the notes don't sound right] And we get this final flash back, back to the night before it all happened. After they fought in front of everyone, Ellie went to find Joel. The pair try to talk, but it's awkward. Like their first night in this town, they don't know quite how to talk to each other. Joel asks about Dina and the kiss. [Ellie] "She..That was just one kiss," "it doesn't mean anything. I don't know why she did that." [Joel] "I have no idea, what that girl's intentions are..." "but I do know that she would be lucky to have you." And this is where I started crying, for the second time by the way, like ugly crying, which did not stop for the rest of the game, because it's here that Ellie and Joel finally begin to talk to each other. [Ellie] "I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would have fucking mattered." [Joel] "If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance that moment," "I would do it all over again." This really puts everything that follows into context. Because Joel says here that even after everything, he would still choose her. He would die for her. In a sense, he would. The very next day, Ellie tells him,. "I don't think I can ever forgive you for that," "but I would like to try." Joel replies. "I'd like that." And in a sense, it's them coming to an agreement again. Renewing that unspoken contract to stay together. I cried because I was relieved to see that their last words were more than just, [Ellie] "Joel fucking get up." But these were still the last words they said to each other. [Ellie] "I'll see you around." [Joel] "Yeah" And that's really sad. In the present, Ellie puts down the guitar. The guitar Joel gave her and spent two years teaching her to play. The guitar we are frequently reminded of throughout the game with sequences like this one. The guitar that Ellie can no longer play because she is so scarred by the journey she took. She puts it down and walks into an uncertain future. And my initial reaction was, [Me crying] Because I didn't want this for Ellie. In the first game, she said her biggest fear was, "I'm scared of ending up alone." And through her own actions, at the end of this game, she is alone. Of all people, it was Cosmonaut Variety Hour's review, which made me look at this a little differently. I disagreed with 50 percent of what he liked or disliked about the game, but his review is the reason you're watching this right now because he said, [Cosmonaut Variety Hour] "No. This is not a story about revenge. It is a story about forgiveness." Ellie thought of this moment as she almost killed Abby. The moment when she was ready to forgive Joel, because the cycle of violence needed to end. It had to. Killing Abby wouldn't have brought closure for Joel's death. Much like killing Joel didn't bring Abby closure. But for Ellie, this moment is what finally helped her to see beyond her myopic need for revenge. This little glimmer of forgiveness and tenderness they shared in some of their last moments together. I think in a lot of ways this game is an exercise in empathy. Like I said before, all video games are empathy machines. Through the act of stepping into a character's shoes and seeing their perspective, video games can build empathy. This game asks you over and over again to care for and empathize with people. To forgive them for their worst mistakes and understand their choices. This game says over and over again, "Look at what this person did. See how understandable it is from their perspective?" We watch a beloved character get murdered on screen and then spend half the game playing as his killer, and she's my favorite part of the game! It makes me think of a line from J. R. R Tolkien's, The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf tells Frodo of Gollum and the havoc he has since wreaked, which will lead Sauron's evil directly to Frodo's doorstep in the idyllic shire. The film version of Fellowship puts an even finer point on it in their version of this scene. [Frodo] "I wish the ring had never come to me." "I wish none of this had happened." [Gandalf] "So do all who live to see such times," "but that is not for them to decide." "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." And that idea, who gets to decide on such matters as life and death and eagerness to deal out death and judgment, the game tells us over and over again to be wary of such things. To approach each other with empathy. To forgive even the most traumatic of mistakes, because the alternative is destruction. The alternative is ending up bitter and alone. All that's left to decide is what to do with the time they have on this Earth. And given the world they live in, that might not be very long. I hope Ellie can learn to love again, to lean into those better impulses that brought her to want to help the world rather than hurt it. To remember the good things Joel taught her and leave the rest behind with that guitar. I know Abby has learned those things. I want to believe that Abby and Lev got to Catalina Island and are alive and thriving like this final menu screen suggests with this boat sitting on the shores of the island and a sunrise implying a fresh start for them. People are already talking about a possible third game, and there are very few scenarios where I would want that. Unless it's about Abby and Lev and the Fireflies or Ellie trying to be a better, less violent person, maybe trying to find another scientist who can engineer a cure and maybe having to protect a young girl bringing this story full circle. If it's not watching Ellie grow or watching Abby and Lev thrive, I would rather leave them all here on this windowsill. At times, I wished this game would be conventional and give me what I wanted. I wanted Ellie and Abby to stop fighting and get along. Hell at one point I was really hoping for some cheesy last letter from Joel that would tie up loose ends and resolve the ache I was feeling from his loss. But this game evades convention at almost every turn. It refuses to be what I wanted it to be, and at times I think that was masterfully done. If I have any beef with the ending, it's that I wish we could have seen Abby and Lev okay after everything happened. Yes. We have this menu screen, but I would have liked to have seen them get to Catalina Island because Abby's story is where I find light here. Abby moving on from her father's death, moving on from her hatred for Ellie, and for an entire group of people to love Lev the way she does. That's beautiful to me. But instead, the game begins with a guitar, and it ends with that same guitar. Joel is gone now. This is the last of him. Ellie is off to wherever her life takes her next. I hope wherever it is, she finds a new home with love and empathy and forgiveness. I hope she leaves the violence behind her, like Abby did, like Joel did. I'm not here for that nihilism. That maybe we were the virus all along school of thought. If in this fictional world, these people are to be the last of us, I hope they can eventually learn to be the best of us. [Joel singing 'Wayfaring Stranger'] "I'm just a-goin'..." If you've made it an hour and God knows how long to do this video, congrats. I hope you enjoyed the journey. The big announcement is that I'm on Nebula now. You know that streaming service started by YouTubers with exclusive content from the likes of Lindsay Ellis and Polyphonic. If you don't feel like donating to my Patreon, but you want access to my new series of short movie reviews along with everything else they have on their site, then go check out Nebula. It's a choose-your-own-adventure kids. I might at some point soon do some Nebula exclusive content or sponsored ads because we sure do live in a society, and I have to pay rent. But with all that being said, thank you to my patrons whose names went by earlier in the credits. Your continued support is much appreciated in these trying times. Thank you for watching. I'll see you on the next one.
