The Last of Us Part 2 - A Beautiful Nightmare

holy [ __ ] man i don't think i've ever seen a game surrounded by so much controversy saddled with so many expectations and released into such a contentious environment depending on who you talk to the last of us part two is either a mature thoughtful and bold artistic endeavor that expands the boundaries of video game storytelling or a self-indulgent and disrespectful vanity project that dishonors its predecessor and aggressively pushes social justice talking points at the expense of its plots and characters the irony though is that both of those things are kind of true which kind of makes a tough nut to crack as a reviewer i mean mainstream video game journalists basically consider it the greatest game ever made but their opinions are worth about as much as the geopolitical views of your average dumb as [ __ ] hollywood celebrity likewise to the people that have spent so much time and effort [ __ ] all over this game without even having the decency to play the [ __ ] thing well i have all the way through from beginning to end yeah my liver is even more [ __ ] than usual but at least i'm in a position to offer what i hope is a fair balanced assessment of this game so grab your three wood let's tee this one off and i'll see you at the 19th hole gentlemen last of us two picks up several years after the events of the first game ellie is now a young woman living with joel in the fortified town of jackson where life is generally good and the people are compassionate and prosperous they even give out bigot sandwiches what you got there bigot sandwiches that is real that is a line which is in this game anyway ellie's relationship with joe is kind of strained for reasons that are gradually revealed through a series of flashbacks ellie's also gay by the way just in case you missed the subtle hints in the trailer she's about to start a relationship with a bisexual jewish woman named dina after dina broke up with her previous boyfriend jesse who's still friends with ellie but pretends to be jealous about the new relationship but then later dina discovers she's pregnant by him and ah [ __ ] off game i feel like i'm watching some cheap soap opera with all these contrived love triangles teen angst and boring interpersonal dramas i don't know any of these people and i certainly don't care about their relationship gripes the original game opened with the protagonist cradling his dead daughter in his arms while civilization literally collapsed around him and what do we get now this she was probably just trying to make you jealous i didn't i would never oh [ __ ] this is awkward great work neo anyway ellie's sent out with dina on a scouting mission to relieve joel and his brother who are overdue to return to base because you know a pair of hundred pound teenage girls are definitely the kind of people you'd want to send on a dangerous mission into hostile territory unfortunately the weather turns bad and they're forced to take shelter at an abandoned lookout post so naturally the thing to do is smoke some weed and bump uglies with dina ellie's gay by the way remember when games actually took the time to build up relationships letting you get to know a character and bond with them before romance developed but neil druckmann was like nah it'll be fine just shove a gratuitous sex scene into the first hour of the game and wipe out any tension or chemistry between the two characters it's at this point that we're introduced to the other main character of the game [Music] [Applause] this is abby a theoretical woman and two time olympic powerlifting champion but i'm gonna call her gigantor because i'm an immature [ __ ] and it makes me laugh gigantor is on the way to jackson in search of joel but her group have second thoughts when they see how heavily defended the place is rather than cut off the mission she decides to push on alone with no backup and no plan for how to get in perhaps you'd have a better chance if you spent more time planning your strategy instead of scuffing down baby ruths anyway things are looking bleak for gigantor when she gets cornered by a group of infected but then wouldn't you know it joel shows up with his brother tommy and saves her wow lucky she happened to run straight into the one man she's been looking for all this time and he just so happens to be isolated and vulnerable what are the odds say then gigantor shoots joel in the leg and caves his [ __ ] head in with a golf club with ellie watching on in horror perhaps if you'd pulled your finger out of dina and gotten your ass here a bit quicker none of this would have even happened ellie's gay by the way and thus the hero of the first game one of the most beloved video game protagonists of his generation dies a sad miserable pointless death lying bound and helpless on the floor in a pool of his own blood having done absolutely nothing of value you know i'm trying to think of something i can compare this to oh yeah there we go you know it's kind of interesting that the same people who vocally complain about the deaths of female characters being used to motivate the male protagonist all seem to clap like mindless seals when the genders get reversed i guess it's okay when it happens to men then gigantor knocks ellie unconscious and leaves to make some more massive gains because you know that's the thing to do when you've just brutally murdered the man she loves right in front of her eyes and she's literally screaming that she's gonna hunt you down and kill you what do you think is going to happen after this your [ __ ] bell end do you really want to spend the rest of your days looking over your shoulder waiting for that inevitable moment when ellie finally comes back to take revenge the entire plot of this game hinges on a character making a completely nonsensical decision ellie's gay by the way anyway the intro's over and it's time to get into the real meat of this story joel's dead and ellie's out for revenge so she travels across the country with dina to the headquarters of gigantour's group for a bit of good old-fashioned payback the game's divided into two main campaigns one follows ellie as she kills her way through the members of gigantor's group each one bringing her closer to her ultimate target the other follows gigantor herself allowing you to see the same events from her perspective a series of flashbacks for both women gradually shed light on key events that have shaped them into who they are ultimately both storylines collide in an armed confrontation where several characters die and gigantor leaves behind a badly wounded alley warning her not to come after her again [ __ ] sake would you learn a lesson but then she does come after her again and even goes so far as to rescue her from a prison camp just so she can beat the [ __ ] out of her again but just when she has gigantor at her mercy she's like nah it'll be fine what's the [ __ ] this is the person who murdered joe in cold blood right in front of you killed most of your friends and ruined your entire life you've traveled halfway across the country lost everything killed more people than you can count and all of it just to get to this point and now you're gonna give up and let her walk away really [ __ ] off game so then gigantor leaves and ellie returns home to find dina gone and she can't even play the guitar anymore because giganter bit her fingers off for the massive protein hits which is good news for me because i was getting pretty sick of all those guitar sessions anyway she leaves the farm behind and heads off into the wilderness alone mutilated her friends dead her life destroyed and her future looking grim wow what's an uplifting game anyway that's the plot for last of us part two now it's time to plunge deep inside it just like owen with gigantor and deliver my analysis now despite all the bad things i'm about to say about this story there are actually a lot of things this game does extremely well i can't believe i'm about to say this but last of us too is a brave ambitious piece of storytelling whatever my thoughts on neil drockman as a person one thing i will give the man credit for is his willingness to take risks this is a story that's not afraid to tackle mature morally complex issues in a realistic and thought-provoking way this isn't a safe comfortable world where the hero defeats the villain and lives happily ever after because there are no heroes and villains in last of us too just people doing what they can to survive looking after those they care about and using that as justification to commit the most appalling acts on anyone who threatens them whether you consider their actions right or wrong very much depends on your own perspective and as the ending suggests maybe there are no happily ever afters the world of last of us too is a hard brutal unforgiving place where good people can be manipulated into doing bad things out of fear and anger where heroes don't get the heroic deaths they deserve where you can die in an instant simply because you walk through the wrong door and where innocence offers no protection from vengeance it's a world where people's choices have lasting implications that can come back to haunt them days months or even years later where actions that initially seem clear-cut and obvious can turn out to be much more complex when the truth is finally revealed it's also not afraid to show the very real impact of traumatic experiences on regular people like the scene where a bloodied and bruised ellie returns from brutally torturing an enemy prisoner shaken and disturbed by what she's been forced to do and you get to see both the physical and emotional toll her missions taken on her it's superbly acted and sensitively presented and it reminds me that naughty dog are actually pretty good at stuff like this when they choose to be or the scene where a jaded and depressed owen explains why he refused to kill an enemy soldier instead he turns to me and he's old and tired he was just ready this is a world where people are at the end of their ropes strung out desperate exhausted by the constant demands of fighting and surviving losing sight of what they're even fighting for these are all good thematic elements that make for an interesting and challenging narrative and like i say i think the game deserves respect for taking a harder path that being said elements of this story are also cheap contrived and manipulative as [ __ ] joel's death was obviously intended to be sudden and shocking and while that's definitely true it also relies on some insane coincidences and really bad character choices like gigantor just so happening to stumble into the one man she'd been looking for who would have been impossible to get to otherwise or joel's inexplicable decision to let his guard down around a group of armed strangers just because they're also fighting the infected doesn't mean they're on your side mates the joe from the first game never would have made a dumb mistake like that and it reinforces my belief that this game really disrespects him the story doesn't just dishonor his death it also dishonors his life by trying to wreck on his choice at the end of the previous game portraying it as selfish and unfair rather than the desperate and entirely understandable actions of a loving man faced with an impossible choice it also ignores the strong implication that ellie always knew or at least suspected that joel was lying to her but was willing to accept the lie and spare him the pain of admitting what he'd been forced to do now we're basically told that joel was wrong he's entirely to blame for the events of this game and ellie has every right to be mad at him he saved your [ __ ] life mate show some gratitude gigantor's decision to leave ellie alive at the start makes absolutely no sense in context killing her and tommy would eliminate the only two witnesses to what you did and while you may not want additional casualties anyone with half a brain would realize they'd eventually come after you for revenge it's sloppy and careless writing and what's worse is that she makes the exact same mistake a second time what is wrong with you gigantor have a baby ruth and think about what you did on that subject a major component of this game's narrative is showing events from her point of view encouraging you to understand her motivations and empathize with her and holy [ __ ] does this game pull out all the stops naughty dog play every dirty trick in the book with this one remember the group that watched joel die with such contempt at the beginning well we're going to show them as a caring compassionate and tightly knit circle of friends dreaming of a better future for themselves those tracker dogs you killed because they were about to rip your throats out get ready to see them in cute fluffy playful modes the woman you've spent half the game dreaming about killing well we're going out of our way to portray her as a brave compassionate and altruistic person with a tragic backstory and even a fear of heights to humanize her feel guilty yet you awful human being no me neither it's cheap and manipulative but undeniably effective show a decent person striving to do good things while wrestling with their own fears and weaknesses as their world slowly unravels around them and obviously you'll generate a certain amount of sympathy from your audience but it's a shallow temporary kind of sympathy that only lasts until you start thinking about it too much and to be honest it doesn't really matter how nice you make her how many virtuous things she does or how many layers of tragedy you keep on her there's no redeeming this in the eyes of most gamers if you want an example of how the same technique can be used effectively look at the boss from metal gear solid who betrays the main character and turns against her own country in the first few hours of the game ultimately becoming a dangerous antagonist that has to be defeated but by the end you uncover new information about the character that casts her actions in a whole new light recontextualizing her into a tragic hero forced to do awful things for the greater goods the difference here is that the boss was a complex well-written character with little hints dropped throughout the game about her true feelings and motivations so that once you actually get all the information the pieces of the puzzle all fall together and the writers were smart enough to know that narratively there's only so much you can pull a character back from and killing off the beloved protagonist of the previous game isn't one of those things which brings me to the real meat of this particular narrative sandwich which is the destructive nature of revenge neither of the main characters make good decisions in this game they're both trapped in an escalating cycle of retribution and retaliation taking an inflicting losses and slowly losing everything and everyone they care about gigantor's obsession with finding joe pushes a potential love interest into the arms of another woman ultimately scuppering her chance of a better future and getting them both killed ellie meanwhile gives up her peaceful family life with dina for one last shot at taking down her nemesis eventually leaving her facing up to a bleak future alone her life in ruins the point is that both women pass up the chance to let go of their hate and move on with their lives relentlessly pursuing their objective until it's literally all they have left and in the end neither one finds the peace or resolution they were hoping for no one wins everyone loses what's a charming story i mean don't get me wrong the first game didn't exactly shy away from dark themes and heavy dramatic moments the difference though is that it used this darkness to make the light all the more meaningful and it told a complete emotionally satisfying story when we meet joe he loses his daughter in brutal fashion and turns into a cold uncaring shell of a man just barely getting by with nothing to live for but his growing relationship with ellie gradually rekindles his caring protective loving side and by the end he's willing to give up a potential cure for the virus in order to protect her it might not be the right choice in logical terms but it's absolutely consistent with his character arc and it feels totally appropriate for him as a result the core message of that game is a positive uplifting one that the most desperate and terrible circumstances can bring out the best aspects of our natures love sacrifice compassion and humanity the things that make us who we are this time around we're told that revenge and retribution brings out the worst in people and while that's true [ __ ] me it doesn't have to make for a depressing gaming experience and i can't help but think there's better ways of getting the same message across ways that wouldn't totally compromise popular characters and leave the player questioning the point of their own existence like wouldn't it have been more interesting if you hooked up with gigantor early on in the game and spent the majority of the storyline working and fighting and surviving with her gradually bonding and empathizing with her through your shared experiences perhaps even forming a romantic attachment only for her to betray you and try to kill joel in the final act of the game forcing you to fight your former ally while wrestling with conflicted emotions and loyalties you could end with gigantor beating down ellie and joel stepping in to try to defend her willing to give his life for the daughter he loves and seeing how much he's willing to sacrifice it's enough to convince gigantor that he's a good man after all faced with an impossible choice and she ultimately makes peace with what happened to her father or ellie could defeat her while joe was knocked unconscious realizing the woman would never stop hunting them she kills gigantor and later convinces joel that she left in peace thus mirroring the ending of the first game but with the road reversed this time a comforting lie to spare a loved one the painful truth or tommy convinces gigantor that he's actually joel and takes a bullet for his brother prompting joel to go on a quest for revenge and forcing ellie to go after him to try and bring him home willing to risk everything to save rather than avenge the man she loves wouldn't any of these scenarios provide a more optimistic emotionally satisfying finale that still conveys the core message about the danger of revenge without actually having to destroy and undermine everything the first game created an ending that would also exemplify the series existing themes of love loyalty and redemption nah what do i know now there's been a lot of talk about the progressive themes that have been worked into this game and if the leaks were to be believed it was going to be 20 hours of nothing but pandering and lecturing and while there certainly are elements of that some of which are more conspicuous than others generally i think it's handled better than i expected the relationship between ellie and dina is probably the biggest but also the most underwhelming component of all this apart from being physically attracted to each other i didn't get any real sense of who they are or why they're together you don't get to see a friendship slowly develop into something more they hook up right off the bat and stay strong almost to the end there's no chemistry between them they never really talk about anything interesting or have big dramatic exchanges their relationship feels flat and shallow and it's a shame because it eats up a lot of time in the early stages needless to say gigantor isn't exactly conventional looking as far as female video game characters go and while i can understand the desire to make her physically imposing there's limits to how far you can go i can't believe you think human females are meant to look like this neil it also makes a romantic scene impossible to take seriously when you're faced with something like this there's also a subplot about a transgender kid that's being persecuted by the religious order they were once part of and while this probably had most gamers rolling their eyes when the news first leaked i'll at least give the game credit for not making a big deal of it for the most part it's handled with sensitivity and restraint and it's not particularly intrusive or preachy clearly last of us too is a very female-centric story and there are certainly lots of girl power moments where they get to be strong independent and resourceful but they're also balanced out by a fairly decent male cast that are mostly treated quite well apart from joel's unceremonious exit the men in this game are never portrayed as cowardly incompetent submissive or ineffective and they don't crumple like wet paper bags the moment a female challenges them on something they make their own decisions fight and kill by themselves and they're not afraid to call the girls out on their [ __ ] where necessary like jesse who oh or manny oh but at least doing this oh well there's still tommy oh yeah there's a bit of a pattern emerging here i'm afraid the frustrating thing is that beneath all of this narrative [ __ ] the last of us 2 is actually a pretty decent survival horror game when the story backs off for a while and actually lets you play the game finally finds its groove and you're allowed to have a bit of fun you navigate a mixture of open world cityscapes and tight claustrophobic buildings scavenging for supplies and solving occasional navigation puzzles while combating a mixture of human and infected enemies naturally ammo and health resources are scarce so you have to pick your battles wisely and make use of stealth takedowns to avoid costly fire fights enemies come in a variety of flavors with different strengths and capabilities so you have to adjust your strategy depending on the nature of the threats an upgrade treat allows you to improve your weapons and abilities as you go the idea being that you're rewarded for exploring your environment thoroughly stick to the critical path and you'll progress faster in the early stages but might find the later levels more of a stretch without the tactical flexibility those upgrades give you here's the problem though the more i played the less inclined i was to explore the world around me part of the fun of games like this is just to see what's out there finding new weapons and equipment getting sidetracked with side quests and adventures or just absorbing the environment and learning more about the world in last of us too you never really stumble on anything that interesting the world of games like fallout for example is littered with storylines quests and little details that build a richly detailed world that you want to explore but here the most you'll get is the occasional note or some more ammo and crafting items so basically the amount of exploration i did was usually tied to how low i was getting on resources enemies are competent enough to make combat a challenge but it really tips into frustrating territory much like the zombies of resident evil the infected are basically just moving obstacles and getting past them is a case of understanding their patrol routes and getting your timing rights that being said there were times when i was literally able to sprint through and forced my way out of an area before the infected could even catch up to me i genuinely don't know if that was a flaw in the enemy design or if the game actually encourages that kind of unorthodox thinking either way there's a feeling of being there done that with the infected this time around because if you've played the first game then you'll know what you're dealing with here the tension they generate is no different from sneaking past a guard in metal gear solids they're basically not that scary anymore human enemies provide a bit more of a challenge making intelligent use of cover and suppressing fire to pin you down while their mates try to outflank you it encourages you to think tactically and stay alert likewise your companions ai is competent enough that they're able to pitch in during fights without becoming a liability that being said the spongy controls and occasionally bad collision detection are a bigger source of frustration there were a couple of times when i got taken out for no other reason than my character corners like the [ __ ] titanic still the checkpoint system is so forgiving that death is more of a temporary inconvenience than a real hit to your progress which kind of eliminates the tension when i think about it in terms of design and game mechanics last of us 2 borrows elements from other games but fails to really expand or use them it flirts with the idea of sandbox gameplay but doesn't offer the true open world freedom of red dead 2 or dying lights it's got some platforming sections but nothing like the fast-paced action of uncharted or tomb raider resource management is an issue but it doesn't offer the flexibility to tailor your loadout like you can do in resident evil what you're left with instead is a simplified watered-down gaming experience that executes most things tolerably well but doesn't really excel at anything overall last of us 2 offers a solid and occasionally thrilling gameplay experience there's enough content here to keep you going for a good 15 hours at least and i suppose you could spin it out to twice that if you really wanted to explore every area and find every secret the problem is that it's all handcuffed to a heavy and pervasive story that intrudes so often i felt like i spent more time watching cutscenes than actually playing the game and it's not helped by big self-indulgent flashback sequences that go on forever and usually require player input so you can't skip them for me it all adds up to a gaming experience that feels kind of bloated and self-absorbed created by a man whose ambitions outstrip the medium he's working in a man whose philosophy can best be summed up by this very telling quote last of us 2 is a bold and ambitious game and despite all my criticisms i do respect it for taking risks and doing things that might prove unpopular because believe it or not in an age when our entertainment is becoming increasingly safe predictable and sanitized we need more games like this games that are willing to push the boundaries and grapple with mature ideas i'm just not sure we needed this game trying to sum up my final thoughts on the last of us too i find myself returning to the same question i've been asking since the first trailer is this a story that really needed to be told did we really need to know what happened to joel and ellie after the near perfect ending of the first game or was it enough to park company with them right there recognizing they faced an uncertain future but knowing they'd take it on together having completed last of us two i think i would have been happier if their story had ended there anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,340,607

Keywords: Ellie, Joel, feminism, Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog, SJW

Id: iGtKUaPhdfk

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PezDispencer]

Eh, not exactly. He's very hit and miss in this video, I'll copy across my comment from the video.

Sure there's no hero, but there is definitely a villain. There is no moral ambiguity in Abby killing Joel. Joel killed her father in self defense and defense of another. Abby killed Joel out of vengeance, and this is immediately after he saves her life. She is very clearly in the wrong. TLoU1 also tells us that there were other immune people that the Fireflies tried this surgery on and none of them worked, with all of them dying. The Fireflies are completely incompetent and would have failed yet again, further killing the few people who are immune. Its actually more beneficial to have let the immune people go to breed, passing on the immunity to future generations and maybe eventually killing out the infection that way. But instead they want to murder her less than a day after finding her without bothering to run any tests or anything. The Fireflies were not good people. The question isn't is Joel or Abby justified, its whether Ellie is. People keep saying she's getting revenge but I view it as she's avenging the death of her father by bringing justice to his murderer. But Ellie is an unlikeable asshole in 2, so whatever who cares.

[u/TammyTamed]

I have to point out that the sex scene is a dropped ball. Like I've said before, Owen was about to call Abby and her hangup about Joel before Jackson as her hypocrisy but nah, they kiss and fucked so moving on.

Another thing to point out is that the after the final duel flashback wherein Ellie said to Joel "I'd like to try" - this pertains to Joel's decision back at the firt game, not Ellie's attempt to be a forgiving person. The latter doesn't make sense with the setting she's in because if she can forgive her surrogate father's killer, then she can forgive anybody that kills anybody close to her. This goes way against what she fears back in TLoU 1 where she kept seeing everyone around her die except for Joel. If we're going along with what TLoU 2's portrayal of Ellie, TLoU 2 actually shits on her. This is the game that says Ellie doesn't give a shit anymore about losing people around her and she wouldn't even lift a finger because "REveNgE baD".