The Last Of Us Part 2 Review (Full Spoilers)

[Music] The Last of Us one to me was a seminal video game the gameplay was fine and served its purpose but the story characters relationships and the immaculate presentation paved the way for one of the most elegant thought-provoking riveting and emotionally resonant narrative experiences in any medium at its core the Last of Us was the story of a developing father and daughter relationship with the bleak post-apocalyptic setting serving as a backdrop to spotlight their growing bond all of which culminated in a moral conundrum how far would you go to save someone you love it's a question with no easy answer and to drive that point The Last of Us was laser focused on contextualizing Ellie and Joel's actions a slow but engaging burn that paid off big-time we believe the transition from total strangers to them becoming each other's most important person in their lives from Joel having little issues sacrificing this kid to save the world - Joel coming to the realization that a world without Ellie was just not one worth living in while Joel's actions continue to be highly debated so many can sympathize with his decisions because of the game's methodical buildup where the Last of Us one used its themes as a vehicle for developing believable characters The Last of Us part two felt to me like it did the inverse the character served as the vehicle for the game's larger theme of revenge and the high cost it fetches vengeance is an ever-present force of nature in the sequel tale and last of us - chooses to use its characters as narrative tools to deliver a larger commentary on the consequences of retribution while Ellie and Joel's relationship comparatively take more of a backseat it is in my personal view that what made last of us one so very special was lost in the sequel Last of Us - is so married to its theme and get so carried away with hammering the folly of vengeance that it ends up overextending itself while sidelining the relationship of the protagonists we fell in love with beyond that compared to its predecessor Last of Us - felt unfocused poorly paced and jarring ly structured with its nonlinear narrative and its decision to stretch the spotlight then across a larger cast of less interesting characters it's a tale that I feel could have been told more effectively had it trimmed some of the fat restructured its delivery put more emphasis on the Joel and Ellie relationship and put more care into developing characters to rationalize their behavior and decisions let's get the elephant in the room out of the way Joel dies gruesomely within roughly the first two hours of the game and Joel's death becomes the driving force of Ellie's revenge arc the perpetrators are members of a group known as the Washington Liberation Front aka the WLF with one particular member a be delivering the brutal final blow it's evident that members of this group have held deep resentment against Joel and the mystery revolves around why they were so intent on killing him immediately questionable about this whole sequence was how casually Tommy and Joel reveal their identities two fully armed strangers and walk themselves right into a compromised position let's Joe Tommy it's my brother Joe I'll act like you heard why so soon cuz they have studying the cutscenes it was apparent that WLF did not know what joel looked like it wasn't until tommy mentions Joel's name in front of a be and until Joel blurts out his name in front of the WLF that they finally realized who he is Joel surely knows that he made a lot of enemies after what he pulled in Last of Us one and given 24 years of street smarts he developed between outbreak day and last of us - it felt out of place for him to be so trusting of a fully armed group lurking outside the walls of their settlement the argument could be made that joel has let his guard down after living in relative comfort and safety for four years in Jackson but one would think 20 plus years of post-apocalyptic survival would have kicked in and set off some alarms either way what happened happened and Joel meets a ghastly end at the hands of a merciless Avenger I want to make it very clear that I was fully prepared for the possibility of Joel dying in Last of Us - frankly I would have been surprised if he survived part 2 given what we know about part 1 the man made a lot of enemies what I didn't expect is that it would happen so soon in part to use narrative taking Joel completely out of the picture in the present day and was still willing to see the story through with an open mind but it quickly became apparent that blast of us 2 was not an Ellie and Joel story as the game's marketing campaign made it out to be so intent was Naughty Dog unhiding Joel's early death that they swapped character models in the trailers to make it appear as though Joel and Ellie would journey together in a move Neil druckmann said was inspired by Metal Gear Solid two's marketing I think I'd let you do this on your own instead Last of Us two stretches itself thin across two separate cast of characters whose storylines run in parallel and intertwine two journeys of revenge at different stages of grief the first half of the game centers around Ellie her girlfriend Dina Dina's former boyfriend Jesse and Joel's brother Tommy the second half of the game centers around Abby her friends in the WLF and Yara and Lev - exiled members of the WL FS rival faction a cult known as the scars or the Sara fights Joel does make an appearance throughout the game in flashbacks which are without question my favorite moment and last of us - Troy Baker once again kills it as Joel no pun intended and I really love the softer and warmer timbre he goes for with the character who has warmed up a little more to the world found some hope again what is the downside to eating a clock it's time-consuming we get to see Joel and Ellie grow closer starting with Joel gifting her a guitar that marks a symbol for their connection we get to see Joel take Ellie out on a camping trip leading to a father-daughter tour of a dinosaur and Space Museum which is such an incredible and wholesome sequence my absolute favorite in the entire game we then see their relationship tested as Ellie suspects Joel lied to her about what happened that day in st. Mary's Hospital and the relationship finally snaps when Ellie confirms her theory by revisiting st. Mary's Hospital herself leaving Joel no choice but to confess his sin in one final flashback at the very end of the game Joel doesn't hesitate to express he'd do it all over again while a distraught Ellie responds that she doesn't know if she can forgive him but was willing to try compared to the rest of the game these snippets felt criminally brief these intimate Joel and Ellie moments unraveling their complicated relationship was what I was hoping the entirety of last of us two would be but with how little of the game it encompassed it felt more like a side story that served to contextualize Ellie's revenge no doubt this was intentional to make us feel like our time with Joel's brief and have us experience the same sense of loss as Ellie but to pull this off the game needed to introduce a cast of characters who are as compelling as that beloved duo and that's where for me Last of Us too did not succeed the game starts with Ellie's perspective consumed by hatred she decides to leave the comfort of Jackson County to pursue the members of the WLF who were present when Joel was murdered and make them pay one by one Tommy goes ahead Ellie and Dena follow not too far behind and we eventually learned Jesse trail behind them as well I do think Ellie and Dena shared good chemistry and no small part thanks to spectacular performances by Ashley Johnson and Shannon Woodward I bought their romance and I could see why they were in love with each other but my level of investment in their relationship did not hold a candle to why I felt for Joel and Ellie when I played Last of Us won a bar that the series set I think what made Joel and Ellie's developing bond so compelling was that they started out as strangers leaving so much room to see that relationship dynamically develop and flourish we saw it go from zero to a hundred every step of the way and last of us to the dynamics between characters like Ellie Dena and Jesse are already established you're starting at 50 or 75 instead of zero so the range of development felt far more limited and in turn I could not bring myself to care or feel for them on the same level that Ellie did Ellie and Dena do have some great banter here and there and share some interesting anecdotes there are wholesome moments like the take on me cutscene that's optional and can be missed and the game does try its best to make me care with snippets of their history but that was nowhere close to being as riveting as the tension of Joel and Ellie's complicated relationship so for the first half of the game around 13 hours or so I was left exploring with a cast that despite some great interactions didn't fully captivate me and while I was initially motivated by Ellie's understandable hatred the games revenge plot meandered so much that I began to lose investment in that too the first 13 hours essentially involved Ellie and Dena going from one WLF compound to another and checking off a hit list of WLF targets sometimes you already find them dead at the hands of Tommy who had gotten to them first other times Ellie would do the deed herself with each new target slain no new information was provided to maintain narrative no new knowledge was offered to drive the story forward or to add further intrigue to the plot and characters didn't feel like they developed all that much Ellie did become less and less likeable though as her mental health continued to deteriorate which might have been the point but as a player it made it harder to be invested in her journey so for me that was the first half of the game Ellie going from place to place hunting down specific targets and killing a bunch of goons and dogs on the way in merciless fashion with the thoroughly compelling Joel flashbacks being the only thing that broke up the narrative monotony not enough really happened during Ellie's 13-hour portion for me to feel the runtime was justified much of that play time is spent traversing admittedly gorgeous but mechanically an interesting environments tediously seeking out resources to loot and upgrades to pick up or sneaking and fighting your way through enemy encounters a gameplay loop that wore thin and could not carry the game through its 25 hour runtime but I'll elaborate more on gameplay later Ellie story does eventually reach a pivotal turning point though the aquarium where she expected to confront Abby only to stumble upon Owen and his impregnated partner Mel who were present when a be killed Joel Ellie attempts to question them for Abby's location before scuffle ensues culminating in Ellie killing them both Ellie discovers Mel was pregnant at which point she begins to exhibit signs of guilt regret and trauma once more the first time she wavered was when she previously killed Nora whose violent interrogation left Ellie shaken but seeing Ellie distress in her pursuit for vengeance did ring somewhat hollow given how much of the game revolves around Ellie controlled by the player going around and brutally murdering everyone in her path there is no semblance of mercy or regret when killing these strangers and dogs in cold blood the game does try to draw sympathy out of players by giving NPC's names and having patrolling enemies shout them out any time a comrade is slain which was kind of cool at first but as my playthrough dragged on the effect felt more artificial and comical than anything the game was trying too hard to hammer the nose that these are human beings with what felt like a cheap trick more than anything no matter how many times they shouted out their friends names I had very few reservations about taking down these video game characters who behave like mindless goons and were actively out there trying to kill me on sight I felt even less empathetic towards the scars whose acts of violence were far too deplorable to garner even a shred of sympathy given how many of these strangers I kill this Ellie with zero wavering on Ellie's part strangers who may have had friends and family there was a dissonance in seeing Ellie suddenly shaken by acts of violence against those who were actually directly involved in Joel's untimely death I guess a woman being more visibly pregnant and close to giving birth does have a different kind of impact and Ellie did find out a short while ago that Dena was pregnant with Jessie's child so that parallel may have contributed to this kill affecting her more profoundly but even so with how remorselessly unwaveringly and viciously Ellie killed dozens of people getting here given the trail of blood she left behind I felt desensitized to these additional murders and felt emotionally disconnected from her sudden trauma at this point what was a few more kills as Ellie is having this panic attack Tommy and Jessie show up having caught up to Ellie to discover this gruesome scenery after Ellie rather stupidly and conveniently leaves her map with notes detailing her hideouts location behind they decide to head back to their hideout at the abandoned theater where a sick and pregnant Deena is resting after some discussion Ellie and Tommy decide to let Abby go so they can focus on what's important taking Deena back to Jackson County for proper medical treatment but then Abby shows up at the theater because of the map that Ellie left behind pins tummy down immediately kills Jessie with no breeding room to really digest and mourn his death a stark contrast to how last of us one gave every character a proper purposeful meaningful and emotional send-off and Elias held at gunpoint by an enraged Abby and that's when the game closes out its first act on a cliffhanger this brings us to the second half of the game which further diminished my emotional investment in the narrative by pulling me away just as things were getting interesting to put me in the shoes of a bee in an attempt to reveal her side of the story the game rewinds time to show events play out from Abby's perspective happening in parallel to Ellie's journey we get a see Joel's death scene from her eyes we get to see what she's been up to during the three days Ellie spent in Seattle hunting her down there are portions of this roughly nine hour segment that flesh out her backstory via flashbacks that accentuate her relationship with her father and her close kinship was love interest Owen and unravel the driving force behind her own vengeful pursuits it is revealed that the surgeon Joel killed at the end of last of us one was none other than Abby's father actions Lita reactions and violence begets violence so resolute and obsessed was Abby on avenging her father and bringing Joel to justice that she spends four years building her body into a weapon I do get what they were trying to accomplish with this parallel narrative structure at the start of the game all you know is Ellie is that the savage wlf bastards killed our beloved Joel you know nothing about this group and you don't care to know anything about them all you know is that these [ __ ] have to die by showing these events from Abbey's lands the game attempts to humanize and make us empathize with Abby and her group to make us see where they're coming from to make the point that there is more to these people than meets the eye so that Ellie's kills have greater implications to inspire some semblance of introspection the intent is to demonstrate that Ellie isn't just killing a bunch of evil goons but rather human beings with their own motivations and lives who believe their own actions are justified who are the heroes of their own story through Abby's lens we get to see a whole new side to the WLF like how they've established a school for children and how this sizable faction and its settlements keep people fed and protected we also get to see many of the familiar faces le murdered in a friendlier and less hostile setting as just people unfortunately in my experience this idea didn't have the intended effect in execution for many of the smaller characters we spend so little time with them that I really couldn't come to care for them and them just showing us a snippet of a more normal side of them didn't suddenly make me wrestle with my emotions last of us two's narrative structure may have resonated with me more if I found Abby as a character in her storyline compelling but I just wasn't drawn to this new cast the idea of walking in the shoes of someone the game makes you despise and hate is admittedly an interesting one but the character has to be gripping and make me feel attached she is wonderfully performed by Laura Bailey don't get me wrong and she does have some genuinely great moments that unveil her vulnerable side but Naughty Dog spent an entire game building up Ellie and Joel's relationship whereas Abby's relationship with her father and with her love interest Owen and her love triangle with Mel and her friendship with some of the lesser characters were told through comparatively brief and sporadic snippets that do not hold a candle to Last of Us ones methodical slow burned character development not to mention that the first impression last of us - gives us of a B is that of her brutally murdering Joel with little hesitation while his daughter figure watched and pleaded for his life Joel's actions at the end of last of us one were monstrous but you understood the position he was in the fireflies didn't consult with Joel or Ellie before deciding to sacrifice Ellie's life for the vaccine and they held Joel at gunpoint without so much as giving him a chance to speak with Allie given that situation Joel kicked into fight-or-flight mode because of how aggressively the fireflies handle his situation and how they were essentially making him go through losing a daughter yet again with no say on the matter leading him to do whatever it took to save Ellie before time ran out he wasn't able to save Sara twenty years ago but he was resolute on saving Ellie at all cost and redeeming himself you can question his methods but every action he took felt human despite its moral ambiguity on the other hand slowly agonizingly and mercilessly beating someone who literally just saved your life while a young girl who clearly loves him and who is pleading for his life watches this unfold that to me was psychopathic levels of inhuman cruelty no matter what Abby went through that [ __ ] right there I couldn't begin to justify or relate to I think how much you end up enjoying last of us two story does ride heavily on how much you connect with Abby and for my part while I grew to understand her more as the veil was pulled from the character I couldn't feel for her or come to like her on a level that the game demanded and in turn I didn't feel the desire to spend an entire second half of the game with her this goes doubly true when most of Abby's arc takes a complete detour from the main revenge plot after Abby meets those two kids Yara and left exiled members of this religious cult known as the Sara fight aka the scars who are at war with the WLF I totally get that this arc was meant to juxtapose the cycle of revenge with a cycle of compassion while giving a be something of a Redemption arc Yaron left happened to stumble upon Abby and save her from a potentially gruesome death at the hands of the scars and after she leaves the kids behind feigning apathy her guilt eventually takes over and she decides to go back and help left save a severely injured Yara all despite the fact that they're part of a warring factions this leads to a whole side plot that attempts to drive the point that there is good in Abby that she is also human that she is capable of mercy guilt regret kindness and empathy but because of the first impression the game gave me of her and because of how much of a detour her story took my interest in her arc quickly diminished I wanted it to be over not because I hated because to me she wasn't as easy to get attached to as I would have liked the relationship between Abby and left did have endearing moments and was clear that Naughty Dog was trying to create Abby's version of this Joel and Ellie like dynamic but it didn't come close I also can't say that I care much for the love triangle between Abby her longtime friend Owen and the impregnated Mel between them I actually found Owen to be kind of an interesting character a man who's tired of all the revenge as was the savagery and fighting between the WLF and the scars at one point we learn he just wants to defect and leave everything behind and move to Santa Barbara California to seek out rumors that the fireflies are rebuilding there and for his longtime friend and crush Abby to go with him with this love triangle dynamic adding a wrench to these plans but before that can happen Abby is compelled to help Lev and his sister Yara by obtaining medical supplies from this other WLF compound at a hospital leading them through a long trek across shoddily constructed bridges atop skyscrapers which is rather unfortunate for Abby given her fear of heights and the infiltration of the WLX Hospital compound where Abby battles this adorable creature after Abby and Lev returned with medical supplies Yao is given the treatment she needs by Mel and a shift happens for Abby here whereas before she would have nightmares of her dead father now for the first time she sees her father alive and well in her dream and gets a good night's rest her act of violence against Joel didn't ultimately help her come to terms with her father's death but her act of kindness left her more at peace than she had been in a very long time yet another way the game highlights that compassion ultimately triumphs cruelty this seemed like a natural stopping point for Abby's arc but the game had one more chapter to tell Yara is alive and well and suggests affecting from the scars and leaving with Owen to Santa Barbara to start a new life but Lev doesn't take kindly to that idea because he's still attached to his mother so he steals Abby's boat and flees to the scars island in hopes that he'll be welcome back Yara's fully aware that he will probably be killed by this cult that isn't exactly known for showing mercy to in subordinates so in what felt like a contrived and drawn-out detour to move a be away from the aquarium for when Ellie arrives and kills Owen and Mel a B and Yara chased after him and embarked on a journey to scar Island to save leva and bring him back all while the wlf plans a full-scale attack oh and along the way man he just kind of dies much like with Jessie it was hard to mourn a death presented in such an abrupt manner especially for a character the game failed to make me care for due to a lack of meaningful development once a B and Yara reached the island it does culminate in a truly spectacular and visually harrowing set piece but the whole WLF vs scars war getting a spotlight felt distracting and counterproductive to intimate character conflicts and development Abby's Redemption arc had already made its point by now this whole other sequence felt like one more way for the game to hammer the point that the cycle of revenge leads to misery but on a grander more bombastic and somewhat overindulgence scale and I feel like it could have been cut entirely to make this portion of the game a tighter narrative experience surely there were subtler more concise more intimate and less contrived ways for the game to draw leve ara and a be away from the aquarium for when Ali shows up what eventually unfolds on scar Island is nothing short of a full-scale war and massacre on all fronts ABI eventually does find love in his home traumatized by having killed his abusive mother and self-defense and after ABI and Yara convince him to leave with them before they can escape the wlf catch up to them deem a B a defector for disobeying orders and helping scars mercilessly kill Yara Yara then in her final breath kills the WLF leader Isaac this character that kind of showed up and then turned out to be a whole lot of nothing and the WLF start to chase after ABI and left who after a bombastic escape sequence managed to flee the island and return to the aquarium none of this felt consequential to the parallel stories of ABI and Ellie nor did the detour feel vital to the games message it almost felt like an entire spin-off last of a story rushed and crammed into a single segment of part two we finally returned to the core revenge plot when a B goes back to the aquarium and finds that both Owen and Mel are dead killed by Ellie who stupidly happened to leave the map with Oliver notes at the scene of the crime with his information on hand Abby and Liv head to the abandoned theater where Ellie and friends have taken shelter and that's when finally the two parallel story lines converged picking off right where the cliffhanger left off I found it strange that Lev was dragged into all this moments after the traumatized Kid returned from accidentally killing his mother watching his sister gets showered with bullets and witnessing a 2-way massacre in the settlement he grew up in and with how far removed levs character art felt from Ellie and Abby's conflict he seemed kind of out of place in all of this eventually after some back-and-forth a confrontation ensues between Abby and Ellie bringing us to what I think was actually a pretty interesting concept and set up for a boss battle you the player fight Ellie as Abby from a pure presentation standpoint I was absorbed by how chilling this boss battle was the marriage of ominous imagery in the setting I traversed through on numerous occasions as Ellie combined with subtle yet unnerving music and sound scapes paired with some truly mesmerizing cinematography animations and performances all had my heart pumping there was only one issue though and it's a big one Abby hadn't grown on me enough to make me feel like killing Ellie it's not that Abby's wrath didn't feel justified I just felt more for Ellie's laws than I did for Abby's because I had gone to know Ellie and Joel better with an entire games worth of focused character development prior to park - my heart just wasn't set on the task at hand like Abby's was losing Owen and Mel didn't have the same impact that losing Joel did so I felt there was this emotional dissonance between me and Abby by the time the dust settles Abby is triumphant a sick and pregnant Deena tries to ambush Abby to save Ellie but she too is overpowered and then comes a moment that further affirmed my inability to empathize with Abby even when Ellie tells her that Dena is pregnant Abby's response is without hesitation to say and gets ready to slit her throat before leb stops her there's just a level of intentional unhesitating teeth err that while on some level does speak to the point the game is trying to make more than anything further distance me emotionally from her it's only left soft platitude that finally snaps her awake and enables her to let Ellie and gang live don't even let me see you again [Music] the game then fast forwards immediately in time and cuts to this beautiful dreamlike scenery an ethereal twilit field accentuated by a farmhouse where Dena and Ellie have taken peaceful refuge living their lives as a couple and raising Jesse's baby life seems perfect but at the same time there is a sense of melancholia that permeates the air is filled with the ghosts of all that was lost in pursuit of vengeance and I honestly thought this would have been a good place to end the game the message had come across at this point and the cycle of engines had been broken both Ellie and Abby were in a position where they had lost so much but ultimately gained something when they decided enough was enough they had both decided to let go after killing Owen and Mel a shaken Ellie prioritized Dena's pregnancy and health over hunting down a bee and after Abby led Ellie and the remainder of her friends live she prioritized moving on with her new friend Lev instead of stoking this vicious cycle further it felt poignant melancholic and like an appropriate stopping point neither character would ultimately fulfill or achieve the presumed satisfaction of killing the other neither would gain back what was lost but they quit while they were ahead but the game didn't if felt there was more to tell that it had one more active fulfill an act that felt like a whole third game story crammed into its final hours we learned during the farmhouse sequence that Ellie continues to experience PTSD from Joel's brutal death Tommy then stops by letting Ellie know he's managed to track down Abby once more believing that Ellie would jump at the opportunity to hunt her down Tommy by the way is a completely different person at this point whereas before he was measured and showed consideration for how his actions would affect those around him and prioritize Dena's health over pursuing Abby during that final sequence now after Abby crippled him during that final confrontation his priorities shift dramatically he does not seem to care one iota about tearing Ellie's new family apart couraging her to abandon this beautiful life she's built with Deena and risk death by pursuing a B once more it's a sudden and cruel transformation that took me aback it's not necessarily an impossible scenario but with how the game skipped right to the farmhouse scene without providing insight as to what Tommy was up to what he went through in that time and without showing us his transition as a character the game failed to justify Tommy's crazed nature when le shows hesitation at Tommy's request he lashes out at her before Deena drives him out of the house [Music] but later that night Elia is unable to sleep as her obsession begins to take over once again deciding right there and then with little build up to abandon Deena and her baby and go after Abby ones more than what I felt was a pointless tale end of the story and an unnecessary reversal to everything that came before before le leaves as she plays guitar and reminisces about joel we are shown another flashback one where we see Ellie chewing Joel out in front of a crowd for defending her during a mounting confrontation at a party that day before Joel's death it's apparent that even two years after Joel confessed about what happened at st. Mary's Hospital Ellie continued to resent Joel for stripping away the chance for her immunity and her life to mean something but you can also tell Ellie is conflicted about the way she's been emotionally torturing him this flashback highlights what I think is the most interesting aspect of last of us - Ellie self-loathing over how she never got to reconcile with him and her hatred of Abby who took that chance away from her which is what kick-started her destructive behavior the Joel Ellie dynamic continues to be the one glue that holds this game together but instead of exploring this aspect in depth it's unfortunate that part two loses itself with so much padding and so much extra filler stuff that I personally think diluted the potential of this narrative concept including a jarring and rushed third act that takes us to Santa Barbara California we get a play as a bein left for a brief moment who are kidnapped by a gang known as the Rattlers after seeking out the fireflies we then skip ahead again to a more mature and hardened Ellie who tracked down a bee's relative location leading to more of the same traversal scavenging and self combat gameplay loop that had long overstate its welcome by now after murdering her way through and infiltrating the Rattlers compound Ellie discovers Abby and Lev rotting away tied to wooden pillars on the beach it's undoubtedly a haunting Vista to behold but the logic of character decisions here began to fall apart instead of killing Abby right there in Dennis she was tied up Ellie decides to free her from her restraints challenger - this one-on-one battle to the death threatening to kill Lev if Abby doesn't put up a fight which then leads us to the final boss battle visually and Atmospheric Lee holy [ __ ] was this sequence undeniably striking the savage screams of anger and agony from both characters there be steel facial expressions the vicious combat animations the booming bassy ominous percussion based background music it was all admittedly goosebump inducing then comes the controversial final moment Ellie eventually overpowers Abby but just as she's about to get a revenge she gets a flash of Joel and lets Abby go [Music] from the farmhouse sequence to this moment there's just so much whiplash with how characters behaved that I felt disoriented it's not that I necessarily mind the idea of Ellie letting go of her vengeful obsession in that moment but there's no build up to this behavior there's no explanation because the two characters never interacted outside of their barbaric confrontations there was no dynamic established really between the two of them beyond the fact that they hate each other with every fiber of their being so it was hard for me to buy that in the heat of this moment Ellie would just stop herself it's not even necessarily that I wanted Abby dead I just didn't believe Ellie as a character in that moment based on what the game had established and what that set up and what they had showed me the only perceptible reason we get for Ellie's decision to let go is that flash of Joel as she's drowning Abbi but I don't know I would think that the memory of what was lost would fuel Ellie's hatred further there is a parallel here with how Abby after saving yara and levin started finding peace within herself began to dream about her father as he lived instead of having nightmares about his death coming to terms with his passing similarly while at the start of the final confrontation Ellie sees a flash of Joel and death when the moment of vengeance comes she sees a flash of Joel alive and well perhaps signaling Ellie's desire to redeem herself and find her own inner peace starting with saving Abby and left but Abby went through an entire Redemption art before her nightmare subsided Ellie on the other hand had decided to give in to her obsession once more and didn't see anything resembling a Redemption art before this moment in this third arc the moment itself I suppose was her redemption but the moment felt uncharacteristic and unrealistic even if the matically appropriate I'll say once again to me it feels like the themes take precedence over believable character behavior and development and Last of Us part 2 when all of these things should be harmonizing like they did in part one Ellie as a character is just so wildly sporadic in this story with her motivations swinging from one extreme to the other her decisions are not impossible it's not the characters destination that's the issue for me it's the journey it's at the game and it's a narrative structure and pacing did a poor job of making me buy into them I will also say it would have been really interesting if the player had the choice of finishing off Abby or letting her go and if the game let players live with the emotional after-effects but the game makes that choice for you which I felt might have been a missed opportunity to leverage this interactive medium I do get that they're trying to tell a very specific story with Allie but adding an element of player agency to this moment could have been incredibly powerful beyond my qualms about how this whole final act played out this just felt like a portion of the game that didn't really add anything new beyond regurgitating what the game had already told us before we had already seen the cycle of vengeance at play we had he's seen how much this kind of obsession can cost we had witnessed love triumphs over revenge so this contrived third act only served to see Ellie suddenly go berserk and then lose even more in the process and I felt pointlessly so after the game skips forward once again Ellie returns home to discover that Dena cleared out the farmhouse and left with the baby we watch a broken Ellie having lost her fingers during her 1v1 fox only final destination battle against Abby can no longer even play guitar which was her last physical connection to Joel that the game brought up constantly throughout the entire journey a connection that's now been severed a truly heartbreaking sight to behold before the game closes one final flashback highlights Ellie's willingness to try to forgive Joel which was heartwarming to an extent but mainly heartbreaking to realize what was lost with that the dust settles the camera pans on an Ellie who has lost everything except perhaps what little piece of her soul remains she leaves Joel's memento behind finally putting him to rest and moves on to wherever her journey may take her next [Music] let me emphasize that my preference of ending the game at the earlier farmhouse sequence has little to do with it being a happier ending it just would have been a tidier more elegant less self-indulgent narrative package the story plain and simply gets carried away with its final act and takes things one step too far with contrived character decisions that the game fails to rationalize in its sprint to the finish line as credits rolled I was left feeling kind of empty like I hadn't gained as much out of this story as I would have liked one that had such a compelling and ambitious concept but left much to be desired in execution I certainly wouldn't say the game left me indifferent or emotionless but much of the emotions the game evoke came from its masterful and sublime presentation with its combination of jaw-dropping visual fidelity and art direction expertly crafted cinematography hard string pulling performances and masterful sound design and musical composition paired with some genuinely great individual character moments with a flashbacks in particular being the absolute highlight I cannot deny the craftsmanship that went into creating this game which uses with attention to detail which makes it all the more unfortunate that the game's narrative turned out to be so in my eyes disjointed poorly paced weirdly structured and contrived that key characters turned out to be so inconsistent and at times difficult to rationalize where last of us once struck a balance of light and darkness lasts of us two wallows in so much misery that it consumes everything [Music] I wish I could at least say the gameplay sustained this experience for me but it had worn thin by the end of Le Sark the core mechanics are fine not exceptional stealth does have its tense moments and this is some of the most brutal feeling combat in a video game especially with the level of sophistication and animations here but like with the Last of Us one the game does feel somewhat clunky to play and with part two being significantly longer I don't think there's enough depth here to sustain the game's length after Ellie's half of the game I dreaded having to play as a bee from scratch with character upgrades being reset not to mention playing as a bee didn't feel too different from playing as Ellie sure a bee does have some more firepower she has some cool new weapons like the flamethrower melee combat has a bit more oomph to it and her half of the game does focus a bit more on action-oriented set pieces but for the most part the game continued to actively encourage the same style of stealth combat given how punishing getting detected is and how limited your resources are I still walked around doing menial and at times overly drawn-out environmental traversal and resource looting before engaging in semi enemy encounters the enemy AI was hit or miss sometimes it's spread out and tactically intelligent formations and do a good job of flanking my position other times they felt dumb as a brick lining up in single-file to get shot one after another or not reacting to friends death that happened right in front of him it was especially silly when during stealth an AI companion would walk right into an enemy's line of sight but they wouldn't get detected which I guess from a gameplay perspective is less frustrating but it still took me out of the game the lack of enemy variety did not help either encounters never really evolved much beyond variations of enemy placement and architectural differences there was the one pretty cool boss battle during Abby's playthrough that broke up the monotony and there were admittedly some truly tense and jaw-dropping set pieces scattered throughout the game but for the most part the gameplay did not offer enough progression or variety to keep me engaged throughout its two dozen hours from time they double the size of the pond from last of us one but in turn made it a thinner and shallower body of water mechanically last of us two plays and feels almost identically to last of us one though the Dodge button and the ability to go prone are welcome additions dodging didn't feel great though it kind of felt less and weightless if that makes sense but it's still made battling the infected or human mailee combatants more viable as for the ability to go prone I have no complaints about it actually does add some new dynamics to stealth gameplay in navigation I will also praise how huge strides were made with level design in Last of Us one environments often felt very videogame II with enemy encounters in particular featuring unnaturally placed objects to act as videogame cover but last of us part 2 does a much better job of believably blending level design and the environments which makes the world that much more believable I also appreciated some of the more open and expansive areas that made encounters more dynamic than in last of us one and one particular exploration segment drops players in a visually breathtaking open-world sandbox area where players can optionally navigate and explore at their leisure a portion that I actually thought was pretty cool and did not overstay its welcome making a return from last of us one our character skill upgrades and weapon upgrades with some tweaks and enhancements here and there but progression never felt substantial enough to keep gameplay interesting when you do upgrade weapons for example you're discouraged from using most of them anyway because of how much noise they make which does not blend well with the game's heavy emphasis on stealth there are some action set pieces and you could opt for a more action-oriented play style during stealth encounters but the game's shooting mechanics while functional have never been the series strong suit and it's no different with part two let me put it this way lots of us wants to above-average gameplay started to wear thin for me by the tail end of the game but the 15 hour experience ended at about the right time and the story and characters were so compelling that I was more than okay with pushing through some gameplay awkwardness and Last of Us two takes that same gameplay extrapolate CID in noticeable but generally minor waste and expects to hold me for ten hours more for 25 hours with little in the way of mechanical and enemy variety this is on top of a story and a cast of characters I unfortunately found to be less compelling to part one I truly do believe that if they had made this a 15 hour experience instead of 25 if the story had been better edited structured and pasted there would have been potential for me to enjoy Last of Us part 2 a hell of a lot more and for the story to be told much more gracefully now look I didn't full-on hate and despise my time with Last of Us - the game's craftsmanship constantly blew me away and there were some genuinely memorable moments that left an impression in no small part thanks to the game's masterful presentation but as an overall package part two to me was in key respects inferior to part one after the high bar that the first game set I cannot deny feeling disappointed by the time credits rolled in part two I loved the open endedness and moral ambiguity of Last of Us ones ending I loved what an incredible standalone narrative package it was and I was perfectly content with leaving that story alone forever like many I was quite nervous about the prospects of a sequel which could make or break what came before unfortunately in my humble opinion I did not think last of us part two justified its existence it's a breathtaking achievement in many regards from a technical and artistic standpoint but gameplay lack the depth variety and evolution to stretch itself to the extent that it did and narrative Lee I could not help but feel let down with pacing structure and excess being its Achilles heel I get what they were going for but I just don't think the game pulled it off effectively enough gorgeously crafted as it might be that's not to say there won't be those who will love this game which is perfectly okay if you're among those who did end up connecting deeply with a B I think the game is gonna have a lot more impact for you than it did for me if you're able to forgive some of its leaps and logic and lapse and pacing and structure and surface of its thematic endeavors you may end up appreciating what the game attempts unfortunately from my part the games intention simply did not connect with me [Music]

Channel: YongYea

Views: 585,974

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Id: KOVH6l3jaFI

Length: 46min 36sec (2796 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020