The Last of Us 2 Thread - This thread is full of spoilers, please don't click on it until you finish the game

General Discussion
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Tbh, the one videogame that I can remember doing well on the whole “I wanna be a movie but with more than 2 hours” was MGS3. Other contenders are TLOU1 and MGS4, but I’m pretty sure most people will agree that MGS3 is just solid story-wise.

There are really 2 simple reasons for it.

The first is that it was a fun game.
The second is that the story was good.

It’s not rocket science. Make a good game, have a good story. Boom. Masterpiece.

What happens with a lot of pretentious clowns like Druckmann is that they wanna tell their edgy, angsty story because “true art is suffering” or whatever nonsense they thought about while doing a self-colonoscopy with their heads.

The result? A story that is fucked up. Plain and simple.

I think I can summarize the problems of the story on one point: There is no foundation for it to work.

Summary

Seriously, what kind of moron gives the killer of a previous, well-established, iconic main character, half the game after that event and tries to paint her as sympathetic?

When trying to subvert expectations (itself a very played out trope already, but I digress.) you need the structure of the storytelling to work perfectly.

This doesn’t happen in 2. Druckmann clearly wanted to paint Abby as a sympathetic character.

So instead of having her kill Joel after her character is shown to be sympathetic with her half of the game being played before the fact, she’s introduced as a revenge-seeking psycho and when you have to play as her, you want her to go fuck herself because she has no redeeming qualities shown in the first part of the game.

So Dumpmann does a “subversion” by derailing a ton of characters, and then subverts the whole structure of the narrative.

It’s a technical problem. The narrative has no core to stand on besides a vague “revenge” motif where everyone wants to fuck up everyone.

And don’t get me started on Ellie.

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The last of the Forbes articles are up. Really good read about what it’s about.

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Kind of interesting points, I like that the reviewer explicitly said he played it on normal.
But alas… I have to comment on it.

Summary

But The Last of Us 2 wants to see that Ellie’s “minibosses” are actual people, Abby’s friends.

Shame the game only works with that angle after you kill almost all of them. Including the dogs.

I keep talking about the structure of the narrative and why it’s a clusterfuck and that’s precisely why.
Pair that up with character derailments and retcons…

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I’m damn sick and tired of people valuing dogs more than people. It is starting to become a trigger point for me.

Side Note: The decision to save Ellie in the first game by Joel wasn’t the moral conundrum people present it as. The plague in the game is a fungal infection. Not a virulent one. To date there has never been a antifungal vaccine. So the first games antagonists were a bunch of quacks that knew fuck all about infectious diseases. You don’t kill the only person with antibodies against a plague. They can’t produce more antibodies if they are dead.

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This. If you act like dogs ate better than people, then I’ll treat you like I’d treat a dog. Cold indifference, miss me with that shit. I got no patience for dogs.

Right on the target again.

It’s heavily implied (iirc outright stated) that the Firefly doc had no fucking idea of what he was doing. The mere fact that “chop her brain up” was the first option is already a red flag.

2 runs circles to try and retcon that but they still leave that mess up clear.

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The real problem isn’t between dogs and people, personally that’s a case by case basis, some people are way shittier then any dog and not worth saving.

With that said that’s not the problem here. The problem here is I am never ever going to feel bad for putting down some someone or something that is trying to kill me. Put all the moral conundrums in the proceedings you want, the moment they try to kill me is the moment i no longer give a fuck and will kill you back, and I won’t feel bad about it.

A couple games have tried this angle in the past of trying to make me feel emotionally invested in the death of my enemies and it fails every fucking time. I will never feel bad for taking the life of something trying to take mine. You’re never gonna make me feel for Abby when she behaives like a monster before i even know her as much of a person.

Sorry not sorry.

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Agreed. Not gonna feel bad for you if you are trying to kill me.

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I’ve never played either game, I’m just interested in narrative structure. But I wonder if that particular point could have slipped by if we hadn’t just had a global pandemic with a president passing off antibacterials as antivirals, highlighting the differences.

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I just finished this game and haven’t ventured in here or read anything in this thread yet.

It’s a perfect 10/10 to me and the best game this gen. It took me 27h4m on default difficulty to finish it.

I really hope that ND makes part 3 on PS5. I can’t even imagine how good it would look graphically.

Thoughts below in details.

TLOU2 thoughts and spoilers

Initially when you “start over” as Abby I was a bit apprehensive and like ‘ugh gotta upgrade all this crap again?’ but that quickly fell off. I liked her character from the get go when you played as her in the beginning parts so it was cool to play through her and see her side of the story. I thought that concept in story telling in general was really awesome. It reminded me a bit of that ZeroZeroZero show in how it story told. And I was anticipating parts that I knew were going to come in story wise. When she saw her dog dead at the aquarium, that part I was like ‘oh know this gonna be bad’ and then it was, but like in a good way.

I can see how some people didn’t like the second half though. It was a gamble they took IMO making half the game playing as someone else, but I liked it as mentioned above. It also makes you feel for the villain and how her story tied into the first one I thought was awesome. You could see Abby fighting her demons in those dream sequences which I thought was pretty cool. I do think that her “change of heart” to go saving the scars was kind of abrupt and felt a bit forced, and when she told the boy after the sister died “you are now my people” as they are fighting the wolf’s, I thought that was also a bit too quick. But I just took it as she saw Owen stating a family and she was just having very mixed feelings about where she is in her life and wanting to have more purpose, and the woman/motherly instincts just called her to do that. And then we saw it at the end when all she wanted to do was save the little boy and put him on the boat.

I also felt very conflicted when you get to the part with Abby where she fights Ellie. It just felt wrong lol. Like this girl you are playing as in part 1 and first half of part 2 is all of a sudden now the villain and you are trying to kill her. I thought she was going to kill Ellie there too. And then she doesn’t. I thought that was going to be the climactic ending there and then there is like 3-4 more hours after that lol. Again, I wasn’t mad at that at all.

Overall the pacing and everything about the game is phenomenal. My only gripe with the game would just be the controls when I was low on ammo and trying to switch weapons in the heat of battle, and it just felt clunky and I felt like I died multiple times because of that. But, that was also probably just me trying to do stuff quickly because I’m in the heat of battle and messing stuff up. It makes me feel like that is what the character would be going through though which was cool.

As for a sequel, they mentioned that Abby was infected. I am wondering if they could play into how she bit off Ellie’s fingers and ingested her blood, and since she is immune, it somehow cures Abby and/or makes her immune too. I know that it would kind of completely go against the whole “she has to die to make a vaccine” thing, but then again it’s not just a vaccine, it would have literally been her ingesting her blood.

Glad I finished it though as I’m driving to the beach in NC tomorrow and won’t have it with me lol.

EDIT:

It’s also hilarious reading all of @Volt complaints about the unexplained parts of the story and him raging about it, and then the second half of the game answers all of those unexplained parts. All of the complaining in here by people who aren’t even playing the game and don’t ever intend to is hilarious. It actually looks like literally no one who has responded in this thread has even played it. It was just like 4 or 5 people bitching about a game they have no intentions on ever playing.

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Truth be told, I was writing about it as I was watching it. I made that very clear.

I don’t think it’s a masterpiece like you, and tbh, the ending was pretty abysmal.

Abby turned out to be a much better written character than she was portrayed initially, the structure isn’t good because it throws all other characters under the bus for Abby’s development, and that goes double for Ellie.

I’d give the game between a 6 and a 7/10.

What they did to Ellie’s character was a criminal derailing, but the Abby section, despite the rocky start because of the messy structure, holds up the rest of the game fairly well.

As for the vibes of the thread… Everyone that actually had mostly positive stuff to say wound up staying in the VG thread, so this one kinda went bad very quick. Not a lot of actual discussion because of that. Shit happens. :rofl:

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You mean you would give the STORY between a 6 and 7. You can’t really rate the game as you haven’t played it.

I also don’t get why some of you spend more than 30 hours watching something you don’t like just so you can let everyone know how much you dislike it lol. Some of you watch multiple streamers playing the same parts. I just never understood that mentality.

I’m not sure what you mean about what they did to Ellie’s character being a criminal derailing. Is that just because the story doesn’t go how you would have written it and wanted it to be?

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I gotta agree with @purbeast on this one @volt .

I have to take an L on this one. I’ve recently found out that the article that said this account of the situation was bullshit. I have no one but myself to blame. You can’t spell ignorance without IGN, I knew this and yet still bought the narrative. Failure on my part.

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Good point tbh. I was mostly basing myself on how the gameplay looked compared to the chunk I played of 1, so I really can’t talk much on that front.

Definitely looks improved in 2 though.

I think you’re making some assumptions here.

It’s not like I had a clear vision of what I’d like the story to be, though I’d definitely push the Abby section to the beginning so people could empathize with her better, as Druckmann intended.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to articulate my problems with Ellie’s character tbh, but basically, everything that Ellie does is related to how she’s utterly consumed by her quest for vengeance and all her actions are painted in a much more negative light and have much worse results than Abby’s.

Summary

Take for example the ending. Abby’s section of the game has her bonding with Lev after almost getting killed. The result is that Abby gets a second chance at life. (And subsequently, a third after Ellie rescues her from the Rattlers.)

Meanwhile, Ellie is almost killed during the Seattle Day 3 events. She tries to rebuild her life with Dina and her kid at the farm they wanted. Yet she can’t because she’s suffering with PTSD, throwing her right back into the void of misery.

To make things worse, the theme of forgiveness with Ellie is treated as flashbacks. So what happens to her until the very end of the game? She can’t forgive anything. Even though her character had already developed towards learning how to forgive.

Seth apologized and even made her a sandwich to prove that it was a more sincere apology than a forced one? Bigot sandwich.

Her revenge quest fails and she almost loses her girlfriend? She can’t find it in her to let it go until she has Abby at her mercy.

This is a character that said “I fear losing everyone and dying alone” in TLOU1. Yet she pushes everyone away in 2 and it’s heavily implied that her quest for vengeance left her completely alone.

Then, after falling into a trap, losing copious amounts of blood, almost dying and then figuring out Abby is captured and might die at any second…

She gotta make sure she lands the killing blow herself. She could literally turn around and go back home laughing and making Karma jokes, but nope. She gotta do what she gotta do…

And then she doesn’t.

After ruining her life, losing her wife, 2 fingers, and almost dying again, she remembers how to forgive and let go.

So yeah, it’s a bit inconsistent. And worse. Unsatisfying.

If she got the same ending after killing Abby, it’d have the same point about how revenge is ultimately empty and a pyrrhic victory at best.

Ellie literally gave away her “good ending” for nothing.

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Okay that makes sense what you are saying…

Summary

One thing you have to remember is that in TLOU1 Ellie is 14. Part 2 is 4 years later so she is 18 or 19. That is a HUGE difference. When you are 14 you are still a little kid. When you hit 18 and 19 you are an “adult” and think you know EVERYTHING about life.

I took it as she thinks she knows what is best about everything in life and that is why she is so pissed off at Joel for not letting her die. She thinks it is so easy for him to just let “his child” die like that.

And she is presented time after time in TLOU2 where there is this caretaker relationship that could be ruined by killing one of them. And it’s not just Ellie’s character, it is also when you are playing as Abby and she could kill someone in those relationships which would leave someone helpless. It’s just a recurring theme and it’s an inside battle they both have multiple times as to whether to take revenge or let the caretaker relationship continue.

I just saw it as them both coming of age and through everything they have been through, understanding that getting revenge is just flat out wrong, especially in those instances.

I thought they did a GREAT job displaying Ellie’s internal struggle to let it go or not. I also think it tied into her feeling guilted into it because of her last moments with Joel. Like when Tommy comes to the house at the end she seemed like she was fine with not going to find Abby, but Tommy made some comment about how she made a promise or something (forget exact wording) and I think that is what put her over the edge in letting it go and having to go find Abby.

I personally thought the end was super satisfying. Ellie could finally forgive Joel even though it took the entire TLOU2 story for that to happen. She had her closure and was okay with not killing Abby and could finally get on with her life, even though it was without Dina.

I also don’t think she thought Dina would have actually up and left so you have to remember she didn’t KNOW that it wasn’t going to be a “good” ending for her until she got back to the empty house.

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Maybe. But she did turn her back on her.

The age thing is a valid point, this is why I didn’t bring up the weed scene. It’s clearly a “college-age people doing dumb reckless things” scenario.

Summary

Iirc, Tommy showed up after her PTSD scene. By that point, it was already shown she couldn’t let the revenge go.

Like I said earlier, the criticism and review bombing are severely overblown, but I disagree with you on some points that keep it from “masterpiece” status.

Good to see this thread getting some level-headed discussion tho.

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The thing that’s weird to me about this game is that I just don’t “get” it.

summary

Maybe it’s just that I went into what I call “trope mode” after Joel died. You know that mode where you’re so disengaged from the story, you start thinking of it in terms of what the creators might have been thinking when things happen? That mode.

Under this lens, things may hit me different from how they hit someone else. All the attempts to make Abby seem good are manipulative. Abby gets all these positive moments, while Ellie gets the grime. The game seems to preach about how revenge isn’t the answer, when Abby got revenge and gets away light.

I don’t get how, with all the potential the last game had, you end up with this.

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Summary

Yeah, there’s some frankly blatant favoritism towards Abby while Ellie gets completely screwed even in similar scenarios.

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Summary

It feels like manipulative parlor tricks to me. That’s how cheap everything was.
On top of that:
1.) Abby is still unlikable. Really. Bangs her pregnant teammate’s man, for one. Has a reputation for being a killer. She shows no real remorse or consideration over those she’s killed like Ellie does (which in itself is still stupid, but w/e right now). She was A-OK with slitting a pregnant Dina’s throat until Lev stopped her.
2.) Her obligation to Lev and Kara seems to grow unnaturally. I get owing someone who saved your life, but the lengths she goes to are just crazy. At least, in this world.

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Summary

Did you find out about Joel’s death 2 months ago, while watching someone else play the game, or while playing it yourself?

I think the answer makes a big difference in how you could feel afterwards.

If you read it months ago you have no clue how it actually played out and have months to ponder it before you actually see how and why it happens. If you watched someone else play it, you don’t have to actually play anything so you can wonder why it happened and be mad about it instead of playing through the game. If you are actually playing it and felt that way, well I don’t know how you could be focused on that and not surviving if you are actually playing.