The Hard Choice: An Epilogue For ‘The Last of Us Part II’
The Last of Us Part II is an emotionally complex and intentionally misleading adventure that offers us insight to overcoming grievances and the consequences of resolution. It is Andy’s recommendation that you listen to The Last of Us Part II OST while reading.
Emotionally Complex
It is without question that we will encounter difficult choices in the face of adversity, and in the wake of trauma. Who we are in those moments affects who we will become and how others will view and judge us. Most importantly, it affects our own peace of mind considering the potential to reflect back at us, or perhaps reveal, both the best and the worst of our character.
The Last of Us Part II masterfully navigates the complexity, power, and influence of emotion through contrasting character choices with striking moral ambiguity. This builds the necessary context for the narrative, providing a frame of reference for the motivations and consequences of each character’s actions.
Structures and Themes of the Story
Naughty Dog deploys parallel storytelling to show us two sides of the same coin, the premise being to challenge our predispositions. The narrative is thematically familial focused and rightfully so in a post apocalyptic world. When civilization and societal infrastructure break down, family and community are the instinctual infrastructure we default to. This frame of reference is one of the key factors that adds a tone of moral ambiguity to the actions performed by most characters. They make decisions on behalf of what they think is right for themselves and their family or people they care deeply about in their community. This is intentional, designed to deliver perspectives that cause us to precariously straddle the fence. Except on one particular occasion. Joel’s brutal murder at the hands of Abby. This is the part that is intentionally misleading, conscripting us to Ellie’s seemingly just cause.
But first, let’s examine the context that led to that fateful encounter. Let’s explore the heart wrenching father-daughter relationship dynamics that compare Joel and Jerry as fathers of strong character making difficult decisions that have immediate and lasting consequences.
The Sins of the Father
Joel, a kind and loving father, was shattered when he lost his daughter Sarah at the beginning of the outbreak. He lost himself, becoming the monster he needed to be to survive, something he struggled a long time with. After 20 years, he finally shows signs of having returned to some sense of fatherhood, finding closure for his daughter’s death through his bond with Ellie. Upon discovering she must be sacrificed to produce a cure, Joel refuses to accept that outcome and experience that kind of loss again. It is the unflinching conviction to save his daughter that compels him to make the hard decision of eliminating all opposition.
Among that opposition is Jerry, a skilled doctor and caring father who has an opportunity to cure mankind’s cordyceps infection, but he must decide to sacrifice Ellie in order to produce the vaccine. Even though he chokes up when Marlene asks him if he would sacrifice his own daughter instead of Ellie, he knows that he could never live it down if he let this opportunity to save millions slip through his hands. He makes the hard choice to sacrifice Ellie in the hopes of saving mankind.
The intertwining of Joel’s and Jerry’s actions are the foundation of The Last of Us Part II’s narrative. The consequences that follow are the mire in which Abby and Ellie find themselves, trudging through it with incredible difficulty.
Establishing Motivation, The Intentionally Misleading
Who among us can say without hesitation that what Joel did at St. Mary’s Hospital makes him a good person? A man who slaughtered the entirety of the Fireflies posted there that night is not sinless. No level of empathy – I say this being a father myself – should excuse his actions. We may very well understand his deeds, but to ignore the impact they would have is to be naive of the world in which all of this takes place. The apocalypse has essentially delivered the end of law, and instead communities become self policing, establishing their own forms of governance and rules without anything more than trust or power to dictate their effectiveness. People are inclined to take matters into their own hands. Especially those of justice.
The first stone was cast when Joel ended Jerry’s life to save Ellies. Think about what that means: Joel murdered Jerry, Abby’s father, a loving and caring doctor doing everything in his power to find a cure for cordyceps and save millions of lives – Joel took that away. This was the catalyst that set in motion Abby’s quest to avenge her father. And if, for one reason or the other, we’re on the fence about Joel’s sins, then we can’t immediately jump to one side or the other when considering Abby’s motivation. I think Nathan Zed said it best, “everybody had their own ‘The Last of Us’…everybody is somebody’s Ellie. Everybody is somebody’s Joel.”
This is important context to understand why Joel’s death is intentionally misleading. Though I have explained it here, in the game we are not privy to Abby’s motivation prior to her killing Joel, though we can infer that her quest is revenge. Even Joel suspects it, knowing well that he has wronged a great many people in his past: “Why don’t you say whatever speech you’ve got rehearsed and get this over with.” He is not naive to his own deeds. Withholding Abby’s motivation from the player at first allows us to experience the raw emotion of Joel’s brutal murder with Ellie.
What I think hurts the most about this (and yes, it’s supposed to) is actually a testament to the first game’s ability to tell a convincing story. I believed, or at least wanted to believe, that despite his actions Joel was the good guy. That he was a paragon of strength in the face of adversity and trauma. I grew to love Ellie with Joel, witnessing their bond grow through the entirety of the first game. I wanted to succeed. I wanted Joel to succeed. I wanted to save Ellie as much as he did. Sacrificing her wasn’t an option. The Last of Us was Joel’s story. His words to Ellie after she gives him the photo of his daughter Sarah before they make it to St. Mary’s Hospital ring truer still in The Last of Us Part II. “No matter how hard you try, I guess you can’t escape your past.”
Ellie’s Vengeance
Ellie, like Abby, seeks closure in the form of vengeance, believing that revenge will end her suffering and right her grievances. She embarks on her quest, leaving Jackson with Dina, to bring an end to the lives of those involved with Joel’s death, especially focused on ending Abby. She tracks Abby’s group to Seattle where she begins to hunt them, mowing down anyone in her way. The body count grows as she gets closer and closer to finding them. Her singular focus reminds me of Joel’s conviction at St. Mary’s, that once he set his mind to a task he would accomplish it at any cost. Ellie is getting her revenge at any cost, constantly putting herself in danger and eliminating any and all opposition.
She eventually finds Nora, one of the people present for Joel’s murder, and proceeds to torture her for information, brutally beating her to death with a metal pipe. It is worth noting that the entire scene is saturated with red, an implicit yet clear indication of Ellie’s rage. After killing Nora, she makes it back to Dina at the theater, visibly shaken. This is the first instance that we see explicitly what kind of a toll this quest is taking on her. She is clearly struggling with seeing this through. When Dina is comforting her with a hug, she feels that stability and trust and it makes her realize even more that she doesn’t want to lose it. She holds tight to Dina’s arm as if she’s grasping for some sort of humanity to pull her from the brink. This is a critical point in Ellie’s evolving mentality. Her rigid quest for revenge has softened a little bit, with the threat of losing even more than she already has lingering over her. She and Jesse then decide to find and extract Tommy, the plan being to regroup and head back to Jackson.
However, when given the choice between pursuing Abby and extracting Tommy, she chooses to continue her quest, reasoning with herself that going after Abby is the best way to help Tommy. This decision leads her to the aquarium where she expects to find Abby, but instead she runs into Owen and Mel. Shaken from torturing Nora, she does not hurt them for information. Instead, using a tactic she learned from Joel, she demands them to reveal Abby’s location. This shows us how much her conviction has softened after torturing Nora. Where previously she was ready to take them all out, she no longer seems to hold that position. Without that all-out focus, Ellie wavers in her interrogation. Owen recognizes an opportunity to get he and Mel out of the situation, but ultimately it ends in their demise. In his last breath, he reveals to Ellie that Mel was pregnant.
This sends Ellie into another state of shock. Another sign that this task is breaking her down. Her quest for revenge has led her from one despair t o the next, extracting from her the vitality and conviction with which she set out from Jackson. In killing Mel, she saw the parallel herself in that she could just as easily lose Dina.
Back at the theater, Ellie realizes the consequences of their quest. The dangers of continuing. Though she doesn’t want to leave Seattle having not faced Abby, she realizes that she has to in order to keep Dina safe. To keep from losing any more than they’ve already lost. Tommy assures her that they got what they deserved, but it’s time to go. Ellie reluctantly agrees, ready to move on even without exacting her revenge. A few moments later, Tommy is heard struggling in the next room and as Ellie and Jesse burst through the door, Jesse is shot and killed on the spot. It’s Abby.
Playing Abby
The game then decides to swap perspective to Abby, Joel’s killer. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly jarring. The disruption of the parallel storytelling was mild in the beginning as we flipped back and forth between Abby and Ellie on their collision course, and after their first encounter it seemed that we were finished playing as Abby. But now, we assume control of her exclusively. It starts in a flashback scene that is more reminiscent of the back and forth style from the beginning, but once we learn of her dad’s fate, we jump forward in time to parallel Ellie’s three days spent in Seattle. It’s an incoherent spring forward that happens in a short amount of time, despite how critical the context of her past is. After this scene, we spend quite a lot of time learning about Abby’s backstory (the narrative driving bits that I’ve already talked about regarding Jerry and Joel), her relationships with the people who helped her kill Joel, and a much larger story that is relatively glanced over involving two warring factions, the WLF and the Serpahites.
Up to this point we have spent the entirety of the game as Ellie, pushing onward and skilling-up in our endeavor to avenge Joel. The structure of the upgrades allowed us to prioritize what kinds of tactics are important for the playstle we are developing. The options have been fairly numerous and range from high stealth to open combat. After spending so much time hunting for meds to upgrade abilities, we don’t get much time, if any, to enjoy the gameplay we’ve been working toward before the switch happens. In this way, it feels like our well earned toolkit has been stripped from us, and it happens without warning.
The switcheroo not only strips us of our upgrades and abilities, giving us a clean slate with Abby, but it comes at a narrative cliffhanger. A time in which the fate of the characters hangs in the balance, on the cusp of what seems like a terrible resolution to Ellie’s quest in Seattle. We tore Seattle apart trying to find Abby, and now here she is. The fated encounter. Instead? Cut to black, fade to Abby 4 years earlier.
I’m not trying to imply that this is a decision that undermines the narrative and the gameplay simultaneously, despite what it looks and sounds like. In fact, I find compelling justification for prioritizing the storytelling and then trying to find a compromise for the gameplay, like increasing the amount and rate of finding meds and parts for Abby’s abilities and gun upgrades. It’s just that, given the sequences that led to the events at the theater, severing the narrative on a cliffhanger and then transitioning into clean-slate gameplay of the character we were hunting should be expected to feel jarring.
The narrative switch is jarring too. The question I had at the time was “why do it like this?” Why have us go through the motions, then take away what seemed like the resolution? I often find that cliffhangers are a powerful storytelling technique because they reveal to us our level of investment. If we are indeed on the edge of our seats, looking for the consequence, good or bad, then the story has proven itself to be capable of grabbing our attention or making us care. Even when cliffhangers feel bad, it seems to me that the narrative was still successful at some point or another to then make it feel like some kind of net loss to end on a note that isn’t resolved. The Last of Us Part II does this consciously. It pulls the rug out from under us, knowing well that resolution lies just beyond this fated confrontation.
And again the narrative structure becomes the most important aspect of the story’s presentation. Naughty Dog saw fit that we must at least be exposed to the other side of the coin. Thus there is a need to spend time as Abby, not passively in cutscenes or flashbacks (though we get plenty of those too) but actively performing similar though not the same tasks as Ellie, mechanically speaking. The gameplay functions as the unifier. The thing that transcends the story itself, and affects directly the player.
It’s not just about the concept of putting yourself in Abby’s shoes, but rather a process of good-faith arguments. There are at least two sides to every story, and Naughty Dog doesn’t want to simply show another side, they want us to play it. What I love about this is that it has had wildly different effects, depending on who you speak to. Some of us hated it. Some of us loved it. Some of us were thinking “okay, but can you get to the point?” Initially, I was just as stunned as I think the majority of us were. But that dissolved quickly as I explored the WLF stadium, speaking with Manny about what the plans were for the day. I may not like Abby, and I have every reason not to at this point (just like Ellie), but to ignore the context and content of her character is a mistake that I think Naughty Dog tries to do right by. Not as a means to get us to like Abby, but as a means to share both sides of the story. An argument that not everybody is as black and white as we may project them to be. That nuance and subtlety are important.
Though the switch of perspectives left me with a sour taste in my mouth, I approached the scenario with an open mind and a few things began clicking for me. I passed a weight room, something that resembled a proper gym, and realized that Abby had trained to achieve her physical form in order to prepare for confronting Joel. I passed classrooms full of kids and was reminded of the snowball fight in Jackson with Ellie and Dina. In the cafeteria I spoke to Manny’s father who told me to look out for his son, giving me a sense for what these people might value. At nearly every turn I had to confront my previous perceptions, even if it hurt to acknowledge that despite killing Joel, the WLF at large didn’t seem like terrible people. They seemed like people trying to make it together. It reminded me of walking through Jackson with Ellie. Not the physical town itself, but it’s metaphorical character. The quality of its people. And I was reminded of Tess when she says “we’re shitty people Joel.”
Really, that last bit is the glue for me in all of this. I made sure to remind myself that, no matter how much I wanted to hate Abby and her group, none of the characters The Last of Us Part II focuses on are inherently good or bad. They all have done and continue to do good and bad things. They’re making difficult decisions in a lawless, morally compromised, and punishing world. When faced with the reality of Abby’s situation, given the context of her dad’s death at the hands of Joel, things start to make more sense. It’s not about liking any of it. It’s about due process. Good-faith, if you will.
Retribution
The Last of Us Part II does not attempt to determine who deserves to live or die for their sins. There is no meta commentary on what is right or wrong. Only the perspectives of characters making difficult choices in the face of adversity and in the wake of trauma. The consequences that follow can land anywhere on the spectrum, often predictably so. Abby and Ellie both seek closure in the form of vengeance for their fathers, but neither of them actually achieve it without retribution. It is retribution that saves them from revenge.
Understanding Abby’s Character Arc
When we are first introduced to Abby, she jolts awake from a nightmare. As she is about to deliver the killing blow to Joel, she remembers the night her dad died as if to steel her conviction in the task at hand. However, even after exacting her revenge on Joel, she continues to have terrible dreams, again jolting out of bed as Manny wakes her up. She is still not at peace. The next nightmare she has begins the same way the memory of her father’s death does, except this time beyond the door, she sees Lev and Yara hanging, disemboweled, just as she would have been had they not intervened. She jolts awake again, as restless as ever.
It isn’t until after she rescues Yara and Lev from the trailer, brings them to safety, and save’s Yara’s life by securing medical supplies for surgery that she dreams again. This time, she sees her father alive and well, proud and smiling gently as she enters the room. She has followed in his footsteps and chosen to save lives instead of end them. This brings a sort of closure to her struggle with her dad’s death, allowing her to move on from the cycle of violence and revenge she was being consumed by.
This is short lived, as she soon finds that Owen and Mel were killed while she was away. The hurt and suffering sends her back to the brink, and she pursues the killer to the theater, presumably to exact revenge. When she discovers that it’s Ellie and Tommy, the two present for Joel’s murder, she makes a remark that shouldn’t go unrepresented: “You killed my friends. We let you both live and you wasted it!” This remark signals to me one of the things I think so many people have either ignored or somehow missed the importance of. Abby’s group did not go to Jackson to plunder and slaughter. They were only looking for Joel. Despite having the opportunity to kill both Ellie and Tommy, to tidy up “loose ends”, they instead let them live. Owen made it clear that killing Ellie and Tommy wouldn’t make them any better than Joel was. And Abby has that at the front of her mind when she confronts Ellie at the theater.
Abby thwarts Ellie’s group, ending with a scene that I also think is underrepresented in portraying Abby’s character. In her emblazoned rage, she wants to kill Dina as payback for Ellie having killed Mel, but Lev brings Abby out of her enraged state by calling out to her. Perhaps this is all it takes because Lev now embodies or represents the retribution of Abby’s arc. A reconciliation of her humanity. She did, after all, save Lev and his sister’s lives on multiple occasions, and even chased Lev to the island to try and keep him from getting hurt. He is not only her reminder that she has never found closure on the other side of violence and revenge, but he is also the witness of her character in this moment. To kill Dina is to admit never having changed. Instead, she shows mercy.
Converging Parallels
I think the most significant aspects of Ellie’s character arc, the ways in which the two character’s narratives are parallel, happen after the confrontation with Abby in the theater. She and Dina are portrayed as having some semblance of a comfortable life, but we soon learn that Ellie is still haunted by Joel’s death. She has been reliving the moment, just like Abby did with her dad’s death. Tommy makes things worse by showing up one day with a new lead on Abby’s whereabouts. He pushes Ellie hard on the matter, reminding her that she promised she’d make them pay.
Ellie shows clear reservation in taking up this quest again. She considers her last night with Joel, the night of the dance. They had another falling out and Ellie was harsh in her response to Joel standing up to Seth for her. She feels guilty, like she owes it to Joel to go back out and end Abby as some sort of retribution. So she sets off again, trying to bring an end to the suffering she never escaped from.
The Showdown
The final segment of The Last of Us Part II is the third and final convergence of Abby and Ellie’s stories. Ellie learns that Abby has been captured by a group called The Rattlers. After finding the Rattler’s location, she proceeds to slaughter them all, just as she mowed down WLF members in Seattle, to get to Abby. She learns from the Rattler’s prisoners that Abby and Lev tried to escape, but were caught and are being punished at the pillars on the beach. At the pillars, she finds Abby emaciated and suffering. When she cuts Abby down, Abby immediately rushes to free Lev and then carries him to the boats on the beach nearby.
This whole sequence is fraught with uneasy tension. There is a clear power dynamic between Ellie and Abby that does not have them on equal footing. At each point in the past, Ellie has confronted Abby when she was healthy, strong, and menacing. But this time, Abby and Lev seem near death. Though she could take Abby’s life at the poles, she frees her instead. Something about it doesn’t feel right, she can’t end it like this. What kind of a person would that make her?
Once they make it to the boats, Ellie sees blood on her hand and Joel’s death flashes through her mind one last time, reminding her why she set out on this quest. She decides that she can’t let Abby go. The two of them square off, and a fight to the death ensues. After some devastating damage back and forth, Ellie pins Abby under the water in an attempt to drown her. As she’s holding her down, she has yet another memory of Joel. But this time, he’s alive and well, playing guitar on his porch. Something about this memory causes her to let Abby go.
Some time later, Ellie returns to the farmhouse. A now empty shell with only her belongings remaining. She tries to play the guitar, but isn’t able to do it well having lost her fingers in the fight with Abby. In her state of reflection, the memory of Joel playing his guitar after their falling out at the dance comes to her. In this memory, we learn that Ellie didn’t forgive Joel for his actions at Saint Marys, but that she would like to try. This tells us that their relationship, after having been on such rocky terms since Joel told her the truth about the Fireflies, had finally reached a point at which it could begin to mend. Which makes Joel’s death the next day all the more devastating. The penultimate grievance was Joel’s torturous murder, but the ultimate grievance is that they never got the chance to mend their relationship. Ellie was robbed of her chance to forgive Joel. It is the last critical piece in understanding Ellie’s motivations and her acceptance of the resolution.
Bittersweet Peace
Closure is the resolution of struggle. An end to some form of suffering. The crux of this game for me is in the connection of the first cutscene 4 years before Joel’s death and the last flashback. “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself,” is the premise of both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II. In the first game, Joel lost his daughter Sarah and subsequently lost himself in the 20 years after her death. Comments like “I’ve been on both sides” when talking to Ellie about the hunters of Pennsylvania, or his argument with Tommy at the electric plant near Jackson show us that he has on multiple occasions forgone his humanity in order to survive. In losing his daughter Sarah, he lost himself.
In this game, Ellie loses herself when she loses Joel, embarking on a quest for revenge. Along the way, she learns of the cost of her endeavors, but is unable to remove herself from the cycle, thinking always that killing Abby is the only way to overcome her grievance. The only way to end her suffering. However, it is her memory of Joel that helps her find herself again. She was harsh to him, exacting some small, personal revenge over the couple years after he told her the truth about what happened at St. Mary’s Hospital. The last time they spoke, he expressed to her that, given the chance, he would do it all over again. And in that moment I think there is a reconciliation of truths. She realizes that she probably can’t fathom how much she means to him, giving context to his decisions despite the fact that he betrayed and hurt her in the process. Instead of harboring disdain and anger, she would rather try to trade it for forgiveness, even if she may not ever get there.
Ellie’s quest was never solely about revenge, no matter how badly she may have wanted it. She may not ever be able to forgive Abby for killing Joel, but she realizes that just like how she overcame her grievances with Joel, in order to move on she needs to overcome her grievances with Abby. She understands that Abby’s death is not what will bring her closure. It is putting Joel to rest that will. Honoring his memory, rising to the occasion and ending the cycle. Though her battles may have started with Joel and Abby, the war was won within.
Meta Commentary
The opportunity to right wrongs inflicted upon us is often not a journey we can project onto others. It must be resolved within. The Last of Us Part II shows us such endeavors through a well crafted fictional lens. It touches upon the emotional complexity of anger, hatred, guilt, grief, love, and forgiveness through careful, good-faith presentation of parallel narratives.
I find a parallel in The Last of Us Part II and modern culture narratives, which is why I’ve worded the thesis of this review the way I have and why I feel the need now to explain my process for developing nuanced positions for the reviews that I do for Epilogue Gaming. The Last of Us Part II was received with such critical fervor that it was difficult to discern noise from genuine information. It was hard to make sense of the perfect score reviews and abysmally low user score on Metacritic because the noise was so loud. Experiencing this game in the bubble I had made for myself was an incredible relief, but as soon as I emerged, it was like the purgatory voices of the river Styx had been unleashed upon every sphere I tried to engage with about the game. I struggled to make sense of it all, and I struggled to communicate effectively my outrage at the outrage. It was made apparent to me that it wasn’t only my communication that had broken down, but that I was one among many people in the same boat. In that struggle, I concluded that I had a grievance of my own to file with consumers, and really, with gaming as a form of media.
However, in that conclusion I was immediately struck by the very narratives I had just experienced through the game. To communicate effectively, in the image of The Last of Us Part II, would require due process. What I found was quite shocking, though not unheard of. A minority of extremely loud consumers berated the game for a number of reasons, many of which were overtly sexist or bigoted, without any critical substance to support the claims. In doing so, those of us looking to engage with substance found ourselves confronting the noise in ways that brought to light a number of heavily unexplored but interesting topics. The lack of nuanced conversation was extremely apparent, and the vocal minority screaming from the rooftops made it difficult to engage with each other.
Though the lack of substance made it easy to write off or ignore the vocal minority, it instilled a sort of divisiveness that I haven’t experienced with any other game. It seemed like so many of us began to slip into camps, or worse, people would assign us a camp after simply uttering whether or not we liked the game. It was at this point that I felt like I had been labeled as one thing or another, with nearly no nuance afforded in the position. Video games hold such a sacred space in my life that I guess I had naively hoped for their exclusion from the culture surrounding most media these days.
At some level or another, many cultures across the world are airing their grievances. I often find a complete lack of nuance in the perspectives presented. Just as I found in many of the initial outcrys of The Last of Us Part II. And the insight I gained from the game itself, about how we can overcome our grievances, led me to assess the meta narratives of this game similar to how I assessed Death Stranding.
What I think is so brilliant about the narrative is that it seems self aware. Naughty Dog made it a point to be misleading about the content of the game, and the effects of this are clear to me in the aftermath of outrage at Joel’s death. We were unfairly hurt, albeit intentionally so. In misleading the public, Naughty Dog was able to preserve the impact of the narrative. We shared in Ellie’s pain that way. And it seems to have caused some sort of disconnect between the player and their agency in the story.
There’s a parallel here that’s importance should not be understated. When we see the game strictly as Ellie vs Abby, it seems to me that this parallels Consumer vs Naughty Dog. Ellie being the consumer, the person we’re rooting for. No harm shall be done. It’s almost like declaring the consumer (Ellie) as a sacred zone. A safe space in which it is sacrilegious to tread upon. Abby then is the developer, the target of our grievances. How dare they do that to me, to Ellie, to Joel. As though empathy is only accessible by those in belief they’ve been unjustly tread upon.
The Last of Us Part II is indeed gripping. So much so that I think we can lose ourselves in the emotional complexity of it all. However, we must be able to separate ourselves from the game, to remove ourselves from the actions of the characters. It is no different in film, books, or other sorts of media or art. If we assume the role of Ellie, in enacting our revenge on Abby, we risk becoming the person that tries to enact our revenge on the artist. On the developer. The voice talent.
We have to stop this. We have to be capable of separating the art from the artist (not that we always should, but that we should be capable). We have to employ critical emotion just as often as we employ critical thinking. We need to be better at managing our expectations, especially when the story demands it. Subversion of expectations is powerful, especially as a storytelling technique.
The Consequence of Resolution
How do we move forward constructively without adding to the polarization? How can we resolve our grievances, and what might the consequences be? Though we may intend for greater outcomes than the endeavors that make them, it’s difficult to make sense of the paths when there is so much loud, belligerent noise. Like Ellie, like Abby, we too could get wrapped up in it all, trying to communicate something, anything, at any cost. Is there only bittersweet peace at the end? I refuse, and maybe that’s part of the problem.
This review took a lot from me. I was angry at people’s anger. Outraged by their outrage. I don’t know if next time I will have the strength, like Abby or Ellie, to spare anyone. At some point I begin to feel like Tommy, wounded, struggling, and focused on revenge. Back in the cycle. I don’t want to be biting and cold. Don’t waste this.
Wrapping Up the Meta
Even though it has taken me weeks to organize my thoughts on this game and translate that into some sort of review, I don’t think I’ve done much justice to the concepts I presented herein and why I think they’re important, let alone how they resonate so well with The Last of Us Part II. Perhaps it warrants further inspection – another article/video maybe – of these perspectives on the meta narratives and meta commentary of video games. But I at least hope this review has showcased that video games, as media, can and often do reflect aspects of our culture, desirable or not. And hopefully I’ve left you, as The Last of Us Part II left me, thinking about the significance of overcoming our grievances and the potential consequences of resolution. “To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.” – Johan Huizinga.
A Final Note
The Last of Us Part II has had multiple profound effects on my overall perspective of video games, forever changing the way I evaluate them. Never before have I experienced a game this powerful and fragile. It took me a really long time to figure out how I wanted to present this idea, and I consider it must-have insight into how I experienced this game initially. I had formulated some perspective on the matter while writing the majority of this review, but I hadn’t really found the right kind of language until I engaged in a brief discussion with some of the members of the Epilogue Gaming discord server a few days ago.
Though The Last of Us Part II is certainly masterclass in some number of things, it also hugely misses what makes those things coherently masterful. The easiest way I’ve come to describe this is that, despite all of its accomplishments, it is so obviously gamey. As if the impeccable character performances, the unbelievably detailed and engrossing world, and the impact of the narrative structure are so separate from certain elements like scavenging, crafting, and clunky or repetitive segments of combat that make it that much more apparent the distance between what games can do and what they actually do (thanks for the lingo here, Ben). If there is one thing I am more certain of than ever, it’s that The Last of Us Part II affords both a look at the pinnacle of what games are, and a view beyond into the vast landscape of what they could be. This is a testament to the game’s masterclass achievements, and a firm nod to its shortcomings.
An Epilogue
It must be addressed, as many times as necessary, the overwhelming grievances that have been weaponized against this game, the people who made it, those who enjoy it, and many who would talk about it.
I had a difficult decision to make in writing this review: whether or not to combine an analysis of the culture with the analysis of the game, or to leave them as separate topics and perhaps write on them both. But my experience dictates that I must include, at a minimum, some statements about the culture surrounding The Last of Us Part II and how it has affected my experience. It has done so greatly, and this review would be inadequate in conveying what I think is so special – and sometimes lacking – in this game without including that analysis.
The ethos of my review process makes it a lengthy one. I go through tremendous effort to avoid any spoiler-territory to make the playthrough as blind as possible, aside from officially released material like trailers or lore spouts from developers. I then spend a lot of time entrenched in the narrative and the gameplay, often playing through the game more than once, trying to absorb as much information as I can and give it shape in the form of voiced or written perspective. Nothing concrete, everything open to interpretation, and willing to change with more info. Once I feel exhausted of my own endeavors, I go out into the world and collect a secondary level of information from all kinds of sources. I look at reviews, discussion boards, listen to the soundtrack, have conversations with others about our experiences, keep a thumb on the general reception of the game, actively seek out critique, and much more. I spend a lot of time observing the initial epilogue of a game’s cycle, comparing and contrasting my own experience along the way. In this way, I enjoy the luxury of a mile high view; I can see so much of the landscape in which our perceptions of a game evolve. But my weakness is then the tradeoff of micro for macro. In other words, it’s difficult to see the details when you zoom out of a picture.
However, I feel this process of review is necessary for me in developing a robust understanding of the game. A process through which I can observe as much as possible, often exposing myself to angles I wouldn’t have discovered on my own. A true synthesis of perspective in which I am not the sole creditor.
The reason I’m explaining this is because I think it is critical, albeit unfortunately so, that I write in a disclaimer for this review explaining how I generate the ideas and follow through with them in the reviews I write for Epilogue Gaming. In the cultural climate we find ourselves in, it is important that such a truism of my work with Epilogue, and one of the tenets of good-faith journalism of any kind, be outright stated. Not only because it is important for those of you consuming this to understand why I feel the need to write this as part of the review, but also because I see the connection between The Last of Us Part II’s narrative construction and overarching themes to some message about the kind of culture we’re fostering, not just in the games industry, but as consumers at large, and I think with further analysis and observation we would find even more perspective on the matters I’ve barely scratched the surface of here.
In summary, I feel that at the hands of a very loud and vocal minority, we are losing our abilities to communicate. That our critics have been unjustly attacked or ignored. That even our praises have somehow been polluted. For some reason or another, it’s increasingly difficult to simply talk about a game anymore. For this, the culture I willingly entrench myself in when determining what to write in my reviews, I have my own grievances. And they cannot be separated from my experience with the game.
What I hope I’ve offered in this review is something a little different than what you’ll find elsewhere. Something that functions as preliminary commentary on the culture we’re all responsible for developing and protecting. And optimistically, I hope it functions as something that asks us to engage a conversation about good-faith games journalism and consumerism. As I did with my review of Death Stranding, this review was crafted in the image of The Last of Us Part II as my attempt at navigating the emotionally complex to overcome grievance and discover the consequence of resolution.
Verdict: Groundbreaking
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