THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US PART I AND PART II
The Last of Us is one of my favorite games of the previous generation. And that's coming from someone who doesn't adore most third person action style games. I would much rather play an RPG, a metroidvania, or a platformer. Staying in the action genre, I typically prefer games with RPG elements or exploration like God of War or Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. What made The Last of Us stand out to me above other games in its genre were its deep character development, its amazing storytelling, superb voice acting and a brilliant musical score, which brought it all home. The Last of Us, to me, was never great because of its gameplay. The gun play, upgrade elements, and traversing the environments were all done much better in other games. However, the story of Joel and Ellie's journey was so beautifully written and crafted, that it truly touched the soul.
I'm a sucker for father-daughter stories. In this case, you can put daughter in quotes, because Ellie is obviously not Joel's biological daughter, but essentially filled in those shoes once his real daughter was killed in the opening moments of the game. Joel and Ellie's bond was one of my favorites in video game history. Their fight for survival being the bond that tied them together, they each grew to love one another platonically, learning about one another in their true and rawest forms. Joel looked at Ellie as someone to look after and care for, filling in that void missing after his daughter's death; perhaps viewing his relationship with her as a mulligan, and a way to make up for his daughter dying under his watch, by saving Ellie and giving her as good a life as one possibly can during post-apocalyptic times. Ellie looked at Joel as the father figure she didn't have, but not in the traditional sense. Ellie always oozed independence and was strong-willed, so while she didn't seek structure from Joel, he gave her that comfort any young girl craves. While she'd never admit it, she looked up to Joel. Seeing their relationship continue to blossom throughout the game, culminating in Joel sacrificing everything, even the future of the human race to save Ellie, when he couldn't save his own daughter, is the kind of stuff that gives you goosebumps and packs an emotional punch few video games can.
Their relationship was something that stayed with me long after I completed the game and why I so heavily anticipated the sequel. There were so many directions they could have taken with the sequel's story. With their development talent, it was hard to screw up. As long as they kept the same general formula, the story was going to be enjoyable. There were so many angles they could have taken. Ellie finding out about Joel sacrificing the Fireflies to save her, her turning on him, and them having to repair their relationship while they traverse they apocalyptic United States in search for another group who is working on a cure. They could've implemented more immune characters out there in the wild they searched to unite with. They could have explored other means to make a cure, and it would be up to Ellie and Joel to find it since they were responsible for other cure not being development. Anything, but the story path they chose. The route they decided to go in The Last of Us Part II was insulting, arrogant, and took one great big dump on two of the greatest video game characters in recent memory.
By killing off Joel in the first hour of the game, it reeked of trying to do something bold just for the hell of it, adding shock value to the game when it didn't need it. They tried desperately to subvert expectations after putting out trailers and promotional photos with Joel in the game, implying he was a central character to the plot once again. But most importantly, they ruined Joel and Ellie's characters in order to promote a dull, boring, uninteresting new character in Abby, who is essentially an lesser clone of Ellie on steroids. Much like Game of Thrones season 8, Naughty Dog's writers(I'm not going to put this entirely on Neil Druckmann) took amazing characters and ruined all the character development they built up.
They turned Joel into sacrificial lamb fodder to give Ellie a cliched revenge plot, and stain Abby's character so they could spend half the adventure trying to wash it out and convince the player to artificially grow to love her. And oh, boy did they try and make you love her. Every scene possible they shoved it right in your face with how caring and awesome she is, they gave her character all the best guns and upgrades, and built her like a tank so you could feel like a badass walking around and punching the fuck out of anything in your path. They turned Ellie into a dark, revenge-obsessed, emotionless killing machine totally devoid of all the character and charm she had in the first installment.
All of these changes, and for what? To preach to the audience that revenge is always bad? First of all, that's debatable, but secondly, that message has been done to death in video games, movies, and television. This was nothing new, and the way they approached it wasn't fresh either. To make things even more insulting, they force awkward gameplay segments onto the player, like having you literally tasked to pummel Ellie into oblivion with their new "golden child" Abby, once again pissing on series' best character's legacy, and being forced to brutally kill dogs with Ellie while "Lovable Abby" pets and plays catch with dogs during every moment of downtime.
The story concludes with Ellie having the perfect ideal life in a post-apocalyptic world. She has a nice house in a beautiful meadow with her newfound love and a child. What more could you ask for? Except, because for absolutely no reason at all, she goes all Daenerys Targaryen and decides to seek out revenge one final time "because flashbacks" and decides to travel down the entire west coast to seek out one girl, a needle in a haystack, just to kill someone she could have already killed. And after fighting through mobs of combatants and taking wooden shrapnel to the abdomen, and track her down barely alive, she decides to let her live at the last second before she can kill Abby and fulfill her promise to Joel's brother Tommy. It was contrived, it was lazy, and if you'd have asked me I'd have told you that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were brought on as writers for the game. The Last of Us Part II absolutely RUINED the series for me in every way. If there is another entry, I will not be purchasing it.
That's not to say the game doesn't have its strengths. The Ellie and Joel flashback segments were my favorites in the game(go figure). They captured some of the charm and emotion of Part I, and did more to build up story than the present moments. The graphics were amazing, arguably the best I've ever seen. How detailed the environments were, it seemed every blade of grass had its own physics, how the player interacted with ambiance was better and more realistic than anything I've ever played, and the character models were awesome.
Unfortunately, the action elements of the game weren't all that improved from Part I, the upgrade systems were largely unchanged, the puzzle segments were extremely vanilla, and even Gustavo Santaolalla's work wasn't nearly as noticeable or memorable as it was in the first. What a letdown.
The Last of Us Part II is one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. It not only didn't live up to the greatness of the original, but urinated all over its legacy, which is a real shame. I loved the characters, loved the story, and I was hoping this would be Naughty Dog's new focal series to carry gamers through the next generation at the very least. Instead, I got a game that ruined the series for me beyond repair and has me trying to forget it even existed so I can hold on to the memories of the first game.
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