This truly was a great game, the overall design and gameplay was a major step up from the original with improved controls, better weapon interface and aiming controls, the archery interface was greatly improved over the original. The game is also perfect in its presentation. The graphical fidelity is off the charts and is the absolute best that the PS4 has to offer, Ghost of Tsushima and Uncharted 4 are the only two that come close. I liked how the game took a break from its linear design every now and then and let you wander around in larger and more open environments. Overall the combat and enemy placement strategy is very well done in this game and what is even more well done is the boss design. The Rat King might just be the greatest boss ever put in a horror game and even rivals the greatest and most memorable bosses from Dead Space, Resident Evil and even the first Last of Us game.
So yes the gameplay has improved, just as it has improved over every singly Naughty Dog Third Person Shooter all the way from Uncharted 1 in 2007, but all the infamy of this game that is still rather new all lies in the narrative. This will obviously be a spoiler heavy review since I am going to discuss major details right ahead.
The Last of Us: Part II is a revenge story at its core and is very different thematically from the previous. What made the original game so popular and beloved was that it was a perfect mixture of light and darkness shown in extreme polar opposites. Showing the full spectrum of the best and worst of humanity and how genuine glimmers of hope and joy can outweigh the odds of the heaviest forms of darkness and despair. Last of Us 1 is highly regarded as the perfect video game narrative and not just the best in gaming history but even rivals some of the greatest in all of fictional media. Everyone loves a good story of hope and genuine humanity, and is exactly why Part II has become so polarised and hated by a lot of people. Those two elements are almost completley missing from it.
I do have to hand it to Naughty Dog for doing something different, you don't just want a carbon copy of the original and it hard to top that particular hope driven story anyway, so what do you do differently next time around. Well the revenge driven plot is a popular route to take movies with films like John Wick being very popular and raking in a lot of money. There is something very satisfying about revenge and definitely can satisfy your darker primal and more primitive emotions when you see a movie character lay carnage on the ones that made them suffer. So why not do that in a video game, I don't really see many video games that have taken this plot choice this extremley before, and you think it would be a satisfying experience. Well yes and no.
The main shocker of this game is the choice of killing of Joel only about 2 hours into the games story which becomes the inciting incident for the entire story. The cruelty of the scene is so brutally raw, that it's no wonder why so many fans were upset. I don't really get upset when I see a fictional character get killed off, because that's all they really are. A fictional character in a fictional story. I do agree that it was pretty distasteful though to have him thrown away to the side like that so quickly. As the same time though, it is a pretty brave choice to do this and I also have to applaud them. This isn't some happy feel good tale, this is The Last of Us, it's of course going to be a dark story and yes you will probably feel upset by what happens in it.
So the murder of Joel starts Ellie's journey of tracking down the killer, who is Abby. I kind of feel that the second reason why people were upset by this game is what this leads up to. As I said before, revenge is an extremely primal emotion and can be extremely satisfying and addictive. Many people were probably feeling a bit of a high in the games leadup to the encounter with Abby hoping that it would the moment the player gets to kill her and deliver some form of hard hitting and satisfying justice. But this does not happen. The game then subverts your expectations and makes you play Abby herself in her shoes instead. Taking you back a few days to the exact same time when Ellie began her vengeance driven hunt.
I for one was confused at first. But I actually grew to like this part of the game, as it shows the player to not be so quick to judge people you know nothing about. Even if what they've done is evil or horrific. Sure, what Abby did was evil, but you begin to see why the life she led and the type of people she was associated with drove her to make that choice.
I think I should talk about the factions that are in this game. It's focused around 3 different groups. The Boston Outpost where Joel, Ellie and her freinds are from which I will call "Team Ellie". They are mainly presented as the "good guys" and the people that the game defaults you to root for. Then there is the "WLF" which is a military based faction that Abby is assigned with that are against what Joel did in St Mary's Hospital in the finale of the first game. These are presented as the villains at first but then leaves it up to you of just how good or evil they really are after you understand their motivations.
That leaves you to the third and final faction in the game. The Seraphites. These guys are just completely and utterly insane. They are a primal extremist and religious cult who will simply destroy anyone who gets in their way or doesn't believe their views. They are basically nothing more than ruthless animals that are brainwashed beyond any hope of reason by their dogma. The scariest thing about them is that you never learn exactly what it is that they believe in, you are only given hints of just the extent of how intensive and the dogma really is based around.
You will be fighting a lot of these in Abby's portion of the game, and the moral narrative can become very confusing but also very interesting as you start to wonder which faction is more evil. How evil Abby is as a person truly, and whether anyone can find redemption for what they've done.
You also see how Ellie's humanity and goodness becomes slowly destroyed as she just cannot let go of her fixation of exacting vengeance on Abby, and it's hard to watch such a likeable character in the first game start to go so horribly dark and evil aswell.
So basically the underlying message of The Last of Us 2 is that seeking revenge or vengeance is ultimately not worth it, no matter what it may be about, because it will ruin you and you will not feel a sense of satisfaction or reduction if you try and sort things out this way. I think however one way this game could have been improved is that if it was choice driven like Mass Effect, BioShock or Undertale, where the story could have gone in different directions if you attempted to practice mercy or forgiveness on Abby instead of trying to kill her. Instead what you get it a 25 hour long linear one tracked slaughterfest as you watch the most likeable and light driven character of the first game become broken by her own evil and warped sense of justice and how vengeance and revenge destroys all.
I myself enjoyed the ride, but I can see why many will find this a journey that they will loathe start to finish. Maybe Naughty Dog can make Part III a choice driven game, how hard that might be. It would be very interesting if they concluded the story in this way, because from the way this game ended, it looks like there is a bit more to tell.
So yes the gameplay has improved, just as it has improved over every singly Naughty Dog Third Person Shooter all the way from Uncharted 1 in 2007, but all the infamy of this game that is still rather new all lies in the narrative. This will obviously be a spoiler heavy review since I am going to discuss major details right ahead.
The Last of Us: Part II is a revenge story at its core and is very different thematically from the previous. What made the original game so popular and beloved was that it was a perfect mixture of light and darkness shown in extreme polar opposites. Showing the full spectrum of the best and worst of humanity and how genuine glimmers of hope and joy can outweigh the odds of the heaviest forms of darkness and despair. Last of Us 1 is highly regarded as the perfect video game narrative and not just the best in gaming history but even rivals some of the greatest in all of fictional media. Everyone loves a good story of hope and genuine humanity, and is exactly why Part II has become so polarised and hated by a lot of people. Those two elements are almost completley missing from it.
I do have to hand it to Naughty Dog for doing something different, you don't just want a carbon copy of the original and it hard to top that particular hope driven story anyway, so what do you do differently next time around. Well the revenge driven plot is a popular route to take movies with films like John Wick being very popular and raking in a lot of money. There is something very satisfying about revenge and definitely can satisfy your darker primal and more primitive emotions when you see a movie character lay carnage on the ones that made them suffer. So why not do that in a video game, I don't really see many video games that have taken this plot choice this extremley before, and you think it would be a satisfying experience. Well yes and no.
The main shocker of this game is the choice of killing of Joel only about 2 hours into the games story which becomes the inciting incident for the entire story. The cruelty of the scene is so brutally raw, that it's no wonder why so many fans were upset. I don't really get upset when I see a fictional character get killed off, because that's all they really are. A fictional character in a fictional story. I do agree that it was pretty distasteful though to have him thrown away to the side like that so quickly. As the same time though, it is a pretty brave choice to do this and I also have to applaud them. This isn't some happy feel good tale, this is The Last of Us, it's of course going to be a dark story and yes you will probably feel upset by what happens in it.
So the murder of Joel starts Ellie's journey of tracking down the killer, who is Abby. I kind of feel that the second reason why people were upset by this game is what this leads up to. As I said before, revenge is an extremely primal emotion and can be extremely satisfying and addictive. Many people were probably feeling a bit of a high in the games leadup to the encounter with Abby hoping that it would the moment the player gets to kill her and deliver some form of hard hitting and satisfying justice. But this does not happen. The game then subverts your expectations and makes you play Abby herself in her shoes instead. Taking you back a few days to the exact same time when Ellie began her vengeance driven hunt.
I for one was confused at first. But I actually grew to like this part of the game, as it shows the player to not be so quick to judge people you know nothing about. Even if what they've done is evil or horrific. Sure, what Abby did was evil, but you begin to see why the life she led and the type of people she was associated with drove her to make that choice.
I think I should talk about the factions that are in this game. It's focused around 3 different groups. The Boston Outpost where Joel, Ellie and her freinds are from which I will call "Team Ellie". They are mainly presented as the "good guys" and the people that the game defaults you to root for. Then there is the "WLF" which is a military based faction that Abby is assigned with that are against what Joel did in St Mary's Hospital in the finale of the first game. These are presented as the villains at first but then leaves it up to you of just how good or evil they really are after you understand their motivations.
That leaves you to the third and final faction in the game. The Seraphites. These guys are just completely and utterly insane. They are a primal extremist and religious cult who will simply destroy anyone who gets in their way or doesn't believe their views. They are basically nothing more than ruthless animals that are brainwashed beyond any hope of reason by their dogma. The scariest thing about them is that you never learn exactly what it is that they believe in, you are only given hints of just the extent of how intensive and the dogma really is based around.
You will be fighting a lot of these in Abby's portion of the game, and the moral narrative can become very confusing but also very interesting as you start to wonder which faction is more evil. How evil Abby is as a person truly, and whether anyone can find redemption for what they've done.
You also see how Ellie's humanity and goodness becomes slowly destroyed as she just cannot let go of her fixation of exacting vengeance on Abby, and it's hard to watch such a likeable character in the first game start to go so horribly dark and evil aswell.
So basically the underlying message of The Last of Us 2 is that seeking revenge or vengeance is ultimately not worth it, no matter what it may be about, because it will ruin you and you will not feel a sense of satisfaction or reduction if you try and sort things out this way. I think however one way this game could have been improved is that if it was choice driven like Mass Effect, BioShock or Undertale, where the story could have gone in different directions if you attempted to practice mercy or forgiveness on Abby instead of trying to kill her. Instead what you get it a 25 hour long linear one tracked slaughterfest as you watch the most likeable and light driven character of the first game become broken by her own evil and warped sense of justice and how vengeance and revenge destroys all.
I myself enjoyed the ride, but I can see why many will find this a journey that they will loathe start to finish. Maybe Naughty Dog can make Part III a choice driven game, how hard that might be. It would be very interesting if they concluded the story in this way, because from the way this game ended, it looks like there is a bit more to tell.