The Last of Us Part II: A Retrospective
The Last of Us Part II is a game that intrigues me in many ways, and for many of the same reasons that stories like Star Wars, the DCEU and Fate/stay night intrigue me. These are all amazing stories, but they also feel incomplete in some ways. They’re not perfect, that’s for sure, but they’re within spitting distance of greatness, and it’s that tiny gap between “pretty damn good” and “holy shit this is amazing” that gets my storyteller brain going.
Like those stories, Part II always felt incomplete on some level, and for a long time, I struggled to understand why. One common opinion of the game I’ve heard since its release is: “No matter how you feel about it, The Last of Us Part II is a game that did what it set out to do.”
But…what exactly did it set out to do? What were Naughty Dog’s goals with this project?
Explaining The Thematic Core of Part II:
The Last of Us, as a series, is all about love, empathy and immersiveness. The purpose of these games is for us to inhabit the shoes of the main character to such a degree that we feel what they feel and get attached to the people they are attached to. It’s similar to Uncharted, but the fresh twist The Last of Us brings is that these are morally gray characters in a society without law and order, so they may be committing actions that we don’t agree with. Even so, the focus on character writing over plot development means that we come to understand them regardless. It’s a unique storytelling style, but it works, and Neil Druckmann uses it to examine the flawed, situational moral compass that makes us human.
This is what made the first game’s ending so memorable. Those of us who already have a worldview similar to Joel’s felt connected with the character from the beginning, so we agreed with his choice to save Ellie. Those of us who don’t share his worldview in the beginning understood it by the end because we spent 10-15 hours inhabiting his headspace. Those of us who still didn’t agree with his worldview after the game could at least see where he was coming from. (To be clear, Joel himself has not changed—from leaving the family at the burning barn in the opening minutes, all the way to protecting Ellie at the end, he is the exact same person: family-focused, bitter, and determined to survive and protect.) But Joel’s story is only one story, and just because Joel is the protagonist of the first game, that does not mean he is “right” in any meaningful, objective sense of the word.
Part II seeks to explore the ramifications of Joel’s actions, to such a degree that the game’s writers said it would be a “disservice” to the first game if they didn’t (source). Given the sheer magnitude of death he caused in the first game’s closing moments, it makes sense someone would hunt Joel down; it also makes sense that if Joel were to die, Ellie would hunt his killer. But truly showing the full extent of Joel’s actions means broadening the cast and playing as the person who killed him (Abby). Thus, Part II is about hate (source): the hatred Abby feels for Joel, the hatred Ellie feels for Abby, and the hatred between the people of Jackson, the Seraphites and the WLF. Now, to be fair, The Last of Us Part II is still about love, but those are in very sparse, quiet moments throughout this otherwise grimdark narrative; whereas the first game shows us the lengths humanity goes to save those they care about, the second game shows us the lengths humanity goes to avenge those they care about (source).
During development, the game quickly became about the cycle of revenge, and it makes sense why; Ellie desires to hunt down Abby, who herself was only reacting to Joel’s actions. Both sides are justified, and both sides deserve exploration. Druckmann wanted characters to thirst for revenge, only to realize the consequences of their actions—something that could only be done by examining both sides of the story (source, source). This was heavily based on Druckmann’s own experiences growing up in the West Bank, part of Palestine and a frequent source of Palestinian-Israeli violence (source).
To truly show the consequences of violence, Naughty Dog needed to surpass their limits and create the most realistic video game possible. That meant motion capture, cinematic writing, superb voice acting, more nuanced gameplay, some of the greatest lightning and textures ever seen in a video game, and a combat system that realistically shows violence without glorifying it.
By the end, the player would realize there are no heroes or villains in this story (source), and the empathy that we’ve developed means we—as the player—support both sides (source). That gave the game a new, dramatic edge the first didn’t, where Part II would be seeped with dramatic irony because only we, the player, have the full context of everything that’s happening, as opposed to sticking closely to one person’s POV. Of course, to craft a story where there are no heroes or villains because both sides feel appropriately justified, this means putting Abby and Ellie on equal moral ground. Since the game had become about the cycle of revenge, where Abby committed her revenge in the game’s prologue and Ellie seeks her own, it follows that Abby and Ellie’s narratives would parallel one-another, with both of them slowly becoming like the other until the line is blurred; by extension, they also parallel Joel’s (source).
This dual structure made Part II inherently controversial. Most of us were fine with inhabiting Ellie and Joel’s shoes because we had a whole game to love them, but we had much more difficulty with inhabiting Abby’s shoes because the first game shaped our subjective worldview to view Joel as a “hero” when he never was one—and so we instinctively viewed his killer as a “villain.” But Joel was never a hero, which means Abby is not inherently a villain, and by controlling her for a good chunk of the game, she stops even being an antagonist. Part II challenged fictional tribalism and binary thinking, but the game’s intense realism meant it also challenged tribalism and binary thinking in the real world. In a digital age of rampant racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of bigotry; TLOU Part II was inherently upsetting to people because it forced them to consider that, hey, maybe those you demonize are actually just people, with meaningful, special lives of their own.
What are the Goals of Part II?
So, laying it all out like that, we can see Naughty Dog had a few key goals with The Last of Us Part II:
Explore the consequences of Joel’s actions in the climax of the first game.
Have Joel’s actions kick off his murder and a cycle of revenge, where each side feels justified since the other “started it,” and each act of violence spurs further violence. Thus, the game’s narrative is about hate.
Have the player develop an empathetic connection to Ellie and thirst for violence, then feel disgusted when confronted with the consequences of that violence as Abby, and vice versa.
Destroy normal conventions of “right” and wrong” or “heroes” and “villains.”
Portray the two protagonists as moral, social and emotional equals.
By the end, once a sufficient connection with both characters has been developed, the player will wish for the fighting to just stop.
When I lay it all out like that, the issues of the game become clear. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game—it stands alongside the first one and augments it in some ways, and both Part I and Part II are two of my favorite video games of all time. But I can’t deny that Part II has its problems, and these problems come from a fundamental clash between presentation, story and goals. They obviously aren’t enough to warrant me outright disliking it, but the problems are still there, even if they are so intertwined it can be difficult to determine where one criticism ends and another begins.
I’ve written this essay three times trying to get my thoughts sorted in a cohesive way, and I think I finally did it. I think I finally understand why Part II feels fundamentally incomplete in a way the first game never did, and it comes down to several main problems.
Problem One: Flashbacks and Pacing:
It is no secret that, once you dig underneath the people who simply don’t like playing as Abby or the people who have a bigoted bias against the game’s diverse cast, one of the biggest and most valid criticisms of Part II is the pacing. To be frank, it’s all over the goddamn place.
Naughty Dog is all about tonal whiplash, and they have been since the first game. Case in point, the opening of the game, where Sarah gives Joel a birthday present and dies minutes later; or the fight with David, which ends in Ellie hacking him into tiny pieces, only to cut to a peaceful spring day at Salt Lake. Those are great moments, because they set up for character growth without having to go to the legwork of showing it all, allowing you to seamlessly fill in the blanks and understand why characters act the way they do months or even years later. But here, a lot of the tonal whiplash is unintentional, a result of the game’s decision to not present its sequences in chronological order.
Naughty Dog has admitted they wanted to create a sequel that felt as important to its predecessor as The Godfather Part II was to The Godfather. For those that do not know, The Godfather Part II is hailed as one of the best movies of all time, and a big reason why is because it serves as both a prequel and sequel, cutting between the present day (showing the fallout of the first movie) and the past (showing how the characters and events led up to that first movie). I find this comparison very interesting and I wonder if that specific comparison is partially responsible for the game’s structure, with a primary narrative set in the present day and a secondary flashback narrative that explains the character relationships. But on top of all of that, a central part of the game’s identity is deconstructing subjective morality by showing both Ellie and Abby’s perspective. And since they both feel justified in acting the way they do, that demands that both of them get flashbacks showing their motivations.
These flashbacks (and especially Abby’s) have a number of problems with them.
They vary tremendously in length, but as a rule of thumb, the medium-length and shorter flashbacks are the best ones (Ellie #1, Ellie #3), and the longer flashbacks (Ellie #2, Abby #2, Abby #3) all would have benefited from being trimmed down because they bring the narrative to a grinding halt. Abby’s very first flashback to the day her dad was killed is a notable outlier—it’s one of the best sequences in the game, and the length is absolutely necessary because it’s the only time we can establish Jerry as a character, and his impact on the narrative is tremendous.
The flashbacks also vary in pacing and placement. One would expect that since Ellie has three flashbacks (her 16th birthday, camping with Joel and Tommy, and discovering the truth), those flashbacks would be redistributed across Days 1-3. Instead, Ellie’s second and third flashbacks both occur on Day 3. Abby is even worse, since every fucking flashback occurs on Day 1 for her, making her Day 1 (already the weakest chapter of the game) extremely bloated. Compounding this, all of Abby’s flashbacks occur at seemingly random points of high danger and low emotion, bringing the narrative to a halt, whereas Ellie’s flashbacks have the decency to come at a point of low danger and high emotion. Because of this, Part II has earned a reputation among fans and critics alike for sidetracking the character every couple of hours to a degree that it really damages the core gameplay loop. Oh, Owen’s gone missing? Better swim in the aquarium for 30-40 minutes. Oh, you just got captured by the Seraphites? Better do an archery contest with Owen.
Ellie’s flashbacks are all a little odd in the context of the story, because they are such huge parts of the plot, but at the same time, their distinct tone and placement in the timeline makes them feel like an entirely different game. Druckmann has said on a few occasions that he considered Joel’s arc to be more-or-less done after the first game, but replaying Part II’s flashbacks, that view just baffles me a bit. The interactions going on between Joel and Ellie are so rich they could have carried an entire additional game. I wish that we had gotten some sort of “interquel” set between Part I and Part II, where the player gets to control both on some small, self-contained adventure as their relationship just completely falls apart.
Finally, Abby’s second and third flashbacks serve little in the way of plot. For some reason, both flashbacks are setting up the aquarium as a place of significance for her and Owen, even though only one flashback of half the length would’ve been sufficient. This is especially bizarre because, as I discuss later in this essay, Abby’s storyline isn’t even about Joel or Owen or the WLF, it’s more so about Lev and Yara. These flashbacks give a false impression that the rest of her storyline will be more melodrama with Owen.
This is already building up to a confusing plot structure, since this means we’re juggling four stories simultaneously: Ellie’s story, Abby’s story, Ellie remembering her past with Joel, and Abby remembering her past with Owen and Jerry. Even so, that wouldn’t be too bad, and better stories have been made with more complex structures.
But the game makes it so, so much worse because of two key decisions: separating the final battle into its own chunk of the game (which I will cover again towards the end of this essay), and having all of Abby’s story occur after all of Ellie’s.
Problem Two: The Order of Abby and Ellie’s Stories:
It is an undeniable fact that Part II wants us to care for Abby and slowly grow tired of Ellie’s actions until we view both of them in the same light, as the sources above demonstrate. But it feels like Naughty Dog made it harder for themselves to do this by putting all three of Abby’s days after Ellie’s three days. If the point of Part II is to humanize Abby and present her worldview as equally valid as Ellie and Joel’s, why is all of her character development, screentime and redemption offloaded to the second half of the game? It strikes me as Naughty Dog shooting themselves in the foot. I’ve heard more than a few people who didn’t like Abby or even dropped the game say that, had they gotten to know Abby and her friends earlier, they might have been more receptive when Abby reacted and killed Jesse in the climax of Day 3.
Plus, this isn’t even getting into the tension. If you had to befriend people as Abby while simultaneously hunting them as Ellie, it would add an unprecedented level of suspense to the game, and it would be much harder to determine ahead of time who lives and who dies. But going into Abby’s storyline already knowing who dies removes the powerful sense of tension that defined Ellie’s story.
As it stands, the base game has a frankly bizarre narrative structure. Ellie’s three days in Seattle work as a classic three-act structure of setup, rising action and climax. Likewise, Abby’s three days in Seattle work as a three-act structure as well. Placed one after another, it feels like you’re playing two different narratives with independent setup, rising action and climaxes. If we alternated between Ellie and Abby’s storylines at the end of every day, then their rising action would blend together into a cohesive whole, and their climaxes would blend together as well.
Probably the most valid argument to not do this is information overload, and honestly, that’s fair. Even so, I think people underestimate just how good of a job Ellie’s Day 1 does in worldbuilding Seattle; the notes around subtly tell you who the Seraphites and WLF are, what their history was with FEDRA and how they came to power. This can serve as a great setup for WLF-Seraphite War.
I actually think the criticism of information overload is a better argument in favor of switching between Ellie and Abby’s levels. Fans of the game say that Abby’s Day 1 is confusing because it introduces so many characters, but here’s the thing: all of those characters (sans Isaac) appeared in the Prologue. The reason why it feels so confusing is because in the last 10-15 hours, most players forgot them. Presenting Abby’s Day 1 right after Ellie’s Day 1 when Nora, Jordan and Mel are still fresh in your head would make them stand out more, as opposed to forgetting about them, getting confused by their reappearance and being disappointed.
The arguments I’ve heard in favor of the game’s current structure just confuse me. Many people say that this would destroy the emotionally immersive nature of the game, and…why is that, exactly? There’s a body of thought online that to truly get in Abby and Ellie’s head and have a 1:1 connection with them, you need to play as them for the entire 10-15 hours. I think this argument has an inherently flawed thesis because there are several points in the base game where you don’t have a 1:1 connection with them. For instance, the game leads you on to believe that Ellie doesn’t know about the Fireflies when in actuality she does, and that friction temporarily breaks immersion in the base game.
In any event, we know that switching POVs like this works because we felt immersed playing as Ellie during the Winter section of the first game for only 2-3 hours. My immersion started to break during the end of that sequence, but that was only because the focus shifted to Joel every 20-30 minutes, not every 3-4 hours as I’m proposing.
Problem Three: Empathy vs Apathy and Ludonarrative Dissonance:
Ludonarrative dissonance is a word that’s been tossed around a lot in recent years, and Naughty Dog is actually a pretty common example of this phenomenon. The term refers to when an unintentional rift exists between a game’s story and gameplay as a result of two components not interacting well, such as how Nathan Drake is a likable, charismatic nice guy in Uncharted, and the story is about a bunch of friends finding treasure, but the gameplay involves slaughtering thousands without a second thought.
For what it’s worth, ludonarrative dissonance doesn’t always exist, for a number of reasons. Many games have a seamless integration of mechanics and story (Hades comes to mind), and many still have no story to speak of, allowing the gameplay to shine front and center (Mario, Mega Man, Minecraft, etc.). On the topic of combat-induced ludonarrative dissonance specifically, I loathe the idea that grounded, gritty, realistic violence is an inevitability of game design in the modern photorealistic era. Not all games have combat, not all combat games have realistic enough combat or graphics to incite this dissonance, not all combat games utilize lethal force (Batman Arkham, Spider-Man PS4, etc.), and a ton of action-packed, combat-heavy games don’t even involve fighting humans (God of War, Devil May Cry, etc.).
Despite the flack Naughty Dog has gotten for Uncharted, ludonarrative dissonance was actually avoided in The Last of Us entirely. Joel commits all of these heinous acts, but it makes sense because that’s the sort of person Joel is: a selfish, ruthless man who will do anything to survive, even if it means condemning the rest of humanity. The story addresses the violent actions you perform during gameplay, and the gameplay makes perfect sense with Joel’s characters. To this day, fans argue about whether Joel was justified in his decision—after all, the Fireflies were shown to be more than a little incompetent and trigger-happy, and there’s no guarantee they’d actually distribute a vaccine or if anyone would believe them—but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. There was a chance that they could save humanity and Joel slaughtered them. You are meant to feel empathy for Joel, and you do. You are meant to kill these guys, and you do.
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I wanted to define that term “ludonarrative dissonance” because in the second game, that emotional link between story and gameplay just wasn’t as present, at least for me. Remember, an explicit goal of the dev team was to use the game’s realism to make you feel shame, guilt and disgust for all the murders you are committing. Now, I can only speak from my experience here, and the emotional impact of a story is far, far more subjective than the story’s structure or pacing. But in my experience this ludonarrative dissonance—where the game expects shame and gets apathy—is the exact opposite of what happens in games like Uncharted, and it occurs for a few reasons.
Now, the murders committed occur in two manners: gameplay segments and cinematic cutscenes. Let’s start with the former and then work our way to the latter.
During gameplay segments, the context in which normal combat encounters take place is not conducive to empathy. The WLFs (WLVS?) are the enemy faction that is developed the most, and the main enemy you fight in Ellie’s story. ND wants us to feel bad about slaughtering them so ruthlessly and realistically, but in your first encounter with them, the WLF soldiers ambush you (as Ellie), nearly kill Dina, shoot Shimmer, and try to kill you before Jordan even recognizes you from Jackson, all for the crime of…riding a horse with your girlfriend. It definitely doesn’t feel like we, as the player, would have any reason to feel bad for slaughtering them afterwards. And since every other WLF is sent after us for the remainder of Ellie’s storyline because the WLF’s policy is to shoot strangers on sight, one can easily make the claim that Ellie is acting in self-defense for just about every gameplay portion even if the story itself is about seeking revenge.
I used the WLF as examples, but this applies to the other two enemy factions in the game. The Seraphites? Mistake you for WLF, shoot you in the shoulder, and try to disembowel you, all unprovoked. The Rattlers? Attack and enslave Abby and Ellie, all unprovoked. And in all of these situations, the violence we inflict back at our enemies is the same violence that Ellie has been doing since she was a child, so why should we be feeling shame now?
The only gameplay-heavy situation I actually did feel bad for was Abby having to fight against her fellow WLF soldiers during the battle on Day 3, since the dialogue was rather gut-wrenching, But even then, the dialogue also got downright nasty and hateful on a replay of that same sequence.
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The Last of Us Part II also struggles with creating empathy, disgust and shame in cinematic cutscenes. Narrowing it down on my replay, I think this lack of empathy throughout cinematic portions of the game comes down to three things.
First, flashbacks are intertwined with the present day narrative, and flashbacks are used to flesh out character relationships and motivations. As a side-effect of Abby’s storyline coming second, we don’t even learn about Abby and co.’s justifiable reasons for murdering Joel until halfway through the game. It’s a lot to ask for players to feel bad for killing people that seemingly lacked any noble characteristics, depth or justifiable motive for the first half of the story. Had the game cut back and forth between Ellie and Abby after every day in Seattle, many of my problems with the game would be alleviated: we would’ve gotten a chance to know Abby and her understandable emotions early on, which would gradually induce that disgust that Druckmann and the team wanted. Strangest of all, this method of alternation already occurred in the prologue, where the player swaps between Abby and Ellie on a semi-regular basis, so to not maintain that throughout the meat of the game is just odd.
Second, by the time we get development for the cast, it is too little. As a side-effect of Abby’s half focusing more on her relationships with Lev, Yara and Owen (which I will get to later), the other WLF supporting characters (Mel, Jordan, Nora, Manny, etc.) are very underdeveloped. I don’t empathize with them as Ellie for obvious reasons, and I don’t empathize with them as Abby because…well, there just isn’t much to them. But I wish we learned more about them because I wanted that emotional reaction.
I have heard some people make this argument about Ellie’s half of the story as well, notably The Completionist in his review of the game, since Ellie’s meaningful relationships are few, static and built almost completely offscreen. I think this is a fair assessment, and even though I think her significant screentime meant that Dina was very well-developed, I can’t say the same for Jesse.
Third, and connected to that, Abby’s entire story is about her and Owen leaving the WLF, and she works with Lev and Yara, who are leaving the Seraphites. Those are, by far and away, the most well-written, fleshed out, sympathetic characters of Abby’s storyline, and I cannot stress the weird situation this puts the characters in. When the antagonist of your game is so disgusted with her military organization for killing innocents and children that she leaves them partyway through the game, it’s difficult for us to feel guilty for killing those same soldiers.
Note here that when I say development, I am not talking about likability. Those are two different things. Naughty Dog is very good at writing characters who are likable (that is, interesting and charming) by adding all sorts of quirks to their personalities. Ellie’s love for comics and trading cards, Dina’s background as a Jewish woman, Abby’s love for coin-collecting, and Lev’s confusion about modern slang are all things that make them likable. Part I has examples of this as well, particularly with Henry, who—in a rather iconic scene—reminisces about riding a Harley motorcycle. These little quirks and interests make the characters feel more real, and it creates a quick attachment to them.
However, “development” is different, that specifically refers to character introspection and/or character growth. In a lot of cases, Naughty Dog might not give certain characters those charming, interesting quirks, but they still receive good development. Owen doesn’t have as many quirks as someone like Ellie or Henry or Dina, but he does have an amazing internal conflict and a strong moral compass that defines his character, both of which are obvious from his earliest appearances. I don’t know anything about Owen’s hobbies, interests, likes or dislikes, but I do know that he’s a good man trying to find happiness, and that’s great. That makes his death hit hard. Contrast that to Manny, whose love for anime and sexual escapades makes him funny and likable, but not developed, so his death comes across as shocking in the moment but rather forgettable by comparison. Because many of the WLF lack development, their deaths do not impact our emotions in the way Naughty Dog intended.
(Side bar: This is also why many people speak of Jesse in the same sentence as characters like Mel, Nora and Manny. Jesse is clearly a likable guy—he’s witty, loyal, good-hearted, and his role as a comedic straight man during the prologue in Jackson is genuinely hilarious. But he also doesn’t emotionally change or grow, and he doesn’t really offer any new insight into the situation, so his death just ends up kind of…not impacting much.)
Problem Four: Underutilized Supporting Cast (especially Tommy):
This brings me to my next point: the game criminally underutilizes its own cast, which is extremely rare for a Naughty Dog game. I see this in four main people.
First, Jesse is set up as a friend to Ellie and an ex to Dina, and he clearly respects Joel and wants to avenge him, so why did he show up on Day 2 and then get killed off on Day 3? It would've been more impactful if he got killed towards the end of the game and was with them from the beginning, all of them working as a trio to dispatch enemies while slowly questioning the morality of their actions. I also wish we saw Jesse react more to the news he’s going to be a father, and have that factor into his decision-making. For instance, maybe he wants to dip out of Seattle on Day 3 because he doesn’t want to set a violent example for JJ growing up, or because he doesn’t want to risk the WLF retaliating and attacking his kid. And if you really want to add a layer of moral complexity, it would be great if Jesse learned about Ellie's immunity, since that’s a plotline that never really goes anywhere.
Second, Mel was Jerry's protégé and a medical professional, and from what we saw of Jerry, he was a kind, sweet, gentle man. It would've been great if the game further emphasized Mel’s guilt for participating in Joel's death—after all, Jerry taught her the Hippocratic Oath and to always save lives, but she applied the tourniquet to Joel and prevented him from bleeding out so Abby could torture him for longer. How must she feel, knowing that she broke the Oath and Jerry's teachings and helped take a life instead of saving one? The game toys with this, but only to the degree that it creates melodrama between her and Abby, not as a genuine subplot that can stand on its own. After Abby’s Day 1, the game pretty much abandons this angle altogether and instead focuses on Mel condemning Abby as a horrible person for Joel’s death (“You’re a piece of shit, Abby,”), which is odd, since Mel feels guilt for participating in the same death.
Third, Manny is rarely seen despite being Abby’s best friend. The game shows us that he's trying to get medicine for his father—another example of the theme of parents and kids. It would've been great if Manny was initially motivated to help murder Joel because he put himself in Abby's shoes, and he couldn't imagine how horrible it was for a child to lose their father. But later on, he hears about Ellie, and he realizes he helped take someone else's father...in essence, becoming the very thing he despised. The game already pairs Abby and Manny together during the Tommy sniper sequence on Day 3, but since Manny is killed right at the end of the sequence and all of his other screentime was spent trying to get Mel and Abby to make amends, his role in the narrative is rather minimal overall.
Fourth, Tommy is by far and away the most underutilized member of the cast. Both games hint at Tommy’s checkered past, and the show has done a great job of fleshing out his hot-headed and fiery nature, so it’s unsurprising he would pursue vengeance. It also makes sense on a metanarrative level that he’s absent—the game wants to ease you into the revenge plot, so Ellie is sent off to Seattle with the goal of “Bring Tommy home,” not “Kill Abby.” This allows the player to get into a vengeful headspace but still have plausible deniability for the acts of violence they commit in the beginning, before slowly realizing the magnitude of their crimes as the story progresses. I recognize all of that, but even so, I think the game’s decision to not reveal Tommy until the final day in Seattle (for both storylines) robs the player of understanding his relationship with Ellie. After all, we don’t need to have Tommy and Ellie interact to get more Tommy screentime.
Tommy is in an extremely unique position as both co-leader of Jackson and a former member of the Fireflies (which was largely absorbed into the WLF). He could serve as a bridge between the two halves of this conflict—perhaps he even knew Jerry Anderson before Joel killed him. But the game only delves into his past as a Firefly as a means to explain his familiarity with violence, never as a way for him to understand the current situation. Tommy is also very unique among the cast of TLOU in that he seems to be a study of opposites and extremes: on the one hand, he’s a loving brother, a compassionate uncle and a good leader to his town; and on the other hand, he’s an impulsive, violent ex-soldier on a vengeful crusade who leaves his wife for months with nothing but a note and seemingly kills without remorse. That’s perfect for a game all about duality, but without proper screentime, the game never gives us a chance to reconcile those two halves. Is he hunting down Abby to satisfy his own thirst for revenge, or to protect Ellie from having to get her hands dirty? Was his plea to not pursue vengeance a trick so he could leave unnoticed, or a genuine request? Does he even want revenge?
This proposal on Reddit by user u/harrytucks10 does a great job of imagining what a Tommy DLC would look like showing his three days in Seattle, complete with flashbacks and a new ending for the entire game; I’m so impressed that I honestly consider this pitch to be more-or-less canon. This pitch recontextualizes Tommy as a genuinely good man striving for a purpose in life, who is both exceptionally skilled at killing but also disgusted with it. He’s trying to do right by Ellie and protect her from the horrors of the world, but he’s constantly second-guessing himself every step of the way. Some lines from this pitch that gave me chills:
Flashback 2: The player is drawn to wonder if Joel's “survival-at-all-costs” mantra is any different to Marlene's position to fulfill her ideology at all costs. On a more personal basis…if [violence] is all Tommy has ever been taught to respect throughout his life, then despite his inner humanity, this brutal directive might be all he will be able to pass on to Ellie.
Seattle Day 2: Tommy hears on the radio about Ellie's exploits and tries to track her down but ends up deep in Seraphite territory…Tommy tries to dissuade himself from sympathizing with [the Seraphites] but can't help but see obvious similarities to Jackson and the Fireflies, and when he sees a group of children praying together, he can't help but think of his old life.
Seattle Day 2: Along the way, Tommy openly acknowledges the similarities between all of the leaders in his life, that these people think it's their choice or their destiny to win these bloodbaths, but that convincing themselves that they are more deserving of life is precisely why they lose their humanity.
Seattle Day 2: Tommy…recognizes that this cycle of violence is bigger than him, it's a wave washing over him that he is caught in the storm of—because of Joel, Ellie, Marlene, Abby and her crew—he wants revenge but more than anything he just wants it to be over. He's exhausted and he misses his brother, his wife and his hope. He's seen horrifying things that have opened up in him past traumas, ones that he had inflicted on him and those he inflicted on others.
Flashback 3: After quitting the Fireflies, Tommy and Maria go on a "special patrol." He [proposes] to her, showing her a gold wedding ring. He promises to never leave her and they kiss, as the camera pans to reveal that Tommy and Maria are standing on the very spot Joel and Ellie were overlooking Jackson at the end of the first game, implying, like Joel's promise to Ellie, this promise will inevitably be broken.
I…wow. I don’t even know what else to say about that. It’s just such a fascinating thing to ponder, and Tommy really is one of Naughty Dog’s most well-written and compelling characters. The role that he got in the final product is less than a shadow of what could have been.
Problem Five: Disconnected Storylines:
I mentioned earlier that Abby and Ellie are not only parallels, but so are the supporting characters in their stories. Abby is in a love triangle with her ex Owen and his pregnant girlfriend Mel; Ellie is in a love triangle with her pregnant girlfriend Dina and Dina’s ex Jesse. Ellie and Abby start the story with the respect and support of their leaders (Isaac and Tommy), who took them in after a tragedy, before gradually losing it for trying to move past needless bloodshed. Ellie is looking for revenge for her father’s death, Abby just finished getting revenge for her father’s death. Many of these dichotomies work, but I think the core conflict of both storylines is not mirrored, which hinders the themes and this cause-effect relationship.
In the prologue (which is about 2-3 hours for most people), Abby kills Joel. Ellie’s storyline is all about a group of close friends (Jesse, Dina, Tommy) fighting the WLF for revenge. One would expect Abby’s storyline to be about the same but in reverse, with a small squadron of her friends (Manny, Owen, Mel, etc.) combating the Jackson team while dealing with their guilt over Joel’s death. Eventually, the two storylines would converge, and the player would have enough perspective to realize neither side is right or wrong, as Naughty Dog intended.
But towards the end of Day 1, Abby goes off on her own to find Owen, who has deserted the WLF, and her storyline shifts to focus on protecting Yara and Lev in an attempt to redeem her soul, and from this point on, Abby’s Day 2 and Day 3 feel almost like a completely different game. Ellie is slaughtering the WLF, but Abby isn’t returning the favor because she’s so focused on protecting these two kids. Abby isn’t even aware Ellie is in Seattle until the morning of Day 3, and we don’t see Abby mourning her friends as they die except for Owen and Mel, at which point it feels like Abby’s storyline is yanked back towards the rest of the game. I don’t think Abby is even aware that all of her other friends—Leah, Nora and Jordan—were killed. For most of the game, Ellie is trapped in one cycle of revenge between Jackson and the Fireflies/WLF, and Abby is trapped in a completely unrelated cycle of violence between the Fireflies/WLF and the Seraphites. That makes the two halves of this story weirdly disconnected, and the team’s third goal of forcing the player to confront the consequences of their actions almost never happens. The conflict between the Seraphites and the WLF brings a new set of themes and ideas, like identity, fundamentalism, and the clash between modernism and tradition, but they’re not appropriately reflected in Ellie’s storyline since Ellie doesn’t really know anything about the Seraphites, which somewhat weakens the experience.
And to be fair, I can see why they did this. Abby’s storyline cannot adequately reflect Ellie’s because, as a combat-heavy video game, Abby needs mooks to fight against in moment-to-moment gameplay, and there are no nameless Jackson soldiers she can fight against, only main characters. To this end, ND introduced a new faction (which receives a fraction of the development the others got) and had Abby defect from the WLF. That does give Abby sufficient enemies to fight now, but it inadvertently makes both the WLF and Seraphites seem completely unlikable and irredeemable.
These two storylines—Ellie’s revenge on Abby, and the WLF-Seraphite War—needed to be merged in some way. There are a few ways they could have done that:
Insert new scenes and dialogue of Abby slowly growing more aware of Ellie’s rampage. (IE Abby emerging from the Hospital on Day 2 only to find it completely ruined.)
Have Mel or Manny learn about Jordan’s death, making Abby realize early on that someone is hunting her down.
Have Lev and/or Yara ask about Joel during the morning of Day 3, forcing Abby to open up about her sins.
Originally, the game was going to be five days instead of three, and on Day 4, while trying to get to the aquarium, Ellie was going to crash her boat on the peaceful Seraphite Island to contrast with Abby battling her way through the same island on Day 5. That would have been an amazing way to connect the game’s two cyclical conflicts and humanize the Seraphites, and the base game feels sorely incomplete without this.
Ellie could have been on the island when the Battle of Haven occurred. As Lev and Abby get to the shore looking for a boat to escape, they run into Ellie, who’s trying to get the same boat. Thus, a showdown can occur here instead of at the theater.
Having Abby and Ellie encounter each other’s factions more during the main gameplay would have been great, specifically by having Abby fight Ellie’s friends like Ellie fought Abby’s friends.
Make Lev playable for a portion of the story. This would set him up as a main character on par with Ellie and Abby, and through these playable sections, we could learn more about the Seraphites.
Problem Six: Broken Parallels in Abby vs Ellie:
Another big part of why I say Abby’s storyline does not adequately reflect Ellie’s is because not only do their conflicts fail to mirror one-another, but so do the lessons they learn along the way.
As we said above, one of the team’s main goals was to unpack the ramifications of Joel killing the Fireflies and…Jesus fucking Christ, does the game succeed at that. Ellie learning to forgive Joel is the subtle emotional backbone of her entire character arc, and it changes the theme of the game from “hatred” to “forgiveness.”
The final scene reveals that she wanted to forgive Joel the night before the game began, which retroactively explains a lot of her behavior. She feels like it is her fault for never properly reconnecting or saying goodbye to Joel, and her guilt turns to self-loathing, which only builds in pursuit of failed vengeance. Even though Ellie genuinely, truly believes she needs to avenge Joel, she is also pursuing revenge as a form of self-punishment (at least I think so…more on that later). When she finally moves on in the game’s closing moments, her leaving behind Joel’s guitar symbolizes that she has not only forgiven him, but herself as well.
But with Abby, I don’t get this same feeling. To be clear, Abby does learn clear lessons in her story, and she grows as a person. Specifically, she’s learned to not blindly follow orders, and she’s realized that her enemies aren’t as one-dimensional as she thinks, which also helps her move on from her own father’s death…but she doesn’t apply any of those morals to her conflict with Ellie. She loses herself in an unstoppable rage after Owen and Mel are killed, and she has to be stopped by Lev, unlike Ellie, who arguably displayed greater restraint in the same position because she could stop herself. Again, I don’t need my parallels to be 1:1, but it feels a bit strange.
Problem Seven: A Broken Parallel in Joel vs Jerry:
This actually points to a larger problem I have with the game: The Last of Us Part II does not treat Joel the same as it treats Jerry, which I think undermines the game’s goal of exploring subjective morality and presenting opposing viewpoints on an even playing field.
Joel is given what I consider to be a good amount of moral nuance in the game: he is a kind brother, a reliable and respected member of his community, and a loving father, but he also lies to his daughter to keep their delicate relationship together, and his lies ultimately drive their little family apart. Even so, the game only seriously explores one interpretation of his actions: he is a selfish bastard and a madman who saved Ellie because he cannot imagine a life without her.
Jerry is not given the same amount of nuance as Joel, partially because he only appears in a single flashback, and by the end of that there is only one serious interpretation of Jerry’s actions: he was a good man who wanted to do the right thing and save humanity. Clearly, Joel is the villain of the story, and Jerry is the hero.
But the situation with the Fireflies was much shadier and more morally nuanced, the type of debate Philosophy professors dream of, and it has sparked years of fan theories and debate. Would the vaccine have been successful? (Real life science shows that no, it wouldn't have been, because the Cordyceps is a fungus and not a conventional virus or bacteria.) Would the Fireflies have used it for themselves, or tried to distribute it? How would they have distributed it? Would anyone have believed them if they said they did make a cure? Would anything have changed in this grimdark world?
Factoring in these questions, you can easily make the claim that Joel did the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Many fans are of the belief that, regardless of the Fireflies motives or Joel's selfish reasons for saving Ellie, the Fireflies were still about to take advantage of a 14-year old's unconscious state and kill her without offering her a choice.
I would’ve liked it if Abby had some major revelation about her father. It could’ve been very interesting if Abby never had the full context for her father’s death; she begins the story only knowing that Joel killed her dad, and that’s it. When she kills him in the prologue and sees Ellie screaming on the ground, it shakes Abby, and she has a brief flashback to when she was screaming in Owen’s arms upon finding Jerry’s body. Afterwards, Abby speaks about the matter in the aquarium with Mel and Owen. In my revised version, Mel speaks frequently and highly of Jerry, but as old memories come to the surface, she grows more and more open about the nature of the surgery, eventually confessing that Ellie wasn’t even awake when they found her and they were so desperate to make the cure that they didn’t bother waking her or Joel. The only reason it didn’t work was because Joel woke up just before the surgery began. This would cause Abby to look at the situation very differently, and it would present a new direction for some of her flashbacks. Maybe Abby starts remembering her childhood with Jerry, and she comes to realize that Jerry was only ever trying to restore the world he grew up in because he wanted Abby to be safe. In other words, Jerry was protecting her…just like Joel protected Ellie, and just like she wants to protect Lev.
Alternatively, Abby might not have such a revelation, but Tommy could. Again, as someone who knew the Fireflies years prior to Ellie arriving, Tommy understood what the Fireflies were like for most of the post-outbreak world. His presence could be used to ground the storyline in reality, assuring the viewer and the other characters that the Fireflies had flaws of their own.
If we presented Abby and Ellie’s stories simultaneously (which is what I so desperately wanted), it would’ve been great to pair this with an extended version of Ellie’s flashback to when she went to Salt Lake City. Maybe there would be an interactive segment as Ellie goes from room to room, finding more and more taping recordings from Jerry. In the beginning, he’s talking about how excited he is to meet Ellie, how happy everyone is, how he and Mel have made so much progress…with the final tape recording having him speaking in a morose tone after he realizes the surgery will be lethal. Jerry begs for forgiveness as he ends the tape, maintaining that he has to do this to keep his own daughter safe.
That would have been a fascinating twist on the story. It would mean that Abby and Ellie’s storylines both focus on the dark side of Jerry and Joel’s parenting, how each father wanted to protect their daughter by taking a life, and now those same protective tendencies are rubbing off on their daughters and spurning them towards a path of vengeance and hatred.
Maybe I’m asking a bit much, but again, an explicit goal of the development team was to present the characters as equals in a story without clear good guys or bad guys. As Haley Gross herself put it, “There are no heroes or villains.” What Joel Miller did was selfish beyond belief, short-sighted, and he would be considered the villain of any other story…but The Last of Us isn’t any other story. To end the conversation at that and not even consider everything on the other side gives Abby a distinct moral superiority that undermines the core values of the game, and it robs her of a chance to reexamine her motives and father without nostalgia.
Problem Eight: Coincidence? I think NOT:
This is a smaller complaint, but in the grand scheme of things, it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The Last of Us Part II tends to suspend disbelief a lot, which is strange for a game that prides itself on realism. (Seriously, listen to any developer interview. Realism and detail are the things that Naughty Dog focuses on the most during game development, for better or for worse.)
Of course, a lot of this suspension of disbelief has to do with the prologue. Simply put, the game’s opening act relies on coincidence way too much to get Joel dead. Abby and her friends go to Jackson looking for Tommy, she storms off and gets stuck in a blizzard with a massive horde of Infected, and Joel and Tommy just so happen to save her?
(Side note: Many people criticize Joel for revealing his identity to a well-armed group. More often than not, I find this is a bad faith argument from people who didn’t pay attention to the game. I do not consider this to be suspending disbelief because Tommy had already revealed Joel’s identity to Abby in the warehouse; he did so in an attempt to familiarize himself with Abby and calm her down so they could work together and survive.)
Suspension of disbelief is mostly absent for the rest of the game, but it occurs sporadically concerning travel distance. To set the scene, the first game was a classic road trip-style story, where the journey was more important than the destination. One of the overlooked strengths of this narrative is how much time it takes to get anywhere. The entire journey encompasses about 14 hours of the 15-hour playtime; Ellie and Joel walk, drive and ride on horseback about 2600 miles in the course of a year.
The second game completely cuts out the 880-mile journey to Seattle and the return trek. I have seen many people criticize this decision, and logically, I can understand those complaints since the first game made it clear America is extremely dangerous. Even so, I respect the developer’s decision to ignore this because it’s not important to the revenge narrative. The game justifies this the first time by giving Ellie a horse and having Dina—a skilled Infected hunter—accompany her. However, it does stretch suspension of disbelief when they make the journey back home with no horse, Tommy having a gunshot wound to the fucking head, Dina being concussed and Ellie having a broken arm, yet all are still fine. Then, at the very end, suspension of disbelief is almost completely broken when Ellie makes an even longer journey to Santa Barbara (1020 miles) on foot by herself. I gave it a pass earlier in the game because Ellie had company and a fast method of transport to Seattle, and the experience in Seattle was narratively crucial to the game, but I cannot give it a pass here because Santa Barbara is not narratively crucial and Ellie is on foot. Why do I say Santa Barbara is not narratively crucial?
Problem Nine: The Santa Barbara Finale:
Speaking of which, the ending is probably the #1 thing in this game I am angriest about. Simply put, the Santa Barbara epilogue, in its current state, should not exist. I don’t even know how to create an argument in its favor, because it just seems so strange to me.
After the game’s launch, Haley Gross and Neil Druckmann had an interesting interview with Game Informer where they discussed how they never solidly outlined key plot events, instead aiming to write in a way they felt was “respectful” for the characters, and in Druckmann’s words, he defined “respect” as realistic. When you view the game from that angle, I can see why they decided to do the Santa Barbara level. Yes, it is realistic for Ellie to still be vengeful and pursue Abby a year later—after all, PTSD causes those who suffer from it to behave in ways that seem obsessive and irrational. It would also be realistic if Tommy died after getting shot in the head, Dina died after getting her head smashed on hardwood floor, Abby died trying to fight a heavily-armed Ellie at the theater, Abby died from starvation after getting captured by the Rattlers, and so on and so forth. Realism does not always matter in the realm of fiction, and a realistic story is not necessarily a better story. Sometimes, realism has to take a backseat to the storytelling experience, and pacing is a big part of that experience.
Basically, the Santa Barbara climax raises way too many problems within this otherwise tight-knit narrative:
First, as I already explained, Santa Barbara pushes suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.
Second, Santa Barbara is an exercise in narrative redundancy. The entire game is a revenge story, either taking place in Seattle, showing the events that led to Seattle or showing a different perspective on Seattle. The epilogue now has a second revenge narrative in another city approximately 1.5-2 years later (depending on how old JJ is), and this only occupies about 2 hours of a 30 hour game because Santa Barbara honestly isn’t that important. We already did this entire revenge narrative, the game already reached its crescendo, and now they’re trying to artificially prolong the narrative by cramming more conflict into the final hours of the game.
Third, Santa Barbara makes the game feel unfocused. Up until this point, the game has been set in the dreary, war-torn city of Seattle, but in Santa Barbara the game loses a lot of its identity. I suspect the core themes of the game would’ve been sustained (if not improved) by taking their fight in the ocean of Santa Barbara and putting it at the end of Seattle Day 3, or in a hypothetical Seattle Day 4, thus making pretty much the whole game about Seattle. Which it should have always been.
Fourth, Santa Barbara is a pacing killer. Why would you have the entire game be about a revenge mission in Seattle, with its own rising action, climax and falling action; have Abby spare Ellie; then cut to a year+ later with a traumatized Ellie learning about Abby’s whereabouts and abandoning her son and partner; then cut to a few months after that, with Abby and Lev getting tortured off-screen, and create a final chapter with its own separate rising action, climax and falling action?
Fifth, the game makes the mistake of introducing yet another enemy faction during the figurative eleventh hour. The Rattlers are by far and away the least-developed, most unsympathetic enemy faction in a game all about nuanced morality and having compassion for your enemies.
Sixth, Santa Barbara exists entirely to set up the final duel between Abby and Ellie, but because the game already reached a natural end, some frankly bizarre choices have to occur so these two can meet again. Tommy only appears in about a half dozen scenes in the game, two of which are spent talking Ellie out of revenge, yet he appears on the farm and persuades Ellie to leave her family and go on a revenge quest. Ellie then goes to Santa Barbara with the intent of fighting Abby, frees her instead, helps her and Lev escape, and then decides she wants to fight, and then decides to let her go for real.
Problem Ten: Ellie’s Choice:
My final problem is that Ellie decides to let Abby go in the end. That might sound odd, but let me remind you: I really did learn to care for Abby and Lev by the end of the game, and my love for Ellie never wavered for a moment as she descended further into darkness, so I had a lot riding on that final battle. Luckily, the outcome of the final battle is exactly what I wanted it to be. Ellie battles her inner demons, remembers Joel’s final words, comes to grips with his death and lets Abby go, ending the cycle of revenge that has taken so many lives. For a narrative like this, it's the only ending that makes sense.
But…why did Ellie do it? I’ve thought about this a lot, and I don’t have a definitive answer…and that, in of itself, is what I would consider to be a problem.
As I’ve made clear many times, this entire series is built around immersive writing. We need to connect to these characters for the story to be satisfying, and to connect, we have to understand. But, on a fundamental level, I do not understand why Ellie lets Abby go in the finale of the game. Again, I wanted Ellie to let Abby go, desperately in fact, because that’s the only ending that makes sense for a story built around deconstructing binary thinking and subjective morality. But the game just doesn’t present a clear reason why, and that’s frustrating, because there are a million reasons why Ellie could’ve done this—some of the reasons require small rewrites, others require just taking subtext and bringing it to the forefront.
Ellie is finally forgiving herself (hence why she remembers her and Joel’s conversation about forgiveness). She knows that, on a subconscious level, this entire journey has been a half-suicidal death wish so she can punish herself for pushing away a man who became a father to her, and she hates herself for it. By letting Abby go, Ellie is allowing herself to live her own life. This seems to be what the game was hinting towards—albeit in a manner so vague and roundabout I’m not entirely sure.
Ellie is forgiving Abby. Maybe dialogue with Abby or Nora hinted at Jerry’s death, and Ellie can no longer see Abby as an unstoppable monster, but a scared, traumatized girl like herself.
Alternatively, Ellie never stops seeing Abby as a monster, but she comes to realize the trail of bodies left behind make her no better than Abby. She’s disgusted that she stooped so low, and she leaves it all behind.
Ellie sees herself in Lev—a shy, nerdy archery prodigy suffering from a recent loss who looks up to their reluctant guardian figure. Ellie can’t bring herself to rob Lev of his family in the same way she was robbed of hers, so she lets Abby go. I’m almost positive that Naughty Dog was not focused on the parallels between Ellie and Lev; that’s a shame, because that would have been an amazing thematic parallel if executed properly, and it would have been another connection to the Ellie/Abby cycle of violence to the Seraphite/WLF cycle of violence.
Ellie notes a distinct change in disposition. Abby no longer carries herself with the same fire that she had in the theater or in Jackson. Maybe, just as Ellie is about to drown Abby, Abby’s gaze softens and she whispers something to the degree of: “It feels empty…doesn’t it?” Ellie takes this to heart, realizing that killing Abby won’t change anything.
And so on, and so forth.
There really are so many reasons why Ellie could be doing what she’s doing, and so many of these reasons work beautifully with both the base game and some of the changes I’ve been proposing here. But as it stands, it feels like Naughty Dog’s strict desire to make the ending artsy and ambiguous robs the player of clarity in a game otherwise about clarifying character motivations. It’s a potentially powerful moment that also completely broke my immersion and left me scratching my head.
Conclusion:
I’ve left my own subjective feelings out of this essay for the most part, but I think it’s important to reiterate that I love The Last of Us Part II, perhaps as much as I love the first. In spite of everything I’ve said, I actually love the characters here, and I completely sympathize with Abby. Do I wish the Seraphites were fleshed out? Yes. Do I wish Lev was presented as a third party who got valuable interactions with both Ellie and Abby, and who helped the audience realize the gray morality here? Hell yes. Do I wish Abby’s arc and themes mirrored Ellie’s to a larger degree? Yes. Do I wish characters like Jesse, Manny, Mel and Nora had more substance? Absolutely.
The Last of Us is a game all about relationships, but The Last of Us Part II shifts its focus. This sequel is a game all about themes and concepts. Those themes sit with you for long after you’ve finished the product, and it means even if you don’t like Part II’s story or you found its core themes shallow, you’ll be thinking about it constantly for weeks or even months after playing it. And that means, on some level, the team’s desire to make a thought provoking video game about morality and consequences did occur.
Unfortunately, Part II is still built on a predecessor that prided itself on immersive character-driven writing, not themes. So when the things that made The Last of Us Part I so great don’t happen again in Part II, those themes don’t hit so hard. When the pacing is off, the themes suffer. When the game fails to build empathy (either in cinematics or gameplay), the themes suffer. When characters like Manny, Jesse, Mel and Nora aren’t properly fleshed out, the game suffers. When Abby and Ellie, two foils in every sense of the word, have character arcs and moral revelations that don’t mirror each other, the game suffers.
As it stands, The Last of Us Part II is a good story, and a really solid, enjoyable game. But it’s also a strange product to experience. The lack of choice can be infuriating, your emotions blur with the emotions of the people you’re controlling, and the game clearly failed to live up to the standards of its own writers in some key ways. Had the game fully explored the shadiness of the Firefly’s actions, I would’ve liked it more. Had Santa Barbara been fully absorbed into the game’s climax; had the two cycles of revenge been connected; had the WLF and Seraphites not have been so comically misguided; and had more time been spent on the secondary characters who stay loyal to the WLF; I think the story could’ve been better.
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