The Last of Us - It can't be for nothing (Part II announced)

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The Last of Us - Part II: The Review by m4st4
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*WARNING: Review is spoiler heavy and if you haven't yet finished the game, stop reading now

Yesterday, I finally managed to get a Platinum trophy for completing all of the challenges in The Last of Us - Part II. It's weird, being able to say that, after such a long wait, especially when just a couple of months in this particular year felt like a harrowing journey on itself, and for the whole world. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, amongst other terrible things - a game about a pandemic! It took me two playthroughs on Hard and Hard+ difficulties, short of sixty hours of game time, to finally get the whole point of the narrative structure Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross (Westworld series) have been carefully crafting since the sequel's inception, somewhere between the original game's DLC Left Behind and rocky but ultimately successful development of current generation Uncharted games.

See, it's about that empty docked boat engulfed in the mist, waves slowly caressing its wooden body. The unknown, the terrifying, almost Silent Hill like, awaits. That's the first image you see every time you press Start on the game's icon. The screen then wants you to press a button, to continue. If you want to solve a mystery of an epic - you have to play the game. It sounds too obvious to even point out, but Part II is demanded to be experienced within a single medium it was created for, and no amount of YouTube commentary, forum discourse, other people's opinions, can truly give one an experience similar to one you're about to embark on after pressing that button, and playing The Last of Us: Part II.

More on that boat later, after all it's a long odyssey from Jackson to Seattle to Santa Barbara.

It's also about hate, and love... or was it love primarily, and hate afterwards? And every step of the way in between? Sometimes, to do right by our loved ones, we are compelled to do the worst a mankind has to offer. How far would you go? How far will the protagonists of the game go? All is left as an open question, until the very end.

The Sacred Original

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It is evident from the very first shot of Joel (Troy Baker, upping his acting levels, with a wonderfully underplayed but heavy hitting 'cowboy' emotion) playing his moth printed guitar, that Part II will hold the original, delicately, on the palm of its hands. The story opens as we are reminded about the cost that was Joel's decision to sacrifice mankind in favor of a teenage girl named Ellie. Tommy (Jeffrey Pierce, this time in a major role, finally able to shine) seems to be taken aback, but still ever loyal to his older brother. As far as he's concerned, the secret will die with him. Careful examination of what said decision meant, not just for Joel and Ellie, but also for the world around them, continues throughout the epic (and I'm not even tiptoeing aroung the word since Naughty Dogs aren't - more on that later). It is a narrative that moves in both directions, as the bleak future limps on, the past gives it the much needed context and often even the warmth, the nurishment for broken souls. But, as Arthur Miller once said, it’s a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one’s self. It's up to Ellie, and you - the player, to find the strength to carry on, even when you know, deep down, that what you're doing will not fill up the void.

You see, the loved ones, when they're gone, the don't come back.

Yet... They live on. In the world of The Last of Us, they are not the cordiceps infected clickers and shamblers and bloaters. They are the world that was left behind. Empty cafeteria. A bike store. Hotel rooms. Aquarium. Computer shop. A single ray of sunlight on someone's twenty year old homework. A letter to Santa. There's a moment in the game when Ellie (Ashley Johnson, all matured up and ready to bring out the pain) asks one of game's characters Jesse, about the derelict building they were in. I wonder what happened here. To what Jesse replies, paraphrasing, it was a comic book convention that never happened, you know, for people like you. Which makes you realise, if Ellie were living today, in our world, she would probably be a supergeek, posting on forums like us, attending cons, enjoying the pop culture world. She'd be, you know, just like Ashley Johnson.

Just a girl, not a threat.

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A Tale of Two Girls

It is no longer a secret to many players around the world, The Last of Us - Part II is not just a story about the cycle of violence and how it can affects us and poison us to our very core - it's a much bigger narrative that draws heavily, like many great stories of our time, from literature classics like Homer's Odyssey and especially Dante's La Divina Comedia, both of which are carefully planted on Abby's reading shelf during her opening Stadium moments.

After all, the very boat I already mentioned is an indirect reference to Charon, who forces reluctant sinners across the mythical river Styx.

But wait a second, who the hell is Abby?

Played by fearless Laura Bailey, Abby is the new character who smashes all of your fanboy dreams for the sequel with couple of swift strokes of a golf club. She is jacked, militaristic, somewhat emotionally distant and she just killed your second favorite character from the first game in the opening hours of Part II. So, yeah. How are we feeling about her during those times?

I'll be honest, like many out there: Not. Particularly. Good. At first. It's the Metal Gear Solid 2 switcheroo of our times, no doubt about it.

But you're in for a ride, of course you are, what else could draw our little Ellie on such a tasking journey to beautifully rendered, rain soaked Seattle, and in the middle of a civil war between two warring factions, WLF (or sexier - WOLF), and Seraphites (we don't accept 'Scars' here you bigot)? And just as you're some fifteen hours in and ready to wrap it up, game's tiny hooks firmly planted under your skin and, surely, nothing else can truly come out of it at that point, Part II pulls the carpet right under you: now you're playing Abby, for another fifteen hours. All of your hard earned skill points are gone, all of your weapons are gone. You think you know where it's going, and it may seem bothersome at first, but brother, just you wait.

The true devil shall reveal itself, but no amount of synopsis can bring you the same level of experience as the good ol' game time.

All of a sudden, Ellie's journey of vengeance that was about to be closed for good feels like a minor point in a bigger story involving two massive war expansions battling each other, all dead set on their goal. It's both horrific and humane to then get to know all sides of the story in deep and gory detail. Terribly reminiscent of our own world right now, what ultimately keeps you going, is the light in all that darkness, a legendary Firefly moto (yet another point of view that keeps on looming in the background). It is no coincidence that moths drawn to light keep appearing each time you load a checkpoint. Each and every one of them is trying to get closer to the only tiny thing that seems different than the rest of the world, which is dark, melancholic and depressing (partly thanks to both Gustavo Santaolalla and Mac Quayle's lyrical and atmospheric sound contributions). Each character in the game is a moth with a single purpose - to find a purpose. They don't know if the light is the answer, but it may very well be. Joel finds it in Ellie. Ellie finds it in avenging Joel's death. Abby finds it, not in killing Joel - the killer of her own father, but in Yara and Lev, two unlikely Seraphite companions, full of humanity and love for one another.

You are my people, says Abby in one crucial part of the game.

It's about that damned boat

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But the game won't just give you a typical eye-for-an-eye narrative and then cap it off with a The End screen, just like the first one didn't just give you a father-looses-a-daughter-and-finds-one-in-another story. We're all so short and sweet until we are ready to talk more about the actual story at hand. And in this one, it all comes back to Ellie again. See, it's all true, Part II deals with issues like tribalism and acts of violence that are coming and going in circles from around the times we were damned monkeys in a cave from 2001. I will, however, quote director Neil Druckmann on this one: it's about all of that, but also - it's ultimately about love, and the places you are willing to seek, to find it.

Final stretch of the game puts you in Santa Barbara, Ellie now looking like a literal junkie, ready for her final needle shot called Abby, Dina and life of peace and prosperity be damned.

'Abby. Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby.'

That is what you hear her furiously whispering as she approaches her final destiny spot, after witnessing yet another needlessly brutal encounter with the latest in humanity's worst - The Rattlers, who imprison people to be their slaves, until they die on one of many crosses along the beach.

The horror, right out of Apocalypse Now, is real. Not just for Ellie, the protagonist at the time, but also for us, the player. What magically happens in that moment in time, after 25-30 hours of game time, is you are now in control of a character who wants to brutally murder another character you learned to appreciate and love. Suddenly, it's not just you - as Ellie, going against Abby, the murderer of Joel. It's also Abby on the other side, who learned to love again, through Yara and Lev, tragically gone love Owen. Abby, who - with yourself along for the ride, went through literal hell, just like Ellie did, to save a single human life.

It is a 'boss battle' to end them all. A culmination of carefully planted narrative crumbs, an experience not unlike Pascal Laugier's horror masterpiece Martyrs (reminiscent in duality of two female protagonists who went to Dante's 9th to become something bigger than what they were at the start of their opposite journeys).

The Last of Us - Part II is about that damned boat, and finally being able to let go of the hate. One last image of Joel playing the guitar on his porch, drinking coffee he just got for a quarter of a soul it seems is what gives Ellie that ability to let go, and us players the ultimate, honest to god tearjerker relief.

What just occured my friends, is a true to form Greek catharsis. Dictionary says it's the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Greeks were known pioneers of using music as a form or relief, so it's no wonder that the final shots are the same as the ones that start the game - that of a guitar. Ellie finally becomes what she always feared the most - alone (washed out crop field scenery strongly evocative of Christina's World by the painter Andrew Wyeth). But amongst all the sadness of the ending, out of focus, she - The Stranger, slowly marches forward. That choice to move on despite the world and its oppressiveness is a Sisyphean task. Ellie adores space and space exploration because it is her own light, her anything-but-here solution to all her problems. What she realizes in the end, perhaps finally growing up in the process, is the fact that no person, or space, or time, really matters, unless you're willing to accept the life as it is right now - broken, silent, solitary... But living none the less. That guitar, that block of wall, that JJ carved in the tree - all of it lives through those who are still marching on, and remember. Now that is a story of a true modern heroine.

It's about that damned boat, because it's up to you - the player, along with Ellie, to finally fill it up with two souls, to save yours, from inferno.
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This game is a masterpiece.
It took someone I hated and turned them into someone I now love

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Aw hell yeah, finally... Spoiler heavy warning:



Edit: Huh boy... Absolute must watch. :clap:
Probably my favorite review, lands everything I tried to say in my own but felt like needed more words... GFR did it the best in my opinion, and in less than ten minutes.

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Wow, when I joined this forum the first game was just coming out (I see I had posted on the first page of this thread) -- here we are seven years later and I decide to log back on with the Tenet release coming up soon and this is one of the first things I see.

Second game has been phenomenal so far -- and much more terrifying than the first. I'm not even halfway finished, though, so I'll just be seeing myself out of this thread until I can sit down with it this weekend

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BroskiSabor wrote:
July 1st, 2020, 2:05 pm
Wow, when I joined this forum the first game was just coming out (I see I had posted on the first page of this thread) -- here we are seven years later and I decide to log back on with the Tenet release coming up soon and this is one of the first things I see.

Second game has been phenomenal so far -- and much more terrifying than the first. I'm not even halfway finished, though, so I'll just be seeing myself out of this thread until I can sit down with it this weekend
Believe it or not but I was just checking out the very first pages here couple of days back and wondered where you were and here you are! Welcome back and enjoy the rest of the game - report back. :gonf:

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Looks like senpai noticed the best review out there 🥺



And they even have a little exchange in the comments afterwards.

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Location: ny but philly has my <3
if people hate the idea of playing as a
villain, why do they love darth vader so much? actually, i think i know the answer

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Great review m4, meant to say that before.


-Vader

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And yes this is a Laura Bailey stan account.

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Vader182 wrote:
July 2nd, 2020, 4:41 pm
Great review m4, meant to say that before.


-Vader
Thanks man! Wish I had more time re-reading it, cutting, editing and talking more about stuff like, you know, gameplay! Or the graphics. 🙈 I guess all of that was already said through previous posts.



Halley is awesome I love her.

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