Giant Bomb Presents: The Last of Us Part II Spoilercast

there's no denying joel's selfish. i think his motives are pretty clear.

but likewise ellie didn't have a terminal illness, and she couldn't have known she was going to die until AFTER joel told her. she might have suspected, but that's not informed consent with good information from a physician.

her wanting to die due to a guilt complex (again- even as 19 year old she thinks she has to have died in order for her life "to fucking matter") is likely what's informing her deathwish. and joel is essentially saying, 'no- your life matters to me- that's enough and fuck everyone else, including your 14 year old sense of agency.'

anyway- i get the sense we're largely on the same page in terms of understanding the issues the game is working in. for my part, i'm still working through it all (no idea when i'll reach a conclusion).

@richard_buttz: I agree with you on narrative framing. The first 15 hours is basically a gender-swapped Deathwish and having a lesbian woman in the driver seat doesn't make it unproblematic. But I could write a book on why simply adding minority perspectives to problematic culture doesn't really change anything.... It's a tip-toe forward at best and seeing Druckman sell this game as this hyper-woke work of art just gives me the creeps...

And honestly, I'm defending Abby mainly because her story was so much more interesting and IMO she should have been the focus throughout. Ellie's story was not only weaker, it was morally reprehensible from the very beginning. Brad said in the spoilercast that he was angry at her by the end of the game. For me, by the end of Day 2 Ellie was completely beyond redemption and I was only hoping Dinah and Jesse don't become new victims of The Part 1 surrogate family.

You are right about Abby potentially being as bad, Mel even says that at one point. However, I believe that Abby found a reason to live in Lev and Yara (my 2 favorite chars by far). I genuinely believe she wanted to put all this shit behind her and raise the kids. Ellie, though? The blood rage is all she has... And you could say that's Joel's influence and that she's a victim but then why did we have to watch all these tender humanizing moments with this abusive mofo? The game seems to equivocate the trail of destruction left by Joel with one immoral decision made by Abby's dad. And to be clear, this is not Ellie's fault, this is the fault of bad writing.

All I'm saying is that they've made Ellie too bloodthirsty for this narrative to work. All they had to do is not lionize Joel and show just how bad his influence was. But, at the end of the day, Joel had too many fans and the writing team held back on this crucial element of the narrative. That's also why I'll remember TLOU2 as Abby's story; her side of the narrative wasn't botched and that made the gameplay and performances so much more enjoyable.

P.S.: I'm sorry if I came off as a dick yesterday. The ending of TLOU2 got on my nerves way more than it should've :)

Just want to thank the crew for a great constructive discussion about the game's story, especially seeing as the discourse on it has been so divisive and heated.

To me, the message of this game just felt really muddled. And for all the incredible detail and work that went into them, the characters never felt as real as they did in the first game. As mentioned in the video, there's some pretty weird character actions that just left me scratching my head. It's by no means a bad game, but for a game that puts such heavy emphasis on its story it's not very good either. It dragged on way too long, and especially in Abby's part it felt like a lot of the story elements around her journey were just obligatory. As if they just needed more for her to do in order to get their point across. The scene at the end, where Ellie got back to the farm and played the guitar, really struck me as having the potential of being a really powerful scene, but it honestly comes too late to serve as an effective epilogue or denouement. I think I get what they were going for, but it just didn't land as well as it could have.

It's just a bit disappointing compared to the first game and makes this game feel that much more unnecessary. I'm glad I saw it through, but I would personally just recommend people play the first one and leave it at that.

Talking over each other the podcast

@lumpofdeformity: I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Joel thing! In my mind, TLOU was never Joel's game, even if you spent the majority of the game playing as him. The prerelease discourse surrounding this game has made it very difficult to talk about, because it seems like a lot of people took sides even before release. Joel has always seemed to be a generic character in my eyes, and I can't really imagine people stanning him.

I also agree with you 100 percent on Abby having the more interesting story. I think the reason I am so critical of her specifically is that I like her way more than Ellie (even in spite of her status as a WLF). If the goal of the story is to explore both sides of a conflict, I want to like both parties equally. It feels like we are both looking at the same problem from different angles. One could tone down Ellie's violence, rage, and despair. Alternatively, you could darken Abby's story by writing more confrontation with her potentially violent past.

I agree with you completely! I appreciate the apology, but no offense was taken. I also apologize if you were offended by anything I wrote. It's easy to mix personal criticism with criticism of the game, but it wasn't my intention.

And one final, big yes! I don't know if the woke label was applied by Naughty Dog or the hooting chuds, but there is very little about this game that is actually progressive. Thats okay! I normally don't concern myself with the politics of a game- I was just confused about how it was actually applied. I purposefully ignored all the prerelease controversy.

I appreciate your posts!

I didn't play this game what am I doin' here!

I was super into the story of this game. I really dug the dynamics between Abby and Ellie. I personally found myself really invested in Abby's arc. Personally I thought Abby was far more justified in her actions than Ellie was.

I read Abby’s arc as this conflict is a lost cause, as opposed to some moral dichotomy.

Are you going to stay with the WLF? For what? To go to war over an island? To kill every stranger you see? That conflict is coming to ahead after Abby kills Joel and a lot of people are unsettled by it and when Abby feels obligated to help Lev and Yara.

I felt the answer isn’t there’s good to be had on both sides. It’s that Abby is finding redemption / something that’s actually worth fighting over. The WLF and the Seraphites both suck and people should get out of Dodge before it’s too late. The both sides doesn’t come from these two factions, but rather how Abby starts to find redemption when Ellie is hunting down all of her friends. Overall I still think the game is more focused on portraying Ellie’s internal conflicts rather than saying something like, “Boy, revenge is not good, huh?”

I was very impressed with the storytelling in this game. I think there is certainly a pacing problem in the game, but it took me 33 hours over a span of about 3 weeks to get through the game, and I thought it was very much a page turner at that pace. If I had the ability to sit down and play it all in one or two sessions, I might be a little more sour on it, but as it was, I was always ready to play more.

I think the game intends for you to become disenchanted with Ellie throughout her time in Seattle. I think it expects you to reject her path forward and to become disgusted or put off by the steps she takes to reach a goal that seems less and less worth it every step of the way. By the time you reach the end of Day 3 in Seattle she felt unredeemable to me. She had committed a myriad of reprehensible acts and had nothing to show for it.

If the second half of the game wasn't as long as it is, I don't think I'd have formed the connection I did with Abby's character by the end of it. I think if it wasn't as long as it was it would have felt manipulative and shallow. But, by actually making you live with that character, you start to empathize with her more and start to feel her hopelessness and struggle.

I've never given much thought to ludonarrative dissonance before, but this game was the first time I felt it and needed to correct the way I was playing. As Abby, I started out as a soldier okay with violence and okay with the bloodshed, but by the time I was with Lev and Yara, I didn't want to cause more unnecessary bloodshed.

By the time I got to the Seraphite island, I no longer tried to kill anyone in the game. At that point, it was Abby, Lev, and Yara just trying to get away from everything and survive. You can make it through that whole section without killing anyone (minus one or two maybe), and I think that is the path that character would take at that point. Abby isn't a WLF anymore, the Seraphite's are trying to kill Lev and Yara, but they are still their people and their culture, she doesn't want to kill them either, she doesn't want to bring them more pain. She doesn't want to be the person she had become anymore.

The biggest misstep is the last section of the game. Mostly with the pacing. Even playing out in shorter play sessions as I did, I felt the ramp towards the end begin and thought by the time I got to the farm I'd only have a short while left. The Rattlers didn't need to exist in the way they did. Trudging through a whole section of Santa Barbara didn't need to exist the way it did. I'm also sure there's a different way to have the final confrontation between Abby and Ellie, but I'm glad it ended the way it did in a lot of senses.

I was disgusted that this game was going to make me kill Abby. I didn't want to do it. Like many others, I tried to put the controller down. I tried to make it stop, but you can't. It was very impactful to me.

This game doesn't have a happy ending. There isn't much fulfillment, and I think that is just fine. It's a very real kind of story in that sense. There are no good people in the world of this game, and I'm not sure I would've felt okay with any ending that was uplifting or hopeful. Not everyone is forgivable, and even if you forgive them, it's not reasonable to expect others to forgive them.

I really liked Abby by the end of the game, or at least I was empathetic towards her, but she is also a bad person. She's done things that can't be forgiven, but she, like Joel, is trudging on and trying to do what she can to keep someone else safe and shielded from the world while she can. Did Ellie forgive her? I don't know. Probably not, but she did recognize that she wasn't going to fix anything by doing what she thought she wanted to do.

I've spent a lot more time thinking about the story in this game than I did with the first game. I understand that some people don't and won't like it, but for me, it's really something special.

Long rambling post with my thoughts because I have no one else to really discuss the game with in my life at the moment. :)

I’m pretty much opposite of most of their opinions. I didn’t think the first game was anything special. I kinda hated the gameplay and I thought the story fell flat. I loved part 2 from top to bottom. Yes it’s a little overlong, but I enjoyed the gameplay so much that I didn’t mind.

I get pretty annoyed when they discuss story elements in games like this. The whole ludonarrative whatever argument is so boring and cliche at this point. It’s a video game. It has to make some concessions to be playable and fun.

They also often seem to rag on not having “choice” in a game, but that’s such a weird argument to make.. You don’t have choice in film or novel, so I don’t know why they have an expectation for them to have it here.

I understand that they all mostly enjoyed it. I’m just finding myself having very different opinions from most of the staff on games these days. Brad is usually a breath of fresh air, since he seems to be more positive and not negative off the bat.

I'm not gonna go deep in to this because I like the game and others dont and thats alright, but I do find Abbys (R) constant idea of "thing x was presented to me like this and this is how I interpreted it in the moment, how come not every single thing is consistent with it?" a bit weird as if the world was so black and white. :D By this I mean things like the talk about rattlers and humanity and whatever else was there. Like y'all live in the US, you're really surprised that there are elements of society that would capitalize on absolute misery and horror? But to each their own, I don't wanna sound like I'm just completely bashing someones feelings or thoughts on this game.

As a side I wonder how much the current atmosphere in the states affects peoples ability to go through entertainment media like this thats pretty grim and not something I would describe "fun" in a traditional sense. I live in the nordics and things are pretty good here and I played this game in like 12 hours sessions, just could not put it down until I finished or really had to sleep, I was so engaged with its gameplay and the story. Probably just an individual thing regardless of country but just a thought I had.

Good cast, keep trucking!

I found it kinda baffling when they didn't realize the entire point of showing you Abby's perspective is to show you that even though in all of their humanity, nice little farms, goats, soccer balls, burritos, pseudo-college dorms and so on...the Wolves (and Scars) are awful awful people or at least institutions/organizations. Their lives are based on tumultuous, problematic, and corrupt ideas and practices. Isaac is a twisted and brutal man, and was Joel a paragon? No, but he did not even come close to the systematic destruction of what Isaac did. He messed up and killed a doctor when he should have just knocked him out so he'd be down long enough to get away clean.

I definitely see Brad's point about the Fireflies being perceived as sorta fuck-ups and these almost-zealots; and that the pitch of the cure wasn't a 100% sure fire worldwide miracle cure. More so it had a great shot of being something amazing, but wasn't something that close to a great guarantee.
I always felt that way and after the end of the first game they definitely give you the notion that he wasn't the last capable doctor ever and Ellie wasn't the only immune person ever. Definitely agree on the fact that they never even asking Ellie straight up about it was really, really fucked.

Oh and on that point, I can't tell you how much I hated that last gameplay section of the first Last of Us...that long ass corridor full of dudes with M16s or w/e was soooo fucking bad, I almost just turned the game off and youtube'd the ending. While TLoU2 wasn't perfect, nothing narratively or gameplay-wise even came close to pissing me off and turning me off as much as that moment in the first game.

FInally finished the game but, our Abby saying Abby was trans on the Beastcast threw me off while trying to finish it. I was waiting for some big reveal and it never came.

@dan_citi: LOU2 should have ended at the farm wtih JJ. The fact they kept going to have another Abby confrontation for no reason, plus I was pissed Ellie lost her fingers and I had no choice in the matter.

SPOILER COMMENT ON A SPOILER PODCAST

I'm not all the way through it yet, but it sounds like I'm mostly with Abby (Russell) & Vinny on this one.

The game that refused to just end.

My take away from the Joel/Ellie Flashback at the end of the game is that Ellie finally forgave Joel through "forgiving" Abby. Her revenge quest was less about vengeance and more about her being unable to cope with not having the chance to forgive Joel for what he did. So in the end I thought it really wrapped up nicely.

God Abby, what a bummer, can't get through this.

@smallville123: Do you happen to remember what beastcast this is, or if she addresses it again here? Carving out some time tonight to listen to it now that I've finished the game.

But...she isn't, Lev is. They are pretty clear about that too.

It was a few weeks before the spoilercast our Abby just kept saying "I have a problem making an antagonist trans"

Shoutout to Brad for watching that Joseph Anderson video on TLOU2, or at least coming to the same conclusions that the Fireflies were obvious fuckups, and should be given no benefit of the doubt that they would be successful, considering literally every involvement you have with them proves they are incompetent idiots.

"I liked the game"

*Rips the game apart for and hour and a half*

I guess I'm in the opposite camp as a lot of people. I loved TLOU 1 but found the story to be pretty trite in light of its influences (Children of Men, Walking Dead). It was very well done but didn't leave me going, "Wow, I haven't seen this before!" While in TLOU 2, I thought its story was incredibly bold and original. Instead of being another Breaking Bad-esque story about an anti-hero, it instead places the player as the focus. It's your personal arc as a player gaining understanding of these waring factions, what starts prejudice and what if anything could ever end it.

The focus on how tribalism dehumanizes others through prejudice is very powerful and potent given what's going on in the world in 2020. In a way, I found it very uplifting because both Ellie and Abby were able to look past their prejudice/tribalism and grow.

Hey! I just finished the game last night, so my thoughts are still very fresh. Also, spoilers incoming.

Those are my rough thoughts. Still kind of sifting through it, and I'm very positive on the game overall.

EDIT: After actually finishing the spoilercast (whoops) a lot of these things were addressed. Thanks again for the video!

Posting this under a 3 month old video doesn't add much but I just needed to put something down to clear my head, so pardon the ramblings.

It's a been a few days since I finally got around to playing this game, and still think about it a lot. Can't recall too many games that stand out for doing this to me but when it does happen, I both love and hate it (ie Nier Automata, Life is Strange, Silent Hill 2) as I feel off for days.

Enjoyed this spoilercast, regardless of some opinions not aligning with mine. I just want to hear and see other people talk and write about it to put my thoughts in order.

I understand the critique the gratuitous violence, long playtime and sometimes hokey plot points get, I just didn't care enough to let that stand out as a negative. The writing might be lacking at times but I apparently have a high cheese tolerance and actually really liked it. This was always more about the characters to me anyway. Gameplay felt very solid as well, as they mention the option to go loud and back into stealth so easily really helps the flow of combat and made it very fun to play.

Great visuals, some amazing set pieces. Loved the little animations and visual power that made it feel so realistic. Just seeing simple things like Ellie putting on the hood every time she walked into rain, or having a wobbly idle animation and change in expression when she stands up in the boat are such a minor yet key things that really improved the overall feel of this game for me. Things like this are obviously much more commonplace nowadays in high budget games but having started playing videogames in the late 80s I still get a childlike glee out of being able to go 'holy shit they made this actually interact properly will you look at that fucking magic?!' I made footsteps in mud and snow for way longer than I care to admit.

Absolutely love this game, warts and all.

it's a shame Jan doesn't talk a lot in this podcast, because when he does he's always on point with his critique/commentary. Loved the discussion overall.

Even though they felt turned off by a lot of stuff from Ellie's arc, because it was too much, I feel it was the best moments in the game and it depicted her distress and succumb to madness masterfully. I still remember the scene when Dina bathes Ellie. It felt very emotional and impactful for the character and their arc... I just wish the plot overall felt like that which it didn't.