The Last of Us Part 2 - In defense of the writing

First off I want to say it's okay to not like the game, to not enjoy it or to not want to play it (especially not now) it is very bleak and depressing. I am also not even halfway through the game so no big spoilers.

I want to offer a defense of the "bad writing" though. The Last of Us 1 had a very typical protagonist that most gamers can understand: what if John Wick had a daughter. Many gamers liked him and understood him. When he did bad things or made bad choices they understood them, even cheered them on because it was coming from a place we have all seen in games and movies. Some players also did mental gymnastics to convince themselves he wasn't a villain or at least morally suspect in the end.

TLOU2 on the other hand is presenting protagonists that are far more alien to the average gamer: female trauma survivors grapling with their identity in a bleak hopeless world. They make bad or morally grey choices based on trying to navigate who they are and how they continue on from the trauma that has shaped (misshapen them)

While I dont know that I LIKE the story in the sense of enjoying it I am fascinated in how Naughty Dog is presenting a perspective I dont know that I have seen before in a game. I am not convinced the writing is as bad as recent Star Wars movies, it just might be harder to understand since it is the same bleak world of the first game seen through a different lense.

I think perhaps Hellbade might be a better parallel than Uncharted.

That being said, the story seems pretty standard from the first 7-8 hours I've seen plus some spoilers I came across. None of the plot elements or themes that have arisen so far seem particularly difficult to grasp. Are people comparing it to Star Wars? Seems weird to me, but I've seen a lot of people fail to grasp the fairly obvious message in Last Jedi, so maybe I'm just out of touch on the cultural zeitgeist.

As an aside, I've seen a lot of people lately judge a story on how many nitpicks they can make as opposed to how well the plot and characters evoke an emotional response, convey a message, or reinforce a theme. It's really the cinemasins-ification of online critique and it bugs the hell out of me.

So far to me one of the most interesting things I've seen has been people criticizing Abby as being "evil and immoral" while making Joel out to be a pretty good dude. Not that Joel didn't do good things, but i thought the first game did a pretty good job depicting him as someone who has done a lot of bad things throughout his time in the post apocalypse.

I just dont like the way they doneJoel in this. I dont care how its written. Its the structure and manner. Its piss poor and forceful. Druckmann clearly has this agenda against the world. Fuck that guy.

Nothing wrong with the characters like abby. Shes clearly well written

On a technical level Its great. I just didnt care for any of the story.

I wish they made a game with new characters.

They poorly handled the execution (some pun intended lol). The golf club scene was distasteful, making us play as Abby was a VERY bad idea, and final confrontation was underwhelming. There are some pacing issues too, it took too long for human enemies to show up, the Seattle part dragged, and a few other things. I don't think gender has anything to do with this. I've always liked Ellie (still do), I hate Abby for what she did and how she did it.

Joel is no angel, but I never thought what he did at the end of the first game was evil. Really, they were going to kill/experiment on a little girl at the chance they might find a cure. Also, WTF is the point in a cure? Obviously it would help, but their problem seems to be killing the existing infected with the limited people and supplies that they have. If there was a vaccination so you couldn't turn infected they'd still have the problem of killing the already turned. To me, it seems like their world is beyond the point of needing a vaccination.

I agree with @haz_kaj, the graphics and gameplay are top-notch, but the story is not good. It has great spectacle moments, but that's different from a great story.

I’m about 10-ish hours from finishing the game myself. I think the writing has been good enough, but maybe lacks in what it is trying to do. I wish I were a better critic so I could clarify what I mean. I really appreciate what they are trying to do. Re-conceptualizing the first game and making all of the characters’ motivations justifiable while their actions maybe less so is a good story to tell, though it can at times mean that those stories can feel a bit pointless. Where the game falters is in how on the nose it can be in its messaging and, at times, how gratuitous it can be. Making Abby and Ellie so similar, even down to the whole ‘character I care about is impacted by a pregnancy’ thing and ‘grief over dad (or dad-figure)’, force feeds the message to the audience that there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guys because deep down we’re all the same. Then some of the acts of violence just felt like attempts to shock and then, in turn, make you think. But really all I was left with was the violence.

But, overall, I’m really impressed by the game’s writing like I was with the first game. I personally think people are being unfair to the game and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s because the first game is so beloved? Or people just don’t like Naughty Dog anymore, I guess? Whatever the reason, the vitriol has been really gross to see and made me want to avoid fans like the fucking plague.

@jasonr86: I keep seeing people saying they don't want to play the game right now because of everything going on in the world right now, for me I can't really deal with how some of the "fans" are acting, you'd think someone killed their family, not made a game that disappointed them

@deathstriker said:

I don't get this specific criticism. I've seen the same thing with the same wording all over. It's distasteful to have a new unknown character execute a beloved character? What's wrong with playing an antagonist? It feels like people are sour over their hero protagonist being killed so easily.

@jasonr86 said:

Read the Waypoint review. Rob takes issue with the routine of it all and tropey nature. I don't happen to agree but it's a point well made, and is a perfectly valid reason to not be interested or entertained.

The vitriol is pretty disgusting, almost everyone can agree.

I'll say this, Naughty Dog's performance capture is top notch. Maybe that results in some of the dumber decisions sticking out.

People complaining about Joel don't want to accept his character. Joel is not a hero, he never was. He was a selfish, ruthless bastard, who killed anyone who got in his way of getting what he wanted to survive. You can make an argument that everyone in the world is this way to some degree, but Joel was no saint. So it amazes me how people think Joel can just go around messing people over and it not comeback on him at some point. Like in real life, you burn enough bridges and people will start looking for you. And the execution of his bad karma was fine, especially if you follow the ending moments of the first game. It was bond to happen. And I'm personally glad it did, because I didn't like what Joel did at the end of the first game.

One might argue that a good writer can make people relate to their characters regardless of how alien the subject matter is. In my case though, the issue was that all the characters came across as if they were written to fit the story, not the other way around.

To add more on Joel's change of character:

Generally, I can understand why a huge fan of TLOU 1 would think the story to be underwhelming. At the end of the day it is a straightforward revenge tale. Watching a movie like Kill Bill would probably be more satisfying. However, I will give Naughty Dog its props where deserved. If there was one singular goal it is for the player to develop a “damn…I think that Abby might be a better person than Ellie” type of feeling. One forgets who’s side there on. I might just be an idiot but that totally worked on me. I personally did not feel that way until the very beginning of the last chapter. Also, I think a big reason it works is because it’s a 20-hour video game and not a movie. You spend a significant amount with the characters…makes a huge difference.

I also hate when characters are more following the plot than their established characterization, that's everyone's problem with the last season of Game of Thrones, so far I felt that the characters have been inline with bleak world, but I might feel differently a year from now.

Also its true not being able to invest in a character could be a sign of bad writing, though I guess I find that take harder to believe since so many that claim that use the mere presence of trans themes to be evidence of the bad writing.

I look forward to reading up more on people's opinions when I finish the game, then I will click all the spoiler tags people post.

Again, I think it is okay to not like the game, but man the online reception for the game is steeped in transphobia and misogyny on end of the spectrum and intense shallow praise on the other end.

Yeah, killing one of the last few doctors in the world was definitely not an evil act. Nor was any of the other evil things he did to get there.

You completely missed the point of the first game if you think Joel is anything but a villain.

There's an extremely obvious argument to be made that in the world of The Last of Us, morality as a theme is almost meaningless because in such a fucked up place, PEOPLE are all we have. Those connections that make life worth enduring even in the face of near hopelessness. That's why Joel did what he did at the end of the first game, to him Ellie's life and his connection to her mattered more than respecting Tess' dying wish or even a chance at saving humanity itself. Remember all the shit that he went through just to get Ellie to the Firefly hospital? And it's why Abby and Ellie go on their dangerous and self-destructive revenge missions.

And it's also why TLOU2 END GAME SPOILERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED: The cost of that revenge is Abby and Ellie losing most of their loved ones and their respective futures together, the only tangible things they had in this messed up world.

I'll echo others' sentiments that it's not that the game is too violent in an absolute sense, it's that the level and fidelity of brutality is dissonant with the contrived nature of the plot. Characters' pragmatic sensibilities and senses of justice are arbitratily manipulated to perpetuate a cycle of violence that the game doesn't effectively justify. The cycle could be broken at many points, either with a voluntary abstinence from violent revenge OR the selective application of more violence to a particular situation, both of which the characters should be capable of at least meaningfully considering. The fact that they don't makes them feel more like toys in a toy chest than real people. Meanwhile, the in-game violence is presented with the aim of making victim and perpetrator feel "real" in the eyes of the player, which causes friction when the game refuses to treat them that way in its own plot.

It's true that in real life, shockingly traumatic events can come seemingly out of nowhere. But it's also true that people respond with a wide array of variably-effective coping strategies, and manage to find and create moments of joy, beauty, and serenity even within a framework of constant trauma. To depict one without the other is fantasy.

Meh, I don't like characters who are all about vengeance. Naughty Dog writing their character like vigilantes who torture people, is unpalatable to me. I'll skip this game, and I woudl have slipped those even if we lived in a better world.

Jesus Christ, calm down. He literally said "I never thought" it's his takeaway from the game. Not yours.

I think there are a lot of a good specific points being made here but I feel I am most frustrated by a more general premise in that.. this seems to be a world where people can only possibly make decisions that are in their absolute worst interests. Humans can only ever be the worst versions of themselves in any situation.

Which seems.. exhausting.

I will wait until the cultural hyperbole dies down to actually figure out what are legit critiques of the game. I didn't enjoy the last game, mainly because the gameplay was not fun. I am also one of the few who thought the writing in uncharted 4 was pretty bad though, especially compared to the first 3 games, but that type of writing definitely fits a slow paced game like TLOU better.

@likeassur: The ending of the first game is gray, what he did was understandable and not good or evil IMO. Kinda like Inception or Pan's Labyrinth people can make up their own minds. I do believe people who think it was purely bad are missing key details.

1. Who says if Joel let them kill her that they'd be able to find a cure? I believe the first game said or hinted that she wasn't the first immune person they would've experimented on. We see in our own world that cures take a lot of time and resources. Odds are Ellie woild've possibly been a step in the right direction, but not some holy key that unlocks everything.

2. In my earlier post I question how helpful a cure would be at this stage in their world. If experimenting on Ellie led to some biological weapon that only killed the infected I'd be a bit more down with their plan, but they're too screwed already to worry about a cure.

3. A doctor's creed is "Do no harm", so if they're going to kill a little kid I'm fine with whatever happens to them.

I mean Joel murders and tortures a ton of people, I don't know why there needs to be any further case being made for him. We have a rather clear view of what he is throughout.

Why does anyone have to be like.. "..Okay but you gotta understand.." about it.

@av_gamer:Very well said, I can't agree more with your post.

I can't really defend how it deals with vocal opposition to the revenge. There's usually one character with them who is like, "Hey, don't do that. It's not going to solve anything." but they seem to be dismissed or become willingly complicit. In one character's case, they flip from one scene to the next. From, "It's hard, don't revenge." to "BRB, off for revenge."

Infuriating.

Also:

The character of Tess was originally intended to be featured as the main antagonist of The Last of Us, pursuing Joel for a year before a final confrontation in which she is killed by Ellie. However, the team found it difficult to believe that Tess would dispute with Joel and pursue him for a year; this was solved by significantly adjusting the story

BRAVO!

So I just finished the game and overall: I like the story quite a lot. I'll not go over everything but I'll address some of my thoughts on issues people seem to be having with the game:

"The vengeance angle doesn't work"

For me, the vengeance angle did work. I understand people seem to be wanting the characters to act pragmatically or rationally but grief isn't rational and I think that Naughty Dog's use of motion capture goes a remarkably long way to illustrating the moments when characters lose themselves over to that grief. I've seen people become totally overwhelmed when losing people they love in real life and it's not hard for me to imagine seemingly good people becoming consumed by vengeance in the way these characters do in a world as heightened by brutality as The Last of Us.

On the flip side, I also have no problem with the conceit of a 'revenge-drama' as a genre, so some people just might not dig it on a fundamental level.

"The event that kickstarts the whole game doesn't work"

A number of people have already expressed it here but Joel was never a good guy and I don't think losing him was a particularly unjust element of either the world or the story nor did I think it was a detriment to the game. I was genuinely surprised by his death and I was sold on the way the grief affected Ellie from the beginning. Then as every flashback introduced another facet of their relationship, I believed in her grief more.

"That thing that happens in the middle of the game doesn't work"

I was right there with you when I started playing as Abby, but maybe not for the reasons a lot of people didn't like it. I have no problem playing as characters in a game with opposing goals so I actually found the idea of playing as the 'antagonist' quite refreshing. My main issue was that it felt like when we returned to Seattle Day 1 and we had to start a whole new set of skill trees and find a whole new host of weapons, it felt like some momentum was lost. I wondered if the game was originally two separate campaigns that were smashed together at some point and I started daydreaming about what the game would look like if the Ellie and Abby campaigns alternated with each mission rather than in two large blocks. I still think there might be a case for examining the game like that to see if it would be less jarring.

Overall, though, before long I found myself enjoying the Abby campaign far more than I'd enjoyed the Ellie campaign. The story felt like there was a real sense of escalation that I think was helped by knowing the fates of certain characters. And generally speaking, it felt like the scope grew larger than the fairly rote revenge story that Ellie's game had followed up to that point. In the end I think it's fair to say that although the introduction of the Abby campaign felt...clumsy, to say the least, in the end I saw her and most of the WLF as real characters rather than boogeymen and it did a pretty good job of eliciting some emotions I would best describe as 'adjacent to guilt'. I don't necessarily think I actually felt guilty but it left a suitably sour taste in my mouth when I realised that these people weren't evil incarnate.

"What's all this SJW crap doing in my game?"

Yeah, I dug all that SJW crap. I'm a cis-straight-white-working class-twenty something but I've got family across the LGBT spectrum and seeing characters represented with LGBT traits but not defined by them was super cool and I'd be down to see more of it.

For those who feel uncomfortable seeing violence against LGBT people, I can entirely understand an aversion to this game but it's a world where everybody is violent to everybody and that would still be the case if every character was a cis-straight-white-working class-twenty something.

"So you think everything worked?"

Nope! Overall the broad picture worked pretty well for me and I'm willing to overlook a lot of tiny plot-hole-picking that some people are doing because I'm capable of suspending my disbelief when experiencing a work of fiction. But a few things felt rough to me:

• The aforementioned shift to the Abby campaign, as effective as it was eventually, felt very clumsy.
• Isaac felt utterly wasted. In a tighter script, he and the WLF would have taken the place of the Rattlers in the games final hours but instead he was killed off in a particularly hurried fashion. Wasting Jeffrey Wright like that should automatically land you in casting jail.
• The Seraphites skirt the line of 'cultist video game boogeymen' far too closely for my liking.
• What the fuck was with that reject Resident Evil boss that Abby fought in the hospital?
• I do not care for Dinah. I think the performance is fine but she comes across as a weirdly nothing character that feels very tropeish.
• The parallel pregnancies felt forced. I thought there was going to be something more with Mel's pregnancy but it seems like it's mostly there to make Ellie vomit. Probably should have had more impact on Owen in...I don't know, some way. Any way whatsoever.
• Stalkers can fuck off forever.

So, that's my initial take, half an hour after finishing.

Curious to see what others who have finished the game think, even if they completely disagree with me. Unless some people just don't like seeing progressive attitudes surrounding sexuality represented in video-games, those people can go choke.

@trulyalive: What a thoughtful take, I love it. I agree with basically everything you said. I respect a majority of the choices the writers made, even if they weren’t what I hoped for or expected of a sequel. And I can not echo your sentiment on Jeffrey Wright’s character enough. High crimes.

I think the problem is all the how and not the what. I'll look at just the main issue, Abby.

4/10 from me. Played on Survivor, NOT on "I'm a journalist who can't play games" difficulty - being the easiest setting.

It is a fucking shame that such a beautiful game becomes such a torture to finish. The game is at least 3 hours too long.

@yagami: I started the game on Hard and finished it on Normal. I don't think there's any shame in not playing the game on the hardest difficulty setting. I wasn't particularly enjoying it on a higher difficulty so I bumped it down. If you enjoyed it at that difficulty, good for you.

It’s weird that people say nothing was accomplished in the game when that was the ending of LoU1. Like on purpose the status quo stays the same. Also, this is a revenge story and not much is “accomplished” in those stories. Many of them focus on how vengeance destroys everyone involved.

@trulyalive: I think its basically that. People don't like revenge stories taken so seriously. People like john wick and the violence but when you're supposed to take it serious people point fingers at it being another one of those and how violence is bad is a dumb trope somehow. Like the meme...real treasure is the friends along the way or chosen one, tropes that people overall just got tired of and need everyone who likes them still, to know how wrong they are. Also, people spew that its agenda-driven and hate any mention of what you said even if they use coded wording to cover it up. That said other than that...people can still just not like it for reasons of it just not working. Hard to tell with all the 0 scores trying to offset the good.

I still stand by the idea that the game wasn't meant for everyone and tons playing it or commenting on it after watching lets plays would be put off no matter what. It's like a COD and sports game player being told Tetris is good and just not getting it since its not something thed play normally. No matter what the best rpg isnt going to appeal to someone who never likes RPGs at the core unless you change the RPG so much original fans cant enjoy it.

I just want to say that in The Last Of Us Part II the true horror is not the infected or man's inhumanity to man, it's a video game director who doesn't have an editor reining in his most self-indulgent tendencies.

Whatever you want to say about the other elements of the game it is way too long and repetitive, and especially features way too many sequences when you're traveling alone through samey environments doing the same thing over and over and over.

A lot of movie directors who have a hit get a lot of creative control and then go kind of nuts in their next project with self-indulgence and including every single thought they had, but it doesn't really happen in video games because they're so expensive to make, and every scene of dialog has to be animated and have assets built etc... Not the case here.

So many segments where you follow a companion character to see something "cool." So. Much. Time. spent at the aquarium. So many dilapidated buildings or concrete storage rooms. It even reuses the same boring environments in several places, which is wild because the game is already too long but it's like "did you enjoy going through this shipping yard the first time when it was full of infected? No? Well you get to go through it again but this time it's got dudes with guns."

Even if you like the writing (and most of the dialog is fine, even if the story is cliche and silly) this game needed like 5-10 hours removed from it.

@topcyclist: One of my favourite films is Dead Man's Shoes. That takes itself very seriously. Same goes for Point Blank. They reach the same conclusions of the The Last of Us 2 but they're a lot more grounded in scope and character.

There's a convenience to The Last Of Us 2 that winds me up. In the first game, Joel had a plan and he had steps to take. Ellie has one clue and the game decides to skip to the destination rather than the journey. That's where the character building was in the first game.

It's a shame to me that I can see a better narrative, better themes and better execution but, for whatever reason, we get something that simply isn't as crafted as the first story.

@bigsocrates: I didnt read the spoiler tag because I havent finished the game but I agree with everything else you've said.

I'm about 20 hours in and I just dont care at this point. It's not the things that happen or even the characters being dislikable it's the pacing, it's fucking awful. It doesnt help that the structure of the plot is even worse. (i'm in flashback hell at the moment)

My only major gripe with the story is how they handle/portray pregnancy.

Both Dina and Mel act as if they aren't even pregnant. My wife was watching as I played the game, and she was constantly rolling her eyes and laughing at it. Did the writers not consult with any female that wasn't a 20 year old California hipster?

I think they accomplish this game’s ultimate goal of portraying the endless cycle of violence and how it can get ugly for everyone so quickly. It’s a simple message but they make good on it. When Abby reaches Haven and the whole town is literally on fucking fire, everyone bloodied and mercilessly murdering each other, not to mention seeing Abby fistfight the dude who literally had a gaping wound in his fucking face, it felt like everything coalesced in that moment and the game successfully illustrated its point.

However in trying to convey its message, I think it asks a lot of the player. I’m not gonna lie, when I started playing as Abby and saw that there were brand new skill trees and new weapons that could be upgraded, I let out a huge ass sigh. Like I just already felt so exhausted by this point. In order to develop relatability and sympathy for this character we barely know, we have to go through all three days of Seattle, PLUS additional flashbacks. But by the end of it I felt Abby’s pain and her sense of loss, to the point where I sympathized with her more than Ellie. The writing was superb, it’s technically a masterpiece and looks fantastic and I enjoyed the experience this game offered, but I honestly never want to play this game ever again.

@big_denim: I noticed how it was inconsistent, one day she survives an exploding horse and crashes through the ceiling like Rambo, then the next day she can barely pickup a chair or walk without throwing up. Much like Tommy and Joel being too friendly, the story has characters do what's needed in order to move things, even if it doesn't make sense or it's uncharacteristic for them to do.

I kinda feel like the opposite about it. I generally preferred playing as Abby, as she seemed a much more interesting character than Ellie and with a much more conflicted set of objectives which led to a much more interesting sense of character development. I also wasn't really surprised that other characters felt the need to murder Joel as both the first and second games allude to him doing some pretty gnarly shit to survive. I mostly feel like the game did a great job at humanising enemies that would have been, in any other game, interchangeable. People that I hated as Ellie I'd come to like and respect as Abby, which is a tricky feat to pull off - even the scars, with Lev and Yara. Honestly, I was mostly frustrated with Ellie by the end of the game, as her one-track "we need to kill these motherfuckers" John Wick-esque mentality made her seem extremely obtuse and was the largest roadblock in the intended "it's not as binary as you think" message. I also think Druckmann is heavy handed with his "he who seeks revenge should dig two graves" narrative.

But generally, I liked it.

@sweep: Well said. I think Abby was my favorite character by the end of the game.

The "cycle of revenge" theme gets heavily undermined by

I also don't think Druckmann did himself any favours with the self-inserts. It reminded me of when people suspected Kojima was going to sabotage MGS V.

Joel reminded me that he was a complete piece of shit to everyone but Ellie when he said “just say whatever speech you practiced and get this over with.” This girl is clearly a loved one of someone he murdered and he just doesn’t care. He would rather die than emotionally confront the things he has done.