Does The Last of Us: Part 2 make Part 1 look bad?
Okay, admission up front, I’ve not finished The Last of Us Part 2. Luckily this isn’t really about that, so we’re good. I’m actually here to talk about a glaring issue with the original Last of Us game that passed me by at the time but has had a light shone on it by the release of Part 2.
I’m going to keep it pretty much spoiler free for Part 2 aside from the two elements that are important to this article:
- The core gameplay is largely the same in both games.
- Part 2 is a game about revenge and violence.
I will, however, be spoiling the original quite a lot. So, stop reading this if you haven’t already played it already, play it, then come back.
The motivation of the player character in Part 2 is revenge, so it follows that when you play as them you spend your time violently killing people. It sounds oddly simplistic but as the game’s co-writer Halley Gross says:
‘Ultimately, this is a story about the cycle of violence’
The story is about violence and the gameplay reflects that. This is the strength of telling a story through a game, the player feels the weight of the character’s actions far more strongly if they’re the one doing it. Regardless of how you feel about the game, it chooses to talk about violence in a medium that allows the (simulated) committing of violent acts. This will always be a more powerful story-telling tool than watching, reading or hearing about violence. That’s what it is here, a story-telling tool.
So why are we committing the same acts of violence in TLOU a game about ‘Love, loyalty and redemption’?
Their themes are chalk and cheese. If you type ‘Revenge antonym’ into google, the first result is forgiveness which is synonymous with redemption. My point being that the themes of the first and second game are not just different, but opposing. Surely, If the strength of videogames as a way to tell a story is in the audience participating, then these two games should play very differently, right?
In TLOU you play as Joel, a middle aged man who loses his daughter in a zombie outbreak and spends the next 20 years doing some terrible things to get by in the post-apocalypse. The main plot of the game begins when Joel has a teenage girl, Ellie, put in his care. It’s then Joel’s responsibility to get Ellie to a group of rebels on the other side of the country. It takes them nearly a year and over that time Joel becomes a father figure to Ellie.
The character progression is clear for the player character. Joel gets a chance to redeem himself for decades of implied stealing, killing and generally being a bit of a villain through protecting his surrogate daughter. The ending throws a bit of a curveball and whether he redeems himself or messes it up spectacularly is a matter of interpretation.
Looking back, what Joel does and what the player does as Joel don’t fit at all. The Joel of cutscenes grows attached to Ellie and strives to protect and comfort her when he can, perhaps making up for the awful things he’s done to others in the past. The Joel controlled by the player is doing awful things to people. People who had it coming for the most part, but still. Joel’s most pressing concern is keeping Ellie safe, but when the player takes control she’s invisible to all enemies. She may as well be a figment of Joel’s imagination for the impact she makes on the gameplay. If you skipped every cutscene, you’d probably be confused as to why you started playing as a teenage girl 10 hours in.
I understand why Naughty Dog did this. Third person stealth-action is well established and will get the most people playing your game. They weren’t wrong either, another third person post-apocalypse game, Death Stranding, caught a lot of flak for shifting the focus from combat to slightly boring terrain traversal. Which, thinking about it, would have fit very well with the cross-country road trip Ellie and Joel were on. Having Ellie be visible to enemies would have turned the game into a 14-hour escort mission, which I’m sure nobody wanted.
None of this is to say that the gameplay and the story aren’t good, just that they don’t form a singular, consistent experience. TLOU is an impressive narrative achievement, but not one that weaves together story and gameplay for the betterment of both. The story, as it’s presented, would’ve worked just as well if the player wasn’t involved.
In fact, there are rumours of a The Last of Us HBO series and I’m sure it’ll be able to capture the story without losing much in the translation. The Last of Us would have worked equally well as a TV show whereas even the first few hours of Part 2 would lose their impact without the interactive element.
So, does Part 2 make TLOU look bad? No, not really. It’s story and gameplay taken separately are among the strongest of its generation. So strong it took me a full 7 years and a sequel to notice something in it that could have been done better. So, take from that what you will and prepare for my critique of The Last of Us Part 2, coming Summer 2027.
Are you currently playing The Last of Us: Part 2 and want to know the location of all the safes and combinations? We’ve gotcha covered in our guide here!
