Topic: The Last Of Us Part II - OT (No Spoilers)

I hope I was clear in that replying is fine, just not with stuff after where I am. I read it back and maybe I should have written 'Reply with' rather than 'reply and', if it wasn't clear. It is just because in that other thread people were trying to talk to me about the ending as an example of Part 2's best writing and I was literally like three hours in at that point 😂

But I am glad you are enjoying the rollercoaster all the same!

@Pizzamorg I saw someone had revealed a rather major spoiler element of the game in the other thread when replying to you. Most likely not intentionally, but I think most of what people have written has been largely spoiler free from what I have seen.

Thankfully yeah! But always worth putting a warning in just in case after what happened before. To be honest a bunch of this stuff I probably already had spoiled for me around the time, I just don't need to be reminded in case I forgot 😂

@Pizzamorg No worries, buddy. I caught your meaning (regarding the PSA to safeguard yourself on the ending). There will definitely be much to discuss when you finish though. From your various thoughts and feelings starting back at Part I, all the way through to your latest update, I know there’s certain to be substantial talking points when it’s all done. For now, I’m just enjoying passive consumption of your feelings right now and then when you’re done, I’ll give my input as to why you’re either right or wrong in your final analysis of the game (😜 Totally kidding of course. You won’t be wrong. But you might feel at odds with my opinion, or with other peoples opinions.)

But yeah, being able to talk and discuss games to our heart’s content is the chief purpose of these forums. Don’t feel bad about getting it all out there. I thoroughly enjoy it.

@Pizzamorg I won't talk about anything after where you are at, but to comment on what seems to be your main problem with the storytelling of the sequel (and something I strongly agree with) is how preachy it is about how bad you are supposedly. It is indeed extremely heavy handed, but you can thank the fact that Neil clearly had more control over the game than the first one. Even though he was the sole writer of the first one, it definitely seems like Bruce Straley kept him reigned in so to speak given the sharp differences in the sequel. A lot of preaching and agendas thrown into a game when there doesn't need to be any of it. It's a video game. I don't need to be told that the main character is a horrible person when that said person is the reason why I'm playing the game in the first place, especially when they aren't any worse than any of the other characters really. It's like people saying how horrible of a character Nathan Drake is when he's just a video game character.

It is exhausting, isn't it? It actively makes me feel less when a piece of media doesn't respect my intelligence, emotional or otherwise, to come to my own epiphanies. This is something so sorely missed from Part 1, which trusted its audience to making readings of the game on their own.

I don't think Part 2's approach is inherently a problem if the game was better written, and had properly integrated it's gameplay focus with its narrative focus, but as it stands it almost becomes some sort of weird parody where the game sets you up for some set piece where you need to blow through half a dozen people but then the whole time the game is just absolutely screaming at you about how awful you are. It is just like... plz... plz guys... what are we doing here?

I also think had we shifted perspectives and just been gaslit the whole time by discovering Abby and her gang are this group of amazing, charitable, heroes of the people or whatever, then I would have rejected that notion as well. The game, maybe rightly, avoids this and tries to keep things more balanced, but it is not well written or executed. The game does absolutely nothing to endear me to any of these characters previously presented as antagonists. It uses cheap devices like dogs, but I see right through it. It just makes me wonder what the point of any of this was at all, if it doesn't make you feel any differently about anything when this tangent started.

@Pizzamorg Abbie's dad helped the poorly zebra. 🙄.

The weirdest part about the Abby's Dad change and the ending retcon that came with it is how unnecessary it is. At least to me.

Both of the Last of Us games are stories of perspectives and biases, which creates a ready made explanation as to why both endings exist.

Part 1's ending is from Joel's perspective. He sees the Fireflies on the end of the terrorist groups blowing up checkpoints and killing solders. In Abby's flashback and if she was the one to retell Part 1's ending, she sees the promise of the Fireflies, her hero Dad at the centre of them and the bogeyman Joel.

The discrepancies could easily be explained, because to Joel, his baby girl was going to die in that hospital so in his mind, the hospital was a dank, grungy, horror movie set full of inept clowns. This is what his perception of reality has created in his memories. Even the fact the original surgeon is a completely different person can easily be explained as Joel literally not seeing individual faces anymore because of all the people he has killed and how he has learnt to compartmentalise those things.

And then in Abby's mind, with the perception of her Dad and the Fireflies etc at that time, she sees that clean, clinical, blue hospital, she sees the vaccine as a guarantee in how it is presented as Part 2. This could have just been explained as her perception of that ending.

The truth then would have existed somewhere in the middle, with the audience to make their conclusions on who is probably closer to the truth, which creates an interesting thought exercise for the audience to engage in.

You could literally have the two endings, a ready made explanation for both, and no retconning would have been needed at all.

@Pizzamorg Have you ever seen the old episode of "The Simpsons" where Bart gets hit by Mr.Burns' car?

Haha maybe years ago, but no specific memory of that episode. 😂Why? Do they do the same thing in that?

@Pizzamorg Sort of - just a very amusing rendition of the "same events but from different perspectives" trope. Comedy "Rashomon".

Oh my. The map. The ***** map, dude. I thought the writing couldnt get worse than those opening couple of hours - outside of the general pointlessness narratively of Abby's entire section, anyway - but my God, the contrivance of this moment. Some of the worst writing I've experienced in anything.

@Pizzamorg I feel your pain. And how about that puffa jacket on the pregnant lady?

I had to log off after the boss fight I guess? Against Ellie in the theatre and just walk away for the night. Come back to the game fresh when I am not so irritated.

Maybe it is just the fresh rage I am feeling, and I will soften on it over time, but on the whole I kinda hated Abby’s stretch of the game if I am being honest.

There were a couple of nice sequences, cool set pieces and upgrades, but it all sorta felt like this was done as like a cheap way of making the audience care about Abby, and there was almost no narrative reason why all this stuff couldn't have been given to Ellie.

This is the more terminal issue with this stretch of game for me, is just that it feels so narratively lost. Like I've already said, I am happy I wasn't gaslit, but the game never did anything at all to justify why the character change even happens in the first place.

The whole Yara/Lev tangent we go on feels like it takes place in a different videogame. Any attempt to endear us to the antagonists through this section (if that is even what it is trying to do?) fail. Abby being a WLF has remarkable little bearing on any of this. I mean basically none at all, and could have created some unique gameplay moments that may have justified the character change had they used her role in the organization more.

And again, this is all mostly centred around a conflict which basically exists outside of Ellie’s story that we came here for, and really has no bearing on Ellie at all, the character we actually care about. Oh and it also includes multiple really frustrating difficulty spikes. Like I can't think of another game I've played where it goes off for like ten hours and just tells a completely disconnected story for seemingly its own amusement and then just returns back to the game you were playing before.

I feel like you could easily cut most of this entirely and the only result you get is a better paced game, with a lot less bad writing (as this includes some of the worst writing outside of the opening couple of hours), bloat and filler.

Any parts of this you leave in, would also make far more sense if you just played as Ellie all the way through. You could have used Yara and Lev as ways for Ellie and the audience to learn more about the conflict between the Scars and the WLF if you think this is even relevant which I kinda argue it isn’t really? Like I guess it is some nice world building, but it sorta distracts from what the core of this story is for no real meaningful gain. But it feels like has even less of a purpose when you are playing as Abby.

Like what was the point of all of this? Part 1 was already long over by the time this tangent comes to a close, and yet I feel like so much more happened in Part 1.

@Pizzamorg The game was like what I would have imagined a PS5 game would be at the time. It was a truly remarkable achievement on the PS4 Pro, and that combined with the enjoyment of the actual gameplay and encounters themselves is what kept me going. I genuinely enjoyed the game whenever the storytelling didn’t get in the way, which became a huge problem once you flipped over to playing as Abby. Sure, what happened to her father obviously really sucked for her and I get her wanting revenge, but at the same time she’s really no better than Ellie but the game sure makes it seem like you should think Ellie is worse most of the time. That’s BS, and goes back to why I was playing the game in the first place. I nearly didn’t finish the game because of stuff like that, but I did.

The theatre sequence you just brought up was the near breaking point for me. I already didn't want to be playing as Abby, although I had warmed up to it a bit until it kept dragging on and on. Forcing me to fight Ellie, even though there couldn't be fatal consequences because it's a flashback, was nearly the last straw for me. Like I've said many times already, I was playing the game for Ellie, not to fight against her. It was one of the few sequences I've ever experienced where I literally had to force myself to actually play through the sequence and not just take the game out and call it.

I don’t regret playing the game. It is a technical masterpiece in more ways than one, especially for the hardware it was released on. I just hate the things it did with the storytelling, effectively cursing the character the whole first game built us up to love basically, and for me nearly ruining what could have been the absolute masterpiece people claim it to be.

So I rolled credits. Beat it in around 20 hours. Online it seems to suggest the game should take you anywhere between 25 to 40, but I got achievements for things like all weapons etc, so I can't have missed anything major, so I dunno why my playthrough ran so short. I don't really care though, I am pretty glad this is over.

I thought the ending was a total mess, I guess I missed the flashcard, so for the longest time I thought I was in some kind of dream sequence as Ellie lay unconscious on the Theatre floor, dreaming about her ideal future. It really took me a while to register... oh no, this is really happening.

I know I wrote a perhaps overlong, rambly, review of Part 1 (although I appreciate the kind words people said about that review) but I am going to have a harder time doing that with Part 2.

I like to take notes when I play a game, and then sort those notes at the end. Looking at something as a whole, then working my way inwards in a more detailed way. However, I took remarkably few notes during Part 2, possibly because I was sharing my experience on this forum along the way, rather than privately in a Google doc but I also just don't really know how I feel about the game as a whole well enough, to really create a core of thought to build any commentary out of.

It seems like very few people are 'meh' on this game and this cloud has sorta hung over me the whole time playing it. I do not hate this game, but I do dislike it. Do I dislike it in a genuine way, or would I too be one of the self proclaimed haters if I hadn't had my expectations set so low by all the hatred I'd heard for this over the years? I can't ever know.

I will say I genuinely hated the bookends of this game, I thought the Abby section of the game is borderline totally pointless, but otherwise everything else was just kinda... eh to me. There are no moments I love in this to counter balance the moments I hated which is why I say I dislike it overall, but I dunno, those moments I hated create just sort of a blackhole of apathy for me.

It is a technological marvel for sure, it is generally more fun to play than Part 1 just purely looking at it mechanically as a game, while still staying mostly true to the gameplay experience of Part 1 (mechanically). Only with more encounters that feel like cinematic set pieces, which I enjoyed.

I guess the most damning thing I can say, is while I am sure I will play Part 1 again in the coming years, I sorta have no desire to ever play Part 2 again. This playthrough has felt like enough for me. Honestly beyond any discussions we may have out of this post, I think I'll honestly be happy to never think about this again and just pretend I am still living in a world where I hadn't played this yet.

I suffer through some really miserable gameplay in Part 1 at times, because the heights of that game surrounding Joel and Ellie's story are worth experiencing over and over again. It is also a near perfectly paced package, tightly telling its narrative and getting out of there, which prompts me to want to reexperience it again and again.

As fun as some of the set pieces and encounters are in Part 2, that is more in the context of how generally not fun Part 1 is to play, not that I think they are these masterfully designed engagements in all videogaming, that are of such a high standard they are worth experiencing over and over again. The gameplay improvements are just not enough in isolation, even if they improve this experience during your one time playing through it.

And also now knowing how flabby this is (despite my apparently shorter than average run time), knowing now that whole stretches of the game and almost the entire game itself honestly is all just kinda one massive exercise of futility, and knowing that it is going to deliver some true narrative low points that absolutely spit in the face of characters, and a game, I truly adore, with absolutely zero high point moments to counter balance these lows...

Yeah, there is nothing here to make me think I ever want to experience this ever again.

@Pizzamorg Just don't say I didn't warn you! Thanks so much for posting your running commentary on the game - it has been a pleasure to read and I have to admit that I'm kind of relieved that there's somebody else out there whose feelings on it so closely mirror my own! What are you going to play next to decompress?

My pleasure... I think?

I was thinking next I'd tie a plastic bag around my head and scream into it for four hours while I throw projections on my wall of images of my family just to chase one last feeling that mirrors that of playing Part 2 before I go play Mario Kart or something and eat some ice cream.

That might not be a joke.

@Pizzamorg I felt like partaking in something comparatively light and frothy afterwards so I put "Eraserhead" with the volume off on the telly and "Dummy" by Portishead on the stereo. Perfection..

@Pizzamorg Genuinely sorry that it ended up such a colossal waste for you. Not necessarily because I felt differently, but well… because it’s just always better to enjoy the games we play rather than extract misery. 😅 That sucks.

Ah well, beyond my guilt for recommending a game which ended so poorly, I am glad for you that it’s over. You played through it at a quick pace so at least the suffering was short-lived.

I’ll share a few more details thoughts and responses on the other spoilery thread.