The Last of Us Part II argues that Ellie is trapped-she must continue her mission to avenge Joel, because the player is controlling her and because any video game demands a mission. Part II seems to have the same mission, but by upping the ante, it gets caught up in the very cycles of violence it’s trying to critique. The first game took a well-known genre and tilted its perspective, so that players could consider its grim underpinnings. The Last of Us Part II is an even more ambitious treatise on video-game moralism than its predecessor, but more often than not, the lesson it’s trying to impart is one the player has already learned.
#The last of us part 2 full
The title is full of plot twists, tense action sequences, and loads of bloody violence-the worst instances of which are once again unavoidable. Now, seven years later, comes the much-awaited sequel, The Last of Us Part II, an epic blockbuster that tries to reckon with the consequences of Joel’s choice while also delivering many more hours of zombie-fighting gameplay. Essentially, how do you tell a resonant tale with proper character development when the game you’re creating mostly involves running, jumping, punching, and shooting people? The ending of The Last of Us made Joel’s history of violence a feature, rather than a bug, and in 2013 that felt revolutionary-the player wasn’t being rewarded for killing their way to the ending, but instead being asked to think about how they’d gotten there. As video games evolved over the decades, they struggled to bridge the gap between their ever more complex storytelling and the relative straightforwardness of gameplay-a conflict dubbed “ ludonarrative dissonance” in the industry. The power of The Last of Us hinged on that connection between player and character, between simple gameplay and deeper intention.
After my many hours of playing alongside Ellie, allowing her to die seemed even more unthinkable than mass murder.
I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but I was more chilled by the fact that I understood Joel’s actions. When I first played The Last of Us, in 2013, my heart was in my mouth for the entire final sequence. A simple nudge of the controller sets things into motion, and the only way to finish the game is to shoot your way out of the hospital. But it’s you, the player, who executes the plan. It’s Joel, the character, who decides to kill the doctors, escape with Ellie, and later lie to her about what happened. So rather than let her die, you slaughter everyone in your path. But when Ellie is unconscious on the operating table, you learn the terrible news-a cure can come only at the cost of Ellie’s life. The duo finally reaches a team of doctors who hope to use Ellie’s immunity to the fungus to develop a cure. Living in a world overrun by zombies after a mutated fungus infects most of Earth’s populace, you play as Joel, a survivor who’s guiding a teen girl named Ellie across the country in search of civilization.
This story contains spoilers for The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II.Īt the end of the bestselling video game The Last of Us, the player does something unspeakable.
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