Last of Us II (Spoiler Discussion)

I am making this thread to discuss The Last of us Part 2 with spoilers.

Just share your opinions on this game and anything related to it.

I liked the game and especially the story quite a lot, I understand some of the complaints, and making us play as Abby for so long was a big mistake. As a whole though, the story of Joel and Ellie was great and all the flashbacks were absolute gold, the last scene between them adds a layer of depth and tragic to the story, considering Joel died just when Ellie was starting to forgive him, such a well executed scene.

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My major issues with the story, without comparing it to the original, are the Rattlers (that was just random) and Joel’s death (less said the better.) Those aside, the other elements went from average+ to phenomenal. When Ellie played her guitar without her fingers after Dina and JJ left, I nearly cried, which is something that Tony Stark’s death failed to do.

@thor-parker: When the flashbacks are the past of the game...

After giving it some thoughts, I would rate this game as... average. Mainly beceuse the entire plot of the game hinges on massive amount of convinience and nonsensical decisions.

This guy basicaly read my mind when he was writting his review:

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The technical aspect of the game was great but the story is dog sh*t.

It honestly never should have been made, nothing could've topped the first and a sequel was never needed. All it did was cause unnecessary hatred to the franchise but greedy corporations don't care.

lol^

This game totally disappointed me, the story was handled very poorly IMO, It had potential but the execution was very mediocre again for me.

The case of Joel was handled so poorly that it even seemed disrespectful to the character and I'm not just saying it because he died since I was one who said that Joel surely dies but the way he did I HATE IT I did not like at all, I was expecting an Arthur Morgan type of death.

ND depended too much on you to like and feel bad for Abby so that everything with the story worked but they totally failed to achieve it with me (AFTER the Joel scene no way I like her jajaja) in conclusion excellent graphics, the gameplay very good but I did not find anything much different from the first part, the story and the writting, very weak.

final score 6/10 again for me.

There's a sharp contrast between the first game and the second.

Last of Us: Joel helps Ellie get through a post-apocalyptic world before doing extremely objectively terrible things like torture and killing a surgeon.

Last of Us 2: Abby does something extremely subjectively terrible and then helps others get through a post-apocalyptic world.

1. The order makes it so different. We got a relationship with Joel before we saw him do those things, so they were justified. Abby's first thing she did was the horrific thing.
2. Joel did objectively terrible things, while Abby did something subjectively terrible. Murder is bad, but when it happens to people we know, it's worse for us. We didn't know that surgeon or the guys getting tortured; we knew Joel when he died.

Shows the difference between the first game and the sequel.

@cocacolaman: I don't quite get if what you are trying to say is a positive or negative for Part II, however it's not a coincidence it was presented that way, the intention all along was for us to start hating Abby and be disgusted by her, so to make the player all the more determined to help Ellie seek revenge on her, but by the point they come face to face, the game plays with our expectactions and completely changes direction.

Players are forced to play as someone they hate and go through a journey with Abby to understand her actions and empathise with her. Whether that is accomplished or not is up to the player, I have seen people loving Abby as well as hating her, for me personally, I still don't like Abby and would have preferred for her part to be much shorter and instead use that time to further develop Ellie and who she is as a character, I think she is an amazing character and if we had spent Abby's time with Ellie developing her more, she could have easily go down as one of the best female characters in any franchise, I still think she definitely holds a place amongst the best though. Another option could have been to have more scenes with Joel, but I do understand ND's approach and appreciate it for what it tried to do.

The game was constantly playing and subverting the expectations of the viewers, not only with the Abby stuff, but throughout all of the story, just when you thought where it was going, things completely changed and took you by surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed that because we never knew what to expect and I was constantly on the edge of my seat.

I understand some of the complaints with the overall story and the ending even though I don't agree with some, what I really don't understand is those people saying that Joel's character was disrespected, there was a lot of love put behind every Joel scene, I think he was magnific and every scene he was in was absolute gold.

@thor-parker: Definitely not positive. I'm saying that the second game, in the context of that death, failed in a way that's in direct contrast with how the first game did something similar correctly.

Having us play as Abby after killing Joel was the big mistake. We already hate her, so everything else feels like a way for making us sympathize with her. If we'd played as Abby doing that kind of stuff before killing Joel, it would have been so much better.

Don't get me wrong, I still think this game is amazing and agree with most of what you said. In fact, I rate it the highest of anyone I've seen rate it. They made the best they could out of the direction they took. I just think there was a much better direction to take.

Game doesn't really deserve all the hate it gets imo. İt's seems like people only hating it because it's popular to do.

Though I really doesn't hate the story as much as other people do I think it still have it's fairly share of problems like: Needlesly brutalized scenes, overly executed sjw messages, underwhelming death scenes and weak plot.

Gameplay on the other hand is top notch, Though it's no GoW it really gives you what you expect from a surviving game I mean it's literally perfected version of TLoU.

And I really liked the concept of crossing stories of two main characters it really makes us doubt about what we are doing. İn one part you play as Ellie and see how much of a fascist, control freaks those Washington Liberation Front guys are but when you play with Abby you see why they need to be like that or you can spend time with dogs who you face as Ellie and see the reason they are attacking you is nothing more than loyality and love they have for their owners and finally the reason that all this start Jerry, Abby's dear father is just all around likeable guy and have the knowledge about the virus to a degree that he may even able to cure it and when you remember Joel killed him you really start having doubts about what is the right thing to do if Joel didn't really killed Jerry would the world finally get rid of the virus or Jerry would't success the progress and Ellie would die for nothing...

My score for this game is would be 80/100

It's pretty evident to me that most people with strong negative opinions about the game solidified those opinions before they experienced anything firsthand. The internet lynch mob jumped on this game and didn't let go.

The first game was praised for being emotionally nuanced and morally complex. The second game is getting viciously blasted for the exact same thing, seriously the exact same thing. People are explicitly unwilling to have empathy for Abby as a character and as such they are deliberately refusing to connect with the game's themes. Joel was just as morally grey as Abby, if not more; not only was he explicitly a murderer of innocent people but the game actually had him violently kill unarmed doctors on screen and yet people somehow, staggeringly, still managed to finish the first game viewing him like an unambiguous hero that did the right thing. If you were disgusted by Joel's actions and deliberately refused to empathize with him you could just as easily write off the entire first game the way people are doing with the sequel, literally the only difference is that Joel was made sympathetic first with a tragic backstory and then we found out about the awful things he has done. Abby was introduced in an unsympathetic light and then was revealed to actually be a decent, caring human that is deserving of empathy. The game is trying to communicate that you can't judge people by their worst moments, and how doing so is ignorant and toxic (hence Ellie's disturbing murder spree). In fact Joel is basically the game's central example of this theme. There is a reason why the game closes on one of Joel's most sympathetic moments when we see him actually being honest with Ellie and putting her feelings ahead of his own, and this is the memory that causes Ellie to relent and have mercy at the last minute. Joel and Abby are really, really similar, deliberately so. Abby's entire arc in the game is a mirror of Joel's from TLOU1. Unsurprisingly, all the people that have chosen to judge Abby exclusively by the worst moment we see her in game are all of the most ignorant and toxic people talking about the game. Funny how that works out.

Ironically, I keep hearing people say that Joel deserved better, but the second game portrays him in the warmest, most sympathetic light since the opening sequence of the first game. The second game is redeeming Joel, not condemning him. It's proof that in spite of all his dark moments he was still capable of growth and redemption. This was very clear to me during my experience of the game and it's one of the things that indicates to me that people are just doubling down on opinions they had before they actually experienced anything from the game firsthand.

People were challenged by this game's story to have an open mind and when it took them out of their bubble they had a temper tantrum. Obviously the game is not without flaws, no game is, and it's received some valid criticism, but there is absolutely nothing about it that is worthy of fan outrage or this ridiculous sense of righteous indignation so many are expressing. I sincerely believe that people who think this game's story was a betrayal of the first game or of Joel as a character did not understand anything about the first game to begin with.

All of this

You freaking nailed it.

On the plus side, I don't think the game is as hated by fans as the internet would make us believe though, it's just that they are a very vocal group and many of the fan reviews are just review bombing of people who haven't even seen the story in its entirety, of course there are those who have seen it all and still dislike it, that's totally valid, but from what I've seen, actually a big majority of the fandom likes it. I joined a really big FB group (40k members) dedicated solely to the discussion of Part II and so far about 70% of the posts are very positive and 30% are very negative, there hardly seems to be a middle ground, it's either love or hate, but at least from that big group, I've seen way more love than hate.

Already stated my input a bunch of times. Not a fan really, had a lot of potential to be better. If people enjoyed it that's great.