I finished The Last of Us Part II today. I had a whole slew of things i wanted to talk about, but i powered through finishing it and either forgot or i'm too exhausted too talk about it. I really enjoyed it though. I'm already considering a play through in the background of these posts (like what i did with 100% on Part 1), but this time Grounded, Per Chapter Permadeath, with New Game+, just too experience it again and maybe mop up a few more achievements to go on my shelf. One thing you'll notice is that i started to really like the 1:1 frame for the screenshots. I like how narrow it is.
On the subject of the main screenshot, I noticed that towards the end Ellie's outfits kind of started to resemble Joel's which i love. I'm pretty sure it was intentional, but maybe i'm wrong. Who knows though? I wouldn't be surprised if there's confirmation somewhere online.
Moving on from that, I really liked how Ellie and Abby's stories converge. I'm a sucker for Dual Protagonist stories, and having them pitted against each other i like even more. I wish we got to brush shoulders a little bit more, but still, i really like the detail.
You know what was even cooler though? Getting a boss fight with Ellie. I mean, i don't want to fight Ellie, but that as a mechanic is so damn cool. I wonder if her damage and such scale's with weapon upgrades. It'd be kind of unfair too less skilled players, but it'd be a cool detail too.
Once we make it out of Seattle i feel like this is where Naughty Dog knew a lot of players would be picking it apart and also knew it'd be important, so they put a lot of detail into it. The farm looks so damn good. I took a few photos with it, so i'm just going to dump them all below
Farm Photos
Ellie's traumatic episode I really liked, not to trivialize it though. It helps give a further motivation for Ellie other than "she can't let Abby go". I guess depth is the word i'm looking for in this case.
Santa Barbara at the end was a little unsettling. Like, they did not hold back to showing the horrors of the slavery these people faced. In a way, i appreciate that. It would have been really easy to trivialize it.
Abby's boss(?) fight was interesting. I honestly appreciate not having some grand showdown. Instead it's just throwing hands at sea. It's an interesting contrast to the first game too with the hospital segment.
That brings me to the ending. I know a lot of people didn't like it, I... kind of did though. It's cyclical like the first game, and in a way that's cyclical itself, but it's something i love in a story. It kind of showed that even if Ellie got her personal revenge and killed Abby (at least to me), was it really worth the cost? Like, she lost her family, she had got injured so many times, and even threatened a child. All for what? To make more violence? I'm rambling a bit, it's late and this probably will make less sense to me in the morning, so i apologize.
I like that Abby took the kid under her wing too, it's a dynamic similar to Joel and Ellie that i think shows her growth, like Joel's in the first game. If it wasn't for how long the Second game is, i'd say i wish the growth was longer just to make it feel more earned. But the game is already pretty long. I would be interested in seeing a DLC following Abby post game though. I am curious to see what the Fireflies rebuilding would be like, but also, with Naughty Dog's attention to Narrative, i'm not sure what the narrative there would be, so maybe it's just left alone.
I actually liked the ending too, but the more I thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
Ellie lives happily, except for her PTSD, with Deena and their kid.
Tommy comes through and says he knows where Abby is, but is too messed up to go after her himself.
Deena says don't do it.
Ellie goes anyway and proceeds to kill dozens of slavers, frees the slaves, then finds Abby, who is on the verge of dying.
She then saves Abby's life, kicks her malnourished butt, then let's her go off on her way.
Ellie returns home, hoping to find Deena and kid, but they are gone and her life is uprooted once again.
The final act and epilogue just seemed so absurd to me for some reason. It was fun and well acted and directed, but it was a bit silly.
I think part of that silliness is intentional, at least in my interpretation of the game. The internal thesis of the game seems to be examining how far they can push the player-to-protagonist relationship until it breaks. Similar to the first game, where it was intended for players to have complicated feelings about having to control Joel in the hospital at the end doing something they may not have wanted to do but was 100% in character for Joel.
Part 2 feels like that idea stretched across the entire game, especially for Ellie. There's a pretty powerful metaphor for addiction in the form of addiction to violence/revenge, and I feel like going to Santa Barbara shows Ellie reaching her rock bottom. The player doesn't want this (especially after playing as Abby), Dina doesn't want this, hell part of Ellie doesn't even want this. It's just the main thing she knows how to solve her problems - through violence