The Last of Us Part II Remastered

Liked playing as Ellie, but the gameplay loop does not remain fun past like 12-14 hours, so when I got to the point I played as Abby, I was just tired of it, plus I don't really like playing the character that killed Joel, even if the game's writing team is doing everything it can to make her feel sympathetic, but there are so many dynamics she has with other characters that make what we on screen and actions she's taken past and present seem so conflicting and wholly unbelievable. They try so hard to make her seem noble, but she is clearly a sociopath through her lack of remorse, hypocrisy and cruelty that she displays throughout the game. One of the other major gripes I have with the story, is that they straight up retconned dialogue in the first game that implied that the fireflies were in the wrong to justify Abby's entire plot in 2, which lays the groundwork for her entire character's development, which is just... no, clear example of a writing sin and a major factor as to why this game is so divisive. There's alot of other stupid ♥♥♥♥ I could go on about with this game's story, as it's a massive step down from the previous game in just about every way aside from worldbuilding, which is not really hard to do with how strong the foundation from the first game was. Gameplay-wise, graphically, animation-wise, this is an insanely polished and extremely well made game, held down by it's very poorly written story and complete mishandling of some really great characters. It's also a shame that NaughtyDog has become well known for mistreating it's employees, with ridiculous crunch and layoffs, with over 70% of their staff departing post Last of Us 2 and Uncharted 4, with plenty of interviews coming out describing just how toxic this company is, as well as how much of an ego Druckman had and how he stepped over other writers and has tried to make this franchise out to his sole achievement. Narcissism like this needs to be called out more, because people like this are the worst, yet constantly get enabled because of corporate cultures and is why AAA game development has become the cesspool that it is that does not allow the flourishing and cultivation of talent like it once did, and instead you are rewarded with a swift boot to the rear end once they have wrung you dry. I appreciate all the hard work that went into this game, but when it is at the expense of the artists involved, it always leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I loved The Last of Us. I despise what Part II does with it. My biggest problem is that this doesn't feel like a story written organically from its post-apocalyptic world. It feels like modern social activism dressed in fungal-apocalypse clothing. Humanity has been absolutely devastated. Entire cities are dead. Governments have collapsed. Communities survive behind walls and every healthy young generation represents the future of the species. That premise should raise some fascinating and uncomfortable questions about population, reproduction, family, duty and individual freedom. Instead, the game seems almost completely uninterested in them. Ellie and Dina are two healthy young women of reproductive age living in a tiny community trying to survive the end of civilisation. You don't have to conclude that Jackson would force anybody to reproduce to recognise that fertility would be an enormously important social issue in this world. Yet rather than seriously exploring any of that, we get a remarkably modern American morality play in which an old man objects to Ellie and Dina kissing, calls them a slur, gets condemned for it, and subsequently has to apologise to Ellie with his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sandwiches. Really? This is what survived the apocalypse? It doesn't feel like writers asking, "What social attitudes would plausibly emerge after several decades of catastrophic population collapse?" It feels like writers taking the cultural arguments of their own time and dropping them virtually unchanged into the apocalypse. The trans material gives me much the same feeling. My objection isn't that such people magically cease to exist when civilisation collapses. Of course they don't. My objection is that the writers continually seem determined to foreground contemporary identity politics in a world that should have developed completely different priorities, pressures and social conflicts. And then there's what they did to Joel. Joel wasn't merely another character. Joel and Ellie were The Last of Us. Their relationship was the emotional foundation upon which the original game was built. So Part II takes Joel, brutally beats him to death in front of Ellie, and then makes me spend a gigantic portion of the game playing as Abby, the person who killed him. And the manipulation is painfully obvious. Look! Abby has friends. Look! Abby has people she cares about. Look! Abby has vulnerabilities. Look! Joel killed people she cared about too. Yes. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ understand. The game desperately wants me to reconsider the distinction between protagonist and villain, contemplate the cycle of revenge and eventually recognise the humanity of somebody I hated. The problem is that I can see the writer standing behind the curtain pulling every lever. I don't sympathise with Abby because you force me to play as her. I don't forget what she did because you show me her relationships. And forcing me to spend hours inhabiting her perspective doesn't magically transform resentment into profound moral ambiguity. It made me resent the game. And Ellie herself becomes almost unbearable. The funny, vulnerable, sarcastic kid from the original game has become bitter, angry and frequently downright unpleasant. Obviously people change after trauma. But there's a difference between deliberately writing a damaged character and making me wonder why I should still enjoy spending forty hours around them. That's ultimately my problem with The Last of Us Part II. The first game gave me characters and allowed me to decide how I felt about them. Part II feels like it already knows the morally enlightened conclusion it wants me to reach and spends an obscene amount of time trying to drag me there. It didn't work. I didn't come away loving Abby. I didn't come away thinking destroying Joel and Ellie's relationship was profound. I didn't find the contemporary identity politics convincing within the world. And I certainly didn't mistake being lectured for sophisticated storytelling. Technically, it's extraordinary. Artistically, it's beautiful. The performances and animation are phenomenal. But storytelling isn't a graphics benchmark. The Last of Us gave me Joel and Ellie. The Last of Us Part II killed Joel, made Ellie miserable, handed me Abby and then seemed astonished that I didn't consider that an upgrade. I didn't. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ waste.