The Last of Us Part 2 Review: Nobody Likes Seattle

Note: This post will spoil The Place Beyond The Pines and The Last Of Us Part II (and technically Part 1 as well). You’ve been warned!!

In 2013 (or maybe later), I watched a movie called The Place Beyond The Pines, a three act movie that is about two families that are intertwined in story of family and tragedy. The first part follows a motorcycle stunt man, Luke, who puts his wandering life aside to try to get close with his estranged son and ex-girlfriend. In order to provide, he finds that he must resort to robbing banks with his employer. They would rob banks and ride out to a hideout in the forest (a place beyond the pines) to lose the cops. Things escalate as Luke tries to get closer to his family and ends up robbing a bank alone which turns to tragedy. He gets cornered by a rookie cop in a room. The rookie cop, Avery, shoots Luke in the chest which pushes him to his death. Luke does get Avery in the leg as he falls out. The second part of the movie is Avery ascending to hero status within the community because of his bravery of killing a cop (even though he shot first). In order to deal with the guilt and the cover up, he spends his time trying to root out the corruption in the police department. Being successful, the third act is Avery running for district attorney. Since the campaign takes most of his time, Avery doesn’t have time to be there for his teenage son, A.J., who ends up throwing wild parties with drugs and alcohol. A.J befriends Jason (Luke’s son) and enter an almost hostile friendship. The movie ends with Jason finding out the Avery killed his father. Jason kidnaps Avery and drives him out to the place beyond the pines where Avery comes to terms with his guilt and shame. Yet in the end, Avery does win the election and Jason leaves town on a motorcycle seemingly to live a life like his late father. A circular story told in three parts.

Playing through the story of The Last Of Us Part II (LOU II) reminded me heavily of The Place Beyond The Pines. Both stories are told in three very separate acts with the first two focusing on two different characters while the third sort of ties the two parties together.  Each arc is slightly different showing how each character grows despite being affected by the other. The third basically brings both together to resolve whatever conflict the two parties had. I am well aware that The Place Beyond The Pines doesn’t include the same characters in the third act like LOU II does, but the frame it uses for the narrative is eerily similar.

In the case of LOU II, the “antagonist,” Abby, beats Ellie’s surrogate father, Joel, to death right in front of her. This starts the first act that pushes Ellie to spend three days in Seattle looking for Abby so she can make her pay. However, in order to find Abby, Ellie must kill her way through Abby’s friends for clues of her whereabouts in post-apocalyptic Seattle. Abby finds Ellie to make her pay for killing all her friends. The game then switches to the second act that shows Abby’s journey through those three days in Seattle. Ellie is just a bookend to Abby’s portion of the story. Instead Abby is caught up in a conflict between her military organization and their skirmish with a religious cult. Amid these skirmishes, Abby gets caught by the cult but almost immediately saved by two defective young cult members, Yara and Lev. The relationship between the three grows through the three days and Abby actually learns that their relationship between Yara and Lev is worth more than staying with the army she was in. However, after escaping from a large scale battle, Abby finds that her ex-boyfriend and his pregnant partner were murdered by Ellie. Abby tracks Ellie down but doesn’t kill her. Instead, Abby realizes Ellie’s love interest, Dina, is pregnant and let’s Ellie go as long as they never show themselves in Seattle again.

The third act is Ellie abandoning Dina to finally get ultimate revenge on Abby. The story moves from Seattle to Santa Barbara where a new faction called the Rattlers have kidnapped Abby. Ellie moves through their camp and finally finds Abby for a final confrontation. During the fight, Ellie realizes she doesn’t need to kill Abby to get closure on her relationship with Joel. She can forgive Abby and still shut the book on Joel. The story, despite the immense loss of life and graphic violence, ends on a semi-happy note. Neither person dies. Which, in the world of The Last Of Us is basically the best ending possible.

Now for some harsh words…

Now the story is exceptionally well crafted, and the level design and gameplay are definitely a step up from the first game. But somehow, I felt tired and bored of playing the game after 20 hours into the game. I understand that gameplay can be used to just string together story beats for a narrative-focus video game, but usually gameplay and narrative meld together enough to not be so obvious. Also, a lot of “cinematic” games don’t last over 30 hours. I think the biggest issue with the game was how the universe was merely background noise for the actual story. Despite the universe having so much potential, everything felt personal. And so while it made sense to spend time sneaking around human beings, it didn’t really make too much narrative sense for me to spend hours picking off infected. I mean, it makes sense that they are there¸ but I felt like every hour the game forced me to sneak through hordes of them. Which sort of gives a bit of disconnect to the whole story, Abby and Ellie aren’t really worried about being infected, are they? They are only focused on killing the people who have hurt their loved ones.

I am focusing on this because there are many interesting and downright nightmarish things you experience in the game that aren’t just humans. There is definitely at least one major, inescapable boss battle you fight. The boss battle is GREAT. I died a ton, I had to utilize quick thinking and all my supplies to get through it, it was awesome. But then…nothing happens. The boss battle I’m talking about happens in a hospital that is literally the ground zero for when the disease started spreading. You fight an infected that doesn’t even have a name. And nothing happens. It’s just another infected Abby needs to kill to get some medical supplies for Yara. Because, ya know, compartment syndrome (I swear they say it so many times during this section it lost all meaning). Since this major battle happens much further in the game, the thrill of the fight kind of left me high and dry. The fight could have been anything and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Get used to seeing a lot of these guys over and over again

It felt like the infected were just filler in the game which is sad since there is a lot of world building done right in this game. The best parts of this game were just reading notes about what happened to the people in that had already passed away or got infected. Some collectibles are even fun to get, too. Ellie’s super hero trading cards were always great to find and read.

These cards are worth the extra effort

One of the weirdest feelings in playing the LOU II was how there was different strengths and weakness in each part of the game. In Ellie’s story, the plot was simple: Ellie wanted revenge. Through her path of revenge, Ellie develops into a cold-blooded murderer which isolates her from everyone she’s close to. However, LOU II decided to remove all the characters from Ellie’s section of the game which makes really undercuts any emotional feeling you have when certain events happen later in the game. Abby’s story is much more complex and interesting. It has multiple characters whose character development is interesting and dependent on another character in the story. Lev is a great Robin to Abby’s Batman.. However, the time where Abby first meets Lev is about the point where LOU II hits the apex in gameplay enjoyment. Despite the resources available, I found that there were just too many areas to get through to get from story beat to story beat. The lack of enemy variety started to become apparent which made paying attention to the story more of a relief than a joy to get to. I believe that’s why the third act made sure to alert players on different strategies to take out enemies (like pitting infected against humans). But at this point, the game had outworn its welcome.  I was tired (I guess Ellie and Abby were too). The length kept getting in the way of my enjoyment of a well-crafted story. So, by the end of the game, I had no interest in seeing what happened next. I just wanted the story to just be over.

Yara and Lev are some of the better side characters you'll see in the game

As a side note, before I end, I’d like to just mention that game is gorgeous and filled with immense detail almost to the point of making it impossible to know is something was an interact-able object or not. However, while the game does have some diverse environments like the snowy mountains of New Jackson (the starting city of the game) and the beaches of Santa Barbara, it cheapens their experiences by making you play through the overgrown, urban environments of Seattle twice. There was only so much overgrowth on buildings and infected filled dark areas I could take. But this is a small gripe for a truly stunning game. After playing through Final Fantasy VII: Remake (also a truly stunning game), I appreciated the realistic models.

All in all, The Last of Us Part II is something like The Place Beyond the Pines. But instead of taking 2 and half hours, it takes over thirty hours to tell the damn story. And grief and forgiveness isn’t a super complicated topic, either. I’m not sure if the journey had the same emotional payoff as the first game, but I know that, compared to its predecessor, The Last of Us Part II was too lengthy for the story it was telling. I think somewhere along the way I felt there was just too much of a good thing. It is an odd thing to say, but really fits what I felt playing through the game.