The Last of Us 2 Review - Naughty Naughty Dog

[CriticalGaming]

It's no surprise that this game has been a point of contention for people ever since major plot points got leaked. The way the game looked like it was going to be overly LBGTQ+ heavy pandering nonsense, with Neil Druckmann's agenda pushing rhetoric bogging the game down.

Well I am pleased to say that isn't the case here.

The Last of Us 2 is a decent game with an unbelievably shitty story.

So let me address the gameplay first, I'll scream for spoilers when I get into that stuff so as not to ruin it for people who might not want to see it. However I WILL NOT be using spoiler tags, so don't read too far if you care.

The Last of Us 2 plays pretty much exactly like the first game, minor improvements to gunplay and stealth, but for the most part it's second verse same as the first. But the first game was good so, this game is also good in that regard. It looks good, it feels good for the most part though the jumping sections are really clunky for no reason. These character's don't jump so much as they kinda spaz 6 inches into the air somehow flailing about like they feel off a mountain. Seriously the jumping animation has more flailing about than when the characters actually fall sizable distances, it's fucking weird.

For the most part you fight people and basic infected. However the AI is really stupid and you can full clear entire sections with ease by stealthing around and sliently killing everything one by one. There are a few forced action scenes but these are surprisingly few and far between which I found kind of boring honestly. Overall the stealth made the game feel too easy, even after cranking up the difficulty you can stealth kill everything with ease because the AI patrol patterns or their view cones don't appear to change. Hard mode only makes the direct combats situations more of a hassle. And I think that's kind of the problem with a lot of Naughty Dog games lately. The combat just isn't fun, it's cover-based shooting that isn't that responsive or satisfying, I don't really know how to describe it. I found myself just kind of going through the motions.

The game is beautiful though, and offers loads of exploration opportunities to look around and take in the scenary which can be absolutely breathtaking at times. The platforming and climb shit suffers from being bland and boring though. I wouldn't have minded the walking sim-esque gameplay through these sections instead of these obnoxious and stupid ass "puzzle" sections. Puzzle being a loose term for climbing shit to find a thing to take back to whatever roadblock keeps you from moving forward. It's just whatever really.

Gameplay wise though, it works. It's not buggy, and though some of the platform can be janky it all does work. The fact that I found it kind of boring and repetitive after a couple hours is honestly most likely a personal problem. I can see people really liking the gameplay on offer here.

Now for the story parts.

SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!!!!!! DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED!!!!

SERIOUSLY!!!!! SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

The story is set up like a revenge plot. We knew this basically going in right? But this is probably the worse revenge story I have ever fucking seen in my life. Every character in this game out for revenge is so half-assed about the revenge that it makes no sense. They really did a shitty job making you feel like these people wanted vengence. Instead they banter about normal life shit, they pet their dogs, they talking about dating and making out, and maybe if there is time left in the day they'll take revenge on some people.

So at the beginning of the game we find Ellie and Joel had grown apart. We don't know why but it's clear they aren't tight they way you would think they'd be after the last game. But they all live in a community now and everything is mostly fine beyond that. Ellie has a semi-relationship with a girl named Dina, who also has a semi-relationship with a boy named Jesse. Ellie, Jesse and Dina, are sent out on patrol in which they go around and make sure the infect aren't wandering too close to the settlement, simple shit really.

Meanwhile we jump to our new character Abby, who is NOT trans the way the leaks seemed to make her out to be. Abby is a girl........bodybuilder I guess. She is build like a fucking Big Rig truck and I would be lying if I didn't take to calling Abby HERcules. Anyway HERcules and some of her friends are just outside the settlement in which Ellie and Joel live, we learn that they are hunting Joel for reasons not given.

To summarize, HERcules wants to go hunt Joel but her boyfriend? Owen isn't into it. Too many people in the settlement might come hunt them down for this, so he doesn't wanna take that risk because I guess Owen, Hercules, and another girl are also in a weird three-way relationship and Mel (the other girl) is pregnant. So it makes sense for Owen to not want to risk the wraith coming right back around on them. HERcules goes off on her own instead, unwilling to let Joel get away with whatever it was he did.

Welp she gets surrounded by a swarm of Infected, and Tommy and Joel appear to save her. They get trapped and unable to go back to the big settlement, so HERcules leads Joel and Tommy to her hideout.

So here is where it gets really fucking stupid. Tommy and Joel KNOW that people want to kill them for what they've done. Or at least what Joel has done. So they run off with this stranger, and just TELL THEM THEIR FUCKING NAMES!!!!!! Like why? You don't fucking know these assholes? Why would you just toss out your names like that? So sure enough HERcules gets all fucking excited about golf.........

Meanwhile Ellie and Dina are off on their part of the patrol, only to learn that Tommy and Joel haven't checked in. So Ellie rushes off to check. She ultimately finds where Joel is just in time to walk into the room as HERcules is going to town on her chip shot.

There is a man that really makes me upset in HERcules's little group. He's a guy who really really REALLY fucking looks like Neil Druckmann. And after Joel suffers the final blow, Neil Druckmann SPITS on Joel's body. Just something to note.

Anyway HERcules decides to let Tommy and Ellie live despite protests from her group.

Thus Ellie's journey for revenge begins.

Dina forces Ellie to bring her along to hunt down this group of people and this is where the game gets really directionless I think. First off you have these nice exploration sections where Ellie and Dina are just bantering, like nothing is wrong! These are great relationship building moments I'll admit, but Ellie is supposed to be consumed by rage and she's just playing around with Dina like they aren't on a fucking murder safari.

Then the game jumps to flashbacks where you sort of see the Joel and Ellie relationship starting to fall apart. Which basically all stems from Ellie wanting to know what really happened at the end of the first game. And when she finally gets Joel to tell her the truth, she closes herself off from him. Thus why their relationship is basically non-existant at the beginning of the game. But Joel is still Daddy and Ellie wants revenge for him I guess.

Turns out Ellie is really bad at revenge, because for the next four or so hours you are chasing key people that where in the room when Joel was brained, but the first few people you catch up to are already nice and dead thanks to Tommy who's trying to do the mission so Ellie doesn't have to.

Question? Why can't we play as Tommy doing this then?

Alright enough of the summary. I just wanted to give you all kind of the set up to the main scenario before giving my thoughts.

So the revenge story sucks, because you don't ever feel that any character is really committed to it. Abby brings up Joel in every flashback, but each time she does it is out of place just to ruin the mood of the flashback. Ellie hates herself each time she gets her revenge on a person. First she tortures a lady for information and the next scene she's trembling and panicking about it. Then her next two revenge kills...err three technically....cause her to have a break down because she throat shanks the pregnant girl. It's only here that she sort of agrees to give up, but HErcules finds her and oh boy shit's gonna go down anyway.

I think my biggest issue here is the constant flashbacks. It feels like they are trying really hard to make us like the characters, but they don't need to do that for Ellie and Joel because we already LIKE them. Then there are a bunch of other flashbacks with HERcules and her interactions with her friends as well as her daily life of patrols and shit. There is even a section where she tries to save a couple of kids, I suppose in an effort to make her more likable, but it just doesn't work. You start the audience hating her and then try to work us over in liking her and it doesn't fit because everything is so disjointed.

You jump around so much that nothing feels like it has time to matter because you see all these drastically different stages in these characters relationships it becomes hard to connect the dots, and by the end you just don't give a shit.

So ultimately I feel this, the gameplay is not interesting enough to make the player want to get to the next story pieces, and the story is such a mess that the questions you ask throughout just confuse you and make everything feel pointless and stupid. And with all the flashbacks and shit, the story feels really really padded. LIke why do I have to explore TWO museums? It's like they couldn't find a way to make a full game about revenge, because most of the game is just flashback shit that is mostly disconnected from the revenge cycle.

I don't hate it the way I thought I would.

But holy fuck did this game bore. It's boring.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Holy crap you already finished it?

I agree on most of the gameplay stuff I’ve experienced so far. It does play more smoothly and I like the improvements to melee being more fluid and responsive, but gunplay is gunplay and so far ain’t much better or different. I think Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy are more “fun” in that regard.

Stealth is also stealth, but I’m glad that they don’t seem to pull the “alert the whole damn army that the person you stealthed made a peep” like the last game often did. Jumping is janky so completely agreed there. I mean it sorta works but it looks less functional than even Uncharted 1 jumping, which is kinda baffling as they iterated this engine based off of Uncharted 4.

The horse riding felt serviceable but kinda mediocre like in The Witcher 3, but then again I’ve played a lot of RDR2. What I do like is how detailed the terrain deformation is especially from the horses. I should make a webm of how the ice breaks apart from the hooves, and the bloody water physics applied to moving around in circles is pretty mesmerizing. The wintry forest scenery is also like a painting come to life, even surpassing the opening of RDR2 in some cases.

“HERcules”. That’s probably more clever than the reasoning behind her character in the first place (I really hope I’m wrong though).

Anyways, here’s a fancy new TLoU themed Taylor guitar for any actual musicians and fans of the game, which apparently isn’t many!?

That reminds me, the guitar mini game is pretty clever too. They seem to have based the hud prompts on the circle of fifths which is a nice touch. It’s also probably the most interesting use of the touch pad.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Holy crap you already finished it?

Anyways, here’s a fancy new TLoU themed Taylor guitar for any actual musicians and fans of the game, which apparently isn’t many!?

Quarantine has had me sooooo bored.

Admittedly I didn't do much exploring when I could. I basically zerged through the story, mostly because I wasn't having fun and just wanted to be done with it.

 

[meiam]

Quarantine has had me sooooo bored.

Admittedly I didn't do much exploring when I could. I basically zerged through the story, mostly because I wasn't having fun and just wanted to be done with it.

Wouldn't the exploring be the best part though, since it'd be disconnected from the story?

Anyway, personally I feel like the first one wrapped up and was a finished story, there wasn't really anything else left to tell in the story of Ellie and Joel and the world was just a generic zombie apocalypse that wasn't that interesting. So I didn't really care for a sequel and wasn't planning on playing this either way. But it's still weird that they decided to take the best part of the first game, the character and their relationship, and just shit heavily on that for an entire game. What was the point of that?

How's the soundtrack BTW? I really liked the first one.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Wouldn't the exploring be the best part though, since it'd be disconnected from the story?

Anyway, personally I feel like the first one wrapped up and was a finished story, there wasn't really anything else left to tell in the story of Ellie and Joel and the world was just a generic zombie apocalypse that wasn't that interesting. So I didn't really care for a sequel and wasn't planning on playing this either way. But it's still weird that they decided to take the best part of the first game, the character and their relationship, and just shit heavily on that for an entire game. What was the point of that?

How's the soundtrack BTW? I really liked the first one.

the crazy part is that the Infected are an EXTREMELY small part of this game. The infect are so irrelevant that they didn't even bother making new ones, at least not new ones that you have to worry about, there are a couple new zombies in set piece sections, but nothing new that makes a gameplay or story impact in anyway.

The Soundtrack is generic IMO. It kind of faded into the background and I didn't notice it much. Unlike the first game.

Exploring is fine, but when you aren't enjoying the rest of the game, you don't want to hang around TO explore, you just wanna get done. I either had to b-line it directly to the ending or risk turning off the game and never coming back to it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

“HERcules”. That’s probably more clever than the reasoning behind her chartin the first place (I really hope I’m wrong though).



That reminds me, the guitar mini game is pretty clever too. They seem to have based the hud prompts on the circle of fifths which is a nice touch. It’s also probably the most interesting use of the touch pad.

I'm glad you liked my joke.

As a guitar player myself, I like the guitar playing touch. I took a few minutes extra to dick around with making music in the game.

(see attached for a picture of my guitar face)

 

[meiam]

The Soundtrack is generic IMO. It kind of faded into the background and I didn't notice it much. Unlike the first game.

: (

That's just sad, a good soundtrack can go beyond it's disappointing media (looking at you Nier, and so many anime like terror in resonance) so I was hoping that would be salvageable.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The more and more I hear about the game, the less I want to play it. I doubt I'll actually play it honestly as I have quite a few games to play that I feel will definitely be better than TLOU2 (I just picked up Desperados 3 and The Wonderful 101 literally just arrived in the mail today from the Kickstarter) and the chances of getting down on the list to TLOU2 isn't probably going to happen. Now, I'm actually more interested in the sense of just how fucking bad it is, I think I'll look for a Youtube movie of the game (as I'm not watching something as long as a Let's Play) and hoping it's Batman v Superman bad because that was highly entertaining in how unfathomably bad it was.

Speaking of Batman v Superman...

I think my biggest issue here is the constant flashbacks. It feels like they are trying really hard to make us like the characters, but they don't need to do that for Ellie and Joel because we already LIKE them.

One of my biggest issues with BvS was that the film wasted at least an hour on Lex trying to frame Superman for shit so he could get congressional approval to bring in kryptonite (I'm sure he would have no problem smuggling it in or he probably has facilities in other countries anyway) when the events of the fucking Man of Steel (that BvS also showed again) already was the perfect evidence for developing weapons against Kryptonians including Superman. And the claims that an extended cut would fix the movie were asinine because over an hour of the theatrical release needed to be cut to begin with.

 

[CriticalGaming]

snip

There is a movie version of the game on Youtube. It's about 8 hours long. They include every story piece of dialog that appears in gameplay and then of course all the cutscenes. So it's a decent way to get an abridged version of the game without all the game.

It starts here: and there are four videos in the playlist.

There are others as well if you look them up. But i've watched this channel's work before and I feel like they try to keep it brief while also keeping the story as complete as possible.

 

[BrawlMan]

It's no surprise that this game has been a point of contention for people ever since major plot points got leaked. The way the game looked like it was going to be overly LBGTQ+ heavy pandering nonsense, with Neil Druckmann's agenda pushing rhetoric bogging the game down.

Well I am pleased to say that isn't the case here.

This is why I don't bother with leaks, or the "public's" reactions to them when it comes to certain games. Sometimes it's best to gamble and find out for yourself. Try not to let others reactions or PR prevent you from buying a game you are invested in. Or make you worry yourself out. I did not read the plot spoilers, so heads up

 

[CriticalGaming]

This is why I don't bother with leaks, or the "public's" reactions to them when it comes to certain games. Sometimes it's best to gamble and I find out for yourself. Try not to let others reactions or PR prevent you from buying a game you are invested in. Or make you worry yourself out. I did not read the plot spoilers, so heads up

In the previous thread, where we were discussing the leaks and the apparent agenda behind the game, I made it very very clear that would be giving this game a chance to surprise me. I was truthful in what I said and I feel like I gave the game a fair shake. And the review is a result of that.

Also I did deliberately avoid talking directly about the ending or the really really strange sex scene that has been memed all over the web.

I might make another thread about the ending specifically in a few days after more people have a chance to play through the game. But I'm not sure on that.

 

[laggyteabag]

Literally just finished the game, and whilst I enjoyed it, it certainly is not perfect.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO SPOILERS FOR TLOU2


I find this game to be quite difficult to talk about, without spending hours on a writeup, so I will just gonna throw out a few bits and pieces that I liked, or did not like, whilst I just simmer down on how I feel about the game.

• The game looks GREAT. It is easily one of the best looking games that I have ever played - if not the best.
• The combat is fun, but the lack of enemy types can get pretty repetitive. I get that there is not too much that you can do with "guy with gun" in a realistic setting, but I would have liked to have seen maybe some armoured enemies, and some more infected types.
• Even though this was certainly marketed as Ellie's game, I did not mind playing as Abby - and I actually grew to like her by the end of the game.
• A lot of the new characters are a lot of fun. I really liked Dina, I liked Jesse, and I like Lev and Yara, too. Abby's crew could have used a bit more fleshing out during her portions of the game, but the core cast of Owen, Mel and Manny were decent enough.
• I mentioned this in another thread, but the more open ended nature of this game's levels only harmed the experience for me. Being encouraged to scavenge for ammo and supplies worked just fine in the more linear first game, but when you are presented with several entire houses that can be explored, it really messed with the pacing and urgency.
• I also like how both Abby and Ellie have a completely different arsenal of weapons - aside from the basic pistol (but even that looks different) - and a different skill tree. It really helped to differentiate between how the two characters played, where it would have been way easier to not do that.
• Voice acting, as always, was top-notch.

As for the specific plot points

• Joel died a lot earlier on than expected. I honestly thought that Abby was going to find Ellie and Dina, and then kill Dina to make Ellie talk. A nice bait-and-switch, there - especially with a lot of the marketing featuring Joel and Ellie together.
• The quiet flashback moments with Joel were really cute.
• I really like how when you play as Ellie, you are finding and killing what you see as faceless, nameless schmucks, only for these characters to then be fleshed out in Abby's side of the story. I don't think it went far enough, as I never really cared about any of these people, but it was an interesting way to tell a story.
• Abby's story had a few cool setpieces, like running from the infected in the woods after almost being hanged, the infested hotel, and the depths of the hospital with the "Rat King" infected.
• ... but, Abby's story was completely irrelevent. Sure, it fleshed out the people who Ellie was killing, and it added some extra context to the Scars v WLF conflict, but I didn't need 10 hours of this story, especially when it had almost nothing to do with Ellie's revenge plot.
• Abby never encountering the aftermath of Ellie's revenge spree was a huge missed opportunity, especially as they visit a lot of the same locations. I was fully expecting Abby to emerge from the hospital, to find that Ellie had killed Nora and all of the WLF there, but no. Abby doesn't find out anything, until Manny reappears and just tells her about it.
• I also really liked how you played as Abby fighting Ellie, and vice versa.
• When the two characters met up again at the theatre, the conflict really should have ended here, and the game should have ended at the farm. Going on for another few hours in California was just unnecessary padding, on an already long game.
• And the ending... I just really, really hate the trope of "I must get revenge! Actually, I guess revenge isn't worth it. You can go, now.". It is just really unsatisfying, and not only did this happen once, but it happened twice! The first time after Abby finds Tommy, Dina and Ellie in the Theatre on Day 3, and the second time after Ellie finds Abby in California.

My biggest criticism of the game is honestly Abby's portion of the game. Not because of Abby, because I actually quite liked her, but it was just so pointless and overly long for the story that it was telling. There are so many other interesting points in her life that could have achieved the same goal of fleshing out her and her friend's stories, without being completlely irrelevent to Ellie's revenge plot.

It would have been nice to have spent more time with Abby's father, and living with the possibility that a vaccine is only days away - only to see it all destroyed by Joel refusing to let Ellie die. Then we could have spent some time with in the immediate fallout, with the Fireflies disbanding, and Abby and her friends plotting their revenge and chasing leads. It would have been so interesting to see Joel as this monster who stole everyone's future, in stark contrast with Ellie's flashbacks, seeing him as this cool Dad, taking her on thoughtful trips for her birthday, and teaching her how to play the guitar.

But, even with the story that we got, it just should have been paced so much better. By the time that I finished Abby's Day 3, everything that happened with Ellie seemed like a complete distant memory, and it was at the point where the Scar village was on fire, and the WLF were attacking, that I actually had to remind myself that I was playing the sequel to the first game. Its not a bad story by any means, but just felt so misplaced in the main plot, and probably would have been better suited to a Left Behind-style DLC or something.

And yeah. the ending was unsatisfying, no matter how you look at it. It is just a silly trope that I hate, which resulted in a story where nothing had a positive outcome, everyone was miserable, and nothing mattered. But I guess that might just be the whole point.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Damn guys we're really not gonna bother with spoiler tags???

I mean, I kinda don't care... I haven't played TLOU but I know the gist of the story. I'm not entirely sure why I'm keeping myself from spoilers because it'll be a lonnngggggg ass time before I can play this game. But yeah, c'mon guys, spoilers weren't mentioned in the title, its not fair to not use spoiler tags.

That said, I gave in and read the rest of the spoilers. Nice to know that Abby was exactly who I suspected her to be. But beyond that, I honestly can't tell what you guys hated so much about it. The ending sounds like a bummer indeed, but then I'm barely attached to these characters. I was expecting some really, insanely bad writing.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Damn guys we're really not gonna bother with spoiler tags???

I mean, I kinda don't care... I haven't played TLOU but I know the gist of the story. I'm not entirely sure why I'm keeping myself from spoilers because it'll be a lonnngggggg ass time before I can play this game. But yeah, c'mon guys, spoilers weren't mentioned in the title, its not fair to not use spoiler tags.

That said, I gave in and read the rest of the spoilers. Nice to know that Abby was exactly who I suspected her to be. But beyond that, I honestly can't tell what you guys hated so much about it. The ending sounds like a bummer indeed, but then I'm barely attached to these characters. I was expecting some really, insanely bad writing.

To be fair, my post does warn when the spoilers start. I have no control over other people though.

 

[MrCalavera]

So i only watched first couple hours of LP of this... and it's bad, BUT not in the way i expected it to be.
What i expected, is misery porn and conga of cruelty, but instead it was mostly, kinda... boring?

The

Spoiler

clubbing of Joel

happens in like first half hour of the game. And there's not much buildup either. His death serves solely as a reason to kickstart actual plot, and give Ellie something to do. And that something is RAMPAAAAAAAAAAGE!

...well not quite, cause her RRoR starts with her and her gf going on a sightseeing tour around post-apocalyptic Seattle, which kinda kills entire tension. This is only the beginning, but the game might've a serious problem with pacing already.
Witholding my final impression for now, though.

 

[Casual Shinji]

So I just got to the flashback to three years earlier, and holy shit, the game suddenly got a pulse. That whole section was so wonderful, I'm shocked that this is part of the same game. That was some true Naughty Dog magic. Too bad it only lasted about 15 minutes.

 

[laggyteabag]

That said, I gave in and read the rest of the spoilers. Nice to know that Abby was exactly who I suspected her to be. But beyond that, I honestly can't tell what you guys hated so much about it. The ending sounds like a bummer indeed, but then I'm barely attached to these characters. I was expecting some really, insanely bad writing.

Spoiler

My biggest issue was how the story was paced, and what stories the game decides to tell.

For the first 10 or so hours, the game is the setup and the execution of Ellie's revenge plot, which takes place over 3 days. Then Abby shows up to confront Ellie. Abby kills a character, holds another at gunpoint, and then it flashes back to Abby during the events of the final chapter of the first game. This reveals that Abby was a Firefly, and her dad was the surgeon/scientist who was going to create the vaccine, and the one who Joel has to kill to get Ellie back.

This was a cool reveal, and it was well executed. Up until this point, the game is so laser-focused, and it is actually really well done.

So where is the problem?

Well, after this flashback with Abby, you then end up going on a 10 hour-long tangent, following what Abby was doing, during the same 3 days that you just played as Ellie. This would have been fine, if it wasn't for the fact that Abby's story here, is entirely unrelated to Joel or Ellie, and instead focuses on the conflict between the WLF and the Scars, and a couple of Scar kids who Abby comes across. As I mentioned in my other post, this isnt necessarily a bad plot line, and it develops the characters of Abby and her (already dead) friends, but it just feels so detatched from everything that we were doing as Ellie, to the point where I actually almost forgot about Ellie completely.

If this whole sidestory was removed, and the game just continued after Abby's flashback, the game would have flowed so much better, with Abby's motivations being clear as day, and the only thing that would have been missed out on, are a few irrelevent characters, some admittedly pretty cool setpieces (which could have easily been slotted into Ellie's story), and some character development to show that these aren't actually bad people - which is something that I had already assumed to have been the case, anyway.

But that is just me.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So i only watched first couple hours of LP of this... and it's bad, BUT not in the way i expected it to be.
What i expected, is misery porn and conga of cruelty, but instead it was mostly, kinda... boring?

The

Spoiler

clubbing of Joel

happens in like first half hour of the game. And there's not much buildup either. His death serves solely as a reason to kickstart actual plot, and give Ellie something to do. And that something is RAMPAAAAAAAAAAGE!

...well not quite, cause her RRoR starts with her and her gf going on a sightseeing tour around post-apocalyptic Seattle, which kinda kills entire tension. This is only the beginning, but the game might've a serious problem with pacing already.
Witholding my final impression for now, though.

That’s the big challenge story-driven games have that also want to enhance or fortify their actual gameplay (because, these are still games no matter how important story is to the developers). How do you honor the story and gameplay so neither detracts from the other?

For a couple other AAA examples, Red Dead: Redemption 2 got away with it better because it was about outlaws stretching out their last days in a land these used to rule while the law slowly encroaches, and they just needed that last big score to be home free. The personal drama which culminates in Arthur’s tragedy is woven in so naturally, with him having time to reflect on his past and decide how he wants to spend his last days (the redemption theme if the player so chooses). The epilogues go the extra mile to connect with the first game, and if they ever remake/remaster the original (which sounds like a good possibility) it will be a nice loop.

God of War was another good example, where the gamey progression worked within the context of the plot without detracting from anything. Kratos and Atreus were on a treacherous journey whose main purpose was releasing his mother’s ashes, but more than that it was about a father learning to - and confronting his demons enough to allow himself to - bond with his son. Atreus also was on a journey of self discovery and learning the responsibility that comes with being a god. Plus the single take presentation held everything together in a way that felt like you were really with them every step of the way. It’s still a bit mind boggling how beautifully this game was done, and Cory Barlow deserves every award he got for best direction; perhaps even a few he didn’t.

In The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog is admittedly tackling a trickier - as well as long in the tooth by any medium’s standards - theme of revenge. There are many different angles of approach, but the way it’s kicked into motion Leaves the gameplay strained against the story they’re trying to tell. I myself like cover everything the game lets me, which means checking every building, alley, road or whatever might be beyond that far hill crest. Considering Ellie and Dina are supposed to be chasing after Tommy to bring him back in one piece, as his own wife ordered them to, let alone the pressing motivation for going in the first place, it works against this inclination to explore when the game is more sprawling.

I know why they did it, but it would’ve worked better if the bigger exploration sections were before the revenge plots in Ellie’s case. I’m only on my way to the TV station so not sure where Abby’s role kicks in, but I suppose for her it could be when her group is I’m unaware they’re being chased or hunted. The thing is, Tommy caught up with them rather quickly, so that doesn’t leave much time there. Like I said I’m not far in yet so maybe it will still manage to tighten the reigns enough to not feel derailed as much.

Having said that it kinda reminds me of The Witcher 3, where you’re supposed to be finding Ciri with some sense of urgency, but following the main quest would mean ignoring the bulk of the game that’s compromised of unrelated side quests and contracts which keep Geralt more than occupied.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Spoiler

My biggest issue was how the story was paced, and what stories the game decides to tell.

For the first 10 or so hours, the game is the setup and the execution of Ellie's revenge plot, which takes place over 3 days. Then Abby shows up to confront Ellie. Abby kills a character, holds another at gunpoint, and then it flashes back to Abby during the events of the final chapter of the first game. This reveals that Abby was a Firefly, and her dad was the surgeon/scientist who was going to create the vaccine, and the one who Joel has to kill to get Ellie back.

This was a cool reveal, and it was well executed. Up until this point, the game is so laser-focused, and it is actually really well done.

So where is the problem?

Well, after this flashback with Abby, you then end up going on a 10 hour-long tangent, following what Abby was doing, during the same 3 days that you just played as Ellie. This would have been fine, if it wasn't for the fact that Abby's story here, is entirely unrelated to Joel or Ellie, and instead focuses on the conflict between the WLF and the Scars, and a couple of Scar kids who Abby comes across. As I mentioned in my other post, this isnt necessarily a bad plot line, and it develops the characters of Abby and her (already dead) friends, but it just feels so detatched from everything that we were doing as Ellie, to the point where I actually almost forgot about Ellie completely.

If this whole sidestory was removed, and the game just continued after Abby's flashback, the game would have flowed so much better, with Abby's motivations being clear as day, and the only thing that would have been missed out on, are a few irrelevent characters, some admittedly pretty cool setpieces (which could have easily been slotted into Ellie's story), and some character development to show that these aren't actually bad people - which is something that I had already assumed to have been the case, anyway.

But that is just me.

That does sound like something you'd only be able to appreciate the hassle of if you had to slog through it yourself. Although, I'm kinda not very surprised. I loved Uncharted 4, but I do think they were approaching the line of being boring with their lengthy walking sections of character development and scenery appreciation.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

That does sound like something you'd only be able to appreciate the hassle of if you had to slog through it yourself. Although, I'm kinda not very surprised. I loved Uncharted 4, but I do think they were approaching the line of being boring with their lengthy walking sections of character development and scenery appreciation.

I found Uncharted 4 pretty boring, there was even a chapter you had to play through that never even happened.