The Last of Us Part II

The Last of Us Part II does not need to exist. Naughty Dog’s masterpiece serves as a generational culmination and capstone, exposing players to profound storytelling only possible through this interactive medium. In the years since, The Last of Us has been dissected and revered, achieving universal acclaim and reverence for its accomplishments. By all accounts, it is a special game. Not perfect, of course, but truly uniquely special.

The final moments of The Last of Us are harrowing. The long, arduous journey of Joel and his surrogate daughter Ellie come to a head, Joel cradling the girl and rushing away from danger after making an impossible choice. The game ends with a near blank, knowing stare and a lie. Every moment leading up to these last scenes feels all the more exhausting because players have navigated past crippling loss, adrenaline rushes stifled by a character’s death or an inescapable revelation. Naughty Dog clutches players tightly in its post-pandemic America grasp with little room to breathe, and while the little scraps of air taste sweet, they are also bitter.

Is The Last of Us fun? That remains a difficult equation to truly solve. Often I view the game as a piece of entertainment that has value across a variety of mediums. When viewed through the lens of just a game, Naughty Dog should take punches for repetitive combat, clumsy puzzle solving, and occasionally tedious traversal. But the often gruesome violence offers a sickening catharsis for a tale that could find itself perfectly wedged into our own violent reality. As a story, it was unparalleled. Abandoning the brisk adventures of Uncharted, Naughty Dog proved it could be deadly serious and claw at our souls. Like a director capturing human drama on film, The Last of Us bridged a gap many developers and critics speak of when referring to the ambitions of gaming and the ever-elusive “art.”

The Last of Us Part II does not need to exist because enough was already said with Part I. But the true achievement of Part II is that it tells something beautiful and meaningful, something hopeless and painful, something violent and true. And without this game, we would be missing out on another masterpiece.

Before summiting the final moments of Part II, I paused the game in view of a farmhouse and went to bed. I was 30 hours into the game, ragged from the emotional twists I had endured. Like its predecessor, Part II is exhausting. And I was exhausted. Yet I couldn’t sleep.

With that image in my head, I wanted to push through, despite it being 2 a.m. But I also wanted to savor those final moments of Part II for a new day, allowing whatever emotional payoff to carry me into the sunlight. Instead, I found my brain scouring over every detail of the game, analyzing, connecting the dots, reflecting on the journey, writing small reviews in my thoughts. Looking back, story beats hit harder and took on new context when the picture was more fully in place. The intertwining web of Naughty Dog’s final PlayStation 4 game felt increasingly meaningful.

Speaking about Part II‘s story is a task, and not necessarily an envious one. While a review embargo can put up particular roadblocks on what to discuss, saying too much will simply spoil the game. From the tiniest of nods to Part I to the greater revelations and moments of Joel and Ellie’s journey, players should embrace the unknown as much as possible. Part II is a game that I want to discuss with friends at great length, rummaging around the finer details and context to gain new insight and appreciation into the script Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross have labored over.

Part II is, reductively speaking, a blood-soaked tale of revenge. Those who watched the game’s first reveal of Ellie strumming a guitar in a dilapidated house strewn with corpses should expect as much. The ferocity in her eyes declaring that she will find and kill “every last one of them” resonates throughout her entire journey. But Part II is not laser-focused on Ellie cutting her way through humans and Infected.

The first mistake players may make with Part II is expecting a rehash of Part I‘s momentum. Part II does not choose to bookend its narrative with crushing emotional moments and instead sprinkles poignancy throughout the campaign. Without debate, this is Naughty Dog’s biggest game and none of it feels like wasted space or filler. I quickly shirked the desire to witness a kind of emotional payoff right out of the gate and instead let the waves of plot crash over and carry me through. Those who truly want to appreciate everything in Part II should, without a doubt, play the first game. However, there may be a certain benefit in not having that precedent cloud over you.

The bulk of Part II shifts control over to Ellie. Now 19 and with the events of Part I a few years behind her, Ellie has settled into a kind of calm at Jackson. One of the first things players will do is walk through the streets of this human settlement that has managed to become a thriving society, unlike the beleaguered and broken cities of the Old World. Though it may look like a scene out of Red Dead Redemption 2, the town of Jackson is full of life with schools, a bar, vendors, and even a playground where children throw snowballs at each other.

Immediately, players are shown the lived-in worlds Naughty Dog is capable of creating. There is a shocking–but not surprising–amount of detail the art team has taken in building pieces of America that are both devastated and developed. First and foremost, however, are the intricately detailed characters players will meet. With each new game, Naughty Dog raises the bar of what their character animation and mocap team are capable of while at the same time raising the industry standard. The amount of expression characters give in and out of gameplay is staggering. Rather than running up the uncanny valley, characters bear little resemblance to their real-life counterparts. While particular attention is given to animating mouth movements and facial expressions, the smaller touches like hand motions and body language are replicated brilliantly.

Despite the acting taking place by real people in a green screen environment, these characters never feel out of place. The looks of mental and physical anguish ground this harsh reality for players. At times, the action on screen feels stripped away from the virtual one, nearly blending itself seamlessly with the real one.

Without a doubt, Ashley Johnson is a star as Ellie. It is a role built for her and seeing the feat of showing the growth and scope of her voice work across both games is remarkable. Troy Baker’s gruff Joel is no longer center stage but is no less impactful, especially during the subdued, emotional moments of the character. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Naughty Dog game without a few familiar names and Laura Bailey is exceptionally powerful in her own right as a character that should be left unmentioned until playing the game.

There was no doubt that Part II was going to be a highly polished game, it’s become a hallmark of not only Naughty Dog but of Sony’s first-party lineup. The kind of quality seen here is one only paralleled by God of War or Rockstar’s worlds. A large portion of the game takes place in Seattle, which has been gorgeously destroyed and carved up by the environment artists. Unlike the vast expanses of Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy, Part II keeps everything at street level but introduces more complexity and depth than ever before.

Part I featured a more open world than any Uncharted but was still contained, likely restricted by some of the PlayStation 3’s limitations. Part II keeps a similar scope but blows it up by increasing the amount of real estate that players can engage with. This vision of Seattle comes with multiple checkpoint-like areas where players can both explore and fight. The first open area players come upon is traversed by horse and features multiple large buildings that players can explore for items and world-building. Further into the game, players can break off from the main path to investigate abandoned shops and homes, all ripe for the picking.

Admittedly, Part II is a massive game even if players were to fly through the main path with little care for collection. But to do so would leave out a wealth of carefully constructed moments of building out the game’s world. I certainly got lost in exploration not just out of a desire to find the several collectibles tucked away but to read notes and peek into rooms. The gut-wrenching feeling of coming across a child apologizing to their parent for not being strong enough or a string of letters showing the decline of a pack of survivors is quintessential The Last of Us. Without these, the full picture is painted much less. Seeing the struggle of unseen or long dead people helps expand upon this stark vision.

There were moments where I may have strayed off the main path a little too much or ripped myself away from a narrative moment in hopes of discovering a collectible. It risks dulling the impact of a scene or dragging on a stretch of gameplay for too long. But keep in mind, these were my personal choices and likely contributed to my longer playtime. That being said, when the credits rolled, I felt like I had soaked up nearly every piece of Part II and understood every facet much better.

Perhaps the biggest evolution in Part II is combat. This is still very much the same game you may have played in 2013 but improved with thoughtful design choices. Combat encounters now take place in more creatively open spaces. While this sometimes translates to wide fields and multiple buildings to hide in, it also means a better realization of intimate, everyday spaces like a group of rooms or a basement. Ellie is capable of jumping–thanks to a dedicated button–and while she won’t be scaling undiscovered temples, it gives players and enemies the chance to scale multiple levels of these combat sandboxes. Ellie can also go prone, crawling on her stomach to hide under objects or be more covert in tall grass.

Part II offers a wide variety of options to keep every encounter from becoming stale or repetitive, especially deeper into the game when players have been fighting for much longer. The expanded suite of tools available to players also gives Naughty Dog the opportunity to tinker with enemy AI. Players will come across more enemies carrying melee weapons who rush Ellie while she hides from gunfire. The L1 button acts as a dodge that avoids physical blows but often allows for a quick escape behind cover. When alerted, groups of enemies will change up their attack patterns or begin searching around and under different pieces of cover in an attempt to flush out Ellie.

Against Infected, Ellie is much more capable than Joel was but these foes are even deadlier. The roaming Runners can be dispatched with slashes from Ellie’s blade or with a chokehold but have a tendency to come in larger numbers. Clickers don’t always have to be stealthily killed with a shiv but can take a beating. Stalkers move silently and are harder to detect in listen mode but can swarm unprepared players. Shamblers, which throw and spew a damaging poison, are intelligently implemented in encounters to cut players off from escape or make a single area unsafe for a limited time.

My first time in Part II was played on Moderate difficulty. Usually, I choose a more difficult option when playing through a game for the first time because there are few opportunities where I actually get a second chance to play and want to soak it up as much as I can. Honestly, Moderate difficulty may be a little too easy for more experienced players. There, I found myself frequently full up on ammo and crafting resources. Enemies never did too much damage and probably took a little too long to spot me. If you are looking for a stronger initial challenge that raises the stakes a bit, try dialing up the difficulty one notch.

However, I think Moderate difficulty also serves as a good trial run for playing the game on harder difficulties by showing players the flow of encounters and where best to seek out materials. This difficulty allowed me to screw up stealth approaches and still appreciate the depth combat could offer. Ellie is capable of sprinting away from a bad situation to regroup and gain the advantage again. Being shot or slapped at didn’t feel like the end of the world and it allowed me to enjoy both the game and the story in equal parts.

Resource management was my favorite aspect of Part I‘s gameplay and Naughty Dog chose to keep Part II similarly basic. Molotovs and health kits are made from the same materials, while players may have to choose to craft a pistol silencer over a bomb. Having multiple recipes use the same ingredients forces players to often make difficult choices or live with quick decisions done mid-fight. Shivs are no longer required to open blocked passages and instead secrets are discovered by asking players to inspect and observe the environment better to find a pathway leading to a safe or secret room.

Ellie is able to permanently upgrade her weapons using scrap or her abilities using supplements. While there aren’t enough resources to fully upgrade everything in one playthrough, I was always conscious to not spend upgrade points the second I could afford something, because players will gradually discover training manuals that open up new upgrade paths. Whether focusing on crafting, stealth, or combat improvements, players who choose harder difficulties will likely agonize over which paths to focus on.

Gunplay is as equally chunky and slightly unwieldy as in Part I, all in hopes of making the game edge towards realism. Ellie’s aiming reticle is rarely sturdy and pulling off headshots is a blessing of perfect timing. Eventually, I got a lot better at executing perfect shots, but in the thick and nervousness of battle, you really feel as if you are the one holding the unsteady trigger finger.

But let’s get to the violence of The Last of Us Part II.

Allow me, for a moment, to use my English degree and take a small part of Part II and analyze it to death, regardless of whether it was the intent of the creator.

In Part II, Ellie comes across a female soldier playing a game on a PlayStation Vita, the music from it blasting out of their headphones. I instantly recognized it from Hotline Miami, a game I have referenced several times. Set in the real world, The Last of Us retains references both blatant and subtle. In a record store players will see an advertisement for Pearl Jam’s upcoming (at the time) record along with album covers that are obvious references to real life ones. D&D and Warhammer lookalikes are everywhere and I commend the art team for their excellent skills at making fake media look real and like something I want to see or play. But for some reason this quick use of Hotline Miami stuck with me, and not just because it would have been possible to play the game on a Vita in 2013 a few months before the fictional outbreak hit.

Hotline Miami is a game where players commit mass murder across a few dozen glitzy levels to incredible 80s-inspired synth tunes. As a masked character wearing a letter jacket, players use guns and blunt instruments to exact gory deaths from a top-down view in hopes of achieving higher scores. Outside of the incredible fusion of violent gameplay and heart-pumping music, there were a decent amount of critics who attempted to find deeper meaning into the narrative of Hotline Miami. Why was a voice on the other end of the phone enough to justify players into recklessly taking hundreds of lives? Is there a cost to so much death and violence? For some, the answer is a simple “who cares!?” because it’s a game and these questions don’t often matter in a game with such a minimal story. But if you really want to pick apart Hotline Miami, there’s enough there to warrant a discussion on violence in gaming.

Again, though, why Hotline Miami? Out of all the Vita games that weren’t a Sony exclusive or a sequel to an original Naughty Dog series, why that one?

Primary negative criticism for The Last of Us either focused on the gameplay or that the game was too violent. Why should a game be so violent? Why should we see these brutal deaths so realistically programmed? This is a world where violence is one of the strongest currencies. A mushroom-infested body will rip and claw at human flesh with no thought given to how bloody it may be. A person will shoot another to survive one more day with little care as to where their gun might be aiming. Society will crumble and different ideologies will form different walks of life.

Politicization is not easy to incorporate into a game; developers will be judged for a lack of it or incorrect use of it. Naughty Dog has created a world in which absolute brutality forges one of many paths. As a story built around revenge, Part II shows how a single-minded purpose can destroy a person or those around them. It addresses the ability to cope with trauma, to live with demons both real and imagined. At every juncture, Naughty Dog takes the steps to remind us that humans are fragile, capable of both overwhelming good and evil. A moment of peace will be interrupted by pain.

How will Ellie conquer the ghosts of her past? Will Joel have to come to terms with his acts of violence? The brilliance of Part II is that it does not provide any easy answer to any question, even after wrapping up. At a certain point in the game, players may be overcome with relief, though left a bit hollow by the game’s missing threads. But ask yourself: why do I want a different outcome when one is perfectly satisfactory?

Frequently, characters will make choices that the players wouldn’t but are still forced to watch them play out, perhaps even participate in them. I often would hesitate with a button press because I was uncomfortable or shocked. Part II features many cathartic moments where violence is exacted or resisted. But you aren’t allowed to turn away and shouldn’t. You want Ellie to be better, you want these characters to turn away from the harsh tendrils of the world and be happy. All of us want that for ourselves. Sadly, that isn’t often how life works.

Shouldn’t these characters learn better? Shouldn’t they think outside the box or be less selfish? Pose these questions to today’s world, to the reality in which we live. Part II may feel bleak, maybe even unnecessarily so. But think about it as a lesson, as commentary on where a singular goal may get us. Over the course of the game, players will encounter two enemy factions, the Washington Liberation Front (the Wolves) and the Seraphites (the Scars). These two factions fight over territory and ideals. Players may even have the opportunity to pit either against the other, or the Infected against them, but when exploring the world, you begin to get a sense of what these groups hope to accomplish. The Wolves criticize the cult-like methods of the Scars and their devotion to their leader. But the Wolves have their own similarly obsessive tendencies and religious creeds, proving any group can become entrenched in their own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Picking apart the game and the bits of world building, players are offered a more complete picture of a flawed world that couldn’t survive an outbreak. Inadequate government response, fear, and misunderstanding all brought the world to its knees. But just because millions of people died, doesn’t mean that people will change.

Part II stings the most when it forces players to come to terms with their actions. On one hand, this is expressed through the gameplay when a fellow soldier may cry out the name of their friend they just watched die. Maybe Ellie will discover a note indicating why a group of Infected were trapped in a garage. These touches complete the picture of a world both lost and struggling to claw back. Yet through a surprising amount of narrative shifts and twists, players will come to realize the full scope of their actions or understand why a character is making the choices they have. The way Naughty Dog plays with time or fills in gaps of story are paced out in such a way to allow players enough time to sit with a decision but also eagerly anticipate the next narrative step. Or, you may just flinch in horror as a previous events give you foresight into what atrocities are about to unfold.

So, again, why Hotline Miami? Maybe I’m looking into it far too much but I think Naughty Dog pays attention to its influences and its peers. Hotline Miami is a game that, like many others, addresses mature themes in its own way. Violence may seem like the answer but what does it really accomplish? In Part II, that answer is frequently blurry. But when you take a breath and reflect, the bigger picture becomes clearer.

And in its last seconds, Part II so eloquently and simply asks both the player and its central character what remains after staying on the path for so long. For some the answer may be satisfying. For others it may be devastating. Others may find it simply adequate. But make no mistake, when the dust settles, you will be left raw and shaken.

The Last of Us Part II‘s extreme violence and self-destructive characters are often punctuated with serene, beautiful moments that crescendo with a stellar score or sincere delivery. I frequently watched a moment in the game pass by, open-mouthed with shock or surprise. Those feelings would be further amplified when a narrative tease came to fruition minutes or hours down the line. You see these characters as real people. Real, flawed people in a real, flawed world.

Naughty Dog has crafted another game bursting at the seams with passion. Coming at the close of another console cycle, the studio proves its ability to evolve and defy expectations. The Last of Us Part II is no simple sequel. It is a fully realized vision of the world players were introduced to in 2013. Evolved gameplay not only asks players to be more tactical, it taxes them emotionally. But it is also a loving send off of beloved, grounded characters. Whether grabbing a pallet in water or carrying around a ladder, subtle nods exist to the first game, showing the studio takes to criticism and can improve.

Only one game exists that is like The Last of Us Part II, yet it would be a sin to ask this sequel to only capitalize on the first’s success. Nothing more can be said than The Last of Us Part II is an emotionally jarring epic where players are plunged into the bleak world of the fragile human psyche, twinged with poignant moments of hope and calm and smeared with the violence of reality. An absorbing, beautiful generational masterpiece.