Hurt by Johnny Cash is one of the saddest and most powerful songs I know . I do not know if it will be the slow sound of the guitar and the piano, the broken and worn voice of the man in black, the letter that tears your flesh to each verse or a mixture of all these elements and others but the fact is that I listen to it And I feel like I’ve been hit with a wrecking ball. And still I put it back on and enjoy it every time. The Last of Us Part II , the long-awaited sequel that some of us have been asking Naughty Dog for seven years, is to video games what Johnny Cash is to music .
WARNING! From this point there are references and spoilers to important points in the plot of The Last of Us Part II so we recommend ending the game before continuing.
If we’re going to start, let’s start at the beginning. All of us who have played it will remember those first sequences from The Last of Us (2013) in which we learned about the trauma experienced by Joel and it served as a starting point to understand the attitude, motivation and evolution of a giant among the protagonists of video games of the last decade. We must also keep in mind that ending (finale) in which Joel lied to Ellie to her face by hiding that she was the only one immune and that by saving her he had condemned humanity. That ending, which seemed so round and full of possibilities, acquires new dimensions when combined with TLoU Part II and leads us to understand the dilemma with which Ellie, new protagonist , must live every day: is her life worth more than a cure for The humanity?
De Jackson a Seattle
In TLoU Part II we can include two parts within what could be considered as the “prologue”. First we have a couple of mostly cinematic scenes in which we reprise the role of Joel , who is sharing with his brother Tommy the guilt that weighs on him for having lied to Ellie, and who returns to Jackson to see a teenage Ellie who begins to feel He is part of a community and realizes that it is no longer the two of them against the world. These sequences will only last fifteen minutes but they are so tender, so intimate, that as you advance in the story you end up saving them like a treasure . The last spark of light to turn to when all else is dark.
The second part of this principle is where we get into the real stuff, the one that serves as a playable tutorial and the one that already breaks our hearts. In this part we deal with two characters: a 19-year-old Ellie who assumes that she is already an adult, no matter how much it hurts Joel to admit it, and a girl out of nowhere who walks alone into the forest . Here we are introduced to characters who, although secondary, are important like Dina and Jesse. This section of the game allows us to recover the mechanics and get into the world that we left seven years ago with the tension, the surprise attacks, the stealth, the notes and collectibles and the combat system that incorporates some novelty. Everything seems to be going relatively well, advancing at a slow but steady pace, until we get to the moment one dreads from the moment one enters the game for the first time. Yes, Joel dies and not in any way but in a very violent way and under the gaze of Ellie and the player, both unable to do anything to save him . The beginning of The Last of Us Part II is a crescendo that culminates in one of the hardest scenes I can remember in a video game and leaves you devastated, eyes wide without being able to take them away from the screen and your mouth open as you whisper ‘ no, no, no please don’t ‘over and over again.
And so the game begins . With the traumatic death of our beloved Joel and Ellie’s departure in search of revenge against those who took the most important person in her life. A journey that gets darker and darker by the minute .
Mechanics and narrative
Some say that if something works, it is better not to change it. The Pokémon saga has been releasing games that are very similar in shape and identical in substance for more than twenty years, and even so they sell millions of copies. Naughty Dog opted for simplicity with The Last of Us and the play went very well, so with this second part they wanted to keep the mechanics almost intact except for some interesting additions . Things like the equipment menu, the collectibles, the creation of materials, the survival manuals to unlock new abilities or the use of stealth and the listening mode are preserved as we saw them in the first installment and give the new title a Continuing air and very pleasant familiarity for the fans. Obviously there are interesting surprises and changes, especially in the combat system and in the possibilities of Ellie (an agile, fast and elusive young girl) when moving through the scenes, climbing or solving puzzles.
The exploration also changes, although in a more indirect way. It is not that they have done anything strange to him, it is that he feels different. When you had been playing TLoU long enough, you ended up living a corridor experience , a learned tendency to know the right way to move forward and a narrowing of the environment, which still allowed searching and searching in every corner. The Last of Us Part II opens up horizons and, keeping in mind that it is still a game to move on and on, it manages to offer a freer experience. The use of open spaces and large esplanades also helps .
But what really stands out in the work of Naughty Dog, that which launched the careers of The Last of Us and turned it into a phenomenon of the gamer world, is the narrative of their games. I think there are few games (without wanting to despise any of them, of course) so careful, complete and consistent with their own world as TLoU and TLoU Part II . Absolutely everything you see on the screen is there for something, from the characters’ clothes to the graffiti on a wall or a newspaper on the floor. The notes and posters that you find throughout Ellie’s journey are a delight for the player because they are not simple additions placed in the game to make them beautiful, but they are part of the story, they are very well written and can reach reveal information about the environment in which you find yourself. In any note nailed to a cork you can find the combination of a safe, a declaration of love from some apocalyptic Romeo and Juliet or the reason why in the next room there is a corpse with a shot in the skull and a cold weapon on lap.
But as good as they are, these notes and messages are complementary to the main story . The plot of The Last of Us Part II can be divided into three parts : a first in which we handle Ellie , another in which we return with the mysterious girl from the beginning (Abby) and a denouement or third act that closes the game. Ellie’s part is the one that is most enjoyed, both because she is the playable character and because of various aspects that make her story a very interesting story arc. On the one hand we have his quest for revenge in Seattle , where it will be a collateral damage of two opposing factions, and on the other we have a series of flashbacks that connect both installments and show us key moments in the growth of Ellie and her relationship with Joel.
It should be noted that when it comes to Ellie, the game is diametrically opposite to the first part . TLoU’s was a story of reconciliation, love, humanity ; a very personal journey in which we saw how hope returned to Joel and his old wounds healed the more time he spent with that responding girl who had gone from being one more commission to his last bond with lost goodness. In TLoU Part II we retrace that path and we go from life in a society framed by the camaraderie and affection of yours towards a hostile, cruel, violent, dark world full of monsters that we look more and more like. It is a free fall into a well in which the player experiences the same conflicting feelings as Ellie, who does not want to lose the light that makes her be herself but cannot forgive either .
The Abby part and the third act are more… controversial. The truth is that the change to Abby (with whom we live the same days as with Ellie but from her perspective) caught me by surprise and it took me many hours to get rid of that feeling that something was not right, that something was squeaking . Seen in perspective, Abby’s plot is interesting and raises the aforementioned confrontation between the two factions (the Wolves and the Seraphites) from the point of view of someone from within, who lives and understands it. This arc has some really good moments , including a tough final boss, and it introduces us to the character in ways that if this part did not exist, only one more villain would make her. The problem is that we can’t forget that Abby’s role in Joel’s death . Naughty Dog made a risky decision to put us in her shoes and I have to say that Abby ends up working and you develop something similar to a feeling of empathy with her but you do not get to overcome the insurmountable and less when you put her next to Ellie. Still, I’m glad that Naughty Dog decided to gamble and did something that, even knowing that many players would not like it, was different and shaken the schemes a bit .
The third act, both because of its length and the way it is introduced, provokes a feeling that the story has wanted to lengthen more than necessary. The end of TLoU Part II does something similar to the movie La La Land : it offers you a happy and desirable ending with which it is strange that a tear does not drop after everything the game has put us through and then it takes it away from you , takes out the little heart that was beginning to heal and tramples it again ( ouch ). Is it a bad ending to the game? No , it’s a very good conclusion to the story and offers a key moment, one last gift from Joel to Ellie, and a new glimmer of hope in the world. So, where is the problem? In that it clashes with the rest of the game and seems a bit forced with a shoehorn .
Blood, fireflies and a guitar
I must emphasize that what has surprised me the most about the game is how human it is, both the story and its execution , and how bad it makes you go through. The animation work of the characters and especially the expressiveness of their faces are extraordinary. Details like Ellie getting angry when she’s in the middle of a gunfight, wiping a tear when Dina isn’t looking, shaking off rainwater when entering a covered place, or you can see the doubt in her eyes when she points at a wounded enemy. Begging for mercy makes The Last of Us Part II look, feel, and feel like a 300% real experience.
It has taken more than two weeks since I finished The Last of Us Part II to dare to write this analysis. Not only did I have to think about what to say and see my experience with a minimum of perspective, but I also had to assimilate the entire journey that the game entails . An intimate journey in which you practically hear the characters whisper in your ear. A tender journey in which every moment of calm and peace (very rare but existing) is a comforting rest in the middle of a storm . A journey full of tension that takes you to sit on the very edge of the chair and makes your heart race with every step. An ugly, unpleasant and extremely hard journey that takes you, as a player, to do things you do not want to do and to suffer the consequences of your actions at a level that affects you personally. There have been few times that, exhausted, I have had to pause the game or leave for a while because what I had just experienced had far exceeded me. Up to that point they manage to immerse you in history.
When The Last of Us came out I didn’t have a console to play it on and I spent years reading reviews and comments about how great it was. When I was finally able to play it, I verified that everything I had read was true and I thought that there could not be a better ending to close the story of Ellie and Joel. I was wrong. We didn’t know it then, but we still had to live a chapter that could close the story. Now I can’t imagine one without the other .
