The Last of Us 2 -- My Final Thoughts *SPOILERS*

Okay! So, I have thought a lot about it (obsessed), and I think I get what The Last of Us 2 was going for. I am still going to maintain that it’s not the game we wanted. HOWEVER, it was kinda brilliant and I deeply respect what they have created here.

AMBIGUOUS SPOILERS AHEAD

We spend the entire first game killing people like they are…well…video game characters. We never once pause to think about the nameless NPCs we’re mowing down to get to the climax, because we’re the protagonist, we’re the good guys. Since hopping on poor defenseless Koopas in Super Mario, we have been conditioned by games to just chew through the "bad guys" and not worry about the body count. Sometimes, if there is an achievement in a game to not kill anyone, or take a pure stealth route, we'll actually care, but that is about us, not about those nameless NPCs (non-player characters). 

In the beginning of TLoU2, we’re shown what it feels like to NOT be the protagonist, the hero of the story, but rather, just one of those pixel-people in the way of someone else’s climax. And we hates it!

We hate it so much we don’t even acknowledge it; it doesn't register that maybe this isn't our story as we head off on our quest for revenge, killing even more pixel-people without a care for who they are or what their story is. 

But this time they aren't nameless.

If you stand around in stealth long enough, you can hear the NPCs talking with each other about their own stories and lives. They got things going on! A lot of them just seem anxious to get home for dinner before the maniac slowly picking them all off (YOU) gets them. You kill a character in TLoU2, and some friend of theirs will happen across their body and mourn them, assuming you give the friend time before you kill them as well. You hear random names called out all through the game as you take characters out, including the DOGS.

Like Bear. I killed BEAR! OMG he looked like an overgrown corgi, and I demolished him with a hammer!

(RIP Bear. All he wanted was to play a little fetch with my liver...😔)

So we go all the way through this game, actively making the very point for Naughty Dog, and so many of us are so freakin’ self absorbed that even once it gets spelled at the end, we’re still pissed because…we’re the hero, dang it!

But, we’re not.

There are no heroes here, as in real life, just different points of view.

The world (especially in TLoU2) does not revolve around us. We could be, and likely are, all the villain in someone else’s story.

Honestly, it’s like a brutal lesson in empathy, which…given how crap the world is right now, is probably needed, and yet, for those of us who just wanted to take a break from all the bad and play a game with characters we loved, totally unwanted. I know I was personally looking for a little relief, and given I don't get to spend much money or time on entertainment, I was initially very disappointed.

Even now that I understand what they were doing the whole time, and why they made the choices they did, I am still a little let down. All this moral baggage put on the player is rough, especially given that the player gets no real chance to sway any of those decisions, to make the wrong choices for themselves—there is no real choice throughout the game. That makes it feel like we’re being punished for decisions we have no control over, sort of that Naughty Dog assumes we’re all bad guys and so we all need the same lesson—

Wait a minute! Did we just get made into NPCs? LOL Guess we should just be glad Devs didn’t ring our doorbell and throw a brick or soda bottle in our face, huh?

So, final thoughts...

In terms of entertainment, the story still gets lower marks from me (4/10), just in that it seemed the story wasn’t even intended to entertain (that’s what the gameplay is for—to distract you from the Jedi mind trick). If they cared about storycraft over the gimmick of  their Shyamalan POV twist, the story would have been organized differently, with less need for hackneyed flashbacks within flashbacks, and we would have legit started the game in the correct POV character.

The game play itself was beyond a 10/10. It was a beautiful game with amazing play and some of the best accessibility features I have ever seen (just in general a very inclusive experience).

 In terms of weaving something that really hits hard and makes you think…10/10. I have done little but obsess about it since the credits rolled. I would not be surprised or disappointed if it ends up game of the year.

Can’t wait to see how they mess with my head in TLoU3!