“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
This adage about revenge is even more true in a world ravaged by cordyceps: a parasitic fungus that takes over human physiology, mutating folks till their heads pop like corn, folding eyes below flaps of pores and skin and progress, leaving hosts gnashing and clawing at the hours of darkness. If humanity can’t unite, these eyeless horrors will inherit the Earth.
The Last of Us is a personality examine of a smuggler and a survivor – Joel and Ellie – trekking throughout post-apocalyptic America. The authentic game opened with Joel’s daughter being killed, and he carries the guilt of being unable to avoid wasting her throughout the US with him as emotional baggage. He offloads that baggage onto Ellie, a youngster who’s resistant to the outbreak – his self-appointed surrogate daughter. By the top they share a Stockholm Syndrome-esque affection, bonded via shared trauma.
Once they attain the Fireflies – a gaggle who declare they will style a treatment from Ellie’s DNA – Joel discovers the process will kill her. He assaults the hospital, weapons down the surgeons, and escapes with Ellie nonetheless sedated. When she wakes, he says they only ran some exams and discharged her. He lies. The Last of Us Part 2 offers with the implications of each the killings and the lie.
Fans of the unique is perhaps involved that forcing a narrative with such an ideal ending to proceed would tarnish the unique’s legacy. Fortunately, that isn’t the case. This is a companion piece that manages to introduce new characters and themes whereas additionally making the unique story stronger just by current. Conversations that you simply’ve forgotten tackle new that means, beloved characters turn into extra nuanced. When it ends, it imprints the identical satisfaction of a narrative properly instructed, packaged inside Naughty Dog’s finest game.
It opens with Joel speaking to his brother, Tommy. “I saved her,” he says because the digital camera cuts to a bloody hospital hall stuffed with our bodies. Three syllables clarify how Joel justifies himself. He didn’t kill them, he rescued Ellie. But he stripped away her company, and he is aware of he’s no hero.
Where the unique game opened with explosions, this prologue is extra understated, poignant. It’s a story about facing the consequences of your actions, how everybody finds their interior power in a special place, and the way revenge can spiral uncontrolled till you lose every part.
We play as Ellie 4 years on from the lie, dwelling some semblance of a standard life within the walled city of Jackson. Joel sometimes visits her cabin to inform her dad jokes. She listens to music on a cassette participant, and a lava lamp bubbles away on her desk. Sketches and posters litter the partitions of her room. In Joel’s cabin, there’s woodwork tables, wood carvings, and household pictures. On his bedside desk sits a pair of studying glasses and a guide, An Idiot’s Guide to Space – his method of making an attempt to rekindle their paternal relationship. The world is filled with little particulars like this that enrich the story and reward your curiosity.
It is the morning after the winter dance and Ellie’s preparing for patrol. She will get her backpack, grabs her pistol, and cocks the slider with a yawn. She doesn’t curse below her breath when folks get curb stomped anymore – violence is normalised, and that is simply an peculiar day. Until it isn’t.
The primary story takes place over three days, versus the 4 seasons construction of the unique. At the identical time, it jumps forwards and backwards from the previous to the current, introducing characters you initially hate earlier than making you fall in love with them. It manages to be hopeful, bleak, humorous, unhappy, peaceable, and horrifying, operating the gamut of human emotion, however masterfully paced out so that you’re by no means overwhelmed.
Every character is complicated and human. It is perhaps Naughty Dog’s greatest game, however it’s the studio’s leanest script – you’re trusted to grasp subtext. The dialogue has an nearly surgical precision to it. It additionally does issues I’ve by no means seen earlier than, in methods solely video games can. It is a generation-defining masterpiece.
There’s a structural sample that’s just like different Naughty Dog games, after all. You see a landmark, you head in direction of it, and you’ve got pockets of journey alongside the best way. There are hub-style areas the place you possibly can discover elective buildings round Seattle, however the majority of the game is linear – tailor-made maps with a number of routes via ruined buildings, by way of underground prepare stations, and plush, overgrown parks. There’s shocking selection to the locations you go to, although, and a robust sense of discovery, awe, and exploration, regardless of that linearity.
There are tense stealth sections, enormous battles, blood-curdling horror scenes, thrilling chase sequences, three-way conflicts, moments of quiet exploration, and even environmental puzzles that aren’t simply based mostly on carrying ladders round.
It builds slowly – it’s hours earlier than you struggle any people – with relationships and character progress on the fore. You decide via buildings and see the ghost of a world that’s alien to those younger survivors, scavenging for provides, ignoring the whiteboards stuffed with pitch-meeting notes and revenue forecasts. It earns its motion and that lends it extra influence in consequence.
Things ramp up in depth because the story goes on, however it’s interspersed with these aforementioned flashbacks. These offer you room to breathe when the primary story goes full throttle. In one, you discover a museum with Joel and Ellie. There’s no fight, simply two characters bonding as you work together with props. It’s considered one of my favorite sequences in a game ever, and lands more durable than any digital bullet.
It’s not one thing I anticipated entering into, however The Last of Us Part 2 reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 5 mechanically. You spend a lot of the game laid susceptible within the grass, slithering between patrol routes. You minimize via and round buildings, slip via small gaps, and conceal below vehicles and trains. It’s stealth that’s designed to maintain you transferring, to maintain you reacting and improvising, to maintain you clenching your jaw – and never simply since you don’t desire a bloater to tear it off.
Level design is Naughty Dog’s finest, every encounter providing a number of routes and alternatives for stealth, motion, and a mix of the 2. You’re consistently segueing out and in of stealth as you decide off enemies with guerrilla ways. It makes you are feeling like a lethal hunter one minute and timid prey the following. The AI coordinates, utilizing vantage factors and pincer ways, flanking and flushing out: they pull you by a leg as you conceal beneath a truck; they sweep buildings like a SWAT staff. It’s extra dynamic than the unique – unpredictable and thrilling.
In one scene, the 2 primary enemy factions are preventing, one aspect standing within the flooded streets and the opposite in a ruined constructing overlooking the open house. I park my boat and crawl, totally submerged, via the knee-high water. The Seraphites, a gaggle of non secular fanatics who talk by way of whistles (that are in some way extra unnerving than the echo-location clicks from an contaminated) are successful. They’re raining down molotov cocktails on the WLF (or Wolves) under. Covered by the screams, I crawl onto a waterlogged financial institution, pull out my rifle, and take goal at a Seraphite via my scope. I pull the set off and cranium fragments explode from the again of his head, alerting the others.
As I proceed selecting them off, I’m distracted by close by splashing so I pull my eye from the scope to see two of them swimming at me, one from either side. I change to my shotgun and take considered one of their heads off, utilizing the final remaining shell to tear the leg from my different attacker. From the constructing, I hear their allies screaming their names.
When I first played The Last of Us Part 2, I misunderstood the intent behind this. Every single human on this game has a reputation, and troopers name out for his or her fallen associates and use names in idle chatter. I assumed this was to make you are feeling responsible for shoving a switchblade into their neck, however it’s not simply that.
Naughty Dog names the enemies in The Last of Us Part 2 as a thematic selection. This is a narrative of revenge, and names remind you that these aren’t faceless drones: every individual you kill may go away behind a beloved one who would possibly need payback. Good and evil is a matter of perspective in a lawless world the place folks act on survival intuition. It’s holistic – gameplay and story in concord. Even a minigame the place you pluck on the strings of a completely useful guitar serves a objective within the bigger story.
Every mechanic and story beat reinforces the themes. Combat is scrappy and messy. Incoming photographs typically knock you onto your again the place you’re free to return hearth in a determined effort. In one scene, Ellie kills somebody who’s taking part in Hotline Miami on a PS Vita. She seems to be so peculiar, however she assaults you. It’s self protection. The subsequent minute she’s bleeding out on the ground because the music from her moveable console rings out. It’s becoming, as a result of the aftermath of every battle jogged my memory of Dennaton Games’ indie hit.
Hotline Miami contains a repeating cycle of top-down violence punctuated by a sluggish stroll again via that carnage, over our bodies and thru corridors painted in blood. It wordlessly asks you to mirror in your violent deeds.
Here that very same feeling interprets to a 3D, photorealistic scene. Bodies lay limp with jaws ripped from their face, tooth lacking, blood spilling from the exit wound. Shoot somebody with an explosive arrow indoors and a piece of flesh would possibly follow the ceiling and drip down within the aftermath – a thick splash of liquid and unidentifiable physique elements the place a human as soon as stood. Shoot somebody within the throat they usually die with a gargle, bleeding out and twitching as blood swimming pools round them. It’s horrific, however it all works collectively to create a temper of unease.
The good appearing makes every part land more durable. When the characters cry out, you are feeling it. When they are saying one factor and imply one other, you get it. Every little facial tic, each shaking hand – Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Ian Alexander, and Shannon Woodward all put within the performances of a lifetime, however even a lot of the aspect characters go away an enduring impression.
When the credit rolled on The Last of Us Part 2 I used to be nonetheless buzzing from the joy of the ultimate few hours. My loyalty shifted between characters. I grew to like who I hated and dislike who I beloved. I laughed, I teared up. I felt anger and elation. It’s the brand new excessive water mark for video game characters and I can’t wait for everybody to see simply how particular it’s. As quickly because it ended, I booted up New Game Plus and I’m experiencing it once more with my eyes open, the context of the completed story imprinting new that means into these early scenes and characters. I’m not swiping at the hours of darkness anymore.
Version examined: PS4 Pro – a evaluation copy was supplied by Sony.
