Post Script
Part II wants us to feel bad about the violence we commit. Does it succeed? (Contains spoilers)
The Last Of Us Part II cements its position as a feelbad game for the ages with one particularly upsetting scene. It’s not staged as a pivotal narrative beat, even as it serves to show just how far Ellie has fallen. It comes as she sneaks up on a young Wolf who, rather than standing guard, is sitting and playing on her PS Vita. With her earphones in and the volume up, she can’t hear Ellie approaching. A tense exchange of dialogue follows, culminating in a struggle which sees us stab the poor girl through her windpipe. We watch her writhe for a few awful seconds, blood gushing from her neck before her light is extinguished.
It’s partly the innocuousness of the setup that makes it so affecting. We’ve encountered dozens of characters in videogames like this – the unsuspecting guard taking a break from their duties who is punished for their slackness by being swiftly dispatched. And though some might argue that the Vita represents an unnecessary example of product placement, it makes this young woman all the more relatable while we’re clutching our DualShock 4 controller. The moment hits harder precisely because in that moment she seems more like one of us than anyone else we encounter.
This is far from the first videogame to attempt to humanise characters you’d ordinarily consider enemies. Even so, Naughty Dog’s approach in scenes like these is extremely effective. Throughout the game it finds a variety of ways to further illustrate its message: that the traditional battle lines of ‘us vs them’ are no more. These are all just people, trying to get by in a world where the old rules no longer apply. You’ll find notes from concerned Wolves, uneasy about the group’s pitiless treatment of outsiders, while Seraphite recruits openly question their faith in light of the way some are apparently interpreting its core tenets.
Its laudable attempts to humanise its wider cast are occasionally heavy-handed. During combat, enemies refer to each other by name to an almost parodically ostentatious degree; their horrorstruck response to a fallen ally doesn’t make you feel any worse than you would for offing a nameless NPC. As for killing dogs? Well, they always attack you first. With a shiv equipped, Ellie’s retribution may be particularly vicious, but it can essentially be excused as self-defence.
The sheer ferocity of the violence, meanwhile, is something of a double-edged sword. Setting aside how strange it is that one of the year’s biggest blockbusters has several scenes that essentially amount to full-on torture porn, its depiction of the impact blades and bullets have on the human body is unflinching. Arms are smashed with hammers, cheeks are carved open, faces are blasted apart and throats are slashed by the dozen. (It’s notable, too, that while most deaths come as a short, sharp shock, the violence upon which the game lingers longest is primarily committed against women – though the counter-argument is that it’s a consequence of its central cast being predominantly female.)
Though it does occasionally tip into gratuitousness, such a confrontational approach feels essential to the story’s aims: to paraphrase JG Ballard, it’s clear Naughty Dog wants to rub humanity’s face in its own entrails and force it to look in the mirror. And yet it can’t escape the feelings of release that often accompany the bloodletting: as hard as it tries to make us look at those hunting us through empathetic eyes, the names and faces don’t register when someone is approaching with a gun or a machete and retaliation is the only option.
Besides, it’s not as if you can avoid it entirely. There are sequences where you automatically come under attack and are forced to fight back. Even if you manage to sneak past an entire patrol undetected, or else sprint all the way to the next checkpoint, the next cinematic you see will involve Ellie doing what you’ve just been so careful to avoid. And its condemnation of violence feels rather disingenuous when you reach a workbench. Here, as you use scrap you’ve scavenged to upgrade Ellie’s weapons, you’ll watch a different bespoke animation for every one, each lasting several seconds followed by a pause as she gazes admiringly at her handiwork. It’s one more dazzling detail in a game filled with them, but these near-fetishistic animations fly in the face of the game’s message; likewise that several upgrades are dedicated to crafting more guns or making your existing arsenal more efficient.
Perhaps that’s an intractable genre problem: any thirdperson action game purporting to confront the evils of violence can only ever go so far when the player has no choice but to partake in it. Though the fact we’re even considering this question at all is a plus: The Last Of Us Part II is many things, but it’s certainly no mindless blaster. Even so, by the end it’s positively revelling in the notion of violence as catharsis: when another group is added to the mix, they’re not afforded nearly the same standard of characterisation as the rest. And so its attempts to moralise here come across as preachy and unearned.
The only real way to stop the cycle of violence, in other words, is not to participate in it at all. And yet the game never really gives you that opportunity, short of turning it off entirely. Towards the end, we relinquish the controller in the vain hope that it will make a difference, only to be treated to another nasty death scene. The fact that we still wince at some of these 25 hours on, we suppose, is a victory of sorts – it certainly doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure.
Any attempt to confront the evils of violence can only ever go so far when the player has no choice but to partake in it