The Last Of Us Part II
PS4
Our sympathies to Naughty Dog’s artists, but we’re on the run. Past hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours’ worth of work we sprint, watching Ellie’s arms pumping nineteen to the dozen, her breathing getting harder and louder by the second. Fearing for her lungs, we take cover by the side of an abandoned truck. The wrong side. The first shot hits us in the arm, the force knocking us flat. Still holding our silenced pistol, we spot the shooter, now foolishly reloading as he approaches. Two bullets are enough for him; then, as we gingerly rise to our feet, we quickly drop into a prone position as his ally advances. Crawling invisibly through the long grass as she turns her back, we grab her and cover her mouth to stop her calling for help. Alas, the agonising struggle to liberate her carotid artery from her neck takes a few seconds too long. A second shot sends us reeling once more. We have maybe a second to admire the rain-slicked concrete, the individual strands of grass swaying gently and the mud on Ellie’s knuckles before the third and fatal shot hits. What a beautiful, terrible world this is.
It’s hard not to think sometimes of all the late nights and long hours that went into building a game world so large and abundant in detail – after all, this is a story that asks big questions about the human cost of the decisions we make. Which isn’t to say The Last Of Us Part II offers any kind of meta-commentary on game development, by any means. Rather, it plays out as a revenge tragedy, a story about how love and guilt can so easily curdle into hate and the desire for retribution. Yes, there is tenderness, compassion and empathy here, and even a few laughs. But in the main, the tone is bleak to the point of hopelessness: for large parts, this is a descent into humanity’s dark side, with a staggering level of violence and scenes that would not look out of place in the New French Extremity movement. Yes, there will be blood, and it’s not giving anything away to warn you that some of it will belong to characters of whom you’ve grown fond during its 25-hour campaign.
That includes Ellie, who, under our guidance, dies more times than we’d care to admit. But she (and we) are responsible for much more bloodshed in return. She was no retiring wallflower as a 14-year-old, but another four years in this world has left her tougher, leaner and more ferocious still. After a relatively low-key opening two hours, an unexpected incident sets her on what essentially amounts to a hunting mission – and this time she’s not looking to shoot deer. She rides to Seattle with new girlfriend Dina, with the bulk of the action unfolding over three eventful days.
Throughout this first half, The Last Of Us Part II is probably the most varied and well-paced action game since Resident Evil 4, although here the zombie equivalents play second fiddle to two new factions. The Washington Liberation Front (Wolves for short) is a local militia whose members don’t take kindly to any unexpected incursions into its territory. And with good reason: an uneasy truce with a second group has just been broken. These are the Seraphites, a religious cult with some frighteningly barbaric zealots among its ranks; in combat, they communicate through a series of whistles that feel deeply unsettling when you’re their intended target.
If individual enemies are fairly short-sighted, they make up for their myopia with effective group tactics, using pincer movements and flanking approaches when you alert them. They’re persistent, too: Ellie’s speed and agility makes running pell-mell for safety a valid option across these more expansive and vertical spaces, but your pursuers won’t give up the instant you break line of sight. As tracker dogs are introduced, even snaking through thick foliage or beneath vehicles on your belly isn’t enough when your scent can give you away. You need to keep low and keep your distance, and the encounter design contrives to ensure that’s rarely possible. There is no easy way out, and while making it through a patrol without arousing attention is satisfying in itself, it’s when a guard’s unexpected turn forces you to hurriedly improvise an escape that proves most exhilarating. Deciding as an enemy approaches whether to spend the next few seconds bandaging your wounds or reinforcing your melee weapon induces a similar anxiety to the first game. The main difference is how often you’ll need to make these choices in the space of a single extended encounter.
It plays out as a revenge tragedy, a story about how love and guilt can so easily curdle into hate
Recognising that we need the odd breather from such sustained tension, Naughty Dog isn’t afraid to take its foot off the gas. Flashbacks are shrewdly deployed, taking us back to happier times, and in a game where the way forward isn’t always apparent, we enjoy the change of being led by the nose – and the break from brutality, for that matter. One in particular is a thing of beauty: a spine-tingling, fantasy-tinged sequence that nods to the most memorable moment in the brilliant Left Behind. Elsewhere, Part II retains the utilitarian approach to environmental puzzles: cables are the new ladders, essentially, but they’re used more effectively, doubling as climbing ropes and a way to power doors via handy generators – though having to manually restart these feels like busywork. There’s also a quasi-open world section shortly after your arrival in Seattle that works better than its equivalent in Uncharted 4. Exploring abandoned buildings yields clues to stashes and more stories about the wider world, while deepening the bond between Ellie and Dina: one offers a direct reference to the events of Left Behind, while another lets you get your hands on a familiar artefact. And if the idea of idle diversions would seem to undermine the urgency of Ellie’s mission, they can all
be ignored. The Let’s Plays, we predict, are going to be heartbreaking for some poor Naughty Dog staffers.
But we’d advise you to linger, though we’re unable to reveal precisely why. Suffice it to say that a bold narrative gambit recontextualises events, not just from the first half but from the previous game. It invites you to reconsider your perspective in view of fresh information, while shedding new light on the two rival factions and their histories – and on Ellie and her friends, too. By and large it’s a risk that pays off, raising uncomfortable questions and encouraging provocative philosophical and moral discussions. It examines the casual othering of different groups and ideologies, the wilful misinterpretation of faith, the destructive effect of obsession and the cognitive hoops we jump through to justify our actions to ourselves. These are not, fair to say, things we find ourselves thinking about during the course of your average blockbuster videogame.
Which makes it all the more disappointing when it conforms to the example of its peers. In a back half stuffed with undeniably thrilling set-pieces, some involving new strains of Infected, it strives for a level of escalation that fatally unbalances the storytelling. We’re willing to suspend our disbelief for a few of the more implausible moments, likewise Ellie’s superhuman powers of recovery, but Part II’s part two takes both to preposterous extremes. An expertly staged sequence exploring the basement of a hospital prompts a boss fight that appears to have been transplanted from a Resident Evil game. Another heavily-guided sequence strives for operatic sweep but strains credulity to snapping point. And it assumes you enjoyed the melee fight that wrapped up Uncharted 4 so much that you’d like to take part in several increasingly grisly replays of it.
Minor problems from the early game are exacerbated here, too: the occasional lack of direction causes those considerate hint prompts to arrive far more frequently. Elsewhere, it surprisingly succumbs to cliché, not least with the storm that signposts its violent denouement. Or one of them, at least: just when you think it’s all over, it suffers from a touch of the Peter Jacksons, with an extended final flourish that somehow manages to recall Rambo and Death Stranding. We suspect that’s not quite what Druckmann and company were going for.
All of this makes the script’s climactic shots at profundity and tear-jerking emotion harder to swallow, despite the sterling efforts of a never-better Laura Bailey, Troy Baker and especially Ashley Johnson, whose work here will surely and deservingly net her several awards. At the very end, it does land one last gutpunch, ironically with a delicate, restrained grace note of a scene. It’s a belated reminder of what the studio can do when it stops believing bigger is better.
Until then, it commits to its epic ambitions with a go-for-broke energy that plenty will adore, just as there are many that prefer Aliens to Alien. You can’t argue that Naughty Dog hasn’t thrown everything at this, and though its tendency towards maximalism doesn’t always work, the results are frequently astonishing. This is the kind of game you get when you have unlimited budget and manpower and no one to say when – even if you wish sometimes that someone had. As a big-budget action game, then, The Last Of Us Part II is almost without peer. As a sequel to that story, it is deeply, daringly, fascinatingly flawed.