I wanted to see what the world had to say about Naughty Dog’s sequel to the 2013 generational masterpiece The Last Of Us before putting my thoughts out there. Not that I’m waiting for the consensus, my mind was made up well before the credits rolled. The series after just one game put itself in an entirely different league in 2013. TLOU part I’s mix of stealth, action, horror, suspense, and character is untouched to this day. While the sequel has a lot to live up to, it also came packed with multitudes of conversational doors to open.
THE LAST OF US PART II
Developed By: Naughty Dog
Published By: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Available on: PlayStation 4 (June 19, 2020)
There won’t be spoilers in this piece. If you believe reading leaks on the internet gave you the entire picture, it didn’t. We’ll start at the base question I had going in. Did I need to have played The Last of Us on PS3 or PS4 to understand what was going on in The Last Of Us Part II?
No.
The sequel does pick up years after Joel and Ellie’s conversation about what happened in the Fireflies hospital where you rescued her from death and potentially curing the disease turning people into mushroom monsters. This time, TLOU Part II puts you in the shoes of young adult Ellie. She lives in a peaceful Wyoming settlement that’s come along way since the end of the world. Every memory you see her have about previous events always comes with context and subtle explanation that never feels mechanically written in. The rambunctious early teen we met in the first game has evolved into an awkward young adult. Weird about expressing her feelings in a world that’s taught her nothing but loss and survival. Truly feeling like a starting point players can begin from.
Gameplay-wise everything about part two is mold-breaking from the original. When Ellie calls upon her inner punisher, she can be a methodical killer or Judge Dredd. Skulking around listening for enemies to sneak up on returns, joined by being able to hide under cars and climb high objects to drop kill. She’s also more mobile than our previous anti-hero, in combat she’s fluid and able to jump and do more on the fly than Joel. Everything about this feels original in comparison to part one.
When I first drafted this, there was about a book’s worth of technical marvel in the game’s lighting, textures, frame rate running on a base PS4, and more. I eliminated it from the draft you’re reading because it’s all been said in the past 72hrs since reviews went live.
What I do want to talk about is the sacrifice a lot of developers of this game had to make. Vengeance, anger, and violence for a cause even if it only means something to you, are the underlining themes of TLOU Part II. That comes with a certain responsibility to earn everything and execute it well artistically. This game could have found itself in a danger of coming out at the wrong place/wrong time in our real world. A story about a world ravaged to apocalyptic levels by a disease. Then on top of that depicting strangling of human beings. Naughty Dog traversed these landmines of ideology superbly.
Make no mistake the violence on-screen during cutscenes or even what your character is capable of at the push of a button are jaw-dropping, to say the least. You won’t find entertainment violence that we see in movies. No one looks cool walking away from an explosion, you can’t put out a fire without scarring, and bullet hits don’t send you flying backward out of a window. What you get is a harsh reality. The resistance of a knife as it tears through a jugular, blood simply oozing out of the throat. That blood almost crusting on your fingers throughout a battle. Arrows penetrating at different levels depending on how far you are from an enemy. Covering your eyes as you smash through a window to escape vicious dogs. Bullets bringing attackers to their knees rather than falling backward like a comedic western. When you shoot an enemy in the head, you can hear a crunching sound of a skull breaking.
These developers didn’t simply get to go off of what they remember from movies and television. It’s clear a lot of overzealous research went into what actually happens when people are the victims of brutality. Things that most of us will never have to see, let alone be forced to look at in the name of art. There are a hundred reasons why The Last Of Us Part II could have been seen as a wrong place/wrong time in history and only one that sees it succeed and Naughty Dog found that single path.
Overall, The Last Of Us Part II is a surpassing successor to a game that didn’t need a sequel but we desperately wanted one. You won’t need to have played the first one to comprehend these characters and the high stakes of this world. However, if you read Dark Horse Comics TLOU: American Dreams, play part I, and the Left Behind DLC, then play part II; the quilt it forms is richer. On its own, TLOU Part II is the PS4’s highest achievement both artistically and technically. As a comic book stan, I would have been perfectly happy giving the title of PS4’s best game to Marvel’s Spider-Man for the level of immersion it brought to one of my favorite characters. Even through playing God Of War, Days Gone, Death Stranding, Infamous Second Son; I held Insomniac’s Spider-Man adventure in that top spot. But now I’m shaken to my core by at least my second favorite video game of all time.
