The Last Of Us 2 - A Few Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch

[@Bricky]

I know it was more ramble-y than you probably expected, but sometimes just a constant stream of thoughts makes me feel better. Whether or not you agree with me, I do hope I at least illustrated my points and you enjoyed yourselves watching

[@magno172]

Pyramid head case file when?

[@thepastamaker5873]

I came for the last of us, I stayed for the apple facts

[@spiritupgrades]

i at least there's a good dozen of bad apples not just six Also ps the new term is called ruinner

[@thomasway0320]

Always love your take on these things, the play through was fantastic with you constantly noticing the details and call backs.

[@faizolilman642]

Damn brick Tlou2 sound better after watching this vids lol

[@nemz7505]

The best quote about this game I've seen was on another channel "It's a game about right & wrong, written by people who always think they're right".

[@Frostwolf_103]

One of the Japanese players / Korean players wrote this right? That's accurate summary they wrote this.

[@yiangaruga4928]

"Remember, when you're lost in the darkness.. look for the light." Is literally a quote from the first game. The second game doesn't even try to look for the light, it tries to make things so violent that it loses all sense of logic from its characters, especially Ellie. Like I swear there are video game worlds that are far more cruel than the one in Last of Us (For example Metro) and even they don't go so overboard with violence and bad things. If you don't have any light moments and it's all just darkness, the darkness itself starts losing meaning. It's not difficult at all to create drama and shock value with brutal violence and the game seems to rely on that all the time. It's the equivalent of jump scares in horror movies. Sure, you scare the viewer but it's not because the person actually got scared but because that's the natural physical reaction to sudden, unexpected things. It's such cheap writing compared to the first game which had alot of violence but also moments like the giraffes to balance things out and create depth in the story. All we get in Part 2 are the flashbacks... Sigh.

[@milorexhar6621]

@@yiangaruga4928 you missunderstood the entire game, that is what the entire game is about, when you are lost in the darkness look for the light, ellie is lost in the darkness, she doesnt tries to find her light until that last moment when she forgives abby, the whole game was trying to basically say that you have to look for the light yourself, if you wont you'd just keep loosing yourself in the darkness more and more.

[@alexrago2783]

that sounds i little vindictive, you actually don´t know those people beyond their public persona. you dont even know who they are as friends or familly, I am sure they are just people like you and me. condemning people as "they think they always right" it is almost like a passive agresive insult. but, it juts my opinion may be you are right about this.

[@thelast4646]

who said that i like to see that video

[@mortalballgt52]

"Senator Abby Armstrong hits a Joel in one." Wow. That was great in a hurtful way.

[@joshuaseagondollar2495]

That's insulting to Senator Armstrong.

[@lego579]

@@joshuaseagondollar2495 *nano machines son*

[@man3son1]

Best joke in the video.

[@mallardofmodernia8092]

@@lego579 dontchu mean hormones? Or steroids?

[@Demonslayre]

Gallows humor FTW

[@jordanyoussef3886]

I feel more about Jesse’s death then anything else in the game. Just something about an excited father-to-be dying in half a second just makes my blood boil, especially because he did NOTHING WRONG besides try and save his friends

[@Birthday888]

I feel like the game shoving his death under the rug and never mentioning him again despite being a very close friend of Ellie and Abby is far more frustrating. It really does feel like the writers only brought him back so that he could be killed off and Ellie and Abby could have their idyllic farm life raising a child.

[@Overlord99762]

@@Birthday888 Don't you mean Dina?

[@aliciagrayson4203]

Tbh I feel like his death being so quick was the point. When someone close to you dies in this kind of universe or any comparable situation, it isn't he end of some long story arc with all the narrative threads tied up all neat or some big dramatic heroic death, they're gunned down by someone they had no hope of counterattacking and they're gone. Its brutal and messy and leaves so much of their story left untold because your actions got them killed. Your desire for revenge got this excired father-to-be executed without a second thought. That being said, the fact that they never show any reaction afterwords is 100% a missed opportunity and to me is the biggest hole in that idea. Because they're alive one second and dead the next, but the characters never actually struggle with that fact. He's gone and he's never mentioned again.

[@aliciagrayson4203]

Now that I think about it, it's almost the inverse of Tess from the first game. She's left behind after getting infected, guns down one or two people because they weren't expecting her to be there, then is immediately gunned down by the others in their group. Ellie and Jesse come through the door and he's immediately shot before they can evaluate what's happening on the other side. Ellie only isn't shot because she had something to take cover behind. Another observation I'm making rn is that he's a nobody to Abby. Just like every one of Abby's WLF goons are to you. You're seeing the other end of the cold, callous murder you've been dishing out to others on the regular by this point.

[@Floridamangaming729]

@OHGAS yea pretty disgusting writing if you ask me. Like who sits there and thinks "yea this isnt fucked up at all! And its such a good part of the story!" Its clear they hate men and only wanna use them as sperm donors. its like advanced cucking. This isnt feminism its female supremacy. Also lets not kid ourselves this game was made by left wing cultists. And they obviously shoved there political views into the game. Which no matter what "side" your on isnt okay. Politics should stay out of games. it makes them unfun. i dont wanna think about politics while playing my third person zombie shooter. i fucking hate this game so much.

[@Jedipikachu9009]

I like the implication that Shadow The Hedgehog is both the best and worst game ever made.

[@simoneconti7635]

It really is the best game ever made

[@flyboy6392]

It's the best worst Shadow game

[@Chaos-vm7cy]

Has everyone who played Shadow the Hedgehog actually bothered to finish it? Because the game has a lot of issues and it's incredibly frustrating at times.

[@UNSCMarine117]

And bricky is in-between.

[@reservoir_flow]

Implication? You mean the only truth in this godforsaken world

[@zacthesecretweapon9931]

I'm playing The last of us part 1 atm, and Joel just found a letter about revenge. Joel said "With that type of thinking, no one wins" This is literly what happens in part 2.

[@ademasdanjuro]

I am as playing the last of us 1, and man, I could only think, this game is a masterpiece while crying of course, and then remembered the part 2 and how it was so forgettable

[@nokturnallex2160]

There's actually a lot of quotes from the first game that can be used to make fun of the 2nd. Another one is when he's describing a movie sequel and says it wasn't as good as the first.

[@josetomascamposrobledano4618]

Nokturnal Lex yeah, when you look at the Twilight parody with the Wolf-man

[@thatromanfella8377]

@@nokturnallex2160 thats... from the 2nd game... from the museum flashback

[@thetruestwaffle47]

That is exactly the message the writers attempt to convey in LOU2

[@dercarrot991]

Writers: “Abby is a person too!” Players: “Yea, and so was every other person you killed but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

[@ataridc]

Imagine if at the end some random folks showed up and killed ellie in front of Dina and it turned out to be a random brother/sister etc of someone shed killed it would piss everyone the hell off but it would thematically make so much more sense

[@zen608]

I know I'm late to the party. But after watching TLOU1 and being so moved by that game to the point of feeling a great connection towards Joel and Ellie, TLOU2 completely shattered me and I realized how badly Druckmann screwed the story up. The team behind Naughty Dog is undeniably amazing, the sound, gameplay, graphics are great, but the story is absolutely sour and I feel like Druckmann went south with the success of TLOU1. I reject TLOU2's story completely and TLOU3 won't interest me at all.

[@mychem20]

@@zen608 you are on the majority my dude. like yourself, I'm sure a large portion of the fans don't give a fuck about the franchise anymore. yeah and we can all thank neil cuckman for that.

[@abbadonmusic]

I like this, because it represents how a literal zombie apocolypse would play out. It would not be hopeful. Extreme fear and depression and trauma would drive everyones actions. Death and suffering would be the norm, hope would be dwindling, everything would be fucked.

[@nathanjereb9944]

"I wont kill you, it will make me as bad as you" OK, but we are going to acknowledge the giant blood-stained pile elephant in the room? Like I dunno... THE RIVER OF BODIES IN THE STREET YOU 2 MADE!

[@hellohello-zn5im]

"Biggot sandwich? I thought that was an outtake." That broke me. I cackled.

[@Naim-Lest]

now, imagine Abby wearing a disney princess costume .....

[@YoshiTheOreo]

Comes with a side of Sexist Joelslaw--COLESLAW!!!

[@atticmichael]

Ellie is 19 years old... It's absolutely something she would say.

[@imarock.7662]

@@atticmichael Um...no...no it really wouldn't. Lmao No 19 year old, hell no normal person no matter what age, can unironically say that with a straight face. That line is probably worse than the "princess beach" line in Death Stranding.

[@Zakjuh]

@@atticmichael without tumblr around? doubt it tbh..

[@TTH247]

I believe the placement of Abby's story after Joel's death might partially be the result of hubris. That is, the creators might've been so sure of their capability of winning over players that they intentionally wrote themselves into the deepest hole possible.

[@radekseky4571]

Getting out of that hole is up to the player, not the developers.

[@Hammer56Time]

@@radekseky4571 That is objectively wrong what does that even mean? If you don't write a compelling character then make the story about relating to this unlikable character your story has failed in what you've tried to do with it, it's not the players job to care about Abby it's the writers job to make Abby a character worth caring about after she killed Joel, preferably should've done it before she killed him.

[@jefferyjoyner6032]

@@Hammer56Time the guy literally just said that good character building isn’t the developers job. He apparently believes that the player can just go in and fix everything about the goddamn game themselves

[@radekseky4571]

@@jefferyjoyner6032 You're both wrong. Getting from the hole of hatred is on the person that is perpetuating it. Every. single. time. Doesn't matter how deep that hole is.

[@xrphoenix7194]

@@radekseky4571 you're ridiculous. We have no reason to not hate abby, because she was written terribly. She's a hateful, spiteful, ignorant monster who beat a man to death in front of his daughter. It's not my job to bend over backwards to like that character, it's the writers jobs to make the character likeable in the first place

[@IrishMan7475]

TLOUS 2 would've been infinitely more interesting if you took control of Abby the whole game knowing she was on a quest to kill the man who killed her father, but the player doesn't know it's Joel. The game only alludes to a man responsible for her father's death and as the game goes on you learn more about his killer only to find out at the end it was Joel.

[@whosthere8658]

Ok that would be pretty cool tbh.

[@NrettG]

Not sure how well that would have worked. I don't mean on the story it'd be interesting, I more mean tricking the player into thinking its not Joel.

[@zzxp1]

Yeah this was clearly two games merged into one, maybe people would have liked Abby more if they took the time to build trust with her. But then again that would had also pissed the autistic fanbase that only wanted a Joel and Ellie holding hands walking simulator.

[@takebacktheholyland9306]

@@NrettG Same way Fnaf:SL You just present her story as the main comment said, without mentioning joel

[@ExtremeMan10]

@@NrettG Joel wasnt the only one who was giving fight to Fireflies and they scraped Hunters, so they could made it from other perspective, that instead you would play a bandit that had to fall into this life because Joel killed his/her parents and you would be hunting him down. It would be far more better as you could see the theme from other side of the fight. Plus Hunters were really cool and really missed opportunity.

[@Melvin_RongDong]

"Revenge is bad, and hurts the people around you" Ellie has no one to hurt anymore..

[@kirbyfan4]

Tom G. Not to mention Abyy got her revenge and got off happier

[@niles1492]

@@kirbyfan4 did she though? Ellie at least can go back to Jackson (Probably not) but Abby lost everyone she knew, except Lev

[@molo1848]

@@kirbyfan4 Abby is miserable, what are you talking about?

[@kylestillwell7031]

@@molo1848 So many people seem to share that sentiment. I really do NOT get it at all. it's wrong. She only got a happy ending once she STOPPED seeking revenge. She ruined her life prior to that because of revenge

[@danielgillrup9518]

kirbyfan4 huh? Both main characters have basically nobody left. Revenge kept them on a trail of misery. But to be fair, Abby was actually justified in everything she did, Ellie wasn’t, until the very very end when she realized that.

[@ThefinalLPer]

My big issue is no one in this game talks with anyone else. People interact, they have quips together, but no one actually talks like they did in the first one. The closest is Abby and Lev talk about their fears on top of the crane, and the flashback scenes. Other then that people talk TO each other, but not WITH each other. They are having quips/moving it forward, but we aren’t really learning anything about the characters. Idk, just how I felt. I just keep thinking about Sam and Joel, when they talk about motorcycles. No worldbuilding, no developing, just...talking.

[@Exel3nce]

Yep, thats one of the major ones. Noone speaks with eachother. maybe its Not so apparent when someone plays the Game but If one thinks about it then you realise that there are no real conversations about anythinf the Characters do

[@brandonclarke436]

That's a lie

[@Arl-es]

@@brandonclarke436 You having to do more than "You're wrong" for it to be an argument mate

[@robogreek3157]

henry

[@hinamiravenroot7162]

Robert

[@RuneKatashima]

Revenge doesn't have to hurt people around you. Sometimes, you're John Wick.

[@Alpha-Omega-TFOA]

Who's alone and has no one.

[@samfire3067]

Dead dog= world war 3

[@cari5627]

@@samfire3067 world war 3

[@samfire3067]

@@cari5627 thanks

[@Chewberto]

In which case, revenge only hurts those around you that are within the effective range of whatever gun you're carrying

[@The_pie_master]

“Senator Abby Armstrong” 😂 lol

[@KokoB1883]

Team Abby 👊🔥🔥🔥💪

[@cipherthedemonlord8057]

"Don't f'xk with this senator!"

[@GG-ou7it]

“Played college golf you know...coulda gone pro!”

[@oddacity5883]

“Nanobots, son”

[@gabathor9618]

She has my vote! Hahaha 😂

[@-Clueless-]

“Makes you want Ellie to stop” Me after playing Abby’s part of the game... *ALRIGHT ELLIE, WEAPONIZE YOUR IMMUNITY-GRAB SOME SPORES AND STUFF IT DOWN THEIR THROATS*

[@jadynmurrell80]

Use your anger let your hatred flow through you

[@sanahoi3785]

@@jadynmurrell80 Still not enough

[@DonkeyWork420]

I hated Abby even more after playing as her

[@slay3r930]

@@jadynmurrell80 sounds like something Darth Sideous would say 😂

[@Inquisitor_Jeff]

Laughs in Palpatine.

[@raymonddavis9277]

For me, my biggest issue is the double standard of Abby. Abby is allowed to exact her revenge without a second thought, despite being saved by the very person she kills? And she manages to walk Scott free without feeling an ounce of guilt at the end for that and killing members of her community without a second thought? Also, there was an unintentionally funny scene where Abby says "Good" and tries to slit a woman's throat when she learns that she is pregnant. Even Ellie didn't know the women she killed was pregnant and was disgusted when she found out. Fleshing out and giving another side to a character who killed a beloved character makes sense, but this just felt biased towards Abby.

[@thetrashpope557]

Well but then yet she is in a more militaries group for her entire life and had to coup with that a lot since her revenge plot isn’t because he killed her dad but also most likely doomed humanity of any chance of recovering and also Ellie did kill almost all of her friends including her love interest before she was about to kill Dina and also also it does set a difference but a similarity between them and don’t see it as that big of an issue I would go into a deep dive into it but said it multiple times and many others said it better but the actual proper big issue is the way the story was structure specifically how it switches over to Abby because you can still have a good story but if the structuring is bad the whole thing is bad

[@Mr2awesomecraft]

Abby did not get off Scott free all of her friends died she has to live with that Ellie had her ultimate revenge

[@Shadow-gc6le]

@@Mr2awesomecraft I think they mean scott free in that she got her revenge, and still has something after. Plus with how delayed it is, she goes all that way losses no one until someone comes after her. Ellie doesn't get her revenge and is left with nothing, they both loose a similar amount until the end where abby is left a new life with a friend, and ellie is left a broken home, disfigured hand, and alone.

[@doogallas]

@@thetrashpope557 That's a hell of a sentence

[@krasmasov6852]

Abby's revenge is constantly portrayed as an atrocity, and the entire reason she dedicates herself to Lev is to assuage her own guilt about what she did to Joel and how much she sacrificed in pursuit of him. Also, Abby initially thought killing Dina would be justifable revenge for the death of pregnant Mel, but she doesn't actually do it. She spares Dina.

[@kari548]

This is like 13 reasons why level of "He's a person too" after that character raped a few and killed and harassed people.

[@CrasH_Dx]

Omg yes. Dude literally after everything we’ve seen Abby do the first thing I thought was “holy shit. They’re trying to Bryce Walker her” 🤣

[@angrysocialjusticewarrior]

Bryce wasn't really bad. He didn't do anything dangerous or really bad.

[@MrSottho]

@@angrysocialjusticewarrior Nice b8 mate.

[@derpdadouch3654]

Griffith did nothing wrong.

[@gorkemaykut5230]

@@derpdadouch3654 the feeling of ''is revenge really worth it at this point when my purpose was to protect casca'' is a really good way to write the revenge plot in my opinion

[@LeviAckerman-dl3fk]

It feels like this game didn't need to happen Especially when so many people are like 'It'd be better if...' Sounds like it just wasn't good because they failed to deliver a sequence of events in proper order...

[@Wveth]

A lot of people think it's just about trying to get you to sympathize with Abby, but it's not. If it was, it would be presented the way people often say it should be. Changing the order sacrifices the driving player motivation in BOTH halves of the game. You have to fucking hate her as Ellie and then really NOT want to like her when you're forced to spend so much time with her. It's challenging, it's frustrating, it's an exercise on how you view empathy and whether you can overcome your own biases. The way it plays with the player is what makes it a unique and special experience and rearranging things would give it more mass appeal, sure, but make it less interesting as a piece of art.

[@sirgentlebread7302]

@@Wveth If art has to be shitty to be "artsie" that doesn't change the fact it's still shitty.

[@itsdantaylor]

Eh, i feel like, if the story had been done better, and maybe even been done with new characters instead of Joel and Ellie, the audience wouldn't have been pre-disposed to NOT sympathize with Abby and remain more objective. If so it could have been a good story about the cycles of vengeance that are a large reason why we as a society in the Last of Us, remain so divided and doomed to murder each other till no one is left.

[@Jay99420]

Of course it didn't need to happen. TLOU sold too well for its own good.

[@tommytommy4899]

@Wveth Yeah no, that’s the fucking problem, the writers spent so much time so trying to turn the entire game into a deep, thematic statement they forgot about proper pacing and character development. If the story is not told well and if the characters and plot aren’t presented in a proper way, then nobody will give a shit about how “deep” the overarching theme is; ESPECIALLY if it’s constantly being shoved down our throats. I appreciate what they were trying to do but at the same time it was so bogged down by the improper pacing, character development and way too much focus on the theme itself

[@Montesama314]

The moral of the story is not that "Revenge only leads you to self-destruction", It's "if you're gonna have revenge, kill ALL witnesses and next of kin just in case."

[@thechugg4372]

True, revenge only ends up backfiring on everyone because they always stop at the very last moment, also tlou2 is very late to do a good "revenge bad story", there's already a ton of other games tackling this theme in a much better way.

[@garrettwhite4448]

That's that Roman mentality right there, can't be stabbed by my rival's son if he's dead too

[@argon39esfel]

​​@@thechugg4372ah, its a great revenge story, one of if not the best

[@argon39esfel]

The moral of the story is literally "revenge only leadás to self-destructio" lmao💀

[@grimsladeleviathan3958]

If you're gonna go, go all the way. Nuke the Eart-

[@itzshentho3013]

19:33 YES THANK YOU, that false marketing was so bad. As i got to that scene i got so mad because as people look at the trailer before the initial release. People would expect oh hey, joel is going to be apart of Ellie’s journey and you probably get to play as him. Not have him die within 2 hours of the bloody game.

[@devilix123987]

Honestly, from the first teaser they ever did, I assumed Joel was 100% dead early in the game. I just didn't expect him to die THAT early.

[@Frostwolf_103]

Back then, we're speculating who is going to die, Dina? Jesse? Tommy? Maria? Joel? No one knew.

[@deadrizen]

I have no issue with them leading us to believe Joel was not going to be the one to die and ignite Ellie's revenge quest. That trailer heavily implied that it would be Dina who would die, which seemed way too obvious. What I do have an issue with is them straight up swapping Joel and Jesse in that scene. It feels extremely cheap and as you said, false marketing.

[@olay1996]

i thought it was pretty funny that everyone was caught of-guard. Alot of people are mad because their favourite character died in the beginning. What they did was obviously purposeful and i liked the boldness. Just an opinion

[@itzshentho3013]

Salman yes, i get that but honestly with that false marketing trailer you’d think joel would live a lot longer than just two hours. You’d think he would die within mid or even the end of the game

[@scootchoong3920]

“Bricky justifies his fan fiction with a 30 minute video essay” the video essay

[@Micheal93k]

?

[@Micheal93k]

He made a fan fiction?

[@MakeLoveNotWar687]

Still better then we got and at least he didn’t flag people KZbin and Twitter accounts down

[@not_Medalin]

The problem I have with this revenge ordeal is that I DID NOT want Ellie to stop.

[@justjoking5252]

Yes, please slaughter all of these named mooks in our combat sections, but do not kill the person who killed your dad because they came back for revenge!

[@chronics3710]

@@justjoking5252 This comment always annoys me because that was the players choice. You weren't forced to kill many people only a couple. Most of the combat sections you can go through without killing a single person.

[@justjoking5252]

@@chronics3710 Most being very little. The amount of required kills is actually surprisingly high. Even disregarding that, you can't deny that shooting people is the intended way to play TLOU 2. With how much effort was put into the weapon customization, crafting, and executions when you can do them, that is how you are meant to play the game. But then the game tries its darndest to make it so that we want to spare Abby. For me it didn't work in the slightest. You're telling me she's going to go and kill countless named individuals for simply being in her way, and then spare the person that beat her dad to death in front of her?

[@chronics3710]

@@justjoking5252 For me she saw the state Abby was in and what she went through also thinking back to Joel and how killing her wouldn’t bring her any closure. And if she killed her Lev would be alone and most likely die. It was the first step in her actually being able to move on as when she goes back to the house she leaves all of Joel’s things she kept there and moved on.

[@kingcyclops4079]

@@chronics3710 true but the whole point of a story based game like this is that YOU play the story YOU make the choices. If the devs aren't going to even take into the gameplay and the story then why make a game? Just make a movie instead. This is ludo narrative dissonance. If you want your story to have weight and be taken seriously the gameplay and story should both be treated the same. Writing a story is one thing, to make a game is another. They're making a game with a story, both should work in harmony to make the experience better. When I as Ellie kill all the enemies and then Ellie struggles to kill the person she wants dead the most it makes no sense. If it's entirely me who's to blame why not either take into account that Ellie's doing these awful things in the story or just limit my choices to be only things Ellie would do?

[@dlweiss]

I really appreciate your perspective on both the good and bad elements of this game! It's such a strange, polarizing creation that I feel like most gamers and reviewers have veered to one extreme or the other, when in fact the reality is much closer to the complicated mix you're talking about here.

[@Bricky]

thanks dad

[@chukyuniqul]

Thing is people are hard on extremes because either they feel like ND's attitude is an insult to their intelligence (ND have been very insufferable about this game) or because they would at this point die for ellie even if she promises genocide on the human race. And the rabidness of both extremes kinda pushes people with more middling opinions to the other because they try to get away from the crazies, forgetting about the horseshoe shape thing.

[@Verlaine_FGC]

If you like this review discussing both good and bad. I'm sure you'll like Skill Up's review of the game.

[@shermaderma2803]

@@Bricky Mom wants you to wash up for dinner

[@Rawnblade13]

@@chukyuniqul Also doesn't help that this game was created on the back of horrendous levels of crunch that broke people and caused them to leave in droves.

[@CrezetheousVNope]

I think Jacksepticeye said it best "I feel like I'm playing The Last of Us Part 2 AND 3." This game just felt like so MUCH, but so much out of order.

[@aiden9384]

My favorite line in this game is when Ellie said, "Jesse, we need to build a meth lab," and then the Breaking Bad main title theme played.

[@AlbertTheHandsomeMan]

Imagine if this was real

[@amraphen24]

18:53 Haven't played either game, but I can agree with that assessment in a general sense. Spending the game building up all those characters, and then gut punching you with the deaths afterward would be a way better and more memorable than doing the deed and telling you why you should care after the fact. You don't start off a joke with the punchline after all.

[@KingTigerGuy]

Your review is basically the the same one i would give, with the one exception that in despite everything, i couldnt really forgive Abby, and really feel empty by having all this build up, then lots of filler, then more build up, and it all kinda just not going through with it at the end. Another small thing was the real lack of the infected, which was a fairly important part of the first game, and still a large part of the world at large, its mostly forgotten, with a few examples, like the one near the end.

[@darkdestiny9106]

I would say you're justified. I couldn't forgive her too, and still wished Ellie would have killed her at the end. Why? It's the difference in the brutality in which Abby killed Joel in revenge for him killing her father. Joel stabbed her father in cold blood. Abby shot Joel in the leg, and clubbed him to death slowly with a damn golf club with the rest of her crew joining in as well, smacking him and Manny also spit on him. And that was moments after Joel SAVED HER LIFE and brought her back to her friends. It's almost psychotic and inhumane that I could only want to see her die as well.

[@itsdantaylor]

I feel one of the big differences/issues was, we didn't get a over arching journey like we did in the first one. We got 2 journeys. Ellie's journey for revenge seems like the original intended journey but then we get Abby's. Abby's kind of derails everything because, at it's core is more reactionary then anything. There's isn't a end goal established early in her story to drive everything to the end, it's just her reacting to everything and as a result there is no anticipation, or steady build up like there was in Joel and Ellie's journey or Ellie's journey in the first half of the game.

[@kari548]

I wouldn't forgive her because of the way they built up the story, honestly if things were better managed I'd be fine with it, I would better accept Joel's death because we all knew it was going to happen at some point.

[@Blazagg]

Sometimes you just need to learn to let go, count your losses and fucking let go man. Joel's death happened almost 20 real hours before you finally get to the potential revenge, that's several months in the game's lore. At this point both of them have lost so much that it doesn't matter, the risk isn't worth it anymore. And don't get me wrong, you don't need to forgive Abby. Ellie just shouldn't have gone to chase Abby because nothing good would have came out of it, whether Abby died or not, nothing.

[@FutureMartian97]

I agree. I honestly don't give a fuck about Abby. They still could've gone with the "Revenge is bad, Ellie loses everything" plot (even though I think its stupid personally) and still have Ellie kill Abby. Because yes, Abby is dead, but at what cost. She lost Joel, Dina, JJ, Jesse, and probably any chance of going back to Jackson because of how many people have been killed, the only think that Ellie MIGHT have is Tommy because she killed Abby, but even then that's not much.

[@brandoncarlson2862]

The message I got from the ending was “if you’re gonna do something do it all the way.” Ellie at the end got all the negative consequences of getting revenge without actually getting revenge. She changed her mind and decided against it in the end but it would’ve been just the same if she actually drowned Abby. She still loses Dina and JJ and still loses her ability to play guitar right handed. So either go get revenge or don’t, you can’t have both, half-assed resolve yields half-assed results.

[@axo9813]

The ending made me laugh. These characters now both have, at minimum, a hundred pointless deaths each on this quest, but actually finishing the job is somehow the line that can't be crossed.

[@TheOldBee]

The fact that Ellie doesn't murder Abby matters, that's the whole point of the ending. Instead of continuing the cycle of revange she backs down and comes back home, where (contrurary to what you may heard or saw) she doesn't actually lose Dina or JJ - in the ending she just comes back to the farmhouse to say goodbye to part of her past, to Joel (the attempt to play the guitar and leaving it in the farmhouse instead of taking it with her back to Jackson). Heck, even if you do not care about what would happend if she didn't let Abby run away with Lev, it's a new start for Ellie - a chance to finally do better, just like Joel did in the first game after he left the thugs to just become a smuggler with Tess

[@nhamazingedward3536]

@@TheOldBee I'd kill them both，abby and lev. get the job done, leave no loose ends,after that,there won't be any cycle. The conflicts between them is way beyond a peaceful ends,none of them have reasons to forgive each other. Even themselves did,there's someone else's blood,like Ellie can't represent Jessie to forgive Abby for killed him right? And personally i think this goes to both sides,Abby got her friends killed too. after all,it's also a story of both sides,they all have their reasons. But we r not god, we can't have everything and everyone,all we can and should do is to pick a side and stick to it, I picked Joel and Ellie's, for that i must kill them both, for the blood we both spilled and to make sure a potential threat is eliminated. U may argue that Abby don't want revenge anymore,but no one can predict another living person's future, a slightly possibility could be fatal, I'm not taking that chance to risk my life and my people's life for moral comfort. I know it is terrible,but it has to be done,at least that's how i see it,feel free to correct me.

[@helgenlane]

@@TheOldBee but she did continue the "cycle". The choice at the very end has 0 consequences, it doesn't matter if she kills Abby or not. Well, it matters in a sense that if she killed her, at least everything else was worth it. The way she dealt with it is just pathetic. She had all the time in the world to come to terms with Joel's death, yet she made a decision to finish her vengeance, yet she backed out at the very end. Makes no sense, accomplishes nothing, it's just a waste.

[@TheOldBee]

@Cyberpantsu She would have continued the cycle if she killed Abby at the end - by letting them escape and later sparing Abby's life she ensures that Lev won't do the same thing that the ex Firefly group did at the start of the game. Also Ellie, by not finishing Abby, chooses a better future - something that Joel wanted for her from the start. This game isn't only about revange and "making it all worth it". This game shows Ellie's journey and her dealing with the aftermath of the converation at the end of the first game. She has to learn to move on, which at the very end, she finally does

[@shadowjezzter]

Something in writing many people seem to have forgotten, there is a limit to how far you can push a character into not liking them, with it being hatred or dislike due to their actions, before people wont follow you back into liking them. Abey is a prime example, she killed a beloved character when we just started getting to know her. Getting her back into peoples good books is a hard task, and the way they did it was a bad idea.

[@pierfrancescopoccianti5780]

Just your opinion. Don't write It like it's a fact. With me, it perfectly worked. I hated Abby at the beginning, then I ended up loving her just like I love Ellie. Thank God you don't work for ND

[@shadowjezzter]

@@pierfrancescopoccianti5780 no, it makes it near impossible to do. Prime example is this, Joel was beloved by the fanbase, having him killed not just suddenly but stupidly, brings her level of love to such a negative level it is basically irredeemable Also sure it may have worked for u but not everyone

[@pierfrancescopoccianti5780]

This is still just your opinion, but you are speaking It like a fact lol

[@shadowjezzter]

@@pierfrancescopoccianti5780 you can call it an opinion all you want, its still true to whats happening. Look at characters though out history. You get ones that are loved at the start of their story who turn into ones people hate and vice versa but there is a limit both ways. Again call it opinion all you want, some people’s limit is just higher.

[@pierfrancescopoccianti5780]

@@shadowjezzter I don't care about people's limit, since that is not a storytelling law writers should follow. I repeat: me and thousands of other players loved both the fact that Joel was brutally killed and the fact that you have to play the second part of the game as Abby. When Joel was killed I was so angry with Abby that I wanted to kill her as soon as possibile, but then I understood her point and ended up loving her just like I loved Ellie. And I believe this was brilliant. Never had I cared so much for the "villain" of the story, and I read tons of books and comics and watched tons of movies. This was new and powerful to me and if players couldn't feelthe same thing I'm sorry for them, but ND writers did an excellent job. Their only true mistake was the false marketing thing, but that flaw still doesn't belong to the game itself. I played it in 2022, without ever watching any trailer, so I 100% enjoyed it without any bad influence. Also, did people really hope that Joel would have never been killed? I was sure he would have been killed at the end of Part I, so I wasn't really surprised when his death actually happend in Part II. This is how all the "old-characters-young characters trip stories" work (for example, Star Wars, Eragon, The Road).

[@TimoCruz177]

"why are we here? why this is happening? this dumb" pretty much sums up this game's entire existence. The Last of Us was a one and done master piece. there was no need to for a follow up The Last of us 2 does nothing other than piss people off

[@RectPropagation]

Pretty much this. Other things I had a problem with: - I found it very frustrating that, especially with how long the game is, the characters constantly dance around the important conversations. Abby's friends clearly feel some type of way about what they did to Joel and I feel like that's significant given that the WLF regularly tortures Scars. Apparently this was worse than their normal torture! But when Owen actually starts to confront her about it...they have sex instead?! Abby tells Lev she feels guilty, but it's not clear why. I mean, yes, the nightmare was about the day her dad was killed but why does she feel guilty about that instead of all the things she's actually guilty for? Was she supposed to be guarding her dad that day? You can argue that I shouldn't need things "spelled out" but you can't convince me that the baby mama drama was a better use of our time. - Speaking of that fight turns into sex scene, I'm going to paraphrase Ebert's review of Battlefield Earth: The writers understand that some stories have two characters who are fighting end up having sex instead but do not understand how that should happen. It's a ridiculous trope anyway but it's so much worse when done wrong. How is the one scene where Owen and Abby have no sexual tension between them the one where they have sex? - Ellie's story feels...thin? The Seattle section is less interesting than Abby's: Ellie torture's Nora, and then refuses to help Jessie find Tommy (she's clearly BSing when she says going after Abby is to help him). And you can tell in his reaction that he knows she lied when she said she was willing to leave Seattle w/o getting Abby. So there's escalation in how far she's willing to go to get her revenge. But then she kills Owen and Mel by accident. She feels remorse but it's over a mistake, not because she went too far. It cut the tension out of the whole "How far is she willing to go" buildup. It also didn't help that it takes so long. Nitpicks: - Why in the Hell is the WLF sending their *surgeons* out into the field?! Because there's just so many in the post-apocalypse? They made it about Mel being pregnant and not needing Owen's permission but why would they ever risk her life either way? - There's several things about how stuff works that isn't realistic (like how apparently *nothing* expires) but how are there seriously still so many infected in remote or otherwise cut off areas? Especially in Jacksonville where they regularly do sweeps of the surrounding area. - I get that creating a vaccine is hard but no one ever came up with a way to kill the fungus *outside* of the body? There's alcohol everywhere but no bleach or vinegar?

[@kipofan7484]

these are some great takes homie

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

On the "why are there so many infected still" There's 350 million or so people in the US at the time of the outbreak. The vast majority of them likely turned into zombies. Million is a really fucking large number

[@RectPropagation]

​@@mechanicalmonk2020 1. The population of Jackson, Wyoming is around 10,000 not 350 million. There being a lot of people in NYC or Atlanta doesn't explain the size of the infected population in Jackson. 2. Jackson gets a lot of snow and gets very cold (almost subarctic at night according to the Wikipedia article). How are the early stage infected surviving the cold and the snow? They still have human bodies that shouldn't be able to survive those temperatures. 3. How are so many early stage infected getting enough food to survive? They still have human bodies so they still need to eat. Are we meant to believe these things that scream and run the second they spot their prey are successfully hunting deer and rabbit?

[@spendsshanks6050]

Your first two “nitpicks” aren’t nitpicks. They are major issues with the story that cause certain events to happen

[@fz7788]

My personal nitpick is simple I like how it's depicted as sad that Ellie can't play guitar anymore but like didn't guitar players like Tony iomi and Django Reinhardt also play with just 3 fingers and became legends. yes I know nitpick but meh

[@TheNinjaScones]

hey HEY what're you trying to say about the only video game ever, Shadow the Hedgehog?

[@treymtz]

Facts

[@vincemegasonic]

He's saying that Shadow the Hedgehog is betther than itself, and worse than itself. Contradicting but hilarious

[@Paul20661]

Shadow the Hedgehog was amazing,yeah,loved playing it long time ago :D Now gotta go listen to that song again,I Am... All of Me,uuf so good

[@killer_wasmad5721]

*Abby the hedgehog*

[@Nutochi]

"Dont kill her shes pregnant" - Ellie "Good" - Abby Yeah cool i def dont want this character to die horribly

[@servonik]

Her friend was also pregnant. Sure ellie didnt know but abby doesnt know that.

[@goldehammergaming]

ellie killed her pregnant friend how do you not understand where that was coming from

[@potatoprist3210]

@@goldehammergaming i think wat defers more is the reaction betwen the two. Elie gets sad at it wille abie dosent relly care

[@ShitOwl]

your name says it all i wouldn't expect you to understand at all but basically abby wanted revenge and she knew that it would hurt ellie even more for killing dina when she was pregnant

[@phantomaugust3791]

Ellie showed remorse for killing a pregnant women while Abby was like fuck kids

[@1012Games]

In the first game when Ellie was talking with Sam, he asks her what she fears the most, and she says, "to end up alone". And at the end of this game, what happens? She ends up alone.

[@philosophos4893]

The whole "revenge is bad" theme that they were going for just fell so utterly flat. We start the game with Joel bein brutalized before our and Ellie's eyes and throughout the game we are supposed to come to the conclusion that "revenge is bad" right? You know who got revenge? Abby. Abby murdered the man who killed her father and in the end got away with it because Ellie let her go. Yeah, great message there. When someone murders your family right in front of you? Just forgive them because "revenge is bad". There are times when feeling hate, anger, and wanting revenge is so just and right, and the big brains who thought the message of this game was groundbreaking seemingly forgot that wanting revenge for your family is normal.

[@ukaszrynkowski178]

Hey, revenge is bad... Revenge is bad. REVENGE IS BAD REVENGE IS BAD REVENGEISBADREVENGEISBADREVENGEISBADREVENGEISBADREVENGEISBAD DO YOU GET IT YET HAVE WE BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH THE MESSAGE YET!! p.s. revenge is bad Edit: revenge is bad

[@TerraBooma]

I mean, she doesn't get away with it. How many of her closest friends does she lose as a result of killing Joel? All of those people who were practically family that Ellie kills in her search. She doesn't get away with anything at all. Both of them lose almost everything because of their desire to follow revenge. Of course it's an understanding feeling for Ellie to want to kill Abby for what she did, that makes sense. But blood feuds don't just end because you're "just" or "in the right." The cycle of blood isnt going to end until someone walks away. Imo, the problem with the game is basically the entire epilogue section. End the story with Dina and Ellie on the farm, and you have a functional ending.

[@introvert6705]

Abby literally got all her friends and the love of her life killed lmao people just look over that like its nothing

[@areallymeanperson]

@@introvert6705 yet she gets away with lev and goes to the fireflies because ellie let her live but ellie loses everything and everyone, you know what that tells me? Revenge good

[@areallymeanperson]

Its ok, thats what the devs intended and it worked, totally planned Im being sarcastic

[@gianmariaforte2433]

I just think Ellie's change of mind was too drastic in the end. Ellie pursuing Abby again is understandable, she's consumed by senseless guilt and can't get past what happened. But that final boss fight has no sense, by then Ellie should already be much more conflicted about killing Abby, still reluctant to let her go, but less murdery about it. That's my opinion at least, the real problem is that there's no buildup to Ellie letting go: you always see her in a rage mode and not once does she show doubt about her revenge quest (except when others are convincing her). When she spared Abby I felt relieved, but it felt abrupt. Imagine Joel being a perfect and balanced man through all of TLoU 1, then showing his brutality only in the end with the fireflies. I think this example describes what happened in the end with Ellie

[@joaquinsantillan4130]

The way that i experienced it was extremely different. All felt right. I was going after abby and i was decided but when i saw abby up there something was telling me no, i didn't know what would happen and i didn't know what to do but as abby was helping lev i started to feel worse and worse. Then i saw abby about to leave after all what she did, even thanking me who have killed all of her friends and i couldn't let her. When i was about to kill abby my emotion were reflected in ellie's face. It was perfect. When she let her go i was destroyed but happy, i couldn't handle it but i know that i couldn't

[@Jetblast01]

It was all backroom politics and writer disagreements at the late hour. That's the actual reason for that.

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@@joaquinsantillan4130 To me, I wanted to kill Abby, and the second game didn't feel right.

[@Dimitri9511]

"Im going into spoilers" [Shows a mini golf camp] Oh anyway FORE 🏌️‍♂️

[@Lenriak]

Shouldn't that be FORE-HEAD?

[@malice1308]

I may be too forgiving of a person, or just never experienced that level of rage/anger at another person, but I think the final bit in Santa Barbara would have been a lot more tolerable if instead of fighting, Ellie were to just ask why or seek some closure, because I don't believe at any point she is told that Joel killed Abby's father and she just assumes its because she is immune. Especially with Abby seeming like she felt guilty over killing Joel and it causing the loss of all her friends, an explanation and a melancholy mutual understanding between the two of them being as how at that final point they both have lost an equal amount of people due to their desire for revenge, would have at least made that last two hours have some sort of meaning, rather than it just feeling like the writers were like "For those who still don't understand what we're goin for, lemme hammer it in for a lil bit."

[@ajduong]

This actually highlights a very good point. One HUGE issue with the game is that, in the Ellie/Abby fight scenes, there isn't any talking at all. Like, these two hate each other's guts and yet for some reason they're not saying anything about why they hate each other? It literally just feels like angry flailing at times

[@ajduong]

​@@FelipeLemos-docs That's not true. If either character found out about the motivations each of them shared, while they certainly wouldn't have made immediate peace, it would have provided an extremely interesting and nuanced link and forced both to challenge the motivations of what they did. Abby, as an orphaned child, would have confronted the fact that she too, took a father away from somebody else and became the thing that she originally despised. Meanwhile, Ellie, as the original protagonist, would have further realised that Joel was far from a perfect man (he even confessed to having been a thief and murderer, with his quote "I've been on both sides" in the Pittsburgh level of Part 1). You might argue that a lack of dialogue aims to reinforce a more realistic atmosphere. While this is potentially true, the fact remains that some concessions have to be made when making a peace of media to make it work. It's the same reason you have music playing in a scene while people are talking, or that in Hollywood reloading is normally done only for dramatic effect, or why you can use health packs to recover injuries instantly. All of these elements help enhance the enjoyability of media so that aspects of realism don't detract from the experience. With regards to confrontations with different characters, imagine if no dialogue had ever been exchanged between characters in conflict (some examples off the top of my head include: - Kung Fu Panda II, with Po vs Shen, one of the most interesting dynamics conveyed between two characters in a kids film, of all places - The Avengers. Imagine if Thanos NEVER talked and just grunted like an angry teenager for ten minutes while bashing Iron Man's face in. That's essentially what the fight scene amounted to in TLOU II - A video game example: say, Undertale, and imagine any of the fight scenes being without dialogue. Imagine if Genocide Undyne never talked to the player and pointed out they were a monster. Or if Papyrus died wordlessly in Genocide. Or if Sans never spoke during his fight. I guarantee you, without dialogue his fight would be the most underwhelming irrespective of the music or difficulty. - Even in TLOU, the David vs Ellie scene. Realistically, no person acts the way David did, taunting Ellie and acting like a creep. He is a hunter so he should no not to make noise to be stealthy when hunting prey. He even sneaks up quietly on Ellie multiple times. The reason he was making creepy dialogue was to enhance the feeling of vulnerability the player felt as Ellie. This was compounded by the fact that she loses all her weapons bar her switchblade, she's a fourteen year old girl, and the white winter scene enhances the physical feeling of dread (all techniques designed to subtly enhance an impactful literary and visual experience). The fact of the matter is simple. The reason Neil never tried to pursue anything like this, or a narrative that was even remotely balanced in asking the audience to sympathise with both hero and villain, is because the game's main selling point to Neil is its ability to convey a narrative emotional twist where the audience is guilted for their actions and originally siding with a party (i.e Ellie after the murder of Joel). It is meant to heavily shame you, the player, for holding any form of sympathy towards Ellie's plight and to feel bad for your actions in the first game. Abby can't reveal any of her motivations up to the fight, at all, because the surprise would be spoiled and there could be no literary twist. A painfully obvious example of this is when she takes her time bludgeoning Joel to death. Why doesn't she ever tell him why she is killing him? Isn't moral vindication a strong part of catharsis, to show Joel that he's an asshole and will die for what he did? Why does she spare Ellie but never tell her? What most people don't understand is that the game isn't Abby sided, it's specifically designed just to try and "subvert expectations" while making the player feel remorse, incorrectness or shame for their original beliefs so they can essentially be lectured into what is "right". If it wanted a meaningful and complex relationship between protagonist and antagonist, the writing would be drastically different. Instead, the characters act in ways that are unnatural simply for the sake of plot and plot subversion.

[@defalttheloner]

I'm exactly the opposite and I'm a ultra vengeful person that felt so much hate that I could feel my muscles failing me. And this game is almost like a kick in the nuts of a person like me in so many levels. I'm from a country that is constantly facing it's failures coming back cause of the lack of commitment to avenge the past and as such it infuriates me to hear the old "revenge is bad" quote.

[@johnsocks3693]

@@ajduong they never talk to each other because then the player i think would realise how much the situation and this story is absurd , if they start to talk they would understand each other and then no reason to continue that revenge story So they have to just shut up and fight

[@nickcagebuthesinabanana]

"There was a sequel... It was a pile of Naughty Dogshit" - Joe, I think idrk

[@Eon233]

The problem with the revenge is bad idea is Abby wins after her revenge. Yes her friends die in STUPID ways besides Manny but she lives in the end with someone she cares for, Lev. Her revenge is successful and she goes off into the sunset to live her life while Ellie loses everything

[@eanderson9599]

Yeah, it feels like they were trying to imply that revenge ruins everything yet Abby walks away with much more than Ellie

[@arieltandian9273]

Really? Ellie still got jackson dina maria etc while abby only has Ev

[@Eon233]

ARIEL TANDIAN she doesn’t have Dina no more and I’m pretty sure Dina moved back to Jackson so Ellie literally has no one anymore. She’s probably not going back to Jackson to face Tommy and Dina and Maria is separated from Tommy. It’s a literal shitstorm

[@eanderson9599]

ARIEL TANDIAN Everyone left her at the end of the game dude

[@molo1848]

@@Eon233 she is still welcome in Jackson what are you going on about?

[@RectPropagation]

Oh, one other thing: it’s absurd that they expect you to level up a character you know is currently pointing a gun at Ellie’s head!

[@arthurwascool5548]

Because you are her in that moment...? I mean sure you can refuse to level up because you dislike her but the gameplay gets harder so youre pushed to do so

[@moonmoon2479]

@@arthurwascool5548 resetting your stats halfway through is just tedious no matter the game or circumstances.

[@CDexie]

@@moonmoon2479 But they don't reset. You get a brand new character. Brand new power-ups, brand new weapons.

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@@CDexie Brand new character to improve all over again. Brand new weapons that we have to get. Brand new power ups that we have to reunlock.

[@danielhavoc889]

I get the whole "The big character must eventually die" trope is a thing, but not only do I think it is stupid, I think it has no place in TLOU. Joel as a character was built in a way where he shouldn't die. He has to live with his sins, and watching him commit those sins, and how he deals with that weight later is what is fascinating about his character. Past that, I get the idea around the melancholic tone and lesson in the game, but yet again think it has no right to be in TLOU. The original game was about getting constantly beat down, again and again, and having to drag yourself along, doing horrible things along the way, yet still finding a way all the way through, to HAVE HOPE. Because the melancholy of the ending of the first game came from the confliction of Joel finding hope, and accepting Ellie fully, yet knowing the horrible villainous ramifications of how he found his own version of hope. Because Joel is a flawed character, which makes him all the more human, and his actions uncomfortably real. It weighs on you, and despite the surface level happiness of seeing both him and Ellie live through their tribulations, you are still left utterly conflicted. You stand there at the end, under a sunset, on the cusp of civilization, with Joel finally overcoming his multiple decade long struggle, with that beautiful light shining over the characters. Yet still in memory, from mere minutes previous, is the fact that you extinguished someone else's "Light" to get here, fittingly named "The Fireflies", and that's simply what it is. Is it ideal? Was it the morally correct decision? Was it even the logistically right decision? No. But it was the one that was made to allow you to obtain this happiness, and so you must live with it. The problem with part 2 is, there is no light, there is no hope, and what hope there is, isn't the same. It's fake, manufactured, not something the game necessarily focused on, as it dove deeper and deeper into the darkness without ever coming up, until you are all at ounce yanked into the light for the last few minutes. There was never a "but through it all, there's still some light ahead" moment during the darkest moments, and so, in my mind, it's simply not The Last of Us. It doesn't fit. It feels like an entirely different being, disconnected from anything that defined the first game. In my minds, the second game never happens, and that's just how I'll treat it. It was a fun game, enjoyable in parts when isolated from its source matter, but it wasn't TLOU. I would've been a fan even, if the characters where switched out, and everything else happened the same, but as it is, it just makes me sad, because the potential of it was ruined by the exact people who made it so great, by NOT doing the exact thing that made the first game so unique. They stuck to tropes, kept it obvious, and treated it like Marvel treats its movies. Use the tried and tested plot-points, and don't continue to innovate. It just makes me sad.

[@draykohunter6805]

I think this says it all.

[@yojilou]

What a refreshing comment to read, it's nice to hear somebody properly dissect the 2 games instead of just saying "Abby bad" and "Joel dead wtf", I replayed the game again about a month ago (part 2) and I enjoyed it so much more the 2nd time around, I was so bitter about the writing of the game and how empty and hollow it made me feel at the end, I'd never had that horrible gut wrenching hollowness from a game, and I don't think I'll ever feel it again, it's a game about loss Ellie doesn't have a father figure any more to take care of her, she becomes absorbed by the need for revenge and guilt for not being with him for around 2 years, I think the bleak tone they went for in this game, was simply, brutal, tragic, and never done on this scale through this medium before, it really fucked me up lol.

[@arnarogbjorn]

So TLOU should have been more like Bojack Horseman.

[@CDexie]

This is, quite frankly, a position you can't hope to defend. TLoU2 *is* about hope, just as much as it is about the destructive nature of revenge. Even for Ellie, even when she lost everything, the moment she accepted what happened to Joel and stopped chasing Abby, her mind and eyes cleared. She can move on with her life. Nevermind the fact that our deuteragonist gets a full blown hopeful, happy ending with her and Lev's arrival at the Firefly island. The world of TLoU is a cruel and harsh one, and they don't just tell you that - they *show* you. Our characters don't have main character syndrome, tragedy can strike at any time. They're not invulnerable, they're not conversationalist masters nor do they perfectly convey their feelings in the most convenient way for the plot to work itself out. This is so far away from a Marvel movie as you can get - it's borderline insulting to say otherwise. Those were tough choices they made. Those choices required grit and passion from the developers to make, because who the fuck didn't love Joel and Ellie from the first game? Yet, Joel dies a mundane death (for their world) and Ellie isn't some infallible person, she's just as human as the others. TLoU2 isn't about "revenge bad", it's about living with loss, and how *easy* it is to drown in it. Yet in the end, our main characters make it through. They make it through that foggy and turbulent sea on a rickety boat with a rickety boat engine and end up on a nice seashore to see the sunrise - not just Abby. What's more hopeful than that? People desperately need to learn to engage with storytelling. The tropey one was the first game - it was as run of the mill as you can get. This one made leaps and bounds to tell its story

[@MrRomaVALE]

@@CDexie No.

[@ryanturner5286]

"Bigot sandwich?! I thought that was an outtake!" honestly the best one liner anyone has said about this game... This is why I keep coming back

[@ChaddyFantome]

This is litterally what i've been saying, the game beats your over the head with what its trying to do in the most overt and unsubtle way possible with the least amount of tact ever that it just takes you out of the experience. I also agree about the ending and how the game shoulda been a Trilogy. Make it 2 story modes, separated just the way you said it.

[@iancarroll4687]

Or, they could’ve just told the entire story from Abby’s perspective, same theme, most of her friends and family die while trying to get to Joel all culminating in the chase seen at the beginning where Joel, Tommy, and Abby, are all chased by infected into that one building. She has her chance to kill Joel and you give the player the choice whether it was worth it or not.

[@tomn8932]

Should have ended with ellie about to club abbey's head in with a golf club, but stops when she sees the kid begging her to stop.

[@Wesker10000]

Na that'd be worse.

[@biospark4758]

Should’ve ended with Ellie realizing her and Abby’s mothers had the same first names and them becoming best friends

[@bigmoe9856]

That should at least be an option. Continue the Cycle or End it. Whichever, so long as I get to kill Abby.

[@Psychoangel-d23]

Then Ellie proceeds to kill both of them. Making sure no loose threads are left

[@spendsshanks6050]

@@Psychoangel-d23 The only right decision

[@blinkasto182]

I was really pissed at Abby. Sure they put her playable in order for us to have some "empathy" towards her... but no. Not even killing the dogs got me sad,. I was really mad at those people, and got even mad as the time passed when I played Abby. So nah, 0 empathy towards the Wolves.

[@yiangaruga4928]

Well the devs quite clearly wanted to intentionally make Abby a hateable character and then force the player to play as her in order to emphasize.. Whether you forgive her or not, the devs succeeded in making you hate her which was their goal. In fact I'd go as far as to say that Abby is a way better written character than the new version of Ellie. Her actions make way more sense. Ellie kills like 100 people during the gameplay and story and then decides not to kill Abby. That just makes absolutely no sense in the context of the world where humanity is in brink of destruction. *No one* would be so stupid that they'd kill a hundred people for personal reasons, at least as trivial reason as Ellie had.

[@eduardohenriquecarneiroalv6343]

@@yiangaruga4928 as Metallica would say, sad but true

[@milorexhar6621]

@@yiangaruga4928 the goal wasnt to make the player empathise to abby, everybody hates abby(both in-game and in real life). The goal was to only involve players in abby and her friend's drama at first and then empathise to abby and lev's relation(not herself alone), that worked so well for me that i hate abby to this point but i cant deny that abby and lev's relationship was one of the best things in the game

[@Tsukasa2727]

@@yiangaruga4928 Weren't a vast majority of the encounters the Wolves attacking Ellie?

[@OkurkaBinLadin]

@@eduardohenriquecarneiroalv6343 How is that sad but true? Its virtually impossible to write some character "correctly" and the other "badly" since both are supposed to play each other off in a single story. The very fact, that you and Yian brought that up is a proof, that the game narrative is terrible.

[@extrasalt9053]

"Subverting expectations" somehow turned into "do the most unexpected but least satisfying outcome."

[@galexandris8024]

It was a sad experience for me considering that ellie that played a huge role in the first game lost everything in the second one

[@jandipopo_art2012]

The idea going around where Abby and Ellie teams up in the beginning, then Abby meets Joel. Shes conflicted cause Ellie is her friend. She kills Joel still, she shows remorse. Ellie mad, going to avenge Joel. Now, you feel for her Abby, Their fight has more drama cause they became somewhat friends before she killed Joel. See. That shit has more drama than this game.

[@awesomechainsaw]

Mhmmm Perhaps we could also Crib from another game and since we’re already swapping between two characters for the whole game. Why not pick who you wanna side with for that final fight? Do you wanna fight Ellie as Abby or Abby as Ellie?

[@hashvendetta7226]

There are thousands of ways they could have written this story and been more successful. Its futile trying to fix their mess. It's over and done. Best to just forget this happened and not support their bullshit and shitty practices. They're a horrible company ran by shitty, pretentious, self serving, people, who hold themselves in higher regard than people around them. Its gross. 2/3s of the employees walking should have been the definitive ending to all of this, but the industry shills propped this garbage up. Seriously, they got way more money off the consumers than they ever should have after how badly they got exposed, and that's before people knew how poorly written the story was. RIP ND

[@awesomechainsaw]

Hash Vendetta I and many people are not trying to fix their mess. Simply point out how easy it would have been to write a better story and design a better game. It’s more for self gratification than to actually help naughty dog.

[@hashvendetta7226]

@@awesomechainsaw yeah, I'm not saying what you're doin is dumb. I've heard a lot of ideas that were really compelling. It goes to show, that just about any story can be told, and it just comes down to how you tell it. This is where ND failed. Plain and simple. This story could basically be about anybody and revenge for anything. Its beyond lazy, considering what they set up beforehand. I'm sure they had dozens of ideas, but just failed to flesh them out enough to make it work, and this is what was settled on, in the hopes of driving anticipation for a 3rd.

[@awesomechainsaw]

Hash Vendetta Agreed. Though I’m Morbidly excited for the Last of Us TV show. Given it’s a retelling of the first game that will expand and “Enhance” certain aspects according to what I’ve read. It’ll be interesting to see the results of their attempt.

[@ClinicalpsychFTW]

You could look at the underlying meaning being “revenge is bad and hurts those around you” and there’s nothing wrong with that. You could also look at it like “never leave a job half done” in the sense that had she killed Joel and Ellie and everyone they were allied with then there’s no one left to take revenge against you.

[@CDexie]

I mean you're right in a technical sense, but it's literally impossible to ever occur by a handful of people (such as Abby's group) in the real world because it a)requires you to be a mass murdering monster of unreal proportions and b) there really is no practical end. Abby could've killed Ellie and Tommy, but she could've never reached those who'd avenge them, like Dina or Jesse or Maria, nor would she ever know about them. The same goes for Ellie - she could never have killed every single wolf in seattle. Or even if she murdered Abby in the end, she would also need to cut the throat of another innocent child (monster of unreal proportions). Do these scenarios seem... feasible to anyone?

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@CDexie Honestly, it's realistic for this game. I mean, Abby found Joel. How hard could finding someone fighting for Abby be?

[@WWFanatic0]

@@CDexie The fact they left witness to them killing Joel was so plot contrived it's sad. Like, you're on a revenge quest against the guy who killed your dad and yet think leaving witness who saw your faces and know most of your names will be just fine. Surely they won't hold a grudge for seeing this guy get killed in front of them. Oh and they were wearing their group's insignia no less. Nothing about that makes even the slightest bit of sense.

[@danflak6363]

I've not finished watching yet, but one point i'd like to disagree with. "If story is good then gameplay doesn't matter." If the gameplay in a game is sub par, then why is it a game and not a film/tv series. I appreciate, there are some games that I also tolerate for the same reasons. But imho gameplay should be the primary concern over any story. Great review so far.

[@Exel3nce]

The gameplay can also Just be there to get the Thing down. Spec ops, Witcher , deadly premonition. Shitty gameplay , great stories.

[@mateoemilioalfaroalcega7498]

@@Exel3nce Gameplay can Also Carry a Game with shitty story, i mean look at MGSV.

[@Ben-fk9ey]

I mean as long as the gameplay is playable and the story makes up for it then whats the problem? There are plenty of games where the gameplay is subpar to the story that people love, I dunno I just think that saying "gameplay should be the primary concern over any story" is quite a strong blanket term.

[@Exel3nce]

@@mateoemilioalfaroalcega7498 i cant think of any. And even if, whats the point. (It also depends on what Kind of Genre it is ) Edit: sekiro may be such a Game but WE see mediocre it was Overall

[@danflak6363]

@@Ben-fk9ey You're right, it is a simple statement to quite a complex topic. I love great stories, as I'm sure we all do. But regarding video games, I always enjoy titles far far more when the gameplay facilitates the enjoyment rather then subtracting from it. To me, the greatest games in history have S tier game play elements and ALSO a well told story. At least the games that lack in story can still be fun, whereas the opposite just becomes a chore waiting for plot development.

[@Upsetkiller456]

The problem I have with the game is that after 7 years they added BARELY any new gameplay mechanics or even enemy types. Gameplay already got tedious for me in the first game and now it's virtually the same but double the length?

[@groovstoov4717]

There's a prone mechanic, attack dogs, shamblers, stalkers and the rat king, and human vs zombie scenarios... Saying the gameplay is "virtually the same" is literally incorrect.

[@thatchedrooves1204]

@@groovstoov4717 7 years and they add in prone and 4 new enemies

[@meganobgutzkraka2398]

@@thatchedrooves1204 dont forget the jump! /s

[@karnege101]

@@groovstoov4717 none of those additions made any meaningful impact to how things played ( and you forgot the dodge button)

[@DarthTalon5]

@@groovstoov4717 Stalkers were in the first game too.

[@raybob8668]

That “4 years earlier” card with Abbi in the woods is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

[@charliegordan6354]

I watched a play through of this and the entire time it really didn't even feel like you got to play most of it. Like when you're playing as Ellie and you get to Seattle, Tommy already took out 90% of the people you're looking for. It was interesting going through the area but that part started to drag on and on. Kind of a shame that the more interesting parts came from when you were playing as Abby. Not only that, but then you finally get to the part where Ellie meets Abby at the theater you don't even get the pay off of playing as Ellie in that fight. You end up beating the shit out of her after her entire journey. This is a story of "revenge is bad" but the person who decided to have mercy was the one who still lost the most. Ellie goes home broken and alone while Abby gets to be with Lev. I feel like this game doesn't even deliver its own message right.

[@leapinggrotto4926]

I mean, Abby did left her alone after Lev intervened. They moved on with their lives. Ellie on the other hand, still going for the revenge. She lost everything the moment she decided to leave Dina and go after Abby one last time. Even if she killed Abby, she still come back to nothing.

[@Birthday888]

​@@leapinggrotto4926 The problem is that by fleshing out all of these characters "after" Ellie has killed them, Abby doesn't feel like she lost anything by her companions dying. The fact that Abby is a pretty stoic character and doesn't have overt/prolonged emotional responses to their deaths really doesn't help as well. The only characters you'd probably be invested would be Owen, Lev and Yara because those are the characters Abby opens up to. But Ellie kills Owen in justified self-defence, Yara's death has nothing to do with Ellie, and Lev makes it through the game alive. You then balance that against the potentially huge amount of investment the player might have against Joel, and the scales will almost always tip towards Ellie's side.

[@skulldoxbox2]

You know, my friends brother plays the guitar and he is or at least was amazing. (It's been a while since I have heard him play.) He only had one arm, his other one ended just below the elbow. Bullshit, Elli lost the ability to play guitar, she still has the ability. Anyway thanks for the video Brick, mostly so I could get a fuller picture than rage.

[@acefromouterspace3813]

you are missing the point about Ellie that just lost her fingers

[@skulldoxbox2]

@@acefromouterspace3813 What I am saying is that even the "consequences" are poorly thought out. The whole last part of the game seems dumb as hell. Ellie at the end is very back and forth about it and honestly if she still hated abby, she should have left her to die, or shot her, or left when she heard the slaver dude said they had caught her. Her fingers being gone isn't because Ellie wanted revenge, it's because Ellie was a dumbass. Ellie already lost the only people she cared about that she had left by leaving, the fingers are over kill but also at the same time not because like I said, that setback is temporary.

[@lllXanderlll]

Think one of the worst examples of the bad writing in this game is when Abby's friend gets his brains blown out right in front of her and even gets his brains on her and instead of ever being addressed, ever having a moment of reflection on it at any point she instead just keeps on trucking. I guess you could say she addresses it when she tells Ellie she killed her friends but it just feels weird, also I loved the way they make it seem so significant that Mel is pregnant and then have her in Abby's flashbacks running through combat patrols, banging her belly into stuff and making jokes about being pregnant. Like seriously ? Even in a post apocalypse situation it seems difficult to believe that they'd send out a pregnant women on active patrols

[@tabuukiller13]

Slight counterarguement I’m meaning. Considering Abby gets away relatively Scott free it may as well be “revenge is bad if you don’t finish it.” Abbys loss og friends wasn’t due to revenge it was because the dude cheated and pregnant girl got mad at abby she succeeds in revenge and gets to make a new life. Meanwhile Ellie stops at the last second and still loses everything including two of her own fingers leaving her with nothing,

[@betchersgland7236]

It's all over the place. It can be "don't leave witnesses", it can be "try revenge kids, it works out sometimes" it can even be "whatever you want to make of it" which is a pretty standard defence for all over the place writing.

[@demonwolf570]

She didn't give a damn about her friends. She never mentioned any of them again outside of 1 scene. Neither did Ellie for Jessie.

[@ChaddyFantome]

Also, the game effectively tells us "Joel's mistake wasn't that he killed Abby's dad, its that he wasn't thorough enough".

[@DarthTalon5]

@@ChaddyFantome Which at the same time is exactly what happens with Abby, not thorough enough.

[@machine1685]

Even the whole "Ellie broke the cycle of revenge" doesn't really work since Abby had no one else left to avenge her besides Lev. And let's be honest, he wasn't exactly in good shape to survive on his own at the end.

[@powwowken2760]

The best way I ever heard it put is that Joel was 100% in the right for 'saving' Ellie from the fireflys. Like a military style group would've actually shared the cure with anyone, they would've become the only immune group on earth and dominated with an iron fist. Joel not only saved Ellies life, but also saved the world from a fate worse than apocalypse.

[@Bricky]

Completely besides the point though. That is just a justification for us, the player. Joel didn't slaughter an entire base because he was scared of politics. We all know his reasoning

[@garbanzobeans6228]

Yeah, that's sounds ridiculous

[@ouchiegiverjr]

Bricky but even still the fire flies were idiots

[@bassgx1459]

Nah, he was in shock knowing that Elle is gonna die for a "what if" so Joe thinking that far ahead is impossible

[@thatromanfella8377]

@@Bricky while didnt do it for polictical reasons, I also think the fireflys are very stupid. Like more then normal.

[@hammerpaw7338]

Usually I am okay with a quick death scene like the characters in Last of Us 2 had if they have the other characters remember them after. It doesn't make sense to cry during the middle of a fight but it does make sense to remember the dead.

[@arthurwascool5548]

It doesnt make sense? The only time i remember someone crying while another person is dying is when joel gets killed and ellie is being held down and forced to watch. How does it not make sense to cry?

[@hammerpaw7338]

@@arthurwascool5548 I meant it does not make sense to stop fighting or to stop doing what you are trying to accomplish. I think that the Last of Us 2 is pretty good at this but has a few scenes that were not very good in this fashion.

[@Mooseshovel]

TLOU2 is like Borderlands 3: We got what we wanted in the gameplay department, but the story was just so bad, that the gameplay couldnt save it

[@AkelasanAK]

...exactly, just that BL is primarily gameplay focused when TLOU is story focused, so bad story hurts it more ....

[@zzxp1]

The story isn't even that bad, I mean the first one isn't nothing to shoot rockets about either. It only had some pacing problems and it was just too long for the story it tried to told. You can easily cut 5 hours from this game and nothing of value would be lost.

[@SirDankleberry]

@@zzxp1 You could cut all of TLOU 2 and nothing value would be lost.

[@zzxp1]

@@SirDankleberry True, but to be fair there was nothing much more to do with Ellie or Joel story, i liked the uncertainty of the first ending because your imagination is more powerful than anything someone can come up to. But you know, money, sequels. Still, people cried over the most stupid things, almost feels like they have not consumed an entertainment product outside the Disney/Marvel sphere.

[@jamesloucks2562]

HAHAHAHAHA!! XD Sorry, but No. Borderlands 3 was a legitimately poorly told, anticlimactic, disrespectful, sjw pandering waste of a story. TLOU2 was a great story with some clunky pacing issues at worst.. That people hate because of thier own emotional attachment to Joel more than any legitimate issue with its story.

[@YoshiTheOreo]

I tried to explain the false marketing issue to one of my coworkers. He justifies it because he says companies do it all the time. I told him that's fair, but there's a difference. The scene you show heavily implies Joel will be with Ellie throughout the game and at the same time you expect someone to die, even Joel, but not that early in the final product. When you use trailers and swap models like this, you need to subvert expectations from what the trailer shows into something more grand, not less. That's like advertising a BigMac with three buns, three pieces of meat, lettuce, and the sauce, but you're okay that you paid for a sandwich that came with two pieces of bread, two slices of meat, and it over-saturated in the sauce. He doesn't get it and says the game is better than God of War...the new one...I feel like he's trying to justify his purchase. I should know, I've played Destiny since it's inception and I know when someone is in denial, but at least I knew what I was getting into, I just didn't care and had money to burn.

[@thechugg4372]

"I've played Destiny and I know when someone is in denial" You're god damn right, poor souls.

[@blazingscythe9463]

The first tlou is one of my favourite games of all time and I bought the second one the day it came out. I regret that purchase wholeheartedly to this day.

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

He used the "everyone else does it, so it's okay" argument. His opinion is forfit.

[@ForrestFox626]

29:38 At this point, I'm glad Joel killed the Fireflies. I am no long on the fence.

[@jamesdoyle3484]

One thing that kinda bugged me about the ending is that Ellie could've learned to play the guitar left handed. I get that it worked better as a scene to have her leave the guitar there, but I couldnt stop thinking about it.

[@merlin_494]

Yes ! Finally, I thought I was the only one xD I'm left handed and the few times I tried to play guitar, it was with a right-handed one, so while I understand the message behind the scene where she cannot play guitar anymore, I was also like ''Girl, pick a plectrum and play with your left hand... '' Which honestly ruined it from my perspective. I can't unsee it now x)

[@vyshan8431]

Was searching for this exact comment as that ending bugged me to no end. Essentially you have right-hand and left-hand which send two different messages. Right-hand is obviously a mean-spirited take, you lost what you had and are unable to grow past it so you discard that part of your self. . While the left-hand is more uplifting as its essentially embracing the unknown, which is about adapting and growth and overcoming your weaknesses.

[@acefromouterspace3813]

How about being sad that you have to learn to play the guitar with the other hand a all because you lost your fucking fingers? If you lost your hand you would not react saying ''thankfully, I have a spare, whats for dinner?''

[@nestword5654]

@@acefromouterspace3813 she left the guitar in the house before leaving, so yeah she's not just "being sad", she gave up on playing the guitar altogether, just because she couldn't play it with her right hand. Nobody say anything about "being sad", nice strawman right there dumbass

[@Topunito]

probably should have ended that scene there as a sign for what she has lost due to revenge, but not ending the entire game, then later show ellie playing it with her left hand as a sign of hope.

[@lukenolin1105]

Strongly agree with the last 6 minutes. I definitely think Part 2’s story might’ve been better if it was saved for a third game and just executed a bit more effectively.

[@lorkieborkie2537]

The midpoint was really bad. When I got control of Abby and saw her dad I knew what the game is just about to do, felt I was getting guilt tripped for making me do things I didn't agree with in the first place. And I think that's the main difference between this game and The Line, as Walker I did all those warcrimes believing fully it was right and I didn't feel tricked because it was so subtle. And while there was some shock value the real horror is the slow spiraling that finally turns into a nightmare by the end. Maintaining immersion is important, becaise when it breaks it's easy to start noticing the plotholes, it all goes downhill.

[@krasmasov6852]

Why would you take in personally? You have no agency in the story. It isn't about you. What plotholes? Name a single plothole in TLOU2.

[@lorkieborkie2537]

there's too much to cover in a comment so if you want proper breakdown I think Macabre Storytelling has the best one The story may not be directly about me but I do take control of the protagonists. As any other game, Tlou2 tries to connect you to them trough empathy and emotions. An example: when Abby kills Joel Ellie gets pissed, but it's also done to get you pissed to establish a motivation that both you and Ellie share. The problem is that this connection doesn't hold up throughout because Ellie's actions in cutscenes don't align with what I'd expect her as a character to do. So when the game turn and tries to out Ellie (and thus me) as a monster it doesn't stick because I no longer relate with Ellie. At the midpoint when we switch to Abby we've been hunting her for 12 or so hours now, it's really hard to empathize because we hardly know her. Her goal and motivation is to kill Joel and that also doesn't connect with the player as we have a ton of empathy for him from the first game. Even if you do give her a chance her playable segment feels like a bunch of sidequests that try to portray her as a morally just character which was too on the nose for me. Abby, just like Ellie, tends to also do things that make little sense if you think about it for more than a minute and makes her character that more unrelatable. Example would be when she kills Joel she decides to spare Ellie and Tommy, which is straight up baffling and results compromises their operation. This is the main problem, lack of empathy and connection to both Ellie and Abby, and generally characters doing things that make no sense one plothole? sure... Abby going off to save Lev and Yara despite being a devoted WLF member. I get that she felt bad but as a WLF member Abby spent most of her life killing Seraphites like those two, there isn't any good reason why she would change her allegiance so quickly

[@krasmasov6852]

@@lorkieborkie2537 But you did that, not the game. You are not Ellie. Again, it's not about you. You're basically arguing now that games are bad if you don't personally have the same goals as the player character. Right, you're not supposed to sympathize with Abby initially. All you know is that she's the target that Ellie's doing all this horrific shit to get. We also don't like that she killed Joel, yes. But giving her a chance is what you're expected to do. That's what the shift in perspective should indicate. There's more to her than you thought. But NOTHING on her side is like a sidequest. It's all inextricably thematically linked to the overall themes of Ellie's story. Also, she's not portrayed as some saint either who's always morally just. She's complicated, which is what you should expect from a person who beat Joel to death. Also, not a single thing she does makes little sense when you consider her motivations. Her sparing Ellie and Tommy is directly explained in the game. Owen wouldn't allow it arguing it would make their group no better than Joel was. It was a moral argument, not a practical one. They make sense if you treat them as characters rather than robotic vessels of pure logic. She's not devoted to the WLF. She's only been in the WLF for 4 years, and she's in her early 20s. She spend most of her life as a Firefly, not a WLF soldier. Also, protecting Lev and Yara is her way of easing the burden on her conscience. She's desperate to do good to alleviate the guilt on her conscience from what she did to Joel. She basically explains this out loud when Lev asks her why she's helping. It wouldn't make any sense for Abby to NOT go after Lev on the island. Honestly, I genuinely don't know how you can think otherwise. That whole scene after Yara's death where Lev angrily tells her, "Those were your fucking people," and she responds with, "Hey, you're my people." Drove it home without much subtlety there, wouldn't you say?

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@krasmasov6852 If the game doesn't take me into consideration, then why shouldn't I treat it the game the same way?

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@krasmasov6852 I'll say this again, but differently. If her story has nothing to do with the person controlling her, then why should we care? We aren't facing those consequences. We aren't hurting. Why should we care?

[@looweeiss]

I actually find the trilogy idea really smart. Because like he said, you can build up each character to the point where their deaths arent only filled by shock value but with actual weight of consequence and/or emotion. it would also do justice to Joel's character in a way bc god damn that death scene gets my blood boiling

[@hashvendetta7226]

It was always meant to be a trilogy once they started work on this. It really makes this sequel hollow if you ask me. It's a gory stopgap, propping up a bunch of really boring characters.

[@hashvendetta7226]

@your face reminds me when I stepped on a burrito 3 you can gather that from the garbage non- conclusion writing the developers shat out. If this is meant to be "the conclusion" to the original story, it makes it even worse.

[@Butiguessilovememore]

@@hashvendetta7226 wrong

[@hashvendetta7226]

@@Butiguessilovememore so you think, that they intended this sequel to be the finishing line, for this story? I'm not talking about when they made the first one. I'm saying they built this game, with a trilogy in mind, and it shows. If you don't see it coming, well.. I'm sure you'll enjoy the next game.

[@TheAlphawolf6]

It pains me knowing how good this series could’ve ended up. This video made me realize there really is no reconciling the issues at this point. The damage is done. Even if they were to make a third game, the problems are too glaring to be mended. Literally just tiny tweaks to the way this story was told and we would’ve had an another amazing outing. The first game will always live on at least.

[@grant5864]

Just because something is realistic doesn't mean it is necessarily good writing or a good story. That was one of my issues with parts of the story in TLOU2.

[@ryanhuestis2955]

i like the parallel between ellie - loves space, hates water abby - loves aquarium, afraid of heights

[@briyanapanton7437]

Same I like the parallels too

[@bigoj7917]

This is the only zombie franchise where you can thoroughly discuss the game for 30 mins and not mention zombies once

[@115livingdead]

That false advertising is one of the things that pissed me off the most. Joel's death is the whole reason of Ellie's journey; why would he join her half way to help?

[@P.D.V.J]

So much potential, but characters were just thrown away left and right that I lost interest. Unlike the first game, I couldn't get invested into the characters. I remember Tess, Bill, Sam and Henry's story very well but I couldn't tell you what I know about Abby's friends. I can't even remember all their name's and the ones that come to mind are Owen and Mel.

[@shaelynmartin1996]

Same. And honestly, I didn't really connect to Owen because he felt so out of the story and disconnected. And I didn't like Mel at all. Especially with how she acted towards Abby before she died, which felt like it came out of left field.

[@abigailslade3824]

Peter Abby’s friends were just so unlikable only Lev was a good character on the Abby half of the game.

[@talonvoidgeist2386]

Last of Us 2 tried to deliver the same message that Spec Ops: The Line did But not as good... and 8 years after Spec Ops: The Line did it But the gameplay is better and the fanboys are way more rabid for LoU2 so obviously it's the greatest thing ever. Edit: I did the stupid thing of commenting before the video was over and see now that you already said this. Well played... And you know... if they'd split it into a trilogy, they could have saved a lot of money, MADE MORE money, and wouldn't have to do all that crunch time worker exploitation shit they've been catching flack for.

[@Exel3nce]

Pretty much , yeah

[@yosos2]

I don't think it even tries to get close to the same message it may be a bit similar at points but not much more

[@itsdantaylor]

Eh i disagree. Spe Ops was directly fashioned after the book Heart of Darkness, the same book that inspired Apocalypse Now. Last of Us 2 was TRYING to be a story about the cyclical destruction revenge causes. It just hinged it's entire story on the hope that all of us would sympathize with Abby at the half way point, but like 75% of us didn't. Kind of like, you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink situation.

[@MrAlbinoGhost]

@@itsdantaylor You don't need to sympathize with Abby at the end to want Ellie to spare her. You should want her to live for Ellie's sake because of how self-destructive her revenge quest has been. She lost herself in pursuing revenge, and killing Abby would be giving away her last chance at keeping some small piece of who she used to be.

[@someguy3263]

@@MrAlbinoGhost She already went off the deep end. It was far too late at that point. She might as well just finish her off.

[@hazelox7971]

Finally, someone talks about the insanity that was the false marketing.

[@Zagrid]

2:51 Why would his background be a vegetable when he is taking about this game? What do leeks have to do wi- ohhh I see.

[@pottersky1]

Winter onions, just like TLOU 2 have two extremes and a gray area in the middle.

[@DarthTalon5]

@@pottersky1 Also because leaks. Which was probably the main reason for their inclusion, even if your idea also works.

[@TheGreatCd]

???

[@TheGreatCd]

I don't get it

[@player062]

Finally someone else talked about the pacing. In all the reviews let's plays and stuff why did no one talk about the pacing I felt like that was what made the divide in the reception of the game so thank you for finally talking about the pacing so many things would of worked great or much better if they actually put them in the right time.

[@ladythmilin]

From a person with a B.A. degree in Creative Writing and various related certifications: a good story = how well you tell it >> you hit the nail on the head. People are immediately claiming fans who don't like the game for claims of poor storytelling are "making it up / grasping at straws / bigots / etc" ... and we're not. We fell in love with TLOU1 because it was a *fabulously executed story.* Simple or not, it was told so well it shook us to the bone and haunted us with its beauty and made us long for that feeling again. For all the reasons you quoted and many more, TLOU2's story was poorly *executed* - and all the amazing visuals and great VO can't make up for a poorly told story. A story is not a masterpiece or narrative success if the audience does not enjoy the journey and the sum of its parts. If we all spend half the game irritated with the fact we are even playing it, questioning our main characters' choices, unsurprised by most events unfolding, disinterested in the loss of characters we should care about, and literally exasperated and yelling at fakeout endings that disrespect the time we've invested for stupid studio-excess and developer-largesse reasons - the narrative failed. Sure, it's a commercial success, like any COD game. But like Joel's quote, this one just wasn't as good, because it tried to tell a story for all the wrong reasons. Nit: I think they took us to Santa Barbra to set up the Firefly comeback for a sequel, but even so, per your points, they handled all this poorly with pacing and should have split some of this off to an interim DLC or a third game.

[@zzxp1]

People are really exaggerating how good part 1 was and greatly overreacting about part 2. Yes the story has pacing problems but the foundation and core themes are solid. I seriously can't expect much more of that game taking as a measuring bar naughty dog previous works. I felt it was a perfect continuation, just so happened that the game should have been split into two separate games instead of one because it really reaches a point you just want it to end.

[@frankwest5388]

@@zzxp1 having solid themes is worthless in a story by itself and focusing on it when critiquing art is misplaced focus. Like having a cool theme of striving despite all the obstacles in life is just boring if the story drags on and the main character feels like a spoilt brat. So by focusing on it, you ignore everything more important and just talk about the idea of the story, rather than the story itself. Writing a theme is very easy, most great stories end with one, often without the author noticing it. But if you think of a theme first and then form the story around it, it will feel forced and preachy, because people will notice the intent behind it. A lot like those awful Christian films, that are all about how great it is to follow god and how inherently evil life without religion is. A good comparison would be to imagine writing a story like building a bridge. And a good theme in a story is like a guardrail on a bridge. It’s not needed for the bridge to be stable and work, but once you take a closer look, odds are you won’t even notice it while passing through it the first few times. When you take you time to inspect the bridge more closely however, you realize that it was there all along and the bridge so much more pretty and safer to cross for it. A good architect might not even realize they built it in, since he is so focused on making sure the foundation is even. You don’t start with a pretty guard rail and then build a bridge to fit it. Otherwise you will place it somewhere that doesn’t need a bridge and the connection to the streets feel off, parts might be too short and unstable because the measurements are all wrong and so on.

[@zzxp1]

@@frankwest5388 I agree the story drags more than it should but I don't think it is preachy. Grief is a very humane condition and the games have done a good job at portraying the human nature. Also I don't really don't understand that bridge analogy because there is no set to writing. Sure there are some guidelines but not every storyline needs to follow them hence we wouldn't have so many styles. What matters the most when writing is what you want to say and how you say it, that's the basic of it and I don't see how that applies here in particular, so if you can elaborate it more I would appreciate it because I really don't follow you there.

[@frankwest5388]

@@zzxp1 I am sorry for not being clear. My head is a jumbled mess of half baked ideas, so it is difficult for me make my thoughts understandable. What I wanted to say, was that themes should not be the focus in writing but something that just develops as the writing process goes. It is very easy to recognize, when an author started with a theme and then built the story around that. The various elements of the writing don’t connect correctly, because they don’t organically develop but rather get made to fit in the theme. That’s why I did the bridge analogy, even if it probably made more sense in my head. A theme is not something essential in writing a story. Good stories do have themes but they are never the focus of the writing process, because they aren’t essential to make a story work. Just like a guardrail on a bridge. You can have a solid bridge, even if the guardrail missing. In most cases the audience wont even notice that a exists in the story while experiencing it. Again like a guardrail. Its great if a story has a recognizable theme and it makes the story better for it. Like how a bridge gets safer or better with a good guardrail. In short its a cart and horse thing. Which is why I believe that saying a story has merit, because it has strong themes is not good criticism. A theme should add to a story, not be it. When the theme is great but the other elements of a story are not, the story still sucks. So, talking about themes rather than how the story is made, feels preachy since the important things about the story get ignored for a secondary detail. This is what the problem with a lot of the themes in TLOU2 are. It is very clear that most of the story wasn‘t written, by the author asking himself, what would logically happen next, but what would make the theme of revenge stronger. Which gives the writing an air of smugness, that drags the rest of sort down. That‘s why a common criticism of TLOU2 is that people say „I get what you mean but that doesn‘t make it good“. Again sorry for not being clear, and I hope to be easier to understand this time.

[@Jozombies115]

I agree with you that the first games story destroys part 2. It mostly comes down to it not being narratively satisfying and Joel not getting enough screen time. It just made no sense to take the heart and soul of the original and throw it away for a story about hate.

[@sebastianelliott-foster3237]

Thank you bricky this has been the best explanation I've watched on KZbin

[@WilliamConway73]

I actually just watched the entire 37 minutes of this video without stopping, you're insight was really interesting from both sides of the spectrum. Thanks for the great content brickster.

[@matttran7161]

The best line in the first game is when Joel finally calls Ellie "baby girl". It cuts like a knife and you can see the tone shift from then onwards.

[@tehrickles1447]

The crazy thing is, if they had broken it up into three games like you mentioned the backlash probably wouldn't be nearly as bad because they would have been able to release part 2 much sooner. I feel like a huge issue with it is all the buildup between trailers and expectation in dev time. Also they would have been able to tailor it a bit better with feedback from The Last Of Us 2: Abby Boogaloo on the pacing and storyboarding.

[@awesomearsam1890]

Ok this is now my favorite review of the game. being fair to the goods of the game while addressing the problems with the story in a way that says the story could be good, if it was executed differently

[@SamSpade903]

Here’s my problem, Abby had years to process her father’s death and still, in cold blood, hunted Joel years later and brutally murderer him. If she just wanted revenge, a gunshot would have done fine. Abby and Ellie’s experiences and behaviors are apples and oranges. Trying to equate the two doesn’t work. And frankly, Abby doing what she did and how she did it, after reflecting and processing how terrible losing her own father was, really goes to show she is a shit person and probably a sociopath. The writing for her and the way the story TELLS you she’s a better person is just shit. The writing is shit in that regard and full of sanctimony.

[@krasmasov6852]

Why would that be fine? Joel did more harm than a single gunshot. He destroyed Jerry's life's work and robbed the world of a vaccine. How do you pay that back with Abby's old sense of retributive justice? Also, how is she a sociopath? What are you even on about?

[@SamSpade903]

@@krasmasov6852 it’s not difficult to grasp. There’s a reason why first degree murder (premeditated) carries a higher penalty than 2nd (heat of the moment). There’s also a reason why the assault before the murder is called an aggravating factor, and is tacked on to a murder charge and results in a harsher sentence. Abby’s revenge was premeditated, deliberated, and was performed with malice aforethought and included torture. It shows a blatant disregard for life in general. The torture and murder wasn’t in the heat of the moment. Abby is a terrible person and the writing in effort to make her seem “just like Ellie” is shit and shows clear ignorance in the part of the person who wrote the story/her.

[@krasmasov6852]

@@SamSpade903 No, just blatant disregard for Joel's life. Also, Ellie tortured Nora too, you know. How is that any different? You are just pathologically committed to hating Abby after she committed that atrocity, and you're mad the game didn't portray her as cartoonishly evil.

[@SamSpade903]

@@krasmasov6852 there’s nothing pathological about it. Look up what pathological actually means. It’s evident you will defend Abby as a character regardless of the false equivalencies you employ to make your arguments. Cya

[@SirDankleberry]

@@krasmasov6852 Hey Neil.

[@kingkaiser95]

huh... didnt expect to learn about apples in a bricky video.... sweet.

[@betchersgland7236]

Sour ones are the best, heretic.

[@PsychoDiesel48]

@@betchersgland7236 Granny Smith for life my guy

[@ChavsberryGaming]

Ellie was just trying to provide some.... *BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD*

[@GG-ou7it]

That explains the massive gains Abby got it was a gift from chaos, makes sense now.

[@ИгнатАртурович]

Worst part was how Joel died: -hey we are looking for a guy named Joel. -Oh I am Joel. Stupidest logic in zombie apocalypse setting.

[@CDexie]

She knew about Tommy too...

[@addison_v_ertisement1678]

@CDexie "Hey, Tommy, you pos." "Hey don't talk to him that way." "Why shouldn't I?" "Because I'm Joel, the person you're looking for."

[@davute9546]

It's 1 am here

[@pzychxzis4044]

Wellvome

[@panosfasoul699]

2

[@spiritupgrades]

hey how's that neff going?

[@mateoemilioalfaroalcega7498]

Yes

[@Sandman23]

It's now 7

[@johannfunn6962]

You really hit the nail on the head. I had so many negative thoughts I couldn’t articulate and you got them exactly. The *stupid long* “haha bet you regret killing these NPCs” sequence just sucked any chance of feeling bad. Also yes that nightmare last arc. Like you said, if things were just rearranged it would have been better.

[@peterisbb]

A great concise overview of this game. I've been wondering what the fuss has been about as I haven't played either. Had some friends tell me about the false marketing and the poor revenge story, had some other friends tell me they'd love it. Good job Bricky

[@GOffensive]

Out of the many playthroughs I watched after finishing the game myself, yours was the most fun to watch by a landslide. You're truly one of the few actual "content creators" on this platform and I'm super looking forward to watch this.

[@Quarmacy]

Ellie when she visits the house suddenly has Dina's bracelet back, has different clothes on and her gear is gone. She also enters through the front door even though she left from the back door. Ellies also says nothing when seeing Dina is gone. There is a note in the house you can find while holding Jesse jr. and you discover that Maria has a home in Jackson waiting for them. This leads me to believe that Ellie is already with Dina in Jackson and is going back to the house for Joel's guitar but decided to leave it. Finally forgiving him and moving on.

[@CEWIII9873]

That is a whole lot of wishful thinking. Did you also imagine Ellie would find her missing fingers there?

[@xande5345]

I think if they just put Ellie's an Abby's chapters alternating with one another, you'd feel the dread of Ellie getting closer to those other characters, afraid she was gonna kill them. That'd make the game's theme hit WAY harder while not making us play through the same story twice. They could have Ellie and Joel and Abby and her dad's flashbacks in that mix as well. That should fix some things I bet.

[@imarock.7662]

I think the false marketing is one of the things that pisses me off the most. Like that's just slimey that ND did that.

[@justincren8259]

you now know the pain of the halo 5 fans

[@romnickrosario6048]

Reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2. Never played the game but i know of how they promoted it with the protagonist of game 1 but then only let you play as him for the first few minutes of the game then switched over to a new guy you never heard or seen ever and you play him for the rest of the game. I found it hilarious but I’m sure a lot of fans would disagree

[@willfanofmanyii3751]

People are fine when Marvel does it.

[@hozairibrahimkhail5995]

WillFanofMany II what are u on about?

[@Eyeshield11721]

@@hozairibrahimkhail5995 He’s talking out of his ass, more likely.

[@Davwid]

Whenever i think of tlou2 i think of the quote from nakey jakey about how the way the game tries to teach you that revenge and violence is bad but completely ignores the fact its a video game the game doesnt immerse you in the setting because alot of the violence is forced upon you

[@TheInupapa]

Jesse would've been one of the best characters to expand. They did him too dirty.

[@yeet_42069]

ikr, he's the only few characters who is really chill, not a hypersexual, has humor, and doesnt say "pendejo" or "puta" every 5 seconds

[@doctoradventure413]

The most shocking part of the game isn’t the way they kill Joel it’s the fact that nobody cares when their friends are killed especially Jesse and Owen

[@Ronaldo_Fortnite]

@@yeet_42069 who in the game is hypersexual?

[@yeet_42069]

@@Ronaldo_Fortnite Dina, we see her and Ellie being very touchy in like 80% of their screen time

[@blankadams3120]

"Revenge isn't worth pursuing"... except Abby gets hers the moment she shows up in game by killing Joel, so it's really more, "Some revenge is okay, but some people don't have a good reason to get revenge."

[@colbythomas2300]

I mean if you ignore that Abby's revenge got literally everyone she cared about except one person killed

[@NJayXnockout]

The best part of this video is educating us about the full bad apples saying and the fact that this is an actual thing: all apples get spoiled

[@Matej_Sojka]

This entire ramble can be summarized thusly: Bricky likes the plot points and game play so he thinks the game is not as bad as people think even as he agrees with their grievances. But Bricky, a story driven game needs plot points to be turned into a good story, otherwise it is a bad game. It does not matter how much sense the characters and plot make on paper if execution does not deliver. LOU2 is a bad game with good game play that was taken from the previous superior title. Which would be fine for a shooter. Not so for an interactive movie.

[@krasmasov6852]

The execution did deliver though so eh.

[@blueflare3848]

Three years late on this, but I enjoyed this review. It was objective and you praised what the game did well and criticized what it didn’t, but in a way that’s actually constructive and isn’t just blindly hating it. You described a lot of the problems I personally have with this game.