Video games. What do we think of when we think of those words…Childish? Silly? Stupid? Military shooter? Have I got some news for you—things have changed. Yes, we still have our Mario and Zelda games, and yes they are still wonderful experiences in their own right, and no they haven’t started featuring a deeper story or more adult themes. But we also have a whole other set of video games that *do* have deeper stories, that *do* have adult themes, that *do* ask difficult questions. I’ve spent much of my adulthood practically apologizing for *still* playing video games at my age, but the thing is, I don’t have to do that anymore. Video games can offer one of the most impactful experiences of any media, and we would all be foolish not to recognize their utility as a source of enjoyment and education for people of all ages and backgrounds.
To that end, I just finished The Last of Us Part 2 and felt compelled to write about my experience. First, let me offer a few disclaimers. I don’t know the franchise especially well so I might get some details wrong. And I’m not pretending that I have some especially insightful take or anything; many of my reactions and experiences were likely strategically induced by the developers. But this game produced more emotion in me than possibly any other fictional media ever has, and I wanted needed to talk about it. So, here’s my essay. Note: This piece has spoilers for both The Last of Us video games.
Part 2 follows the first game, a game in which the world has basically ended after a fungal plague takes over mankind—a not-zombie but basically zombie arrangement where people affected by the plague are referred to as “Infected.” Almost everyone gets killed, society collapses, fast forward 20 years and the world’s population has been reduced to (I think?) 24 million. Military factions rule the day, and any movement outside protected walls is endangered by the prospect of encounters with the Infected that roam the earth.
Enter protagonist A, Joel, a seemingly everyday man—albeit a somewhat dishonest everyday man, a smuggler—whose daughter was killed during the initial outbreak. This is the part where I’ll fast forward in describing the plot of the first game so as to get to the second. In the aftermath of the outbreak, Joel gets tasked with “delivering” a girl—Ellie—to a band of resistance fighters known as the Fireflies, and the game basically follows their path through treacherous streets on the way to their destination.
After many tense, riveting, and murderous encounters, they eventually get where they need to be, and Joel turns Ellie over to the Fireflies. It turns out that Ellie is immune to the fungal infection which otherwise claims all who are bitten or scratched by the Infected, and the Fireflies want to make a vaccine using her blood. The problem? Ellie needs to die for the procedure to work. Having just bonded through adversity, and seeing Ellie as his second chance at fatherhood, Joel decides he won’t let that happen, and rescues her unconscious body from the operating table while killing all Fireflies who get in his way. At the very end, Joel lies to Ellie and tells her that there were actually dozens just like her (immune), and that they didn’t need her after all, so as to not burden her with the guilt of what had transpired.
End Part 1. There’s a lot to say about this first game, but in order to keep this focused, I’ll restrict this post to analysis of Part 2.
Part 2 follows Ellie and Joel’s new life. They now live as part of an establishment, Jackson, a protected city seemingly replete with the normalacies of pre-infection life. Times are not perfect—Ellie has figured out what Joel did when he rescued her from certain death, and she is not happy about it. By her view, he robbed her life of purpose; her life and death could have meant something. She can’t forgive him, though we learn at the end that she wants to try.
Shortly into the game, we’re introduced to a new character outside of Jackson, Abby, a second person of whom we take control. She seems bent on revenge for some reason, as she and her party are seeking out one specific person. Conflict with the ravages of the “normal” world lead to her being rescued by Joel and his brother Tommy, who coincidentally are on patrol in the area. As Abby directs them to the nearest safe area, an outpost with her group, we learn that Joel just happens to be the exact person she was looking for, and Joel and Tommy walk right into their trap.
Torture ensues as Abby beats on Joel, and our perspective shifts to Ellie as she (we) races to rescue him. She arrives too late, just in time to see a battered Joel receive the final death blow from Abby’s golf club. Fade to black.
Joel’s death was difficult to watch, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that his death was the ultimate hardship of the game. We’ve spent a few dozen hours controlling Joel in the first game, and having this identification be broken in such a brutal way was a punch to the gut. It was further complicated by the fact that the player just spent some time getting to know Abby first-hand through direct control of her character just moments before, so we’ve developed a small level of understanding of her world view as well. You’re left with nothing but questions, sadness, and anger.
The direction of the game then becomes apparent: this will be a revenge tale. For some reason we can’t understand at the time, Abby and her group have spared Ellie and Tommy—who was also present at Joel’s death—and we take control of Ellie as she becomes hell bent on finding Abby to enact justice. We spend the next roughly ten hours playing through the game as Ellie in her quest to avenge Joel, leading right up to an epic confrontation with Abby.
Ellie’s path is ruthless. She has become a cold, hardened killer, a harsh juxtaposition from her original innocence and naivete in the first game. Whereas firing her first shots from a gun were met with hesitation and reservation, now she kills with impunity. She’s on a mission and nothing else matters. Throughout this experience we see her haunting memories of Joel’s death, grim reminders of our motivation.
These haunting memories become touchpoints throughout the game, and they regularly cause Ellie to reconsider her present actions. What I find especially welcoming about this aspect of the game is that these flashbacks persist at all times, even during periods of calm and content; she can’t get rid of that part of her past. It feels authentic. All too often in video games, we traipse through hordes of undead or zombies or just plain bad people, killing left and right in the name of our own personal justice, never pausing and reflecting on the gravity of our actions. But here, we reflect, we understand, we partake. We don’t just see the evolution of Ellie; we experience it. We traveled with her as an impressionable, innocent young girl, we came to understand her viewpoints, we felt her passion for comics, we are charmed by her sense of humor as she reads entries from pun joke books. We lived those moments, and we experienced her growth and subsequent decline into a hardened killer. It’s one of many examples how this game not only transcends the storytelling abilities of most games that came before it; it transcends other mediums through its unique offerings of interactivity and interplay. We are Ellie.
At this point the player can identify with Ellie’s actions. After all, we built a strong relationship with Joel as well, so we’re hit hard when he’s killed. We also want justice. Ellie’s genocide of all offending parties may be a hard pill to swallow, but at least we get it. However once we reach that epic confrontation with Abby, the game throws a hard curve, and we find ourselves controlling Abby at various points in the past that led up to that confrontation.
The game likes jumping between timelines, but for the purpose of this discussion the specifics of each jump are not especially important, apart from the big shift from Ellie to Abby. We learn that, surprise, when Joel broke in and killed all the Fireflies to rescue Ellie in Part 1, he also killed the main surgeon, the one expert left in the world who might be able to develop a vaccine with Ellie’s body—a man who also happened to be Abby’s dad.
So yes, at this point we realize that Abby was on her own tale of revenge when she killed Joel in the first place. Now things get really interesting.
At this stage, we’ve spent an entire game (Part 1) getting to know Joel and Ellie. We’ve bonded with them and their struggle, we love them for their strengths as well as their faults. Then we spent essentially another entire game taking Ellie on a quest for justice to avenge her brutally murdered father figure, Joel. We root for her bloodlust because we are so sad for Joel’s death, we wish for her success. Then, we have this all ripped into pieces as we learn that Abby’s motivation was her own tale of justice, that she was acting in a way that bears a striking resemblance to the character that we’ve just empathized with for 25-30 hours.
This is where the medium really comes into play. I don’t think I would have felt the deep connections that I felt to these characters if I wasn’t the one controlling them, if I wasn’t the one who was ultimately responsible for many of their actions. It was in this way that Part 2 exemplified the unique ability of video games as an interactive medium to produce a deep-seeded core of understanding about a character’s situation. Movies and TV shows just can’t do this because it’s so obvious that you’re a third-party observer; you don’t feel the weight of the decision that you (the character) make, instead it’s all an act that’s being put on in front of you.
Now I’m not saying that there’s not some degree of that happening here, because of course there is. We are still having the experience that the developers want us to have. But I argue that it’s a deeper experience, a more guttural, kinesthetic, raw feeling. It affects the entire body. And when the goal of the developers is to produce empathy, to produce understanding…then the effects of this feeling can be profound.
When I shifted to controlling Abby and learned of her perspective, I was conflicted in a novel way that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in any form of media before. I truly understood both sides in this conflict. Now that in itself is not unique, but what is unique is that I played the story through the eyes of each protagonist, and I was able to develop a strong connection with them and the characters that they meet throughout the story. At times I bonded with Abby’s friends, friends that are eventually mercilessly slaughtered by…well, technically it’s Ellie, but really it’s us. It’s me. I already killed them during the first part of the game. I struggle to find a comparative experience to the nasty, rotting, despondent feeling in the pit of my stomach as I joked with the very people I killed just hours before. I literally experienced a bad taste in my mouth.
Part of the reason I developed these strong connections and had these sincere reactions is surely due to the unparalleled degree of realism, the fact that we’ve reached a point where video games can so authentically mirror the expressions and reactions of real people that the line between game and movie and real life fades away. Developer Naughty Dog has created a world and experience unlike any other, and the deep level of immersion created a disturbing quagmire of conflict in my stomach. Boiling this down to something like “good graphics” would be harshly reductive; they’ve created a world with living, meaningful, relatable characters. Sometimes, when you kill an enemy, you hear one of their colleagues call out their name in distress. When you need to reload your revolver, the animation tracks to how many bullets you’ve fired, instead of just a standardized reloading sequence. When you’re walking through a hallway during a dialogue sequence, you can see full classrooms in session, with unique interactions between students and teachers, all from a scene that you would never have seen if you didn’t diverge from the main path and think to explore. I could go on and on and on with examples like these, but suffice to say that this virtual world feels real like no other. At least, none other since Red Dead Redemption 2, another recent game that also created a beautiful and authentic world, but one without the deep, relatable relationships that make Last of Us Part 2 so special.
Part 2’s realism goes far beyond the surface of simply understanding each character’s background and portraying granular character and environmental models. Throughout each campaign, you come to interact with scores of interesting and fleshed out characters. First, you do this through Ellie’s point of view. We learn about her perspective on relationships through her lesbian romance with Dina and the way she interacts with others in her communities. We also come to understand and appreciate Ellie’s mental struggles with uncertainty and conflict. We see the way she deals with the enemy, with cold, calculating, callous intent.
When we take on Abby’s perspective and travel through her journey, we learn of her own relationships with an endearing cast of characters (which you later…by which I mean earlier…kill as Ellie). This isn’t even limited to humans; you play fetch with dogs as Abby that you brutally silence as Ellie. Viewing these situations intimately from different perspectives was one the most challenging examples of mental gymnastics that I can remember.
This perspective switching produces a tremendous inner conflict that I’m still to this moment grappling with. After all we learn about Abby and Ellie, we can empathize with both of them. Ellie was an innocent child who was thrust into an unwelcome role as the world’s sacrificial lamb, forced to deal with death as a means of survival at first, but as a means of conflict resolution in the future. Abby was a sweet young girl whose father was taken from her, whose upbringing and whose chance at a peaceful life were harshly ripped from her grasp.
As I played through Abby’s campaign, I experienced a dramatic shift in perspective amongst my glut of emotion. I started out hating her, of course. She killed Joel. Like the aforementioned bad taste in my mouth, I literally had a nauseous, dirty feeling in my stomach as I started controlling her, one that lasted for hours. I didn’t want to play as her, damnit, I mean what the hell, Naughty Dog?!?! I don’t want to spend an entire half of the game as this character. Even after learning of her justified anger, of the death of her father at Joel’s hands, I still didn’t like her. She killed Joel. She hurt Ellie.
It’s a testament to the power of human relationships that I still felt compelled to hate her based on her murder of Joel. True, it was a gruesome murder, one rife with slow, painful, hateful strikes, one of countless examples of Naughty Dog’s authenticity that at times seemed excessive but in retrospect produced an immersion without which the player would likely not experience such strong emotions. But I should have been able to better understand her at that point. Her father was killed. Her father, who was the only person left who had a chance at saving humanity’s future, was killed. Humanity was killed. Despite that, I still hated Abby.
But, as was surely the point of the game, as I took on more and more of her perspective, my feelings changed. I saw her grow as a person. For example, Abby ends up aligning with a trans boy named Lev; initially, she was hesitant and uncertain about him but eventually grew and came to view him as a close friend or even family. Gone was the tunnel-visioned hatred of this Joel-killer; in its place was a confused desire to understand, to help. Isn’t there a way that *I* could help both of these characters? To say that The Last of Us Part 2 is lobbying for the player to consider and adopt other people’s perspectives is a bit too on the nose, but that is surely one of its achievements.
How many other games include a gay protagonist? Sadly, not many. And if they do, that aspect will surely be a consequential part of the experience. Yet here, Ellie’s lesbian relationship is viewed the way it should be, as a powerful bond between two people trying to survive in this world of horrors. It doesn’t need to be the focus. True, there is a bigoted remark by one of the characters, but even there the focus isn’t on the hate, it’s on how Ellie absorbs and deals with such discrimination, with a tired and belated “we’ve seen it all before, you’re old news bub.” And that immerses the player even further. True, Lev’s transition to a boy is mocked by those in his circle, and it is a big factor in his banishment from their establishment. But apart from this recognition of the way that people might treat a person in their situation, the abuse they endure is not their defining quality. Lev is kind, caring, thoughtful, nimble. In this way the game helps the player grasp the innate similarity between all of us.
Adopting perspectives continues to be a theme as you play through Abby’s campaign right up to that epic confrontation moment with Ellie. A particular poignant lesson uttered by Abby at that moment could be taken by all of us, not just those in Ellie’s rather unique position: she seethes “I gave you your life, and you wasted it.” Abby realizes that Ellie is the same girl that she let go when she murdered Joel, and that Ellie’s quest for revenge will lead to her undoing. Not now, however: Some people die but Abby and Ellie escape each other’s grasp to live another day. Abby embarks on a quest with Lev to discover a recently discovered small group of remaining Fireflies, and Ellie returns to a simpler way of living at a farm.
Some more perspective switching ensues, and we eventually find out that Abby’s been captured by yet another military faction, only this one abuses its prisoners and threatens them with torturous methods of death. There was a time in my life where I might have scoffed at such a portrayal of mob rule, but here in 2020 I had no reaction at all—I’ve ceased being surprised when groups are able to recruit significant support for conspiracy theories and extreme behavior. Abby meets one of these threats head on as she is captured and then sentenced to be crucified on pillars in punishment for trying to escape. It is here that Ellie finds Abby. Ellie had managed to pull things together and escape all of the conflict by moving to a farmhouse with the love of her life Dina, but she could not settle. She could not sleep at night knowing that Joel’s killer was still out there, as she continues being tormented by recurring visions of horrible violence and Joel’s death. There was simply no way for her to escape these memories. So, despite arriving at this seemingly happy epilogue, she had ventured out yet one more time in search of vengeance, and eventually found Abby in this pitiful state of crucifixion.
One of the saddest parts about Ellie’s continuing quest for revenge is that it’s taken all of the humanity that she had left and thrown it on the fire. She’s now just a shell of a person, ironically walking around in her own version of a zombified state as she pushes forward with this final revenge plan. She’s only going through the motions. At this point she mows down enemies on the last leg of her quest, making off-the-cuff remarks dripping with apathy and indifference: “fine, whatever” as she kills yet another oppressor. “Aaabbbbbbbyyyyyy…” Ellie moans under her breath. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t even know what the hell she’s doing out there anymore.
At the point where Ellie stumbles upon Abby on death’s door, to say that she is confused about her own feelings would be a gross oversimplification. She sought out Abby to kill her, but upon seeing her in such a pitiful state of suffering, she can’t just end it there. Instead she lets her down and walks with her to a rescue boat—with her, Abby, and Lev all in a state of shock and disbelief at the situation—but as they are close to parting ways, Ellie catches a vision of Joel’s murder and she realizes that she can’t let Abby go. Abby won’t fight Ellie in this state, so Ellie resorts to threatening an unconscious Lev with her knife if she continues to resist. They fight in a brutal and jarring scene, and Ellie gains the upper hand at one point. As Ellie chokes out Abby underwater, she becomes conflicted and lets her go, just telling her to leave as she sobs at the misery that is her mind and her life. They part ways and Ellie leaves to go back home to Dina.
Only there’s no Dina to go back home to. Sadly Dina’s gone when Ellie gets back, as she’d had enough of the never-ending revenge quest. Instead we’re left with a pitiful, sad guitar scene where Ellie can no longer properly play—two of her fingers were bitten off by Abby in their last fight—followed by Ellie leaving their house and walking off into the woods. End scene. Thousands of credits roll.
I cried for most of the credits sequence. I’m not really even sure entirely why. I think I was just tremendously sad for Ellie. She lost it all. She came out of this shit world teeming with shitty cruelty by landing a peaceful farm life with the woman that she loved. It was the ending we want for her; despite all her anger and murder, despite her revenge quest to kill a character that we also empathize with, we still root for her, we want a future for her. At least I did. And she could not settle. She let her mind win, let her thoughts of revenge take precedence over everything else in her life. When we see her failed attempt to play guitar at the end—she finally had the courage to play the song that she so closely tied to Joel, but now is physically unable to perform it—and we see that lost gaze on her face, we know that she’s not found the answer to her question, and that she never will. She truly is a lost soul, a shell of a human being doomed to wander the land in the same way the Infected do, without vision or purpose. Life is bouncing from one suffering to the next. It’s all pointless. So why bother.
I’m still thinking about why this game has resonated so deeply. Maybe it’s the connection of this theme to life itself? Maybe it’s the fact that for most of us, we are this wandering Ellie? We stumble through life, bouncing from one conflict to the next, never sure of ourselves or who we are or what we want. I’m not sure the developers wanted to connect this moment to the story of humanity, but is there really that much difference? Maybe I was crying over the collective humanity of it all. No, we don’t live in a post-apocalyptic dysfunctional society, but we do live in our own bubbles, our own version of their factions. We do shelter ourselves from other viewpoints and attack those who are different from us, who might threaten our way of thinking or way of life. We spend our lives doing what we think we’re supposed to do. I guess Ellie’s struggle, though aggrandized here, isn’t so different from each of our own struggles. Maybe we’re all wandering and lost, and maybe that’s why I was so sad, because most of us are doomed to that fate, to never seeing the forest for the trees. I know I’ve felt that way.
Honestly, in the moment, though, I doubt it. At the time, I was crying because Ellie was a tortured soul. Because Abby was a tortured soul. By playing each of those characters for dozens of hours, I identified with them in a way that just doesn’t happen in other forms of media. I felt like I am Ellie, like I am Abby. And in fact we are all tortured souls in one way or another, and until we recognize that we’ll all just end up fighting one another until the end of time, alone, isolated, and unhappy. And with those states of mind, there’s no need for a post-apocalyptic wasteland; we’re already living in one.
Whatever the reason, I am sincerely grateful to all the developers who put in long hours to make this game happen. They dedicated many years and countless hours, surely enduring extreme crunch to make the game as good as it could be, and it shows. It was a meaningful, heartfelt experience, one that leaves me digesting its content to this day and likely much further into the future. It’s possible I’ll pick up this game again at some point, but for now I just need some space. It was not a feel-good tale, but it sure did make me feel. And think. The Last of Us Part 2 is far from a perfect game, but it is *most certainly* a masterpiece.
—
P.S. If you’d like to get a taste of the game, casually watch this 5 minute clip. I chose it specifically because there’s not really anything remarkable, it’s just a nice perfect little representation of Part 2 as a video game. Ellie’s song in the second half makes me tear up every time. Every single, god, damn, time. This game hit me hard, but I’m so glad I had a chance to exist in their world and in their lives, if only for a small chunk of mine.