Five years after its original release, The Last of Us Part 2 received a free update, adding a mode that presents the game’s non-linear narrative in chronological order. Given the game’s track record of controversy, it wasn’t surprising that the announcement was met with mixed reception.
Over the years, The Last of Us Part 2 has been on the receiving end of a wide range of complaints — about how there are more human enemies than infected ones, about the direction of its non-chronological story, and about an ending that some perceived as unsatisfying, just to name a few. After its mixed reception, developer Naughty Dog released a remaster that adds new game modes like “No Return” (a roguelike survival mode) and additional content, such as lost levels and behind-the-scenes material, to flesh out the story.
The Last of Us Part 2 was mired in controversy even before its release, with early leaks hinting at Joel’s brutal death. When the game finally launched, backlash from fans of the original intensified, not just over Joel’s fate, but because players felt misled by Naughty Dog’s marketing of the game, which withheld Abby’s role and misrepresented Joel’s.
Image: Naughty Dog/Sony Computer Entertainment America
The narrative of Part 2 aimed to explore moral ambiguity, much like the original game’s ending, where Joel saves Ellie from being dissected by doctors hoping her immunity could lead to a cure for the cordyceps virus. That potential cure was never guaranteed, and Joel shoots (and kills) the lead surgeon, who, as revealed in Part 2, was Abby’s father. Her actions, then, are driven by revenge, completing a cycle of violence that the sequel forces players to confront head-on. But exploring this grey area of morality wasn’t received as well by players as some of the story beats in Part 1.
However, that’s the story Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann aimed to tell. It’s coherent, using dual perspectives of Abby and Ellie to force players to wrestle with terrible actions happening in the name of revenge. The chronological mode comes across as if it’s addressing criticisms retroactively, attempting to make the story more palatable and digestible to ultimately smooth over the negative reception the game received. The same could be said about the HBO series.
Even though its creators took some liberties in adapting the first game for TV, spectators didn’t seem to mind; the first season of HBO’s The Last of Us was a success by many measures. In season 2, where the series begins to adapt the story of Part 2, the story of revenge takes a backseat in favor of highlighting parenthood as a theme. Although there are elements of parenthood in the source material, I believe revenge is the crux of the story. To me, it appears that the second season of the series put the revenge aspect of the story on the back burner.
Image: Naughty Dog/Sony Interactive Entertainment
These choices seem to me like the decisions of a creative team trying to rewrite history. But The Last of Us Part 2’s story is just fine the way it is. It’s a challenging story by the very nature of having to play as Abby following Joel’s murder — a narrative framework that, by design, is supposed to elicit strong emotions. Learning about Abby through your time with her is supposed to make you see life from her perspective and understand that she, too, wants to protect the innocent people in her life.
Abby’s story reflects one of the truisms of The Last of Us: There is no good or bad guy. The ending is supposed to be about learning how revenge just begets more revenge, and how we as a society can never move forward until someone shoulders the burden and moves beyond the hate, before you end up losing everything, just like Ellie lost everything — her parental figure, her lover, her soon-to-be child, her pinky, whatever semblance of innocence she had left, and, of course, her ability to play guitar and connect with the man who taught her.
The moral ambiguity of Part 2 made it timeless, but in chasing broader approval, Druckmann seems to be sanding down the edges. Five years on, no tweak or reframe will put the toothpaste back in the tube. Part 2 wasn’t for everyone, and maybe it shouldn’t be.