The Last of Us Part II lets you play as stealthily as you want, but plenty of times it forces you to go along and kill people without being given another choice. In The Last of Us Part II, the deaths and violence is as brutal and personal as it gets-with friends of your victims screaming their names as you, the protagonist, kill them. The clear reading seems to be that the game wants players to ask themselves why they like violent games where they mow down countless faceless drones, but the Abby twist gives this choice another meaning. Whenever you kill a soldier, their companions scream their name, and trainers shout the name of the dogs you kill. The Last of Us Part II goes to great lengths to make you realize that every person you kill has a name and a family who will miss them.
Much has been said about the game’s bleak, realistic approach to violence, which isn’t entertaining as much as it makes you feel sick for simply continuing to play. Had we met Abby and her dad in the first game, and then experienced Abby’s pain at losing her dad, wouldn’t people consider Joel and Ellie to be the unsympathetic monsters of the story? The love triangle between Ellie, the girl she loves, and her ex-boyfriend? We also get Abby involved in a romantic triangle with her childhood crush and the woman he is now involved with. Seeing Abby and her dad bond over their love for animals mirrors a scene in the first game where Joel and Ellie encounter a herd of giraffes walking down the streets of a deserted Salt Lake City. The flashbacks we get to Abby’s past are eerily similar to those we get of Ellie’s, and to her own story in the first game. Indeed, as you spend half the game’s length playing as Abby, The Last of Us Part II repeatedly argues that Abby and Ellie are two sides of the same coin. In a few minutes, the game re-contextualizes the “villain” to make them not that different from the “hero.” Abby, as seen in The Last of Us Part II. One of the doctors was Abby’s father, as you learn when the game has you replay a flashback to Abby’s childhood. The original ended with Joel killing the doctors that could develop a cure to the infection that’s turning people into zombies, but one that would cost Ellie’s life. Turns out, Abby killing Joel is a direct consequence of the events of the first Last of Us game. It cuts to black, and then goes back in time to show you the events of the game from Abby’s perspective.
But when Ellie finally finds and confronts Abby, the game pulls the biggest ace from under its sleeve. We experience Ellie’s pain and loss through her eyes, so we feel the anger she aims at Abby. Like any revenge story, it doesn’t matter how much violence and death Ellie leaves behind, we still sympathize with Ellie because we spent the entire first game getting to know both her and Joel. This horrific act of violence leads Joel’s surrogate daughter, Ellie, to torture and murder her way across Seattle, hunting down those involved in Joel’s death to find Abby.
Within the first couple of hours of the game we see Joel, the protagonist of the first game, getting beat to a pulp and then killed by a woman named Abby. This is the point of no return if you haven’t yet played The Last of Us Part II.
note: OK, seriously, spoilers are coming.
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