The Last of Us: Part II

Spoilers for both games.

The Last of Us: Part 1 has two endings. Or, it has two contexts for the ending. This has been talked to death, but it’s important for what I have to say, so bear with me.

The final sequence takes a classic video game scenario and flips it on its head. It ends with a cliché video game story: kill the bad guys, save the girl. But it’s mangled by circumstance, because you’re not infiltrating an enemy base. You’re shooting up a hospital. So, it has two interpretations: Joel is a hero who saved his surrogate daughter’s life, or he’s a monster.

People who like those hyper-masculine themes see this as a celebration of violence – a storm of bullets bravely faced by a rugged man who will let nothing stand in his way. People who don’t like those tropes see this as a warning; this is the price of unchecked masculine ego. He might have saved Ellie’s life, but left a trail of innocent blood in his wake. Both of these interpretations can be correct at the same time. Joel is both a hero and a monster.

The sequel explores how these acts of violence affect people. That’s why it’s so horrifically gruesome.

Truth be told, I didn’t enjoy playing this game. It was not a fun experience. Being forced to kill people in these brutal ways was nauseating, even if they’re just characters in a video game. The structure itself was frustrating as well, specifically when you start playing as Abby.

Villains become more engaging when they have a tragic backstory, to garner sympathy. So, it’s no surprise that we play as Abby in the beginning and then just after she shows up at the theatre. However, what is surprising is just how long we stay in her shoes.

You play as Abby for roughly ten hours, about the same length of time as Ellie. In the moment it feels like a waste of time. In retrospect, it was absolutely necessary.

Sympathy is relatively easy to provide in a character. Empathy, however, is wildly different. Sympathy is simply feeling pity for a character, understanding their viewpoint as an outside observer. Empathy is looking at the world through their eyes, really feeling their emotions as if they were your own. Playing as Abby for an hour or even five would have garnered sympathy. For empathy, though, those ten hours were critical. By the end, I forgot that this was Ellie’s story, and when the game finally caught back up at the theatre, I wanted to take her down. Ellie became the villain in a very tangible way that could not have been accomplished through just sympathy.

So, then I had to play as Ellie again. I had to play as this character who I didn’t even like anymore, hunting down Abby as if the last twenty hours hadn’t happened. I was frustrated. I didn’t want to finish this game. I wanted her to put down her gun and go home, but that’s not what Ellie wanted to do. She wanted to finish this in the only way she knew how.

This game is frustrating. People who want Ellie to kill Abby are frustrated by the sudden shift to her perspective. People who were won over by Abby don’t want to play as Ellie again. Neil has stated in interviews, that disconnect was intentional. It was to show the player that this is not a story of revenge, it’s the story of an obsession that has grown out of control, and what the cost of that obsession really is.

The last hour of the game is a perfect coda on Joel’s arc. Ellie is in a similar situation: kill the bad guys, find the girl. But this time, it’s mangled in a totally different way. These bad guys are human traffickers; they delight in torture and death. They’re Bad Guys. Eventually, you fight your way to the middle of the compound and free the prisoners. It should be a victory, but it feels hollow. Ellie doesn’t want to save anyone. If she’d known that Abby wasn’t in that cell, she would have left all of those prisoners to their fate. She’s still obsessed with finding Abby, and saving these people was meaningless to her. She’s the villain.

I hated this final hour. During the final confrontation I just stopped hitting the button prompts at one point. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Abby any more. I was forced to play as this character that I’d lost all empathy for, trying to kill a person who I now saw as the Good Guy.

Of course, these games aren’t about good guys or bad guys. They’re about people, and the awful things we do to each other with the best intentions. This isn’t the first piece of entertainment to explore this idea, and it won’t be the last. However, it’s one of the few that really examines empathy. That’s why the enemies have names. It’s not just a cheap trick that Neil thought would be cool. It forces you to question whether or not this rampage is worth it. You’re not just taking out NPC’s, you’re killing people. This game makes you question who you empathize with and why. It’s about when we choose to be heroes and when we choose to be monsters.