The Last of Us Part II (PS4, June 19, 2020) Video Game • Page 22

The more I think about it, the more it would’ve made sense to end this game on the cliffhanger of wondering whether or not Ellie will go after Abby in Santa Barbara, and then that final two-hour stretch could have really been its own third game.

 

I thought it ended there and I was pretty miffed. I loved the epilogue.

 

It should have ended four hours before it did.

 

Yeah that would have missed the climax of the game and been a big mistake. The entirety of both arcs wasn't finished until the very end.

I've seen a lot of suggestions on how to make the game better structurally and they're all really bad ideas for telling this story.

 

word, thanks for the response! I've been trying to convince myself to buy Bloodborne (I don't do horror well and I know that it's supposed to be extremely difficult) so maybe I'll finally do it.

 

Man, this game really is incredible. I'm in the Abby sequence now. Just after the aquarium part with Owen. I love the subtle parts they hint at that you just played as El.

Where is Haven? I see a lot a talk about it, but I don't recall if I was there.

 

I'll rephrase it. I meant four hours shorter, not literally four hours exactly in the story from the end.

 

was referring to the post that said it should have ended at the farm on a cliffhanger. I think it could have used a few less of the standard encounter sections but wouldn't cut anything significant from the game.

 

It should have ended at the boats with a portal opening and their future selves coming to tell them they need to go back in time to stop Joel from meeting Ellie in the first place and then another portal opens from the past saying they need to stop their future selves from trying to mess with the timeline and then there's a giant fight between all their past and future selves.

 

Now that we know they have no problem with continuing this story despite how the first one ended, it feels more than a bit disingenuous for them to pretend like there isn’t going to be a part 3 by providing closure to every major plot thread and character in this game. By ending it with the ambiguity of wondering whether or not Ellie will go after Abby, it forces the player to contend with whether or not Ellie has indeed learned her lesson about the price of revenge and whether she’s willing to throw away the beautiful life she’s made for herself in order to finish the job.

Then the inevitable third game can close out the story in a way that doesn’t feel crammed into two hours right at the end. And waste a really interesting new villain faction. And a really interesting new series of settings (the whole state of California).

And that way Part 2 can be the dark middle chapter of the trilogy that ends on a cliffhanger, and Part 3 could be the fully fleshed-out journey to inner peace that it should have been.

 

I don't think there's any pretending that there isn't going to be a part 3, but I think it'll come when and if there's an idea for it. There's no point just breaking up this story to pad it out in a sequel. Ellie figured things out too late and now has to live with the consequences, that's the whole point of the story. I can't think of anything else they needed to add to the ending, definitely not enough for an entire game. I also don't think we needed to see anymore of that new faction, they served their purpose.

I feel like there's a ton of stuff left open ended that they could explore in a sequel. Pinning themselves down to finishing a thought they started in this game would have been a disappointing move.

 

Part 3 is going to be the remnants of the Rattlers tacking down Ellie at wherever her new home is, killing someone important to her, and Ellie having to go on a revenge quest all over again lol

 

Ellie will be the main villain in Part 3

 

The last section confronting Abby felt necessary from a story perspective but it did feel kinda weird that we go through this whole journey of learning empathy for your enemies and then they introduce this biker gang that enslaves people. Also they give you at automatic silenced weapon for you to easily murder them with. Kinda felt like that whole section only existed because it's a video game and you need people to kill on your way to point B.

 

In Part 3 you alternate playing as the twin son and daughter of the guy with the grey hair that Ellie finds out the location of the Rattler base from. They go on a journey to Ellie's new home of New Orleans seeking revenge. Along the way, they learn that revenge isn't worth the toll it takes and that the cycle of violence needs to end with them. They spare Ellie's life in the game's final moments and go home to Santa Barbara broken and unfulfilled.

The game closes out the PS5's life cycle and receives 10/10 from nearly every major publication.

 

I think it was partly that but also to affect Abby/Ellie again before the final confrontation. I'm not sure it would have had the same weight or outcome if that hadn't happened to Abby/Lev.

 

I just wanna know more about Ellie’s parents. Dunno how they could make that work in a narrative that wouldn’t otherwise suck but yeah.

 

I don't disagree I just thought it was kinda funny. It obviously wasn't intended as such but when you get the silenced smg, it felt like ND was winking at me saying "fuck it dude just go kill these guys!"

 

that's absolutely what it was saying, whether that was intentional on ND's part or not, and that kind of just undercuts the entire message of the game about how the price you pay for revenge isn't worth it and break the cycle of violence etc. etc.

"just get through this part of the game as quickly as possible, don't worry about annihilating these faceless goons, go nuts and have fun"

 

For the record, I did in fact go nuts and have fun

 

right, which...is sort of contradictory to what the entire game up to that point has been trying to say

 

Like the gameplay loop of everything that happens in Seattle is designed entirely around making you feel the weight of every life that Ellie takes. You have limited ammunition so the most efficient way to kill human enemies is to brutally stab them up close with a pocketknife, while Ellie's face contorts in rage and their comrades call out their names in despair. You can also upgrade Ellie to perform an even faster and quieter (thus, more efficient) knifing animation, making the most brutal option even more of an attractive choice. The devs want you to see how ugly this revenge mission truly is.

And then in that whole sequence at the end you're given a (comparatively) super-powerful weapon and provided (comparatively) way more numerous ammo drops for it, plus the game throws a very large number of enemies at you to the point that going in guns blazing becomes more of an enticing strategy than trying to navigate all of those overlapping visual cones in a stealthy way. It just runs counter to what they appeared to be going for and the only reason I can think of was because they sensed that the game was running a little long and wanted to provide players with a way to more quickly reach the conclusion.

 

I was mostly joking! It definitely undercuts what the game is trying to say in service of more combat areas that make the game feel a lot longer than it needs to be

 

Also while I'm getting more complaints out, it's pretty stupid and, yes, "unrealistic" that Abby, the trained soldier, doesn't carry a knife around at all times given how effective they are at killing both regular humans and the infected. Having to go back to crafting shivs like the first game after using Ellie's knife throughout her whole half of the Seattle narrative was just bad.

 

I think they wanted to make playing as Abby feel like playing as Joel because of their parallels as characters but yeah that sucked