A Look into The Last of Us Part II

A series of notes about different aspects of Naughty Dog’s latest production — The Last of Us Part II.

Part I — Perspectives The talk about the need to see and recognize other people’s perspectives isn’t new. We hear about it almost every day — in discussions of politics and history, in arguments with our family or friends, and some by trying to analyze our own actions and their impact on the world around us. So the fact that The Last of Us Part II introduced Abby’s perspective isn’t anything particularly striking per se. The way it’s done is though.

Everything in Abby’s story is about Abby. This statement may seem odd at first. Of course, it’s about Abby. Who else could it be about? Yet going through tens of Youtube videos on the game, one of the most common complaints about Abby’s arc was that is manipulative and purposely done so that the player begins to see Ellie as cruel. Thus, consciously or unconsciously interpreting Abby’s story through Ellie.

In my playthrough, I caught myself continuously wishing to see Abby’s story pushed forward through Joel. I expected her to have nightmares about the cruelty with which she killed him, her friends to address how the event was traumatic for them, and finally, Abby recognizing that Joel saved her life and questioning herself because of that. Initially, I was disappointed when none of that happened. Similarly, I was expecting that Abby would find out about Ellie’s arrival to Seattle the first day and she would then look for Ellie just as Ellie looked for her. I hope it’s obvious from the above that I too didn’t recognize Abby’s story as her story.

More often than so we like to think that we see and recognize other’s point of view and perspective. Yet we keep perceiving their actions through us. As if they are still focused around us to some degree. It doesn’t make us bad people per se. It’s just how our brains work. A flaw in our programming, one could say. That’s why it is so difficult to actually connect to other people. Because to start, it’s necessary to recognize that they exist completely out of our own perspective.

There is truth to the complains that a lot of aspects in Abby’s story are connected to the cruelty of Ellie’s quest. Seeing them as manipulations is our own choice though — when we try to make Abby’s story about us. Yet if we let Abby’s story be about Abby, there’s a lot more the game can offer. I don’t know how much of this was intentionally done by the Naughty Dog team. But it made playing The Last of Us Part II a unique experience for me. Somewhere halfway through Abby’s story, I realized it will never become about Ellie or Joel. In classic storytelling tropes, all arcs would meet at one point — both thematically and at a certain point in space and time. Yet although Ellie’s and Abby’s arcs collide not once but twice in the game, I would argue it never happens because they are in the same place thematically in the overall story. They never truly engage with one another. Ellie’s story is about Ellie and Abby’s story is about Abby. It may seem wrong storywise. But it feels even more real-life because of it.

We like to believe that our emotional heartbreak, the rationals we came up within our heads once poured out would make the other person change their mind, realize their wrongdoings, change their ways — that there will be an emotional catharsis. A payoff for all our pain and suffering. The truth is that it hardly ever works this way.

Joel was never a real person in Abby’s story. He was a figurehead for the pain she felt because of her father’s death. She didn’t care why he did what he did, just as Ellie didn’t care about Abby’s motivations. She had no doubts he needed to die — that the pain needed to go away. The fact that Joel saved her from death meant little to nothing to her at that point. For her to recognize him as a person not a figurehead would have required a lot more of life-saving, and what’s even more important, a lot more of time.

By the time I got to the first Ellie-Abby boss-fight, I was still primarily invested in Ellie’s story. I would always remain on Ellie’s side. But I doubt anyone at Naughty Dog ever believed that someone would cheer for Abby in this fight. Just as almost everyone else I’ve seen playing this game, the first thing I did was let Ellie kill me. It felt satisfying at first. But the satisfaction wore off pretty fast. It was genuinely challenging to get the upper hand on Ellie, and seeing her again and again savagely killing Abby made me truly uncomfortable. It was like seeing oneself in the mirror. I mean, it was obvious by then that Ellie was acting like a monster of sorts. But there is a difference between thinking that while playing for her (when you act at least partially in self-defense) and seeing her being the one brutally attacking you. Just as Joel did, I wanted Ellie’s life to be about something good. And seeing her like that was heartbreaking. It definitely worked for me.

With The Last of Us Part II, I never got to a point where I began to genuinely feel for Abby. But I think by the end I learned to recognize her as her own person, and not just as an antagonist with an illusion of backstory. And I think that was the point.

We will care about people that we love even if they are in the wrong. That’s how emotions work. There’s nothing wrong with that. We should only be careful not to try to bend the reality in order to ignore that the people we care about may be in the wrong.

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The Last of Us Part II is not only about Abby’s and Ellie’s perspective. There’s a lot of depth to the conflict between Joel and Ellie. And much of it centers around two completely different perspectives clashing. Ellie wanted her life to mean something through sacrificing herself. Joel wanted her life to be meaningful by living it. Their final conversation is heartbreaking. In it, Joel confirms that if he had another chance he would still act the same way back at the Firefly hospital. And Ellie, though not agreeing with his decision, finally begins to recognize his perspective.

We have this illusion that if we know in our hearts something to be true (not even good or right, which are far more ambiguous statements, but simply true) that other people would eventually change their minds. But this is wrong. People can avoid truth for million different reasons — it may not be objective truth or they may be unaware of the reality of their situation or unable to comprehend the rationale behind it. If we want to have a conversation with someone, anyone really… A real, genuine conversation. If we want to do that, we will have to learn to accept that the world isn’t about us, about what we want, or what seems fair to us. The Last of Us Part II is the perfect illustration of this. It is not about what is wrong and what is right, who is more and who is less important. It’s about whether we are able to see beyond ourselves. Not just say that we can. But actually do so. For real.