Why I Liked The Last Of Us Part II

The sniper bit is one of my favorites in the game. There is a moment during it when you enter the garage and Tommy starts shooting at the cars in order to draw out the infected, which is exactly what he tells Ellie to do during one of the flashbacks. When that happened, I knew it was Tommy for sure, and there was this mix of like "you motherfucker, using what you taught me to do against me!" and also "I really don't want to get to him and kill him." Good shit.

My favourite part of the game is when you chase Nora into that red lighted basement and she realizes Ellie's immune. It's so badass.

I didn’t come to argue, I came to state the fact that this is such a rare title on YouTube and I salute you for your bravery

What bothers me the most is that Abby never got to tell Ellie why she actually killed Joel. Ellie knows Joel killed the doctors but she didn't know the main surgeon was Jerry; Abby's dad. Ellie thought Abby was mad because Joel prevented the development of a cure... of course she is mad about that, but she killed Joel specifically because of what he did to her dad. During the confrontation between Ellie and Abby, when Ellie puts her hands up she says "I know why you killed Joel, he did what he did to save me, there's no cure because of me I'm the one that you want." Abby assumes she knows why Abby killed Joel, since Ellie literally says she knows why, but she actually doesn't. They never had a chance to talk, not even in the last horrific scene... it's all just very sad, but it is a very very good game, flawed in some ways, but very very good nonetheless.

I agree with everything but the "one more death was too many" Ellie didn't let Abby go because she wasn't strong enough to kill her, but because by that point she already forgave her, just when you are about to drown her you flash back to Joel playing his guitar, now, this isn't a "oh it's not what he would've wanted" moment, the memory is about Ellie telling Joel that she's gonna try to forgive him, even if she doesn't believe she can, that is what happened at that moment, Ellie realizes the only way to let go of her guilt and pain is to forgive Abby rather than taking revenge, she already killed everyone else involved and what did she get? PTSD, she knows finishing her won't give her what she wants and will just repeat the cycle, this time with Lev hating Ellie

The dlc of the first Dishonored is, in my opinion, the best example of playing as a villain you previously hated.

Crazy thing is....I truly believe Ellie did have a happy ending, we just missed the clues... another YouTuber commented on the letter you find at the farm when you are with Dina and the baby. It's from the baby's father's mom saying they will always have a place in Jackson if they choose to come back home. And, if you notice.....when Ellie leaves to fight Abby at the end....she's not wearing the bracelet Dina gave her....but when she returns...the camera zooms in on her hand ...we were focused on the fingers missing but looked completey passed the fact that now she is wearing the bracelet, possibly meaning she has already been to Jackson...and is living with Dina......she just went back to the farm for the guitar....but decided to leave it. That represents her finally being able to accept Joel's death and end the cycle of revenge. Here's some more things to back this claim...... 1. When she comes back to the farm...she's not hurt or not wearing any of her weapons. 2. She doesn't seem surprised that everyone is gone when she enters the house. She doesn't call out Dina's name or anything. I think people were so caught up in "Revenge" that they missed all of these details. I wish I could remember the YouTubers name who pointed the letter and the bracelet out but sadly I don't remember... he/she is the real hero.....I just added more context and details to back their theory. Btw this isn’t my original idea, it’s from someone else

I literally HATED the switch in the game, I refused to do any exploration because I just wanted to become Ellie again... This changed as I began to experience the storytelling. When Abby met Manny and got shot at I actually got mad, and wanted to see the sniper dead... Then it was Tommy and I was so confused... Didn't know how to feel or what to do... This game did a number on me. And I absolutely love it.

In the sniper scene it’s actually pretty obvious that it was Tommy the whole time, because it was said during Ellie’s gameplay lol

This is a super insightful analysis. I have a different take on the "decides Abby is worthy of sparing, for some reason" perspective. Ellie's central conflict is survivor's guilt. She resents Joel for (in her view) robbing her life of meaning. We see examples throughout the story: her backlash against Joel after Dina kissed her and her reprimanding of Joel for micromanaging her routes. He keeps getting in her life's way, she thinks. Right as Abby is dying, Ellie flashes back to her final conversation with Joel and abruptly achieves a moment of clarity. She was unconscious when Joel made the decision to rescue her from the Fireflies. And she was put unconscious without being told the surgery would kill her. She had absolutely no agency in that event. Joel's comment that he would totally make the same decision again if he could go back means something new to her in that moment. No matter what, her life was never going to have that particular meaning. Meanwhile, she's two years beyond her fruitless quest in Seattle after leaving her partner, child and new home. She's in California, drowning this woman for what she thinks is closure. That's not the closure she needed, though. She didn't need closure over Joel's death. That's not her real problem. Her real problem is survivor's guilt. Her quest (and Abby's imminent murder) are not only failing to add meaning to her life; they're also subtracting from it (she's wasting time on nothing). She breaks down weeping at that thought and tells Abby to leave. She's been pursuing the wrong closure, this whole time. She doesn't spare Abby because Abby's worth sparing. She spares Abby because she realizes that Abby has been a distraction. The game ends as she sets out to take her life's meaning into her own hands. And otherwise, she killed WLF and Scars for the same reason we killed them: She needed to get to Abby, and they were very in the way.

The two showdowns completely broke me. While playing as Abby in the theatre I wanted to cry because I thought Ellie, whom I've learned to love through 2 games, was gonna die by my hands. And playing as Ellie in the ending, trying to kill another character I have come to love, I just kept thinking that I wanted them to stop and become friends instead, all this violence is completely unnecessary. I salute Naughty Dog for this amazing gaming experience! Edit: I have never ever gotten this many likes before. Thank you guys so much!

The best part of the game in my opinion is when, playing as Abby, you finally find Ellie and end up in the basement fight. Hearing Ellie craft Molotov cocktails is a sound I never thought I'd have panic attacks over.

The game really tests the limits of the player's empathy. By the end I just wanted them to just move on. They both lost so much. I'm glad Ellie kept her humanity by the end.

I completely disagree about the sniper scene. I knew straight away that Tommy was the sniper, I felt impressed rather than oppressed by the gameplay segment as he shot the cars to lure infected towards me, and I knew Abby wouldn't kill him when we caught up to him because he was fine and dandy in the theater with Ellie the next day.

I feel the exact same way, I remember the moment just before Ellie leaves Dina and JJ to find Abby once again, Dina begs her and said something like “she doesn’t get to be more important than us” I felt that.

The ONLY thing I hated about this game was the amount of dogs I had to kill, especially sweet bear and Alice ☹️

I feel the only failing of the game was the monumental whiplash of going from the climax of Ellie's story to the start of act 1 for Abby's. Abby had finished protagging after she killed Joel, and the first handful of her scenes following the perspective switch felt aimless because she no longer had any desire driving her actions, and needed to start a whole new arc from scratch. It was the stalling of momentum that made the switch so frustrating. It took me a couple of hours to really twig that this was more than just a truncated handful of flashbacks; it's an entire game-within-a-game. This was compounded by the plot of Abby's half having almost nothing to do with Ellie's half, except the handful of points where characters from the two groups intersected. Having both sets of characters caught up in a unifying set of surrounding problems and goals would have given Abby's half more drive. I think it's worth living with the few flaws in order to have such an ambitious story. Naughty Dog set themselves a monumental task in trying to overcome the reflexive tribal instinct that we all slip into so terrifyingly easily. The story of both games shows us time and again that it takes place in a world so brutal that no one is allowed the luxury of remaining a good person with clean hands. And yet we can't help but make judgements of right and wrong based on who we knew first or who we like more.

I get the writers intentions in the sniper scene but as someone who wasn’t spoiled, I almost immediate knew that the sniper was Tommy. I mean the game foreshadows his sniping ability when he trains Ellie and moreover if you follow the days and relate it with what Ellie would be doing at that time, it makes it even more obvious. So this “trick” really didn’t work for me.

The way i understood the ending was that ellie wasnt that much hurt from joels death but because she didnt forgave him in life, and, as she says, she wanted to try, then she goes hunting for abby thinking that will make her feel better, later realizing that it wont make her feel better and thus killing abby wont help her sleep and it would be pointless to kill her and leave the kid to die. This is also seen with abby that even tho she killed joel and avenged his father she still cant sleep well, only when she helps the kids she starts to rest

At the ending of this game, I really felt that Ellie shouldn’t have killed Abby because what would’ve happened with Lev? I guess it requires empathy towards ones situation as whole. Also I appreciate that Ellie doesn’t go through with because it shows that there is humanity inside her still, people really wanted Abby to die which seems kinda short sighted and plain hateful.