The Last of Us 2 ending should have left more for the player to think about - harriscondets

The Last of United States 2 ending should rich person left more for the player to think about

(Image credit: Sony)

Cardinal things upfront ahead I allege anything else, Firstly, I think The Last of Us 2 is an amazing piece of work, so try not to barrel into the comments to complain about the newspaper headline without in reality reading anything. And, second, spoilers obviously. I'm going to atomic number 4 talking about the ending and little other, so don't go near the rest of this article if you haven't seen the credits roll.

There was a spot during the climatic moments of The Last of Us 2 where my hands were actually shaking. I was literally shook, watching what I thought was the end of the bet on unfold in front of me. Ellie was at home on the raise with Dina, following her defeat at the hands of Abby/Pine Tree State in the house. She was broken, struggling with PTSD, and unable to adjudicate or suffice any of the questions she had about everything that had happened. But she at least seemed to be trying.

She said no to Tommy's unfair asking to get going another death wish pursuit of Book of Joel's killer and later, after a few notes connected the guitar, she stopped to stare into the intervening distance as the screen faded to black. At that point I was much or less beside myself trying to digest everything that had happened. Thither was so much to process. So much I need to take out and think about.

And then the game carried on for another quadruplet hours.

By the time the actual credits finally appeared, all those questions had been slapped departed past answers; capped off with a few hours of condensed epilogue that seemed to exist purely to clarify things and let the player 'gain ground' as Ellie.

Victory lap

Automatically, this trip to Santa Barbara is close to of The Stopping point of U.S.A 2's best gameplay. The Rattler's camp is a brilliantly studied level, with the sun blasted, dusty location matchless of the most well realized in the game. From the sunburn on some Ellie and the Infected, to the dry rasp of bleached handle leaves in the breeze, it's an immediately fascinating emplacemen that expands the world boundlessly. Narratively, though, it tramples over everything that happened adequate that point equivalent a five year ageing trying to get attention.

In the space of few hours, the sequence strips away all of the ambiguity that made the ending on the Farm so devastating and interesting. There's ultimately soft incertitude left as a outcome: Ellie totally gets her revenge and finishes the game in a victory state but lets Abby go following a pardon Three Kings' Day, avoiding forcing you to kill a character the game has spent so long trying to make up you empathize with up to that point. Compared to the lack of via media and plentiful questions of the first unfit's ending, Part 2 closes along an oddly middle ground attempt to delight everyone that leaves little to masticate over.

Away this point, you've spent much fourth dimension with Abby that she's basically proved herself to equal the better person. The title screen you see at the end even continues Abby's story, rather than Ellie's, by making it clear that she and Lev reach Catalina. Yes, she killed Joel but he did kill her father and, technically, the anthropomorphic race's hereafter, so, you know... [waves hands]. And, away the end of the game, Ellie has murdered hundreds of people (including quadruple members of Abby's extended family) finished her conscious selection to chase revenge.

The definitive feel of the final beach fight thus feels totally self-contradictory with everything the game has tried to do at this steer - fostering a growing sense of ill ease with Ellie's self destructive obsession, and developing the actualisation that Abby is basically Ellie, or even Joel, in a variant cosmos. IT draws so much morally gray lines that you could pick it apart in look of answers everlastingly, and never feel content.

Lady Vengeance

The beach press strips all that off by reasserting the roles of Ellie arsenic 'hero' and Abby as 'villain'. Something that never feels quite outside as you gash away at Abby's painfully gaunt frame. If it's meant to put you emotionally in Ellie's place, information technology doesn't work. At this point Ellie's inability to let go has transcended cause operating theater logic. She only exists because of revenge.

Thither's the quality of an addict to her that director Neil Druckmann hints at in this interview, with the ending compounding the idea - crystallizing it into something hard and permanent. I don't of necessity mind this arsenic a narrative arc. The Last of Us 2 is an ugly worldly concern full of ugly people, so Ellie organism left an almost irredeemable shell by her life isn't too unexpected. Information technology's more that, after everything that's happened, and the time you've spent in that story, Ellie dropping noncurrent certain a few hours of much killing, only to discover her power to forgive in the survive few minutes, feels rushed and forced.

Everyone that Ellie kills is a Joel to someone

Much of this need to provide answers does come partially from the problems of building the halt around so much a personal pursue revenge. Everyone that Ellie kills is a Joel to someone, and Abby exists as a playable character to serve that point Eastern Samoa untold as anything else. Ellie directly up murdering people for 30 odd hours to avenge a single death is clean going to fall apart narratively, whereas Abby resembles a more morally acceptable protagonist as, inaugural aside, she's largely active to survive. In fact, her write up with Lev is much nigher to Joel and Ellie's journey in the original game, and unlike Ellie in Component 2, she's not looking for problem (past the initial quest to avenge the death of a beloved father figure whose describ also starts with 'J'), she's just trying to survive and make peace with herself, and what she's done. "I did it for me" she tells Yara and Lev when they ask why she helped them.

Having built half a game roughly trying to mitigate the impact of Ellie's unregenerate and destructive revenge, it seems funny for Racy Dog to double down connected information technology in the last few hours of the spunky. Termination at the Farm would have avoided these problems without fetching away the implications. Ellie is still arguably a intense somebody, but the questions posed go far more than interesting when odd to your possess interpretation.

It's a akin mistake the first game made with the character of David. When Ellie ab initio meets him, he seems benevolent and willing to help. Later, he starts to talk about how whatsoever of his hoi polloi were "slaughtered away a dotty world with a little girlfriend", suddenly inserting an uneasy ambiguity to every action you've made up till now. Maybe Joel and Ellie are the bad guys along the new slope of the line? Some of the hunters you run across are clearly ugly, but were they all? It could have been the classify of moment that is debated and discussed for years. Except the game throws it all away by qualification David not just evil, but a homicidal anthropophagus, as if IT needed to underline the good and bad with a marker pen.

The necessitate ma in The Death of Us 2, to Adam beyond the farm and end the game with Ellie in control, to define her and its resoluteness, is a similar fault. Everything is far Thomas More interesting when Ellie stays at home with Dina, because it involves the instrumentalist to process it wholly and count the events. What does it mean to you? How does IT feel to you? The epilogue we got feels a trifle like Naughty Dog didn't trust the player to set that, and decided instead to clearly outline the blanks, if not fill them in entirely.

I'm currently GamesRadar's guides coordinator, which substance I've had a bridge player in producing or writing all of the run and tips content along the site. I also write reviews, previews and features, and do video. Previously I worked for Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website. I'm a big fan of open world games, horror, and tale adventures.