I see I've been summoned. You might think its for pain. No, my children. Its for hate.
I've actually had to sit here for five or ten minutes just to reflect. This is going to be a dissection, because this game is a corpse. Not going to lie, this is going to be a long one. We've got what we need to look at it completely. With Mass Effect 3, you could delude yourself that the first part of the game was good until Earth. Then the realization hits you. I was one of the people eternally scarred by witnessing that ending fresh after powering through the game. It was at a point in my life where nothing was going right, and I got to witness that abortion. I once called it the worst ending I've ever seen in any medium by a serious creative.
Never, EVER in my life would I think I would see that surpassed. Neil Druckman is incompetent to the point of delusion. Instinctual writing habits developed by 10 year olds he fails to grasp. Not only does he fail to grasp the bare essentials of writing a story (arc structure, circular and flat character growth, presentation and style), he doesn't seem to understand how creating anything works on the bare minimum level. A world, a story, motivation, characters...everything is a failure. There is not one correct thing Druckman does story wise.
The Last of Us 2 is an epitome of a failure cascade. The premise collapses, which leads to the plot collapsing, which leads to the characters collapsing, which then in turn leads to the gameplay collapsing. The only proper thing TLOU 2 does is it can run on a Playstation 4. That's it. Just thinking about the horrifying mess wants me to beat this smug faggot in the face with my collected works of Shakespeare, binding first, so I can knock this fuck face's teeth out.
I've witnessed some hackneyed shit. Nothing ever comes close to this. It has to be, the first time in AAA history, that a company has let someone who clearly has no clue what creating something means, to do something like this without oversight. It is an embarrassment to the industry. It is an embarrassment to Sony. Its an embarrassment to the medium.
Now that we've got our 'context' (Lets see those faggots at TV Tropes explain this away), I want to go over the salient points. I'm done comparing TLOU 2 to anything, because any AAA title beats it. I have not, in my extensive experience, seen a story as incompetent, as poorly told, as laughable as The Last of Us 2. I'm going to split this up into two parts: The meta of what Druckman has done and pure plot. Lets start with the pure narrative problems.
1) Abby is Irredeemable and Morally Evil
There is no getting around this. She hunts the country for people named Joel. She tortures and kills a man who saved her life. She's a sadistic serial killer, yet for some reason she is portrayed as sane. This is a massive disconnect that is impossible to ignore. This is a character we want to kill. We don't care about her daily life. We don't care if she runs a puppy daycare. We don't care about her boyfriend or her friends.
She has passed the point of any moral redemption. From where we start, she is morally irredeemable. She is not a morally grey character. Undeniably, Abby is evil and her crimes put her with the worst people living today. Her crimes are so grave they stain and darken the people around her. Those who are friends or love her are equally culpable.
She is also a traitor. I mentioned this in the thread, in Dante's Inferno, the 9th Circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers. In literature, mythology and human nature itself, betrayal is a crime that cannot be itself forgiven.
There's even more. Some might say Abby's past makes her complex. It does not. It simplifies her even more. In the story, Abby is portrayed as sane. This means she clearly understands morality. No matter what happened in her past, she has chosen to drown herself in blood, innocent blood. This makes Abby irredeemable and the fact that Abby has chosen to be this way.
By any theology, eschatology, Abby is evil, the personification of it. You cannot avoid this. Insanity cannot be an excuse for her actions. She is sane, killing in cold blood. Hence, this is her choice. It is not a complex. It is not a delusion. It is something she wants to do.
2) Ellie is Righteous
Good and evil contrast. Without evil, there is no good. That being said, Ellie's actions are inherently righteous compared to Abby. Simply by standing against her, Ellie's actions are morally good. There is no moral relativism in Ellie's actions. There cannot be against a sociopathic, mass murderer who betrays and tortures the men who save her life.
Therefore, this is very important: THERE IS NO MORAL CONFLICT IN THE LAST OF US 2. What we see here is a very, very straightforward morality tale: Good up against unmitigated evil. Anyone on Abby's side is abetting her darkness. Those you kill are complicit in her murders.
3) Revenge as a theme is a failure
There is no revenge plot for Abby in TLOU 2. It doesn't exist, because Abby isn't driven by it. She's driven to kill for her own desires. She has chosen the path of murder, vengeance is just an excuse. She isn't hunting for one man. She's not looking cross country for a person. She is just finding people named Joel and killing them. This is not revenge. It is serial murder. Her sanity further exemplifies the fact that she is CHOOSING to murder these people instead of hunting the singular person that killed her father.
In this respect, Joel doesn't matter. She's killed countless people with that name, why does it matter she kill the 'real' one? It doesn't. Its just an excuse. Joel could have easily been a random victim rather than a target. He, himself doesn't matter to Abby in the least. How many corpses has she piled up by the point she gets her 'revenge'?
It is only a quest for vengeance for Ellie. Because Abby is completely heinous, Ellie is completely righteous. Ellie is not made morally grey enough to negate Abby's evil. Therefore, revenge itself cannot be evaluated by TLOU 2, because Abby's character is so evil and drowning in a sea of innocent blood. In fact, if we look at revenge, Ellie's clearly in the right.
4) Endless Misery is No Misery
We've got posts saying its a Misery simulator. Misery in fiction works as something that best on the fringes and something oppressive. But misery itself needs to be punctuated by hope. Even in the worst, most miserable fiction, there's hope that punctuates that. The problem with TLOU 2, is that you're playing a serial murderer who killed a beloved character. There is no end to the misery.
As humans, we become desensitized to things. Now, this gets a lot of play, but we get desensitized to specific things in specific circumstances. For example, we get desensitized to murdering civilians in GTA but we aren't desensitized to death, we're desensitized in that ONE specific instance. Its why if you see video game blood and guts over and over and laugh, but look at a real corpse and vomit, you're desensitized to ONE specific experience.
So if TLOU 2 constantly barrages you with misery, its basically as if there is no misery, because emotionally, you'll just stop caring. By the time you get to the end of the game, you're more likely to laugh than feel anything else, because you've been exposed to this feeling of misery constantly with little to no interruption of hope.
So the ending, in addition to being terrible, is ultimately pointless. This is because the audience will be so used to misery, it will just be one more miserable thing and indistinguishable for the others and carry no meaning. So the ending is truly useless to convey any feeling, because that feeling has been conveyed the entire narrative. The reason The Road's ending is so emotional is because it is hope punctuated by an environment of misery. Misery punctuated by an environment of misery is unnoticed.
5) Joel as a Prop
Joel is not a character in TLOU 2. He simply is not. He exists only to die and drive the motivation for Ellie. He is not even relevant to Abby, as he is simply just a name for her. Killing another person named Joel at this point would hold no meaning. Joel for Abby is another drop in an ocean of blood. What does it matter? Abby chose to kill and go down this path out of her own free will.
So for Abby, Joel's death serves no real point. How is this any different than the many others she's played out over the years? Because he's the 'real' one? In the end, does it matter? No. Abby is not killing for revenge. She's killing just because she wants a purpose. 'Real' Joel doesn't matter any more than the 'fake' Joel's she's killed. Therefore her true motive is not revenge, its purpose.
For Ellie, we get no screen time with her and Joel except in brief flashbacks. This means the total emotive resonance of Joel comes from the first game. Which does not count. We need legitimate emotive resonance in the sequel. We get none. Therefore, Joel is being used only to drive the plot. For all his faults, it doesn't matter if we don't see them. We see him saving the antagonist and get betrayed.
His only purpose was to exemplify Abby's villainy and give Ellie motive. Joel is not an independent actor in the story, but simply a prop to push things along. Even then, Ellie for some bizarre reason hates Joel at the end, which makes her entire quest pointless, thus even rendering his entire EXISTENCE pointless. As Ellie should not have motivation to go after Abby or care all that much.
The entire narrative is a circular cluster fuck and if we look at it, it SHOULD NOT EXIST. Looking at my points, with what we've been given, the narrative itself cancels itself out.
So this concludes the narrative part. If people are interested in how this fucks the audience, I'll do another post. But this I think adequately explains how TLOU 2 basically can't exist with the plot it put forward.
