"The Last Of Us Part II" But Done Better

So "The Last Of Us Part II" is out and much to no one's surprise (unless you've been living under a rock) it's getting raked over the coals in reviews, non-establishment media reviews that is. All of this is, of course, a result of the leaks which occurred a few months prior to the release of the game which revealed major plot points and essentially spoiled the game not to mention the involvement of a certain frequent feminist's supposed input in the game's development. All of this lead to "The Last Of Us Part II" a game that should have been a slam dunk becoming a critical failure. I decided to keep quiet on all the goings-on because for the most part, the leaks were unsubstantiated, and while we all had good reason to believe they were accurate I'm a "see things for myself" kinda guy. But now that the game is out and the leaks have been substantiated I feel the need to comment and in this article, I'm going to do "The Last Of Us Part II" even better. So join me down this rabbit hole, spoilers abound.

Let's start with the elephant in the room which is Joel, in this version, yes, Joel will still die at the hands of Abby and yes, players will still play as Abby and the story will still be a revenge narrative. Here's the thing, ya'll everyone suspected Joel was dead from the very first trailer and I see no reason to keep Joel alive...granted I see no reason for a "Last Of Us" part II and I share my reason as to why HERE (shameless plug) but that aside if the fans have already figured Joel was dead or going to die I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Furthermore, killing a character isn't a bad thing but the manner in which it's done has to be equal to the character. A lot of people compare Joel's death to Glenn in "The Walking Dead" so let's run with that. Glenn's death heralded the introduction of Negan, a no-nonsense bad guy who showed his teeth and was going to be sticking around for a while, so they traded Glenn for Negan. Herschel's death was the herald of The Governer's downfall, the final straw that broke Rick's back and ultimately won him the conflict. If Glenn or Herschel were killed by some random guy it wouldn't have been pretty lame but you get the point.

No reason, just posting a picture of this handsome bastard.

The thing is both Negan and The Governer were built up, Negan was hinted at all season long before he was finally revealed so his introduction had to be impactful. The Governer played the slow game with everyone before finally losing his mind, but the point is we spent time with these characters in some capacity to understand them, we don't understand Abby, therefore, having her be the herald of Joel's death...who is this woman? Granted, I don't exactly care, I'm not a huge fan of Joel because in my eyes he effectively doomed humanity and rendered every death in Ellie's life utterly meaningless. Secondly, Joel is not (I repeat) not a good man by his own admission, he's been on both sides of a raid and as he stated not all the parties were guilty. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy his character or understand him but saying he's a good man who didn't deserve this...yeah, that's a "You're wrong." from me.

All that aside Abby is random and because she's random her introduction and being the harbinger of Joel's death already puts a bad taste in the mouths of those who would otherwise be okay with Joel bitting it if it were justified. What I'm going to attempt to do is give you the same events with a better context. Let's begin. So Abby hunts Joel for revenge, that's fine as Ellie said "Joel's crossed a lot of people." but having Abby be a member of the WLF...yeah, no...the biggest group that Joel crossed was The Fireflies in taking out one of their leaders Marlene, so we already have a motive, in my version Abby is a member of The Fireflies, simple but I have a reason, just stick with me. Also let's fill in some gaps, in order for The Fireflies to be as big and as well known as they are there have to be several larger factions so Marlene's faction was just one operating in Joel's area. That is to say, Marlene wasn't the main leader of The Fireflies.

So here's the thing, I'm completely removing The Seraphites they're superfluous and stupid and only work to pad out the story...they're gone here Second, it's not Abby's father that gets killed by her brother rather, I feel like a brother is a much more personal connection especially if it's her younger brother. So let's begin...for real this time. If we're going to have the player control Abby than like Joel in the first game we need to connect with Abby immediately. So at the start of this game the player controls Abby and we get a cut scene of her seeing her brother off. It's a real heartfelt scene between a brother and sister (kinda like the first game...opening the story with a heartwarming moment to humanize the main character...sounds silly, right?) it's revealed that Abby talked her brother into being the lead surgeon with the expressed understanding that all parties (Ellie included) consented to this as her brother (let's call him Alex as a place holder) is a decent man who doesn't want to actively kill anyone. Abby assures her brother will be fine and that she'll meet him in a few hours after the surgery, they hug and see each other.

Abby and her team arrive at the hospital, Abby opens the door and finds dead bodies everywhere. She screams and runs down the halls calling for her brother, one of the Fireflies (Owen) is alive and she calls for her men to help him, she rushes to the operating room and finds the massacred body of her brother. We hear a cry of anguish and then we see;

Right off the bat, I did several things that the actual sequel did not do; I established a new character in Abby, established a relationship Abby and her brother and I gave an insight into who this character is. It's hard to hate Abby if we understand her and even if after all this you still hate her you can't say you don't understand her and her motivations. Likewise, I gave a callback to the first game which opens with a heartfelt brother/sister moment only for it to end in heartbreak and tears. Although less traumatizing because both parties are adults, it's no less than what Joel suffered. Likewise, we need to drive the point home how good of a man Alex (Abby's brother) was so that Joel's brutality comes off as exactly that, brutality. Furthermore, the player now having witnessed the aftermath of what Joel caused now understands actions have consequences and those consequences are often times unpleasant. The player should be horrified now because now they understand Joel did this and Joel is the enemy...Oh, but Joel had a good reason...yeah, so does Abby...you see?

Also, I subtly addressed how Abby found out it was Joel who killed her brother, Owen survived, and being a member of Marlene's group was familiar with who was bringing Ellie to the hospital so Owen is the one who tells Abby it was Joel. Now the player assumes control of Ellie and we can do all the stuff they did in the actual game with a few exceptions; Tommy goes on patrol with Jesse and they run afoul of a horde of runners only to be saved by Abby's group, they take Tommy and Jesse back to their mansion for safety. Jesse lets it slip that Tommy was a firefly at one point and Owen recognizes the name Tommy Miller as someone who used to roll with Marlene...and realizes that Tommy is Joel's brother. See I did something else, Tommy and Joel would be smart enough not to trust new people immediately, but if we're going to have a new character like Jesse make him useful. He wouldn't be nearly as cagey as Tommy or Joel because he's only dealt with clickers and runners, the people he is social with are people in town so he's more cautious around the infected than he would be around other people.

So Jesse lets that info slip and Abby plays it cool now realizing that her 7-year search for Joel is effectively over. Yeah, 7 years because it takes a while to track down one man without GPS, cell phones, and the internet, not to mention while traveling in the zombie apocalypse you tend to get stalled from time to time...especially if you have no clue where you're going. But Owen remembered Tommy waxing blissfully about Wyoming and decided to go there. So Tommy and Jesse meet up with Joel and someone else only to be ambushed by Abby's group, Jesse tries to cowboy up and gets shot, Tommy and Joel are taken, prisoner. Ellie returns to the colony only to discover Joel didn't make it back, she and Dina split up and everything that happens before happens now except for a few things when Abby has Joel she still knee caps him with the shotgun but instead of telling him to guess who she is the conversation goes like this: Abby tosses a picture of her and Alex at Joel. Joel glances at the picture and says;

 JOEL

Am I supposed to know who this is?

ABBY

No, of course not. Why would you?! His name was Alex, 

Alexander Rawlings and you killed him. He was a good man. He never

hurt anyone and you...you took him from me!

Joel can't confirm nor deny what he did but he basically tells her to get it over with then and then Abby grabs a pipe and starts swinging. At this point, the player should understand Joel's not a good person and is indeed the guilty party here. As much as we wanna side with Joel, we understand Abby's anger and we understand why she's not just gonna walk away. Anyway Ellie bursts in like before, there's a scuffle and Ellie's arm is exposed and Abby realizes Ellie is "the immune girl" and here's where it gets interesting. They have Ellie pinned down and she's begging them to stop but Abby tells Ellie the truth. The thing is she can't hear it from Joel. If she hears it from Joel that'll defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to set up. She has to hear it from Abby because at this point Ellie's faith in Joel is shaken in two ways, first seeing Joel as a continuing presence in her life (what with him battered and beaten before her eyes) and second with Joel as someone she can trust (with him carrying this lie around for so long).

So Abby does the deed and for the remainder of the game, we play as Ellie. Ellie goes on a mission to hunt down Abby. Now here's the thing she won't be encountering or killing any of Abby's people and this is important and I'll explain why later but for the most part Ellie will be dealing with infected and vagabonds like before, she manages to catch up to Tommy who had been captured by some group, she rescues him and they set off to find Abby together. Eventually, they find Abby, Tommy gets wounded in a shoot out with Owen resulting in Owen's death and an injured Abby hobbles away from Ellie, ultimately they come face to face and Ellie starts literally kicking the crap out her with Abby refusing to fight back. Ellie screams at her to fight back but Abby just accepts the beating refusing to hurt Ellie because she's the cure and above all her brother would want her alive because if Ellie's alive there's still hope and Alex above all believed in hope, so Abby is ready to die and be with her brother.

Preparing to deliver the kill shot, Ellie lowers her gun and says "Tell me about your brother." to which Abby does she shares with her a story before the infection happened where Alex once chased down an ice cream truck (remember the first game?). Ellie tells a story about Joel when they met Sam and Henry and how they were separated and how Henry told Ellie he'd do anything for Sam and couldn't survive without him (remember we never really see what happened with Henry and Ellie) and she says when Sam got infected Joel blamed himself because Sam was with Joel the whole time when Henry killed himself after Sam died that was the first time Ellie had seen that kind of love, the kind of love that couldn't be without the person. She shares another story about the time Joel nearly died and she nursed him back to health all winter. Ellie says she felt alone and scared but capable, she wasn't going to kill herself no matter how bad it got. She also says in her mind she always knew Joel was lying but didn't want to know exactly because she understands why Joel did what he did and she forgives him and with that, she leaves Abby. Abby asks Ellie if she's going to kill her and Ellie says "For Alex." and she leaves, leaving a wounded Abby to her fate. Ellie finds a wounded Tommy and Tommy asks her "Did you get her?" and Ellie simply replies "Yeah, I got her.". End.

Now for those of you asking me why didn't Ellie kill Abby it's not like her! You have to understand we're not dealing entirely with the same Ellie from before, this Ellie has friends and has lived in a semi-civilized society, she has different opinions and her own thoughts has interacted with various people, been exposed to new ideas, she ain't the same girl. Second, as much as the player would like to kill Abby the whole point of the story is it accomplished nothing and ultimately Ellie and Abby are both victims of rage on behalf of another (Joel killed Alex to save Ellie/ Abby kills Joel to avenge her brother). Ellie recognizes Abby's pain and we're given context to that pain when Ellie recalls her time with Sam and Henry. I always thought it was dumb that Henry killed himself instead of blaming Joel and Ellie...but we never saw what happen to with Ellie and Henry. Maybe while they were in the sewers Ellie was the one taking charge and Henry was the one freaking out about Sam?

Filling in the gaps gives context to Ellie's decision to let Abby go because she understands what's driving Ellie and Ellie understands what's driving herself...everyone say it with me now "LOVE!" and if anything Ellie can understand that. So for Alex, Ellie lets Abby live because in Ellie's mind Alex's death is ultimately her fault, Joel did what he did because he loves her. "The Last Of Us" as a title means something, not just a foreboding sounding title but as an idea. What does it mean to be "The Last Of Us"? I think it means potentially the last of humanity and that character is Ellie, she's immune to the virus and ultimately is the only character who can carry humanity and now they're living in an era where things like empathy, forgiveness, compassion, all of that are thrown to the wayside for the sake of survival. Ellie has seen all of these but empathy and at a moment where it is the hardest to do it, she finds humanity and seeks empathy. Also, the reason why Ellie won't be attacking any of Abby's people is that in order to get to the ending Ellie can't obtain revenge in any fashion, so all her anger and rage is taken out on people who had nothing to do with it.

IF you really wanted Ellie to get her hands on someone then yes, she can still do the Mel thing and kill a pregnant woman but I think that'd drive the point home too quickly and cause Ellie to realize sooner rather than later that she's becoming a monster and I kinda wanna hide that revelation from her until the very end where she's face to face with Joel's killer who is wounded and basically at her mercy.

And also we harken back to the end of the first game where once again the main character is forced to tell an uncomfortable lie to someone they care about. Ultimately, Ellie walks away having not given to the cycle of violence surrounding revenge and leaves an overall better person for it returning to Jackson to make her life mean more than survival, for Joel. Let me know what you guys think. Is this a better game? Did I fail? I'm jumping into the hornet's nest with this one, I'll catch ya'll later. Peace!