"Those were my friends you killed, asshole." "Guess what!? We're shitty people, Joel. It's been like that for a long time." You brought up a great point. Those 2 lines always stuck with me. Tess's line was the first time I thought about them killing Robert's men. For a moment, I stopped thinking of these 2 as badass survivors, and looked at them though the lenses of "shitty people." Made me think about the only people left in this apocalypse at this point, were shitty people. That random NPC's line about his friends, made me think about every single person killed up to this point. Made me remember that Joel has "been on both sides" during an ambush, and w those guys in the city who hunted tourists, were probably a tight knit group too. It's funny how those 2 lines made me think about the other communities and the other people who are just trying to survive while TLOU Part 2 just made me roll my eyes at the thought.

I like it when enemies call out the name of someone I've killed. It tells me where they are so I can kill them too.

Dina willing to go to Seattle to avenge Joel for Ellie, when all we got to establish them as "soulmates" was a scene of them smoking pot and having sex while on the job.... seriously?? That's a night shift at Dennys.

*Neil Druckmann hits blunt* "What if the people you kill are actually people, dude?"

I will never understand the "Joel robbed Ellie of her choice" comment because the Fireflies didn't give her a choice either. Literally no one gave her a say so it's a moot point.

Honestly, the fact that Abby's segment was very plainly intended to make you like her just made me spiteful, which made me hate her more

Did you forget about how Abby's dad was willing to kill Ellie, without her consent, but hesitant when he was question if he would be so quick if it was his daughter and he has no answer. It kinda makes Joel's actions justified.

Their biggest fuck up was not having Abby wonder if she killed Joel in front of his daughter. This would cause internal conflict and have her realize she did to someone else what was done to her. It's also a better incentive for her wanting to save Lev and Yara as a way to atone and return to who she was before her dad was killed. There. Fixed the game.

Red dead 2 had an interesting take on vengeance. After spending time building a normal life, John is given the opportunity to hunt down Mica. His wife begs him not to go but he decides to anyway. After killing Mica the epilogue shows the feds investigating the carnage which leads them back to John. It’s an extra depth of consequence in John’s story. It doesn’t take away from the original story, it helps drive home points made in the first game.

The realisation that revenge isn't going to give Ellie peace is kinda nullified after the fact that she's slaughtered hundreds of people to get to Abby. By not killing Abby, that means everyone that she killed died for nothing 😅

Tommy was done dirtier than anyone else. Once they turned him into an asshole, I just couldn’t even pretend to enjoy the game anymore. He didn’t want Ellie getting involved with Joels killers, than at the end he tries getting her to go and hunt down Abby again. Wtf is that?

Fun fact, not one single person told Ellie why Abby hunted down Joel. Ellie assumes it's because of the cure, but the narrative shows otherwise. Why? Because if Ellie knew that she might have stopped her plan for vengeance. This whole thing reeks of someone who thought they could put anything on the page and the audience would "ooooo and ahhhhh".

"He's not a hero, he's human" Your line about Joel carries so much weight. This is what I wanted for Abby, they didn't need to make her a hero but human.

One of the biggest problems I had is that during abbys sequence, you can notice that there is a ridiculous amount of plot convenience, eg. Yara appearing out of literally thin air to save Abby from Tommy, who was getting her absolute shit rocked.

Besides the couple that ran away from Jackson in the second Ellie flashback, I’m baffled that not one side/major character gets bitten and we face a dilemma like with Tess and Sam, it makes the infected feel irrelevant in a world full of them.

I've always felt like the writers at Naughty Dog had a very patronizing attitude towards the audience in this game. Some of the plot devices they use to evoke reactions are so blatantly obvious, it seems like they think we have zero brain cells. In the opening sequence of Abby's subplot, they show her and her dad saving a goddamn Zebra to try to make the audience like them? Can they get any more condescending than "Guy saves animal, therefore guy is good"??? I've watched multiple interviews of the creators of the game, and it seems like they firmly believe that they have created a piece of art so profound that a mere gamer cannot grasp the complexity of the themes. I get the vibe that they saw the outburst of the gamers towards this game as an act of immaturity because we are ourselves victims of the "cycle of hatred"

Friendly reminder: the Fireflys' brain surgery would have wasted Ellie's life and their only chance to make a cure. Before the nuclear option of removing the brain, there are many things they should be doing first but didn't have time to by the time they were about to saw the skull; like take chemical/tissue samples with a tiny drill or do a psych evaluation. As long as Ellie lives, she can still share her gift; she just needs to find doctors more qualified than a Batman villain.

Also fun fact: You can shoot the surgeon in the leg at the end of the first game and it won't count as a kill.

One thing that strikes me strange about Jerry (surgeon) the most and one that personally cemented my perception of how good he and fireflies as organization, is the utter lack of respect over human life. In real life, you would want to preserve life of an immune patient for as long as possible in order to find "the right ingredient" that cause their immunity. You would design numerous ways, non-intrusive or at least non life-threatening procedures in order to preserve the patient intact longer so you can perform further testing and improve your chance of finding out how the immunity ticks, if not keeping them alive altogether. He did mention replicating it in lab. Common sense would dictate that it would be whole lotta easier and with much more success rate if the source is preserved, instead of this seemingly one chance one opportunity situation. They could've started from the lowest death risk procedure and work their way up from there slowly as possible. Instead what you find is how quickly the surgeon and fireflies both goes to the operating table without coming up with anything else. It's almost like the surgeon is scalpel-happy. This, when combined with the mention of past cases makes me feel pretty horrified. If they are very much at ease with killing a child, then out of those cases, how many were sacrificed? How many of those are willing sacrifice? ? how many fell under the scalpel blade? How do we know they're not just magnifying the chance of cure as they're trapped in sunk cost fallacy?

Joel’s face when he stuck up for Ellie and she goes off on him always hurts my feelings because he looks so damn hurt and embarrassed for seeming so protective and almost ashamed for caring about her so much

Imagine if they game had started the same way LOU 1 did. But instead of experiencing the outbreak through the eyes of Joel's daughter only for her to die, we experience the hospital massacre through the eyes of Abby only to find her father dead. Hell imagine we didn't even know what we were experiencing and it played out like this: The game opens with young abby chilling about in a building when all the sudden, gunfire breaks out. We don't know who Abby is, where we are, or what's going on. After the fighting subsides, we control Abby as she makes her way through the bloodbath. Again at this point we still don't know what's going on. Abby sees the carnage as she searches through the hospital. At the end she opens the door to find her father dead. Now it all comes crashing down on us. We realize that this girl is the Doctor's daughter, the Doctor we killed at the end of Part 1. The segment ends with Abby sobbing and clutching her father's body just as Joel did Sarah in the prologue of the first game. Cut to title screen. Now we have much more reason to emphasize with Abby instead of instantly hating her when we jump to her perspective later on. Players would be less likely to resent the game for making us play as her, which was a common criticism among those who didn't like the switch. It also sets up a pit of dread in our stomach, because we know where this is leading. Abby is going to come for Joel. It's the equivalent of being told about the bomb under the table before it explodes. There is much more tension and payoff instead of shock and confusion.

As someone else said in the comments of another video, Joel’s remark about Ellie not knowing real loss isn’t solely directed at just losing loved ones...but an entire worldview. Joel lost everything: his society, his security, his moral sense of right and purpose, the world he grew up in, the things and settings and people he’d become accustomed to (things we currently take for granted, like movies and the internet, or simply passing strangers on the street in comfort, not having to look over our shoulders 24/7 or sleeping with one eye open for the rest of our lives). These are things Ellie has never known and can barely even understand, as referenced in the first game when she read a girl’s diary. Going to school, graduating college, getting your first job, going to prom, eating at a restaurant, etc. Joel lost all these experiences and more, to the point where Ellie doesn’t even know what an ice-cream truck is. So he’s right about her not knowing real loss.

Dude maybe tommy got brain damage from the bullet thats why his character turned 180

People’ who claim that Ellie is a more “evil” character than Abby always seem to say “look at how many people she killed just to get revenge.” To my knowledge, you can avoid most (if not all) enemy encounters by stealthing around them or running away. You can avoid killing most people in the game, which doesn’t really fit the narrative of Ellie’s murderous rage. Nearly all of Ellie’s kills in her cutscenes are in self defense, with the exception of Nora. Abby has killed in less than justified circumstances, and has no remorse for killing Joel despite it being in front of a young girl screaming for his life. That’s something monsters do.

TLOU2 is like a dish that was made with good ingredients and then was served on a fancy plate, but the Chef was terrible at his job and try to do more than he can handle. It has good ingredients and was presented nicely, but it tasted terrible in the end, effectively wasting all that preparation.

Sparing Abby at the end is like when movie characters spare the life of the main villain after killing all of the henchmen. It is completely shallow way of making a character seem like a good person for no in Universe reason

The game would have been a thousand times better if at the beginning it pretended it wasn't about Joel or Ellie, we just get this character chasing someone for vengance. We could explore her in more detail and empathize with her early on, only to later realize what she actually wanted to do. Then we wouldn't need to waste time on a second half of the story making us "sympathise" with Joel and Ellie, because we already know them. I dunno', there's a million directions this story could have been told, that would have been much better than what we actually got.

This video really made me appreciate the first TLOU even more. A beautiful tale of two people finding hope in an hopeless world, the game just had to build around that concept to make it believable. The art, music, gameplay, characters, plot, events all act in unison to create an art piece. Getting a clear emotion or concept across requires a certain genuine simplicity in its direction/creation process that TLOU 2 just lacks

It’s insane how empty the game made me feel, it just felt so completely and utterly pointless. Such wasted potential.

What also pisses me off is that Ellie puts all the blame on Joel for "stealing her choice" in that hospital, without ever bringing up that the Fireflies did the same thing by keeping her asleep and performing the surgery on her with or without her consent. Not only that, but she acted like a vaccine was _guaranteed._ BULLSHIT. If anything, the Fireflies were idiots for trying to kill the one girl who happened to be immune. So if they fuck up, WHOOPS! No do-overs. It's also baffling that nobody brings up how Ellie's immunity could be passed down to her future children. Also hey, there's another good reason Abby's group could've kept Ellie alive maybe? She would be too important to kill? I dunno. Or maybe if they had another purpose for going into Jackson instead of just taking out Joel. That would be a secondary goal whereas their primary goal would be something different.

One of the things I would like to add is that the game that the PS Vita girl plays is Hotline Miami, a game which has almost the same themes of violence and the consequences that follow which for me feels less than an Easter egg and more like the writers try to flex at how much better they did their own story Spoiler: THEY DIDN'T!!!!!!

One thing I have to say that is extremely bothersome- after the first game, Ellie has an overarching "beef" with Joel despite all they got through together. OK, he lied to her, but guess what, her character is so self-absorbed and disappointed with not being a martyr that she spends more years at odds with Joel vs the bond they created through their survival journey, that it's just not believable in any reasonable sense. That's a very weak component of Ellie's part in the 2nd game as far as I'm concerned 🤮

God, when you showed that first trailer screening, I got so sad, because I remember how excited I was seeing my favorite characters again in a new light. I was not expecting it to be this bad. There was so so so much potential, wasted for nothing.

Ellie in the first game: A young girl who grew up in the apocalypse, and only through Joel and her best friend found glimpses of what the world was once like before. Also she’s responsible for Joel’s character arc throughout. Ellie in the sequel: “You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death!”

Fun little piece of trivia: The reason many of Abby's segments felt poorly paced or just out of place is because her character received hasty rewrites due to the fact that playtesters almost unanimously hated her. Let that sink in for a moment: even though Naughty Dog saw the writing on the wall well in advance, they still tried to do damage control on this complete abortion of a character any way they could -- even if it meant forcing players to play as her in order to make her come off as sympathetic after the fact she brutally murdered Joel and gave the worst possible impression she could. In the end, all they accomplished was the precise opposite of what they intended. That might as well be the game's tagline: "Everything went wrong because everyone made idiotic decisions."

Damn, your critique of Abby killing Joel so easily after he saved her life and your potential rewrite of using the Joel-saves-Abby twist to make Abby's scene better is so fucking spot on.

It was definitely weird to me that Ellie didn’t find out why Abby killed Joel

You know there’s a nostalgia critic quote that fits this game Perfectly “yeah but it’s symbolic and means stuff” “just because it’s symbolic and means stuff doesn’t make it good”

Even Walter White couldn’t find any chemistry between these characters

I'm late to the party, and outside of everything you said that I 100% agree with, I love that they try everything to manipulate into feeling guilty for killing people having their friends and lovers scream out their name. "ANTHONY!" but if I casually walk up to "ANTHONY!" he will casually murder me without a second thought. so yep I feel extremely guilty for killing him :)

one thing that i want to comment is that Abby´s friends didnt die because the murder of Joel, they died because they stupidly decided to leave Ellie and Tommy alive, even when Ellie was screaming that she was going to murder them and one of the characters even said so "no loose ends", so they knew that leaving them alive will make them look for them with vengeance like they did with Joel, also they wear the logo of their group, which is what Ellie and Tommy use to know who they are and from where they are, the story happens just because they are idiots.

1:47:24 "... its almost as if, the writers for Part 2 had a lack of faith when it came to the capacity of empathy of the player." Holy shit, exactly! This game hammers over your head the messages and themes regarding empathy so many times, without any subtlety, that I started to tune out half way through the game. Its like when a comedian starts explaining a joke for the 100th time why its funny, the humor just gets lost.

"Ellie was the hope for the WORLD!" and "The Fireflies were the only hope for the WORLD!" but we don't see the rest of the world in the story! We only see the USA. I would have LOVED to see how the outside world is handling the Cordyceps infection, in fact that what I had originally hoped for the sequel instead of ruining the ending of TLOU. Have us explore other Characters and their stories going on around the World instead of just focusing on the US, because I find it kind of hilarious now that TLOU2 hints at that Jerry was the only person in the world that could make the vaccine and that the Fireflies are the only ones looking for cure and is the hope for all of humanity around the world.

I get really confused when I hear people say "Im cool with joel dying the way he did, his arc was complete!"... like did we play the same game??? Last of us 1 was a cliffhanger ending to me, I remember my mind spinning in all directions of where the story can go with that great ending.... only for all the possibilities to be beaten to death and to be replaced with a revenge plot and dropping the importance of Ellie's immunity or the zombie crisis at hand. I think people were not just angry at joel''s death, but more angry the death of Joel's plot for it to be replaced with basically nothing. Abby straight just has no plot and Ellie's plot is to kill her, its quite boring IMO.

Can't wait for TLOU pt3 when the son/daughter of the the fat Rattler grows up and seeks revenge on Elie for killing his/her dad, who we come to fine out in flashbacks was only imprisoning and torturing those people because THEY were the actual bad guys at first. Because you know, there are 2 sides to each story 🙄

My biggest complaint is how the game ironically makes Joel's morally grey decision at the end of the first game the objectively correct choice. Survival is a huge theme in the first game - we are shown time and time again how the world has basically failed to stabilize outside of Jackson. Quarantine zones are failing, entire cities have been abandoned to the virus, children have to be desensitized to ultra-violence if they are to have any hope of making it through puberty and there are more bandits than non-bandits. This is why Ellie's operation in the first game is such a big deal: it represents hope for change in the world order. It's ironic then that in the sequel after Joel 'dooms humanity' they decide to relegate the infected to jump scares and filler combat arenas, instead of having them be be a part ANY significant story beats. If you look at all the way of life that survivors have in the second game you can see civilization is not damned, it is THRIVING. Jackson can afford to send teenagers on zombie patrols in snowstorms without adult supervision, the WLF owns the streets of Seattle and the Seraphites have an entire island to themselves that isn't contaminated by a single spore - in the first game, that would be a luxury akin to El Dorado. The themes are so completely disparate from the first game that you could almost tell the exact same story without using any recurring characters if they didn't bring back a few plot elements

*_ARE YOU WEARING MY BACKPACK?!_*

Also one thing you kinda touched on but didn't fully commit to is Tommy's girlfriend. I noticed this the first time I played through and it pissed me off. In the beginning she was willing to risk Ellie Dina and the security of Jackson in it's entirety to get Tommy back (via possible retaliation from WLF). But at the end of the game they aren't together anymore and there's no story behind it. So she went from risking it all for the guy to their relationship being whatever. It's like they changed her character during the game and didn't even explain or show why. Crappy writing. The whole game is like this. No creativity at all just basic convenient random character decisions that give the excuse of more gameplay.

they’re really tryna tell me dina who was less than 2 weeks pregnant, fell through a high ass window got shot at and ran heavily everywhere and even after she was two weeks pregnant got nearly beaten to death by getting her face smashed in and a arrow in her shoulder didn’t die from simply stress alone???!! make it make sense omggg

"Perhaps they were too married to their conceptual ideas" There's an interview out there with Druckmann where he says that he wanted to make a character that you loathed and then bring you around to liking them (as mentioned in the video). His actual storytelling goal was to set up Abby as being terrible and then do the perspective switch, presumably to gut-punch the player for having their preconceptions about her. Of course, there's a reason this story isn't done -- at least not in this way -- and it's because it doesn't really work. Druckmann even said that when they were focus testing the story, *everybody hated Abby*, and instead of realizing that it was a structural problem they just desperately added scenes with her to try and build more sympathy. This kinda-sorta makes sense, as these focus tests were done very late in development and restructuring the entire game was pretty much out of the question by then... but it was also a storytelling decision that anybody could have looked at and known wasn't working before they were too deep to change things. (Although I think the overall story underwent some significant changes before release-- early information focused on how Ellie and Dina would do missions in Jackson together to build up their relationship, and suggested that *Dina* was actually going to be killed by religious extremists and Ellie's revenge quest would be against the Seraphites. The problems that arose from this are that (1) nobody cared about Dina and nobody was sold that Ellie would turn into a mass murderer if she was killed, and (2) it's a zombie game and making the main enemies religious nutjobs seemed extremely weird. This was the storyline they implied shortly after the first release trailer, and I think it underwent *substantial* re-writes afterward when the response was not what Naughty Dog wanted, which in turn is why TLoU2's story decisions feel like rushed first-draft setups that really needed a second pass.) It doesn't helps that *he* openly admits that Abby is his favorite character and *he* already had all the sympathy he needed behind her and couldn't understand why focus testers didn't love her as much as he did. So this was actually Druckmann's conceptual thesis, and yes, I believe it's safe to say that he was so married to this *concept* that he failed to step back and realize that it simply wasn't working for the story he wanted to tell.

Take a shot every time he says And yet it gets worse.

TLOU 1: Story > Gameplay TLOU 2: Gameplay > Story

The desecration of Tommy's character at the altar of "empathy" is one of the biggest video game tragedies of the last decade :( I'm so sad that this gets lost in so much "analysis" of this story and am so grateful you included it in your video! Bravo!

So Neil ACTUALLY HAD AN IDEA to build up Abby with Joel and the others before the killing? They just threw away all that chance to create Abby as a sympathetic character and said "fuck it, we need to make the plot happen." I swear, every time I look at something about this game, I find another disappointment.

For Ellie to say that she was supposed to die in that hospital is one thing. For her to actually allow it to go through is another.... Remember, in the first game she said “killing a few to save many, that’s shitty” when Joel told her about how the military killed off people outside the QZ. The same logic is applied to her death to generate a vaccine/cure.

I really wish your idea about Abby changing her mind about Joel’s killing was canon. It would literally solve most of her narrative issues. Very good video!

You can't hide a poorly written story behind fancy graphics and near-perfect gameplay mechanics. And even if you hate the character, Laura Bailey did an incredible job at playing Abby in the game and deserves none of the hate associated with the actions of her character. Ashley Johnson (Voice of Ellie) got little to no backlash for her characters choices in the game, why should Laura get all the criticism?

I hate what they did to Tommy. He was one of my faves (and still is, except his last scene). I liked him even more than Joel. Tommy is such a great and brave and loving guy (and I love his voice actor!). And then the last scene.. just killed him more than Abby did. This was the scene where I decided that this game sucks for me.

I think this has to do with how crappy Abby's arc is, but she almost comes off as a narcissist. Think about it, she has no problem with brutality torturing a man who had just saved her life, yet when some of her friends alienate her because of it, or at least dislike her, she decides to save two kids. Even though earlier in the game she tries to justify killing seraphite kids. And when she's about to kill Dina, Lev calls her name. She's nearly going to destory her image in his eyes, so she lets them go because she doesn't want to alienate Lev. But thats just my thought process on it.

The first game works because Joel’s final decision happened because it’s who he is. The second game doesn’t work because Ellie’s final decision happened because “the theme” forced her to, not who she is. And unlike the second game, the first one didn’t try to make Joel a good guy. He’s a broken, selfish and flawed person and Joel himself knows it and willing to live with it. The second game tried too hard to make us love Abby and trying to protect Ellie from becoming a scumbag in a way that it makes no sense for any of these characters.

Could be horribly wrong but doesn't the whole "You took away my choice to die for the cure/vacccine" plot narrative fall flat thanks to what Ellie says and what happens to her in the first game? At the water scene where she drowns, just a few minutes before that, she makes mention of how maybe Joel could teach her to swim after they're done. "When we're done", said directly near the hospital where the Fireflies are located. Wouldn't this imply that Ellie expected to be walking out ALIVE from the surgery? She fell unconscious due to drowning and most likely remained unconscious even up till the surgery itself, when was she ever informed that she was to choose whether she wanted to sacrifice her life due to her no doubt going to die during surgery? When was she given a choice? She says she's "still waiting for her turn" due to what happens in the DLC, and Marlene tries to say 'it's what she'd have wanted', but wouldn't that only work if Ellie KNEW she was going to die in this surgery, Joel figured out she knew and made the choice and STILL chose to save her? So how the FUCK can she use the "you took away my choice" narrative in TLOU2 if she never MADE a choice AND possibly thought she'd be leaving alive? That's my biggest question here. Please, someone give me a source that shows she was given a choice and knew :,) Just genuinely trying to make sense of this..

ALSO, the characters act like Ellie is this horrible person seeking revenge over Joel who was her fatherly figure..but isn't that EXACTLY what Abby did? seek vengeance for someone who killed her father??? why is Abby the one that gets a free pass but ellie doesn't?

The saying “you either love it or hate it” gets thrown around a lot, but this game couldn’t make it more true.

I unintentionally made this game miles better by taking like a 2 month break from the game in-between the switch between abby and Ellie because I was so annoyed I had to relive that whole sequence. By doing that I forgot a lot about who I killed as Ellie making the reveal that Owen and Mel were dead much more powerful than it would have been if I had played it straight through. I had totally forgotten by that point that Ellie had already killed them so it was a total surprise to me.

“Destroying pre established characters.” This pretty much sums up the game

This is a great video, and I commend you for your work here. But this has to be said: I find it hilarious that Jerry went from a nameless NPC to a savior of the world who is a neurosurgeon, virologist, and infectious disease expert all in one. Truly astounding.

The biggest problem for me really was that Abby literally says nothing about Joel. There's nothing that connects Ellie and Abby because Abby is so unavailable. I think Ellie learning about why Abby killed Joel would have bonded them in a profound way. Bonded through hate but bonded nonetheless. Or even when Abby is about to slice Dina's throat, they could have had a moment similar to Breaking Bad's episode Ozymendias, where Walt fights Skyler with a butcher night and yells "What are you doing, we're a family!" and then has an epiphany about what he's done. There was so much potential to connect Abby and Ellie's parts but they just COMPLETELY opted out of it.

I would've like to see a moment like where abby and ellie facing off in which ellie yells "I'll kill you for what you did to joel" then abby retorts "He had it coming, he killed my father!" then ellie whips right back "He did it to save me! If someone was trying to kill you and your father jumped to save you by killing them would you fault him?" Abby hesitates..."why do you care anyway, he wasn't even your dad!" Then ellie hesitates even longer until "yes he was..." Something like that would've given me goosebumps and a tiny redeeming moment but instead ellie bad and abby good because she likes dogs and is a trans ally (because trans > lesbians according to the writers lol) Also this game is like that cereal "oops, all berries" except it's "oops, all themes" lol

The game is unbelievable on a technical level. The acting, animation , scope and wealth of detail are unrivaled. I think this is why the game got so much praise. Its lifted up so much by these aspects.But ofcourse its conceptual planning and writing are really quite tragically misdirected.

I actually love the idea of Ellie tracking down Abby and seeing her Already dead. Also what’s the song that played during the betrayal of Ellie? I’m obsessed

About a year ago I submitted a 15 page analysis of TLOU2 for my English capstone and promised to never return to the game again... and yet I just finished this three hour long video lmao 🤡 You did an amazing job on this video! It's such a relief to find someone who talks about how shitty the writing is without being a bigot (the transphobia/racism/antisemitism etc. I always see is awful). You were so thorough in your arguments and pointed out a lot of things I've always felt but have never seen someone else put into words. After watching this, I think I can FINALLY be finished with this stupid game once and for all... so thanks! :)

In your conclusion you said it yourself without noticing; the reason why the second one isn't as good as the first one is the fact that it wasn't, in fact, made by the same people. Neil had Bruce by his side on the first game and in part two, he was basically by himself. So yeah, I blame mostly Neil . Also, Neil doesn't accept criticism and even said in one interview that these people criticizing the game "don't matter at all". So I guess he doesn't care about my money either, which I'll be spending on games that he doesn't make.

Man, towards the end of the video I realized that the game would’ve been so much better if the writers would’ve stopped to think “what would Joel do after this...” “what would Ellie do...” “what would Tommy do...”, etc etc. That was one element from Vince Gilligan’s team when writing Breaking Bad. Imagine if Vince would’ve worked on this game! It would’ve been sooooo much better

Summary of the video for people who don’t wanna sit through 3 hours: “Oh you thought that was bad huh? Just you wait, there’s more and it gets worse!” Times 10 lmao

I finally get why I wanted Ellie to get revenge: I can understand Ellies hate, while Abby seems like a sociopath with a likeable mask killing the person we loved without considering that he was even more of a sociopath and created the situation where not only two people loving each other were separated without time for a goodbye, he also intended to kill a girl without even asking her for consent and thought the man taking care of her for a year would just be okay with him killing her. He literally treated her like an object, and wouldn't have done the same if it were his daughter, yet he tries to intimidate a man protecting her like a father because he wants to save her. And Abby should know that. Why the fuck, then, does she want revenge, or for that matter why the fuck does she do any of the things she does? She seems likeable on the outside, but there is literally no motivations given. Even if getting revenge isn't what Ellie needed (what it would be for me, honestly), why the fuck should we care about Abby?

I like your idea about Ellie finding Abby already dead. Then she could have broken down in hysterics, "You can't be dead, no, no" etc. which was her finally coming to fully grieve Joel's death. They could have played a montague of moments they'd shared together and then rolled the credits. It would have been sad and left the player shocked but it would have given closure. That would also have shown that really it was (still) about Ellie and Joel the whole time. Besides, WGAS about any of the other characters, who were all dead weight to the whole thing anyway?

the best way I heard it put by a reviewer "I was told this game would ask me deep questions, but I never felt it asked me anything, it just told me 'violence' louder and more aggressively until I couldn't even hear what it was saying" My biggest problem with this game was the fact that it forces you to be a bad person, it makes an effort to make you feel terrible for every action you take, and never gives you the chance to stop. They make an effort to make the game less enjoyable and fun in order to push their message and push a large part of the audience away by doing so. And, in regards to the message, I assume it's meant to be that revenge is bad, but that's not what the game suggests. Ellie, who almost goes through with her revenge but inexplicably gives up at the last moment, loses everything. Her wife and son abandon her, her last link to Joel in her guitar playing is lost, most of Jackson likely will reject her because of her abandoning Dina, she has nothing left. Abby, who actually does go through with her revenge, in possibly the most brutal fashion possible, loses her friends. But, then finds a new friend, then finds the fireflies, which she's been talking about for her whole half of the game, she gets what she wants in the end and ultimately comes out better than Ellie. So, the person who does go through with revenge ends up better than the person who doesn't, so it says to me that, rather than 'revenge is bad', the message is 'if you're gonna go on a revenge mission, finish the job'

Maybe in california, ellie could’ve been properly captured and enslaved by the rattlers for a prolonged period. Then she’d have no choice but to cooperate with abby or at least tolerate her existence, since any attempt she would make to kill her would be stopped by the rattlers. This could then lead to ellie learning why abby killed joel, them getting to know and maybe empathize with each other, and then have both characters be put to the ultimate test by having to work together to liberate themselves from the rattlers. A parallel could be drawn between their physical enslavement and how both characters are slaves to grief/rage.

Ladies and gents. Let’s not forget the satisfaction of Tommy killing Manny. Hated Manny just as much as Abi if not more.

the surgeon held a knife to Joel and said you arent taking her. Joel had no choice

Oh boy, a 3h video? Better get myself a drink and some bigot sandwiches

Zero sympathy for Nora - she talked all that trash then cried like a baby when Ellie caught up and she was about to fall into the spores. Basically everyone is terrible in this game though.

Best part of the game was playing as abby, then letting tommy & ellie blow holes through abby. Satisfying ending forsure

Terrific, terrific critique. The more time passes since I played Part 2, the sadder I get for the missed opportunities this game had to be a definitive sequel. He'd probably never admit it, but Neil Druckmann sorely missed Bruce Straley's (Staley?) voice in his ear with this one.

The message is: revenge is pointless and will never bring you satisfaction. It will only make thins worse for you. But only if you’re Ellie. If you’re Abby then revenge will always satisfy you and never cause you problems, and if it does it is because Ellie is a bad person.

Any time a zombie story tries to ignore the zombies as the core antagonist and do a "humans are the real monsters" type of thing, it's always shit. No matter what universe it is

A contrivance I didn't notice until now: when Tommy slams Abby with the sniper rifle, the moment she crosses through the door, his M14 does have a magazine in it. This staggers Abby far enough away to give him room and time for him to shoot her, but the story would end if he did, so he kicks her instead. During the kick, before he is choking Abby with the rifle, the magazine is conveniently missing from the gun, so that he can't shoot her, nor Yara during the rest of the scene.

I never really bought Ellie being so naive about what Joel did. She seemed so oblivious to the Firefly event, when she is obviously pretty bright. At the end of the first game it seemed like Ellie clearly understood that something happened but was content with letting it go.

1:05:51 Let me just say I think the whole little sniper segment is dumb as. Tommy has literally more experience as a hunter and handling weapons (including sniper rifles) than Abby has experience just being alive let alone weapons and combat training. Tommy is on par with Joel we are told and shown this in the first game. Joel himself didn't just murder an entire building full of trained and experienced soldiers BY HIMSELF to get to Ellie, He fucking massacred them. They really wanted us to believe that Tommy, a man who is on par with his brother Joel in not only experience and training but also brutality, would be unable to kill the shit out of Abby? Tommy isn't like in his 60s in this game he's late 40s to early 50s at his very oldest what 50-year-old trained killer is going to lose to a 19-year-old girl? Even if she is buff how in the hell does this make sense? I know she's trained too but again Abby is 19 Tommy has at the very least 20 full years of experience. In almost every scenario especially combat experience trumps everything.

TLOU2 is a masterpiece of misery. If you want to feel terrible with no payoff, there is no piece of media that comes close. The manipulative marketing where they made it look like Joel would be a facet of the game by putting him in scenes that he doesn't live long enough to see really was just evil genius. As for being a story with a lesson to teach? It's awful.

I almost quit the game when Dina didn't immediately tell Jesse she was pregnant. "It's not the right time" she says. Dina, life has decided that for you, YOU aren't a goddess who can decide when the right time is, he's the father, he NEEDS to know the second you suspect you are pregnant. Then there was the throwaway line of "Do you know of she'll keep it?" Spoken by Jesse when Ellie tells him. Now abortions are a controversial topic, I sit a bit in either side of the arguement, so it wasnt that in and of itself that bothered me, it was how nonchalant the idea was thrown out there of terminating the fetus, it really grossed me out as to me it didnt even cross my mind to do that. And with limited pills, what are they going to use, a coat-hanger? Bleach? It just threw me off. I despised all of them. I tried replaying it recently and quit when I heard Mel say "Why would it be up to Owen?" as she's decided to enter a combat zone. I yelled at the screen "BECAUSE HE'S THE FATHER YOU SOCIOPATH!". I mean she tried to act high and mighty to Abby later on, but SHE coaxed them all to kill Ellie, so she's no better. I felt sick seeing her technically kill her baby by parkouring. Honestly that child was probably dead a minute after they left the stadium anyways. Yuck. That game was just...Vile.

wait, they literaly had a better idea, to have abby get the drop on joel, and went in and just rushed it 😂 this makes it soooo much worse. imagine if she hung around, and she even grew somewhat attached to him, and then have her backstab moment be painful for her aswell, maybe even have joel drop his guard because he felt like it's time to pay his dues, what would've made it even more painful. abby probably fantasized about what a monster joel had to be, to do what he did. and then it turning out that he's just a guy that regained his humanity when he saved ellie, that worked his ass off to give to other people. that way, abby could've told ellie at the end that joel wasn't fighting back when she got the drop on him, and have that be the moment when ellie said "just go", make more sense. the whole killing moment could've been way more personal, and ellie could've just dropped in, right after joel told abby "it's okay, i'm sorry". abby could've fled, they could've tailed her with multiple people from the village. that way giving abby and her friends a reason to immediatly flee, and in that way see all of her WLF buddies and ellie would've had her trail to follow, because they couldn't pack up all their stuff, and she'd know who her enemys are. the rest could then play out as it was, with us being confused as to whom to even side with, because joel himself decided to not fight back. dunno man, this was the moment that most people disconnected with the game, i watched and rewatched tonns of streams just to see their reaction, and from that point on, most of those i've seen, just went trough the motion, besides some minor moments where it almost got good again. you can't just kill a beloved character without the perfect set up, would be as if aerith was killed at gold saucer by a malfunctioning arcade cabinet, everybody would've just been pissed off. how you frame such a death can kill your whole story, and in this case, it just did, and they even told us that they didn't care enough, by saying, it just needed to happen fast. they were banking on pure shock value.

Okay this was a nice side project. But really, when are we getting the definitive 4 hour essay on Wang size in GoT?

"I struggled for a long time with surviving'. No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for." I love how this game pushed my imagination to empathize with the consequences of decisions and livelihoods so catastrophic; how quickly people change their needs for survival.

37:30 Exactly. Ellie was so deep into vengeance that is makes ZERO sense to let Abby go in the end. Zero.

Can we talk about how Abby should have been so weak at the end that Ellie should have killed her in one punch? Beaten half to death, then strung up and starved for God knows how long? Then she just carries Lev like it's nothing and has a competitive fight with the comparatively fresh Ellie? Meanwhile Joel got impaled once by rebar and he's in a damn coma.

“Revenge is a fools game.” Arthur Morgan, 1899. (Seriously this is by far the best video I’ve ever seen discussing LOU2 in a unbiased way. You deserve an Oscar for this video.)

The last of us left us with a profound and powerful ending, but thou2 left us with nothing

What I find most despicable is the way they finished Joel off but how cowardly he was still put back in flashbacks and cutscenes over and over because they knew we bought 2 to get to know Joels and Ellies conclusion and relationship. Killing Joel off that early that way is fanfic level

I'm surprised so many people liked Dina. She was a shallow, moronic, token character placed in there purely to be a love interest. Her and Ellie kissed once then had a high bang and suddenly they're soulmates and raise a baby together?? There's no connection there, at all.