People still get heated. Five years later, and a mention of a golf club in a gaming forum is enough to start a digital riot. It’s wild, honestly. Naughty Dog didn’t just make a sequel; they made a 30-hour psychological endurance test that forced players to live inside the skin of someone they were conditioned to hate. Love it or loathe it, The Last of Us Part 2 remains the most divisive piece of media in the history of the medium.
It’s messy.
Most games want you to feel like a hero. They want you to win. But Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross wrote a script that basically asks: "What if winning feels like losing everything?" You start the journey as Ellie, fueled by a brand of righteous fury that feels good at first. It’s a classic revenge tale. Until it isn't.
The Joel Problem and Why the Leak Changed Everything
Let’s be real—the conversation around this game was poisoned before it even launched. In April 2020, massive plot points leaked online. People saw low-context footage of a certain protagonist’s death and lost their minds. By the time the actual game hit shelves, a huge chunk of the audience had already decided they hated it. They felt betrayed. Joel Miller wasn't just a character; he was a surrogate father to millions of players who had spent seven years mythologizing his relationship with Ellie.
When Abby Anderson entered the frame, she wasn't just a new character. She was an intruder.
The audacity of The Last of Us Part 2 lies in how it handles that intrusion. It doesn't give you a quick cathartic kill. Instead, it snaps the camera away at the height of the tension and forces you to play as the "villain" for fifteen hours. It’s a jarring, uncomfortable, and frankly brilliant mechanical choice. You go from wanting to put a bullet in Abby's head to realizing she’s just the protagonist of her own tragedy. She’s Ellie’s mirror image. They are both broken people perpetuating a cycle of violence that has no logical endpoint.
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The game forces you to reckon with the fact that Joel wasn't a hero to everyone. To Abby, he was the monster who murdered her father and doomed humanity by taking the Cure away.
Mechanical Empathy: How Gameplay Reinforces Trauma
The combat in this game is disgusting. Not just because of the gore—though the way NPCs scream each other’s names when they die is deeply unsettling—but because of how heavy every action feels. When Ellie kills a dog, she doesn't get "XP." She gets a whimpering sound that sticks in your ears.
Naughty Dog used a technique often called "mechanical empathy." By making the player perform these acts of extreme violence, the developers make you complicit. You aren’t just watching Ellie descend into darkness; you are the one pushing the square button to make her do it. This creates a psychological friction. You want to stop, but the game demands you continue if you want to see the end.
It’s exhausting.
But that exhaustion is the point. By the time you reach the final fight on the shores of Santa Barbara, both Ellie and Abby are emaciated husks of their former selves. They aren't even fighting for a cause anymore. They’re just fighting because they don’t know how to do anything else. When Ellie finally lets go—literally and figuratively—it isn't a victory. It’s a surrender to the reality that revenge didn't bring Joel back. It just cost her two fingers and the ability to play the guitar he gave her.
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The Technical Wizardry of 2020 (and 2024)
Even the harshest critics usually admit the game is a technical marvel. The animation system, specifically "motion matching," makes every movement feel grounded. If Ellie steps over a corpse, her foot actually reacts to the uneven surface. Her pupils dilate in the dark.
The 2024 Remastered version on PS5 didn't change the story, but it added the "No Return" mode, which highlights just how tight the mechanical loop is. It’s a roguelike mode that strips away the narrative and leaves you with the raw, terrifying combat. It’s fun, sure, but it also feels a bit strange to enjoy the "fun" part of a game that spent its entire story telling you that violence is a soul-eroding trap.
Why the TV Show Faces a Massive Challenge
With the HBO adaptation moving into the events of the second game, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have a tightrope to walk. TV audiences are different from gamers. You can't force a TV viewer to "be" Abby for five episodes. You can only show her.
The show will likely expand on Abby’s perspective much earlier than the game did. In the game, the "switch" was a shock to the system. On screen, that might just cause people to change the channel. Rumors suggest they might split the second game into two or even three seasons to give the characters more room to breathe.
Misconceptions and What People Miss
A common complaint is that the game is "woke" or pushing an agenda. Honestly? That’s a surface-level take that ignores the actual text. Ellie’s identity and Lev’s journey are integral to their characters, but the game’s primary obsession is tribalism. It’s about the WLF vs. the Seraphites. It’s about "us" vs. "them."
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The game argues that once you stop seeing the "other" as a human being, you’ve already lost.
Another misconception is that the ending is "nihilistic." I’d argue it’s the opposite. It’s hopeful in a very bleak way. Ellie leaving the farm at the end signifies that she is finally moving past her trauma. She leaves the guitar behind—the last physical link to her grief—and walks into an uncertain future. For the first time in years, she isn't defined by what she lost.
Real-World Impact and Awards
Despite the online vitriol, the numbers tell a different story.
- Sales: It sold over 10 million copies by mid-2022.
- Awards: It held the record for the most Game of the Year awards (over 300) until Elden Ring eventually took the crown.
- Accessibility: It set a new gold standard with over 60 accessibility settings, allowing visually and hearing-impaired players to complete the game.
What to Do Before Your Next Playthrough
If you’re planning on jumping back in, or if you’ve been avoiding it because of the discourse, here is how to actually approach The Last of Us Part 2 to get the most out of it:
- Turn off the HUD: The game is incredibly legible without icons. Playing without a crosshair or health bar makes the tension feel real. You have to count your bullets. You have to look at Ellie’s body to see how hurt she is.
- Read the Journals: Ellie’s journal entries aren't just flavor text. They contain the internal monologue that she refuses to say out loud. It’s the only way to truly understand her mental state during the Seattle days.
- Pay Attention to the Mirrors: There is a recurring motif of characters looking at themselves in mirrors and not recognizing what they see. It’s a subtle bit of visual storytelling that hits harder on a second pass.
- Listen to the NPCs: Stop and listen to the WLF soldiers talking. They have lives, jokes, and anxieties. It makes it much harder to kill them, which is exactly what the game wants.
The game is a tragedy. It’s a 25-hour funeral for a man who did a terrible thing for a beautiful reason. It’s also a story about a girl who had to lose everything to find out who she actually was without him. It’s not "fun" in the traditional sense, but it’s essential.
Whether you think it’s a masterpiece or a disaster, one thing is certain: we’re going to be talking about that golf club for another decade.