At the Edge of the Abyss - A Last of Us 2 Spoiler Review & Analysis

Note: This piece is meant as a spoiler-heavy review and analysis of the main storyline and gameplay elements of the Last of Us 2. We will dive deep into the narrative, so if you haven’t played the game and want to go in blind, you should look elsewhere on this site for something fun to read! Also, If you would like to see a more technical review, I’d recommend ACG’s video. Skill Up’s more critical take on the game actually contains reasonable criticisms (some of which match up with my own), while LazerzZ’s positive verdict is a good watch for those who appreciate what the game attempted to accomplish.

SPOILER WARNING IS IN FULL EFFECT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

The Past is Prologue

All it took was a cold-blooded murder to set the events in motion.

Perhaps the man had it coming. He had done horrible things, some in the name of love, others in the name of his daughter’s memory. Sarah’s death had changed him; it marked his soul, reshaped his destiny, and turned him bitter.

The man found purpose in living out his days as a smuggler. He found a partner in a rugged woman named Tess, and together, they carved out a semblance of a life. Running guns and contraband through the various quarantine sectors in the city of Boston, they encountered violence on a daily basis.

One day, they were tasked with escorting a girl named Ellie to a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. By some genetic quirk, she was immune from the mutated Cordyceps virus which had infected the entire world, turning people into hideous zombified creatures. Tess died tragically, so the girl and the man fought their way across the country, finally reaching the hospital. The girl would undergo surgery to ensure the development of a vaccine that could cure humanity, saving millions of lives at the cost of her own. 

To the man, who had grown to love the girl as he loved his daughter, this was too high a price. Enraged, he killed the soldiers who defended the hospital, as well as the doctors and nurses who had prepped the girl for surgery. He saved the girl, but doomed humanity. For him, this was acceptable. Ellie would live on, and that was all that mattered. But the man also knew a reckoning would come. He could not escape it, and four years later, it arrived.

Is Humanity Worth Saving?

As you can probably see from the ending of the first Last of Us, one of the big philosophical questions at the core of its story is whether or not it is justified to save all of humanity at the cost of a single life. For many, the cost of a solitary life for the sake of everyone’s survival is not only acceptable, but preferable. The Utilitarian ideal of saving the many at the cost of one is even heroic. Whether it be a soldier leaping on to a grenade in order to save the lives of his squad, or a fireman inhaling a lethal amount of smoke as he saves a family from a burning building, those who do so are lauded and rewarded for their selfless actions. If we go by that metric, sacrificing Ellie to save the rest of humanity at the climax of the first game would have been a sad, but ultimately necessary, act.

This was clearly not the case for Joel, the central protagonist of the first Last of Us. Over the course of the journey he embarked on with Ellie, he began to see her as his surrogate daughter, and a replacement for Sarah. We began to see her bring out Joel’s compassion during the game. We saw her escape from volatile and dangerous situations, often in an attempt to save Joel’s life. We even played as Ellie in the first game, and as we spent more time with her, we came to love her. Like Joel, we did not want her to die. 

Thus, the final moments of the first game challenged us with a simple question: did Joel cross the line in killing all of the soldiers (here called the Fireflies) and doctors in the hospital? I think most of us would say he did. Others, like myself, were actually pleased to see the first game not take the easy way out of this moral quandary. While I could see the horrific violence of Joel’s actions, I also empathized with his decision. I loved Ellie, too. Losing her was not an option, even at the cost of the rest of humanity.

Cycles and Consequences

The Last of Us 2 picks up where the first game left off, with Joel finally confessing his sins, but not to Ellie, who actually needed to hear it. Instead, he tells his brother, Tommy, the one person who’d understand his decision. From there, you meet up with Ellie, and they share a tender moment together in which Joel sings an acoustic version of Pearl Jam’s “Future Days.” “If I were to lose you/I’d surely lose myself,” goes the first verse, foreshadowing the entire plot of the game. It’s a sweet scene that belies the tension hanging between them. Ellie has some idea that Joel has been lying to her since she woke up after the events at the hospital, but she doesn’t press the issue. For his part, Joel can’t bring himself to be completely honest with her, either. There’s a silent distance between them that’s obvious and tragic.

Later, Ellie goes out on patrol with Dina, her girlfriend. She’s told that Joel and Tommy are both missing, and immediately sets out to search for them. We get the sense that Ellie and Joel’s relationship may be strained, but she’s still concerned for his safety. Even after discovering the truth of what he did, she cares for him and loves him.

Meanwhile, Joel and Tommy have both been cornered by a group led by a young woman named Abby. When Ellie reaches the room where Joel is being tortured, she’s pinned down on the floor. Joel’s bloody and motionless body lies across from her, and for a brief moment, he opens his eyes to look at his beloved surrogate daughter one final time. 

Both Ellie and the player are powerless to stop Abby from delivering the killing blow. Ellie sobs and vows to kill them all. Abby and her crew leave, but not before Ellie is beaten and left unconscious. In that moment, Ellie isn’t the only one who swears vengeance. I do, too, and her rage becomes my own.

Beautiful Destruction

I want to switch gears a bit now and talk about the technical aspects of the game before returning to the narrative. First, the graphics in this game are incredible. While I touched on this in the Renegade Arcade podcast show notes, I believe that the developers at Naughty Dog outdid themselves in terms of visual fidelity and world design, as well as character animation. Every puddle of mud on the ground reacts to your footsteps, and every shard of glass from a broken window shatters convincingly. The game contains unexpected moments of beauty, as well. Droplets of rainwater cascade off swaying leaves in the verdant forests of Seattle, and a majestic sunset over a farmhouse late in the game is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. On the more grotesque side of the spectrum, infected enemies look and sound frightening and disturbing. Larger infected like Bloaters and Shamblers are covered in bloody pustules and expel noxious explosions of gas from their bodies, even as they die. It’s genuinely gruesome, and I love it. 

Combat situations where Ellie has to stealth-kill enemies show off the incredible facial animation that the team developed. The desperation on her victims’ faces as Ellie stabs them in the throat is almost too unsettling. Even smaller moments contain amazingly subtle touches, like Ellie wiping the dirt and grime off her trusty pistol as she upgrades it at a workbench. Cinematic sequences sometimes reach the uncanny valley in terms of lip sync or character movement, but it doesn’t detract too much from the experience. Overall, I believe the Last of Us 2 is the best-looking game of this console generation, and that’s really saying something in a year that’s delivered visually stunning titles like Doom Eternal, Resident Evil 3, and Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Sound design in the game is top-notch, as well. Gustavo Santaolalla’s emotionally-charged musical score wraps you up in Ellie’s fractured mindset and never fails to enhance the mood of the game. Environmental sounds are creepy and terrifying, particularly when it comes to the infected enemies, whose dying screams and gurgles are deeply disturbing. It seems that at every corner, Naughty Dog wanted players to feel the weight of their actions, and the audible shrieks of pain from those you’ve killed only serve to make you feel unsettled as you progress through the narrative.

On the other hand, I found the gameplay to be a mixed bag. Aside from a few added abilities and tweaks to the combat system, most of the mechanics found in the Last of Us 2 are identical to its predecessor. You still search high and low for resources to craft the items you’ll need to upgrade weapons, and you rely mainly on stealth to evade or kill enemies during combat encounters. As in the first game, there are quick-time events which require you to hold down buttons to open a gate or door. While the developers have added new traversal elements like rope-swinging and jumping, as well as the ability to go prone in outdoor areas, these seem perfunctory and minor.

Still, combat is intense and forces you to adapt in interesting ways, and you do have more tools to utilize in order to escape dicey situations. For instance, Ellie can use an enemy she’s grabbed from behind as a human shield and take out his friends before silently slitting his throat. It may be grisly and brutal, but it works. In the same vein, repetitive tasks such as looting the same resources over and over also gives you time to explore the beautiful environments the developers have rendered and even discover little character moments, such as Ellie playing the guitar for Dina, who accompanies her on her quest for revenge.

By the end of the game, I could feel the repetition of the play mechanics and the odd pacing of the narrative start to grate on me. The story runs about two to four hours too long, and Naughty Dog’s bait-and-switch halfway through the game effectively resets all your progress and forces you to play as a character you’ll probably have no interest in controlling. While I do encourage those who have played up to the midway point to keep going, I don’t blame them if they stop or come away hating the experience. Personally, I play these games because I enjoy the plot and characters more than the mechanics, so I felt the need to see it through.

Seeing Red

From the very first announcement trailer, there was speculation that Joel’s fate was sealed, and this game seemed to be Ellie’s story. But was it? After several leaks about the nature of the storyline became publicly available, players uncovered that roughly half the game would see the entire narrative shift to Abby’s journey, during which we would control her. This felt jarring, especially since it happened at the culmination of Ellie’s quest. I felt like I was pulled out of the narrative and placed into a boring subplot that featured unlikable characters who had killed Joel. Granted, this was not the first time I played as Abby, as she was also playable in the opening hours of the story, but I was still upset and on the verge of losing my patience.

As I persevered, something interesting happened. While I could not condone Abby’s actions, I began to understand her. Like Ellie and Joel, Abby had faced great tragedy in her life. She lost her father four years prior to the events of this game, and it’s revealed that he was the surgeon Joel killed to save Ellie’s life. That was why Abby murdered Joel, and while I loathed her for that, I also pitied her, and I could see her point of view. As much as I loved Joel and empathized with his actions at the end of the first game, I knew that he had blood on his hands and had done many desperate things in order to survive. Nobody’s hands were clean in this world. However, Abby’s revenge hadn’t really changed anything. Her father was still dead, and she was still just another cog in a conflict that had no end in sight.

You see, Abby was a soldier in the WLF, or the Washington Liberation Front, a militia group that found itself locked in a territorial conflict with a strange religious cult called the Seraphites, or “Scars,” as they called them. Later in the game, as Abby was about to be brutally murdered by a Seraphite patrol, two young rebels named Yara and Lev helped her escape. The three of them managed to find safe haven together, and soon became companions. Yara was tragically killed, but Abby took Lev under her wing and vowed to protect him, which showcased a significant shift in Abby’s development. Her journey toward compassion for her protégé reminded me of Joel’s love for Ellie, while Lev’s innocence recalled a younger version of Ellie from the previous game and its expansion, Left Behind. By the end of the story, I could see that Abby’s character arc ironically mirrored Joel’s in the first Last of Us. While that certainly didn’t absolve her of her sins, it did make me question Ellie’s quest for vengeance, and for the first time, I wasn’t sure that I wanted Abby to die.

A Dish Best Served Cold

Eventually, I reached the most shocking moment in the game, by far: the first boss fight between Ellie and Abby. Rather than playing as Ellie, you’re cast as Abby, which was disconcerting on multiple levels. As I played, I feared the worst would happen to Ellie, and that I couldn’t stop it. After Ellie lost the fight, as she lay beaten and battered on the ground, Lev’s intervention convinced Abby to let her live, even though she had killed all of Abby’s friends. It seemed that Ellie had failed, and we jump forward eighteen months to an unlikely scene.

Ellie and Dina now live in a farmhouse with a newborn baby boy named JJ. It’s an idyllic life: They have livestock, a vegetable garden, and a roof over their heads. They have become a family. Everything seems perfect, but sadly, it isn’t. Ellie’s trauma over Joel’s death and the fight with Abby left her with PTSD. It becomes clear that she hasn’t let things go. Even though Dina promises to leave her if she tracks down Abby, Ellie still decides to do so. She needs to finish it.

Although both of them are wounded and almost killed by a new group of enemies called the Rattlers—who are introduced far too late in the story to be anything more than boilerplate enemies who serve to pad out the game’s runtime—Ellie and Abby finally face off for the last time. As Ellie gains the upper hand, nearly choking Abby to death, she sees a vision of Joel at peace, strumming his beloved guitar. Though moments away from attaining her revenge, she finally relents and lets Abby go. Afterwards, Ellie returns to the farmhouse she shared with Dina and JJ, only to discover that it’s been abandoned. Her quest for revenge has cost her everything she loved. She leaves everything behind and walks back through the forest at the edge of the property as the credits roll.

Shifting Perspectives

Although the ending may have lacked the catharsis many gamers wanted, the fact that Ellie refused to kill Abby left me with some hope that she could move forward with her life. Although she chose to go down a dark path and nearly lost her soul, Ellie still retained her innate goodness in the end. Her complex relationship with Joel and her decision to try to forgive him drove her to the edge, and the shame and guilt she felt over her inability to save his life made her lose perspective. Hopefully, she found a way to make peace with herself and her relationship with Joel in the end.

Similarly, I had to make peace with the Last of Us 2 in my own way. I don’t think the game is flawless. Its story is oddly paced and structured, and some of the new characters feel under-utilized and one-note, though the performances across the board are great. Ashley Johnson gives everything she has in this portrayal of Ellie, and Troy Baker brings a softness to Joel that I never expected to see in him. Laura Bailey, a prolific performer in her own right, delivers an amazing and nuanced performance as Abby, someone I initially hated with a fiery passion. She found humanity in a seemingly monstrous character, which is impressive. I’m a huge fan of the entire cast, but those three were the standouts. Just being able to spend more time with Joel and Ellie was a treat, even though it ended up feeling bittersweet.

Ultimately, while the narrative was overly long and needlessly padded, particularly during the later hours of the game, I still appreciated what Naughty Dog attempted to do here. Thematically, the story was deep and challenging, and the developers once again refused to take the easy way out and rehash a run of the mill revenge plot. The Last of Us has always been more complex than that, and while that doesn’t work for everyone, it certainly was provocative and emotional and left me reeling for days after I completed it.

I will say that the Last of Us 2 is not the same game its predecessor was. Whether it’s better or worse is up to the individual, but I personally like the first one a good deal more. Its characters are more memorable and developed; its plot is tighter and more engaging; and the central relationship between Joel and Ellie is deeper than anything on display here.

Even so, The Last of Us 2 is one of the most challenging, thought-provoking, and thematically rich experiences I have ever played. It made me question my own perspective as I embarked on a journey with its characters, and it made me feel empathy for a person I was sure I hated, even though I remained in solidarity with Ellie to the end. It forced me to put aside my bias and see things through the opposing point of view, which is unique in a video game. Perhaps the world wouldn’t be the mess that it is if we all were more empathetic toward each other. After all, if we could come to see the value in Abby’s life after what she did to Ellie (and by extension, us), maybe we could perceive it in the other side of a political debate, or in those who have hurt us individually.

The Last of Us 2 may not be perfect, or a flawless masterpiece, or even necessarily fun to play. Many have expressed outrage at its story and character design, and the ending of the game has left some players feeling cold and dissatisfied. I completely understand that reaction. However, I would still recommend the game, simply because it’s so ambitious and thought-provoking. I hope that we all can grasp something meaningful from the story, and that we, like Ellie, have the strength to move forward even in the midst of tragedy, and the hope that we can change ourselves even when faced with the horrible things we have done.

We’ll have more to say about the Last of Us 2 in the upcoming spoiler episode of the Renegade Arcade. Special thanks to Jacob Krehbiel for proofreading the piece, and to Joshua Lozano for allowing us to use his video at the top of the article.

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