The Last of Us 2 Fails to Convey the Tragedy of Violence
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- Kat from Pixel a Day looks at how The Last of Us 2, What Remains of Edith Finch and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice portray the tragedy of death.
All footage from The Last of Us 2, Edith Finch and Hellblade capped by me
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Transcript: bit.ly/pixelad...
Thanks to:
Gaming Portal for the Spec Ops: The Line footage
Izuniy for the God of War footage
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I felt loss from throwing Portal's companion cube away.
NunSuperior as did we all
Now this is one of the better criticisms of the Part 2's themes and story that I've heard. Not much I disagree with, though I think you maybe under-addressed Ellie's flashbacks a little bit, also maybe Abby and Lev's relationship pre-California, but otherwise, excellently done! I think the emotional context of playing the TLOU1 can have an important role in how one experiences the tragedy themes of TLOU2, but I could see why you might not address that, as not all players will have that context. Super well done video, definitely subbing.
To answer your closing question: Hellblade and TLOU1 are my 2 favorite and most impactful games for me personally.
Thanks for the compliments! I actually agree that having played TLoU1 would create some grief for Joel’s death in TLoU2, but that’s an achievement of the first game for building a fascinating character, not the second game for killing him off.
Excellent video! The first Last Of Us did a great job of making us feel for the connections between Joel and Ellie and I think it did a great job of showing the beauty of life through that connection. It shows what someone is willing to do, to save someone they care about and that is why I feel Te Last Of Us 2 falls flat on its face. I really loved your delivery of the lines and this video was incredibly well made, keep it up!
JoystickDrummer thank you so much for the kind words! 😊
I totally agree, the first game created so much empathy for Joel because you could see he was doing it all to protect Ellie. In #2 I just couldn’t get on board with how little Ellie did to protect the people she supposedly cares for. That was what killed the humanity and the relatability for me
Part 2 falls flat on its face? Piss off mate, absolute horse shit. They were both fantastic at getting across what they intended.
This review is quite brilliant, I think it elevates gaming as an art form and offers a critique at that level, which I don't think I've seen before.
So much of this essay helped me put my thoughts together in a way that finally feels coherent and meaningful! The section I resonated with most strongly is this one:
"...All the hideous incarnations of death and destruction in the game certainly did make me feel a lot of things-Uncomfortable, disgusted, worn out...but it didn't make me feel sadness or grief or loss...and it didn't leave me with the feeling that murder and violence are tragic, only that they're grotesque. Grief and loss aren't about death, they're about life. We need to value life in order to feel grief when it's taken away."
Both systemically and narratively, "life" doesn't really show up in the game. There are no "forgiveness" mechanics, no "affection" systems. The player is only allowed to express themselves violently, everything else is handled in short cutscenes. Mechanically, violence solves problems. Systemically, kindness does not exist. Narratively, *every* main character values violence over their own life-I'm realizing that I'm starting to approach hyperbole so I'll cut myself short here lol.
I just hope that studios like Naughty Dog and the wider AAA games industry decides to explore "life-ness" and "alive-ness" as the primary gameplay loop, not as the thing that happens in that one cutscene that one time. Then a game might only need 1 death instead of hundreds to have grief be meaningful.
Plus, I'm an aspiring game dev myself, so I'll try my hardest to explore "life" systemically, narratively, and in all the ways I can find.
Thank you so much for making this essay!!!
Oh my goodness thank you for the wonderful comments. I know a lot of people argue that the fact that “violence is the only option” accurately reflects Ellie’s mindset, but I still think that her turning into a murder-obsessed maniac is too simplistic and not even realistic. I want to play your future games!! 😁
Wow you worded my frustrations with TLOU2 really well! Portal made me more attached to a cube than that game did to any of its characters
Darkfry Harsh but fair 😆 Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Death is not tragic. Not appreciating life is tragic. Or rather not appreciating Life and Death on their own terms is tragic. And gratuitous violence or killing for revenge is the biggest non-appreciation of Life. Romanticizing and glorification of death through “righteous revenge” or heroism is a death trap for our civilization. And we are all responsible for perpetuating this image, even if it is “only a game”. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections.
Thank you for yours! 🙏 I know a lot of people disagree and that the game worked as an anti-violence message for them. I think it does succeed in portraying death as ugly and un-heroic to some extent, but I also think it doesn’t do much to rise above the obsession with violence that it claims to condemn in its characters.
I do not see how both can not be true.
Night In The Woods will always sit close to my heart for its loving depiction of what used to be breaking down into what could have been and is in the present
It is one of my favorite games!
Really enjoyed this video, did summarize my thoughts on Tlou having played Hellblade and WROEF. Would probably recommend this to my friends who are new to the medium and won't really watch the 2+ hour critiques.
Thank you
Seymour Laine THANK YOU and yes please do share it round, my tiny channel could do with the exposure! I wrote a more complete set of thoughts on the game here as well: medium.com/@kat.pixeladay/tortured-by-a-video-game-thoughts-on-the-last-of-us-part-2-990a396fb5ff
I don't think that forcing the player to do things against the game's overall message (in this case to be violent when violence is bad) is necessarily a problem, especially when you play an established character (someone the player simply controls to witness the story, instead of someone the player becomes to shape the story).
In Shadow of the Colossus, for example, the player has no choice other than to kill the majestic (often even harmless) colossi. From the very beginning it is no secret that killing them is bad, but the game even plays loud epic songs during the battles to get you pumped up, only to then immediately switch to a deeply sad tune as the lifeless body of the creature hits the floor. Still, the tragedy of the story doesn't feel weaker by the lack of choice at all.
Great analysis!
And comparison to SotC.
Ever since I watched your first video (made before TLOU2 came out) yesterday, and reading the comments below that one, I was very interested to see what your opinion of the hotly-debated sequel would be. It seems like I have the basic idea of the answer now, and its an interesting one of course!
Death I suppose is like a black hole - the actual experience of the person who died is ultimately unknown to all that still live, as is the effect it might have on their state of being beyond death. But what we *do* see is the impact and damage someone's death has on everyone and everything close to them, just as we can see black holes only when they are in the middle of devouring a star. So inevitably I guess, that the tragedy of death is also focused on the perephiral effects surrounding a death. It's not that the person is gone, it's what them being gone means for the world, and the loved ones around them.
And gosh, Edith Finch and Hellblade are both such good games, in such different and yet not entirely unlinked ways from each other. Both sources of flawed female characters, also! I do like how your videos often feel like spiritual sequels to your earlier ones already, and you only have six of em so far. :D
Nice, it's great to hear my videos have some kind of thread! I sometimes just feel like I'm spouting fairly random opinions sometimes 😅 Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I hope you found the video interesting!
@@PixelaDay I most certainly did yes! :D
What game made me feel the tragedy of death most keenly? Life is Strange.
The junkyard scene in episode 4 broke my heart. It still breaks my heart to revisit it years later... "What kind of world does this?" indeed.
A struggle to overcome the traumas of the passed is precisely the story told in Last of Us 2. Abby is struggling to escape the crimes she has made in Jackson and Seattle and learns caring for others doing so. Ellie is going down all the game to the point of becoming the monster she is tracking, before realizing that being saved in Salt Lake hasn't emptied her life of meaning but compells her to be worthy of everything Joel had seen in her, which eventually leads her to turn back and spare Abby, which is the game's huge statement: violence has never been the option, if you want to make your life matter, do it another way. The ending symbolizes Ellie finally chosing to seize the future Joel's sacrifice has given to her, and reclaiming her humanity after the descent of her revenge quest. This story is definitely one about coming back to life after a trauma, and I completely disagree with the vid on this side.
One can be indifferent to Ellie's struggles if they had 0 empathy for what Joel had done in Salt Lake or for the relationship between him and Ellie, and I'm fine with that. But all the game revolves about the descent into darkness (and the eventual redeeming) of people traumatized of losing a part of their life that they cherished above all, which definitely implies that life is worth being celebrated, how is this spitting in its face, or glorifying death?
And I don't see at which point the game disregards Ellie's relationship with Dina, or tries to romanticize or legitimate the quest for revenge. It's all the opposite to me. It is underlined over and over again throughout the game that Ellie is becoming more and more selfish and criminal, that Tommy, Jesse and Dina were simply dragged into Seattle because of her and that her lust for revenge is simply dooming them (regardless of it being justified in the first place or not, which it was imo).
I really like your videos, but I am in a strong disagreement with this analysis of Last of Us 2. I feel that you really missed the point of the game, and that for once, the argumentation is really thin and 90% relying on impressions ("it seems that"...) instead of facts and arguments. Anyway, keep up the good work, I don't mean this as a personal criticism by any means.
I needed this video. I felt the same about Last of Us 2, I just couldn't figure out why. I loved Hellblade, but again, couldn't really figure out why.. You did both. Subscribed. Thanks for this and I'm looking forward to more of what you do, whatever the subject. I like the way you think and explain things :)
Zoltiboi wow, thank you!! 😊
This is a great channel, hope you are successful and make a ton more informative analysis videos like this!
Pyrodactyl Games thank you! There will be more, hope you can stick around!
Appreciate your review/perspective tho I’m in the minority of ppl who loved this as much as the 1st. Yes it was darker, I found some sections a bit long & can certainly appreciate why you felt it glorified death/killing or whey many ppl felt the story was a forced cautionary revenge tale. I do however, feel the arcs of extreme violence for both Ellie & Abbey were in line & justified w how broken/tormented they both were & what was ultimately needed for each to find inner peace within themselves. ND def took w bold risks w this sequel, something developers rarely do & I really appreciated it. Rather than making Joel & Ellie 2.0, give fans exactly what was expected, they told the story they felt was right for the characters. There had to be major fallout from the events of the 1st game & seeing it thru different intersecting perspectives was clever & satisfying for me. I found Ellie’s flashbacks w Joel & Abbey’s hospital dream sequences kept things grounded & put all the killing in perspective. Tho there was much death/loss on both sides, the ending especially left me with a sense of peace & hope. Abbey was left for dead by the Rattlers but Ellie ends up finding her, cuts her down, & in doing so ultimately saves her life & sets her free. Abbey now can live her life with a renewed sense of purpose to care for Lev. And tho Ellie leaves never got the chance to forgive Joel, she left the guitar at the house b/c she finally found peace over his death & was able to let him go. She then walks off to head back to her life w Dina the baby wherever that may be (hence the bracelet on her wrist). Ultimately, I found there to be plenty of subtle beauty to balance out all the violence. Cheers!
The best game I've played that deals with life and death well is Spiritfarer. Not released at the time of this video. I'm sure you've heard of it, and maybe played it. But it's a game that is just so emotional. Made me cry multiple times. You just learn about the lives of all these different souls that you are leading to the afterlife. It is sometimes tragic, and often beautiful.
Ahh, it's on my list! Thanks for the push :)
Just found your channel and I'm really loving it. Such thoughtful and structured analysis without too much bias or personal opinion.
I personally enjoyed the part 2, but I can really understand and get behind your fresh perspective and agree on a lot of what your saying.
I'd recommend Ico, Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian if your looking for some interesting relationship/emotional dynamics that you don't see to much of in video games... the developer of those three games focus a lot on emotional connection and relationship dynamics in a very organic subtle but effective way. The last Guardian specifically has stirred such an emotional feeling in me, as close to reality as I've felt from any type of entertainment medium. Def worth checking out :)
Oh yes I’ve played them all! I think Shadow of the Colossus single-handedly made me appreciate sad empty worlds in games.
Game called "Quietly" by developer named spacepuppy is a very strong expression about loss. Actually it's one of my favorite games. It's quite obscure and can be found on itch.
Thank you for the video!
Thank you for the recommendation! 🙏
While I despise the leaders of the Mormon church throughout its history, I will share one of the handful of beautiful things that happened during my childhood growing up Mormon that this video reminded me of. I remember asking someone why Mormon's are the only Christian denomination that I was aware of that never decorated anything with crosses. And I was told that there was nothing to celebrate in Jesus's death. He mattered because he lived a perfect life and was thus guilty of no sin so when he took upon the punishment of all of humanity's sins and suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane it was such an injustice that it broke the ordinance that made it so that we must be punished for our sins and could repent. I just thought that there was really something beautiful about that, that is wasn't the death that mattered, it was his life, his choices and his resurrection. Probably doesn't mean too much because the suffering in the garden was supposed to be much worse than the cross, but symbolically it's still kinda nice.
One day, when I will stop being so lazy and I will make videos about culture and phylosophy - I want them do be like your videos. Great videos, thoughtfull and meaningful. Thank you
Thank you for the lovely words 😊
Really glad I found you!
Hmmmm, I think your critique about how TLOU2 actively diminishes the value of life, more so than just simply glorify violence is a helpful take and highlights a bunch of problems the game has. But I've wondered if the primary theme of TLOU2 isn't supposed to be that "violence is bad" and "death is bad" and "we shouldn't kill each other." In my reading of it, the primary theme is that revenge and violence cannot fix grief and loss (it's only slightly more nuanced than the violence = bad take). This was reinforced in me a few times throughout the game.
1) Ellie is given the chance to celebrate life with Dina and their child at the farmhouse but chooses to pursue her revenge in an attempt to fix the PTSD she suffers from and to give her closure. The consequences of choosing violence as an outlet for her grief is that Dina abandons her.
2) Ellie's flashback with Joel in her final fight with Abby demonstrates another opportunity Ellie had to choose life over hatred and vengeance by reestablishing a pathway toward forgiveness with Joel. The flashback reminded her that she can give Abby the same chance of life and forgiveness that she gave Joel (does this absolve her of the mass murder she committed in Seattle? No, so it's right that she ends up alone and abandoned, but it's fair that people think Ellie deserved worse).
3) Abby learns the same lesson in her relationship with Yara and Lev. She decides to embrace people who belonged to the enemy and protect them even at the cost of Abby's own people. And it's through her relationship with Lev that Abby is able to let Ellie and Dina go in the first place. I would say that this is the weaker character arc, because Abby's situation is far less emotionally weighted than Joel's death for Ellie, so the player has to suspend their disbelief far more for new characters that Naughty Dog now has to make us care about.
The characters constantly rebound and struggle between choosing vengeance as an outlet for their grief or letting go and embracing life.
4) I think TLOU2 *tried* to introduce empathy and the value of life by having us shift to the WLF and learning about Abby's friends, but the game's plot choices were so blunt and brutal that I wonder if Naughty Dog thought that players could reasonably handle the severity of it all. So many disruptive and jarring things happen that people are too busy recovering from it all to think straight.
I think TLOU2 is a really messy game where not all of its thematic and gameplay choices work together as seamlessly as some people may think. But I think there is more to its *primary* theme than the cycle of violence is bad. In my reading, it's how that cycle of violence is personally applied to the specific emotional stakes of the characters in the game, that is, the cycle of violence cannot be a vehicle to heal from trauma. We need to let go and choose something else. I think this is also why the criticism that the game tells you violence is bad but doesn't give you a choice to do anything else isn't relevant because violence = bad isn't the primary theme. If players had more agency in the story about how they applied violence or chose when to be violent, then they would effectively short circuit the plot and come to the proper thematic conclusions before the characters do. This raises other questions about the medium itself and whether TLOU2 is more like a TV show than a game, but we can also debate whether there is room in the videogame medium for stories presented as narrowly as this.
But I could be totally off. I also wonder if TLOU2 has generated so many interpretations because it has a genuinely in depth story or a poorly told one l, and whether all the confusion/debate it's caused has helped or hindered the medium overall.
Of course you're absolutely right and I could have worded it differently in the video, but yes - I found the central theme of "senseless violence and revenge don't fix anything" too obvious (and bluntly told) a message to be resonant for me.
I would be curious as to your thoughts on Spec Ops: The Line, another game that funnels you into a violent path and then judges you for those actions. While I tend to see a distinction between the two games (with Spec Ops not necessarily arguing that death is bad but asking why we choose to play violent video games), it is also a game of continuous violence that remarks on the horror of those actions in retrospect.
No need to wonder any longer! kat-pixeladay.medium.com/creating-player-guilt-in-the-last-of-us-2-and-spec-ops-the-line-63e00ea5625e
@@PixelaDay You are awesome and I am very glad Errant Signal sent me to your channel.
I love the fact that you make videos about death because it's a very rich topic
I never connected with the first game in the first place. We're supposed to emphasize with Joel and his daughter but we have no idea who they are, and five minutes later we're shooting random people. They're trying to eat their cake and have it too. For all its faults, Dexter was much better at making you emphasize with a murderer. Hex, the opening of Up did a fantastic job at telling you a story about these characters in the same amount of time.
Good video but too little view ;( you guy deserve more
I thought the game's theme would be that revenge is pointless but it didn't even deliver on that-Ellie going out again to throw her life away broke that entirely. She didn't learn anything. And yeah, most of the deaths didn't have an impact on me since I didn't even have much time with the characters. The worst one probably being the first death in the game.. Even if we had time with the character before, it being so quick in the game now just made me go "eh, shame"..
Pixel Passport I did actually feel sad when Joel died, but I think credit needs to go to the first game for making me care about him in the first place, not the second game for killing him off.
@@PixelaDay the first game did do a good job building him up but with the second, it had been too long since I had experienced the first game's story in its entirety so it hit a little bit less than it should've
I could not agree more.
I was definitely moved by TLOU2, but you're right, I don't think it was in the direction of 'sadness'. Not, at least, in the way that the game may have intended. I wasn't crushed by it. Sure, there were definite moments of it. I think the more distinct feeling I had about the game was that humanity and its ceaseless primal need for vengeance will continue to turn us into something terrible, no matter how long and how hard we try to find light out from under. Someone is always coming for us (on some scale) and we are always going for someone (within that same scale) until we find a way to consciously break the cycle. -- The most moving game I played, in my memory at the moment, at least, was the first Walking Dead game from Telltale. It all built up to such an incredible place throughout the episodes and when you finally come to a point where the game begs of you the season's climax, it's almost too much to bear.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment!
I have mixed feelings on the Fire Emblem series, but I think conceptually it does a really cool thing in regards to the value of life. Your units are all individuals with hopes, dreams and personalities. In some of the games, they can fall in love or marry. And yet, at any point in the game, they can die. One or two wrong hits from an enemy, and it's over. At the end of the game, you'll get an overview of what each of the surviving characters decides to do with their life, and it makes you feel so bad for the people you've gotten killed. Battles have weight to them, you're not just at risk of losing a valuable combat unit, but of losing your good friend, and they'll never get their happy ending settled down in a cottage or whatever. It's great and I've loved Fire Emblem since I was a kid because of this feeling.
Except, all of this doesn't matter if you play the games like most people do, reloading your last save if anyone dies. As the games have received larger budgets and more complex stories, they could have explored loss and the risk of it so much more. And yet instead, they decided to write the games with the assumption that people ignore the permadeath. Most characters are written to be irreplacable in the story, so when they "die", they actually become injured (although they can still fight in story scenes). This is worst in Fire Emblem Awakening, where no woman can die because they all have to potentially become mothers. There's never a moment of silence for any fallen soldiers, if two characters are married, and one of them dies, the other doesn't even have any dialogue remarking on it. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, they seemingly just forgot about permadeath, because in the first half of the game, you're a teacher sending your students off on training missions, and if one of them "dies", they just kind of transfer classes and you never see them again. (except sometimes in the hallway?) The backbone of the series, the permadeath, was only an afterthought within the actual story of the game.
So my point is that even though Fire Emblem has the potential to tell really great stories about life and death, and the human cost of war, it isn't really interested in doing that. In the newer games, characters don't even seem to remotely care about the possibility of death, throwing out cheeky one-liners at every opportunity. And the games are also very much pro-war, you mow down countless faceless soldiers, and even if everyone but the protagonist suffers a horrific death, the game still gleefully celebrates that you beat the bad people at the end. But still, when I play some of the older games, I still the feeling that I need to do what I can to protect these wonderful people, and it's great. I just wish the game cared as much as I do.
Contrast this with another game that features party-based RPG combat and permadeath, Darkest Dungeon. The atmosphere seems perfect for the type of game I wanted. It's gloomy, it keeps reminding me that people will die, and I have this group of unique characters. The game is about the stress that a party of adventurers would receive. And yet, when one of my party members dies, I just feel annoyance because it means I'll have to train up another. Apart from some unique abilities that make you deal +x damage to y enemy, the characters are not unique. There's an infinite supply of identical level 0 characters to replace any who die. They say the same few repeat phrases throughout the game, they are pretty much disposable robots.
So in a way, Fire Emblem and Darkest Dungeon are both two sides of the same coin. Games that could have made life and death important and meaningful. But one doesn't give its characters the humanity required for meaning, and the other just seems fundamentally disinterested in exploring the effects of death on such characters, opting for more traditional JRPG stories where you use the power of friendship to kill God.
idk this was kind of an incoherent rant lol
The game that made me feel loss the most might be Utawarerumono the mask of truth.
I agree with the most of what's said in this video.
But the amazing thing that Last of Us 2 *tried* to do was to transform hate to compassion. It's doing it through lived experience rather than as an essay. As a way to change people stuck hating their enemy in conflicts like Israel - Palestine.
I'm happy that you critic Last of Us fairly and don't just dunk on it
Want to play a game that discouragees killing? Death Stranding. I loved it. Great videos. 👍
You should've compared and described Undertale as well.
Sadly this is just another video about someone's interpretation of what this game "wasn't" instead of focusing on the themes and subjects that this game DOES touch on so well. Definitely the most misunderstood game I've ever played, and there are some incredible essays out there that dare to actually give a review on the game. Not a generic dismissal of what they assume the game is about.
If Naughty Dog had instead made a game about how meaningless is life, then it would have been a better game. Probably. I really dislike TLoU2. TLoU1 was a better game because it was coherent: it told the story of a man who lost everything (his daughter and his normal life, then Tess, then Sam--to some extent) and survived only by going hollow. Later, he met Ellie and, after several months (months! not minutes! you don't build care in minutes, you need time), was his humanity restored. He did the right thing, he saved her from certain death, he realised at last that life was better than death. The end. It was a story that didn't need a sequel. A sequel would not possibly be good. And it happened to be right. The sequel almost ruined the original story (almos, because if you play only the first game and skip the second, your care won't feel shattered and betrayed by devs that only cherish money and fame).
It won an award for best story. It was cheating. It was an award given without actual merit, an award delivered by people who might not have a functional critical thinking inside their skulls. They saw a game with dark color palette and realistic graphics (blue/black/gree is the new brown), depicting people crying, and they might have thought, "hey, this is literature, this should win, this is like that movie where a bear eats Dicaprio, and it won best movie or something". It makes me angry, but I can't do anything except express my disapproval. *shows disapproval*
If I may share my thoughts oh tlou2, I do feel the post apocalyptic setting is a good enough excuse for the relentless barrage of violence the player is subjected to. Society as we know it has crumbled. Systems of checks and balances, common decency do not exist anymore in this world. It's kills or be killed. Therefore taking lives also holds less weight; except for the ones that matter to you (Ellie, Abby). Human beings are truly capable of horrific acts as they edge closer towards their most primal instincts. My take on the story is one of redemption and how even the worst human beings can find it if they choose to do so. Ellie kills a hell of a lot of people on her path of revenge/redemption but I don't really count the kills she makes during gameplay sections. Ultimately this is a game and we need targets to take out. The lives she takes during the story elements are the ones that count. If we count all kills made in the game, then surely that makes Nathan Drake a murderous psychopath 🤣. Again I appreciate your take on the game and I realise we are on opposite ends of the spectrum with it. Just sharing my thoughts. Live your videos and essays! Keep up the amazing work.
Nathan Drake is 100% a murderous psychopath and we all need to come to terms with that 😁
@@PixelaDay 😢. Nathan Fillion is a murderous psychopath 😭😭
bevtsen The actor? Well he may be for all I know
@@PixelaDay I've just always thought he'd play a good Nathan Drake. Yes possibly a psychopath too haha. Have you ever seen the uncharted fan film with Nathan Fillion?
bevtsen oh yeah I remember that! That was awesome
This game was made for people who foolishly believe they have a better understanding of the world by self-flagellating.
You may need to look at stories more for what they are rather than assume what the storyteller was trying to do
-Elle may have learned the lesson of death and violence at the end, why does she need to show some kind of remorse or pain at her doings throughout it. It’s a revenge game and she’s just plain angry.
- its the apocalypse, realistically hardly anyone is gonna have soft feelings and emotions and if the main protagonist was anything like the one in Edith Finch, she probably would be dead, that’s why Elle is a survivor.
- The game doesn’t want you to have the option for no violence because it’s a linear narrative not a telltale game. There is no doubt that the designers of the game wanted to express the nastiness of violence and death. It’s not as if the game shows her having a good time doing it.
The game may not have the same impact as Edith Finch, but maybe they didn’t care to make and Edith Finch or Dear Esther. Not all players have the school girl/boy approach of making a diary and reflecting on past events with a tear like in those games. Some don’t reflect until too late or don’t even at all. some just see moving forward with action and violence as another option, hence the world yesterday, tomorrow, and the future
The statement that TLoUP2’s characters don’t care about life is spot-on. I was shocked that the entire second half where you play as Abby, the part where you’re meant to sympathize with her and see she isn’t that bad, has so many contradictory moments. In the end I didn’t think Abby cared one way or the other about the WLF raid of the Scar island and the ensuing massacre. For all the game’s insistence that anyone you kill could be someone with their own life and hopes and dreams the overall message seemed to be “have morals when it’s convenient, kill when it isn’t.”
I’m glad we agree! I thought it was clunky that the way Abby shows her newfound care for the two kids is...slaughtering her way across an island. She’s redeeming herself for her killing with...more killing? :/
Interesting. TLoU 2 wasn't about the futility of violence or revenge for me. Sure, it is a strong theme in the game. But exactly the fact that the game takes the decision making power away from the player shows to me that this isn't the lesson to be learned here. Rather, it appears to me that the game presupposes that we all agree about violence and revenge being futile, destructive and bad. It doesn't want to inform us about that.
For me, the game is about many things. I don't think that one does the game justice by picking just *one* single thing and claim that this is the main topic or moral lesson to be learned here. This way, in my opinion, can only lead to disappointment. When you say that this is a game about death -- well, that's just your opinion.
I find TLoU 1&2 to be primarily to be an experience that speaks through emotion. The strong moments in the game are those without words. Feelings can't be argued with. They are just there. In a way, we are victims to them. In a way, all feelings are beautiful, even the "negative" ones.
When you see Ellie's path until its completion, you might think that this is what the game is about. You might think that your job now is to extract a message from this, a learning, a moral of the story. And I'm not sure if this makes sense. I feel like the game urges us to see what happens through other perspectives. To be skeptical of our own biased perspective. I don't think that Ellie's story is the most relevant story in the game, just because the game shows us everything through her eyes. There are so many other interesting things happening along the way that deserve attention. Possibly more attention. Ellie is almost like a force of nature, an intersection of all the different paths.
Ellie makes the mistake to take her story as the most important and the most relevant thing happening in the world, just because she happens to experience it first hand. Are you making the same mistake too?
Quite the opposite. When I was playing as Ellie it was so obvious to me that her journey was wrong headed, and that the opposite perspective was valid (Joel murdered a lot of people in the last game! He wasn't a good guy!) that it fell very flat when the game did the perspective shift. I felt like it was wagging its finger at me assuming I was "biased" towards Ellie's side when I wasn't at all.
@@PixelaDay Yeah, makes sense. I was biased towards Ellie, and I didn't want to be. I almost felt bad about it, knowing that she turned into the baddie in the end.
Similar to the ending of the first part. I absolutely *hated* Joel for his decision. Totally!
But I could understand him so well. Maybe it's because I'm a father of two daughters. Joel lost his daughter once already. How many times can you expect him to go through this?
After this, he started behaving to Ellie even more like her dad, at least I saw it that way. And I had tears in my eyes.
People can make the worst decisions that you can think of. They can be immoral. And you can still love them.
I thought Part 1 walked that line so beautifully. I thoroughly understood Joel even when I didn't condone what he was doing. It seemed like Part 2 was trying to do a similar thing with Ellie but it just didn't work for me at all. I've, uh, had a lot of thoughts about this on Medium XD
kat-pixeladay.medium.com/tortured-by-a-video-game-thoughts-on-the-last-of-us-part-2-990a396fb5ff
medium.com/@kat-pixeladay/the-last-of-us-part-2-is-not-my-real-dad-game-god-of-war-ragnar%C3%B6k-is-4c0ad3880ec4
@@PixelaDay Thank you for the links, I will read the articles!
Good video, but I weirdly completely disagree with your analysis of The Last of Us 2.
TLOU2 isn't about violence and grief, it is about revenge and forgiveness.
The Last of Us 2 works in a way that takes the player as part of the game. If you don't notice beauty in the world then it is because the characters are finding a hard time doing so. If Ellie is having a hard time forgiving Abby then you should too, and your inability to forgive her will make the game bad just like Ellie's life. This is called a double-frame: the director manipulates you into taking a narrative - e.g. forgiving Abby - so that you can understand the meaning they propose. You can sense such manipulation - hence can disagree - but not accepting it means you will lose the narrative's meaning. A postmodern art wouldn't care about meaning and turn everything inside-out by irony, cynicism, fourth-wall breaks, etc. and will make the meaning exterior, subjective, and relative. But, a metamodern art like TLOU2 would give you a meaning that isn't as linear and easy to swallow as a modernist one where good and evil are clear, where good triumphs, where what you want always happens, where good fantasy is always better than evil reality, where the art is supposed to make you feel good instead of make you feel deeply and reinspect life because it touches that which is essential and vital to us all: life and emotions.
The Last of Us 2 is full with inner-struggles: Liv's identity; Ellie's Sexuality, purpose in life after losing her sacrificial one, forgiveness for Joel's lie, grief over Joel, and later PTSD; Abby's love-hate with Owen, Mel's raising a baby, Owen's with the war between the WLF and
Seraphites and look for belonging in a rumour of Fireflies, etc. All of that touches on the fragility and vulnerability of humanity and how we can always have an excuse to fall in despair. Then, there are the constant battles for survival which are totally irrational from the single characters including the trigger: Sarah, to complete wars such as between the WLF and
Seraphites which actually represent the Palestinian-Israeli War. And lastly, the lost hope for restoration sense you are in an apocalypse and probably all your ties are dead, lost, or in constant danger -Even Mel's pregnancy isn't something to celebrate but to be anger at as if it is a sin to bring a child to this place-. And so, realistically, this is a great scenario to shine a light on the side of humanity which is involves death and revenge instead of life and beauty. One can indeed in closer retrospection realize life and beauty in the nostalgic scenes, the memories, the details, the natural scenes, and the music whether played by the characters or in the Soundtrack. The soundtrack is, too, a part of the narrative because in a metamodern art you as a player are a part of the narrative: did you struggle? did you enjoy the graphics? did you hate the director? did you want to stop the game for a while because you couldn't get over Joel's death but also needed to end things? did you find beauty in small details and events then remembered how the world is so bleak? Well, then you are living like Ellie and the player of Ellie as a true metamodern art is supposed to make you feel.
After being born in a such an irrational world were factions are always in war and losing all those whom mattered to you from Riley to Tess and hanging on one thread of meaning (being a Jesus figure), it is no wonder that Ellie's whole character is based upon this quest of sacrifice and Joel's manipulation of it and lie which led to the /existential/ struggle of season 2: forgiving Joel and finding another meaning, which means letting go of being a saviour and actually try to find happiness like Joel wanted his Sarah to. After struggling with growing up, just discovering her sexuality and meeting someone she likes, and attempting to forgive Joel, he dies.. This is supposed to make someone completely shattered, because who here can collect themselves from the pit of hell twice? Maybe someone who was born in it. Ellie doesn't know anything but fighting 'I struggled for a long time with survivin'. And you-No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.' So, what would anyone in their right mind do in such a situation other than to avenge Joel's death and become a suicidal machine?
Not stopping is supposed to make you exhausted, and the game is mainly bleak for a reason. Stopping and noticing the beauty in the world isn't realistic because her mind is filled with negative thoughts. When it all ended and they lived happily ever after the barn gave her a PTSD-flash. How can she live with something unresolved, when she still hangs onto Joel, onto her history with him as the companion towards human's relief? How can she live when everything she ever wished for is there but she still feel scared to her wits? So, how was the road before that then? Definitely bleak and depressive.
Seeing Dina try to romanticize their living and having a child should be the 'beauty' you sought in TLOU2 but you counted it as a negative. That and guitar plays or flashbacks or the beginnings of Ellie's and Abby's chapters were all beautiful and a 'shore' to rest on, so, there is beauty found in the 'Story of humanity', in the 'Story of struggle'. Without seeing the whole picture, without retrospection, it would be hard to find beauty. Like a comment said: "Death is not tragic. Not appreciating life is tragic". Ellie's tragedy is attaching to being a Jesus figure. 'The tragedy of their stories is not that they died, but that they couldn’t find a way to fully live.' In the end of the game, Ellie sacrificed everything -The Farm, Dina, J.J.- and was going to have her revenge. Abby long ago realized the futility of this after not feeling anything from her revenge on Joel but actually gotten better from helping Liv -see how her dreams of her father became brighter-, but Ellie had to fulfil her meaning in life. She even threatened a child to get Abby. But, then she remembered Joel on the balcony telling her he would have done it again if he could. She then truly tried to forgive him by stopping the cycle of revenge.
Irrationality of the world brought a virus that caused humanity to panic and a little girl -Sarah- to die. An irrational father furious at the world became a skilful killer. After more than a decade he has the chance to be a father again, and the irrationality of the world demanded he sacrifices his other girl. He refused, and told Ellie he would do it again if he could. As such, Joel signed his death wish by his own will knowing it will come bite him. When Abby was going to kill him he already knew many people are after him and was ready to die. This was supposed to be the end of it. But, Ellie couldn't accept that, couldn't accept that Joel 'Deserves to die because the world is irrational and he choose his own wish in it.' So, she kills a spree of people including Jordan & Mike, Manny, Owen and Mel, and Nora. As a result, Abby tries to even it out by killing Jesse and trying to Kill Tommy and Dina. Ellie was going to kill Abby, then Liv would kill Ellie, maybe J.J. will kill Liv, etc. Revenge is the opposite of forgiveness, and forgiving Joel was going to end this revenge because Joel's death isn't supposed to be avenged to begin with: he wanted to die to save Ellie and she could accept that! Forgiving Joel and ending the violence meant one thing: she is no longer the saviour.
The game hits hard and takes days to ingest - especially if you watched an 8-10 hours video instead of playing a lengthy and somewhat boring 30 hours of the game - , and is supposed to tell you that individual, social, and existential struggle and irrationality is always there. It is our relations - Joel and Ellie, Ellie and Dina, Dina and J.J., Abby and Liv- and community that can give us laughing kids and snowball games, what give us a softer Joel who tries to work with his brother on bringing people to safety -there are notes of them putting food for a stranger and befriending them for days so they can join Jackson-, what gives adolescents a chance to fall in love, for people to party and dance and have fun and forget the world is destroyed. When we get out of that and wanted everything to be rational in an irrational world, we lose it all and we lose ourselves that even if things were the best they could be we wouldn't be able to recognize them or even worse: live with ourselves. The games you presented took death as a reminder to appreciate the memories we have and the beauty that still exists or can so in the world, TLOU2 showed us what we would lose if we couldn't accept the irrationality of death, how it could foster into anger, into bloodshed, into destruction, and hurting the people you care about the most including yourself. The way TLOU2 approaches life isn't by appreciating beauty and blossoming a relationship, it is about presenting the tragedy of throwing that away for a fruitless act that has a hallow meaning. The majority of people don't appreciate life, they are just afraid of death. They would live a life not their own, care about escapism and busying themselves from their thoughts, limiting their scope to not notice the 'subliming' part of existence. The people raised on death in TLOU2 can't even be anything other than afraid of death, there is no hope to life but survival, there is no alternative meaning. Ellie had a meaning and lost it, and this journey is her accepting her new meaning of finding happiness. I disagree, TLOU2 didn't do a bad job of giving death a meaning, it gave it its exact one: death is irrational and the meaningful approach to grief is to accept it as a part of life or else you will lose that too. Life now takes its meaning not because it is beautiful, but because death is a part of it and thus: it is finite. Talk about appreciating limited things :)
Aren’t games by their nature, mostly about killing? Walking simulator types like What Remains of Edith Finch aren’t, but most are. I’m not sure how much levity stories like these are supposed to have either. Some of the films you showed didn’t have much. Anyway, I’d strongly recommend the game Pathologic 2. That has a very depressing atmosphere to it, and it definitely shows the value of life. You play as a surgeon in it, and need to save the town from being overcome by a plague. You can’t save everyone and people will die, but the writing is good enough to make you want to save as many as you can.
I ordered TLoU2 and will probably be playing it the week after next. Hopefully there’s some things I enjoy about it. You’re pumping our videos more frequently lately too. I always like watching them.
By their nature? If we're talking just AAA, sure, or at least violence is the core activity, not necessarily killing or death. Thematically though, games cover a wide range of aesthetics, even in AAA space. Just look at RPGs, the core mechanics might involve combat, but exploration and mystery play a bigger role than the combat does, as much as people complain about the combat mechanics in those games sometimes.
@@JINORU_ They still have a lot of dissonance in them with the story. I think it's often important to separate the story from the gameplay, as there's mostly a big dissonance between them. There wasn't in Pathologic 2 that I mentioned, but in most games there is. I recently just finished Red Dead Redemption 2, and found that game to have a fantastic story, with lots of rich themes and characters. However, it has major ludonarrative dissonance. You fight shitloads of enemies, even in the calmer sections of the game, like the epilogue. You can also tie people to the railroad if you want. This is not what people like Arthur or Marston would do with regards to the story, but you can do it during gameplay, and are frequently forced to engage in big gunfights. I just block the gameplay out when I'm experiencing the story moments. I'm not sure how many canon enemies Ellie kills in TLoU2, but I'll find out soon enough when I play it.
"Aren’t games by their nature, mostly about killing?" Games offer you some experience that is somewhat interactive. But to be able to interact with them, you have to understand their rules. Looking around is something that everybody understands, it is an easy job to teach.
While we look around we can point at things, so it is natural to have a game mechanic that uses this. But if you think about it, in everyday life we don't really point at things, unless we use tools, throw or shoot something. So we need story settings that justify shooting things while maintaining easy understandability. So when rendering virtual spaces become the norm shooting at people become the norm with it.
Killing in video games really emerged from software limitations and accessibility.
Games are, in general, about conflict, not killing. However killing is a straightforward mechanic to create conflict, which is why it's so commonly used.
As an aside to those who will try to point to examples of games that "don't use conflict", they do. It may be you Vs a timer, you Vs the landscape, you Vs the controls (QWOP being a good example), &c., rather than you Vs an enemy, but the conflict is still there. Conflict needn't be violent. Anything that creates a challenge is a conflict.
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thank you for this well written analysis, I can't get unmad enough when I think about these shitty garbage ass torture porn games like tlou AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
nice video thanks now I know what genre hellblade is 🤠 (it's made by team ninja right so I could have assumed , but ,)