 Hey everyone today, we're going to talk about the last of us to Storytelling and game reviews while the last of us to got for the most part completely glowing reviews There were several that were so off the mark I think we can learn something about art about criticism and about failing to approach works for what they are Rather than what we wanted them to be the beauty of this is not only do I get a chance to talk about a game That's one of the finest pieces of art ever made I also get to respond to a critique I got and admit to an example of me doing something about to criticize and others I will briefly very briefly touch on the gameplay and level design But for the most part we're gonna talk about the game's story and the negative reaction it inspired from some players Despite almost certainly being the finest example of storytelling in a game yet achieved and honestly There's simply no way to get around some spoilers while I won't do a full plot synopsis I will be talking about the main themes and structure of the game including a few specific plot points and events So if you haven't played it yet, feel free to save the video for later and buy it immediately By all means though, please do come back when you're done Oh, also like comment subscribe and make me a sandwich after the logo Several of my favorite films ever are Woody Allen movies Crimes and misdemeanors and Manhattan are two of the most well-written films. I've ever seen I Also love Robert Frost's poetry Heidegger's philosophy and Phil Spector's music Woody Allen has been accused of terrible things and even the thing he admits to is pretty troubling though not technically illegal Frost's reputation is controversial now, but back when I was a young man It was thought that he had terrorized his wife and kids regularly Heidegger was a Nazi literally a Nazi and Phil Spector is objectively a crazy person who's also a murderer Yet despite all of these men being deeply flawed or even downright psychotic The work they produced has touched me deeply or played a role in shaping my worldview or comforted me when I needed it Learning about their personal immorality or criminality didn't change the role. They played in making me the person I am All of this to say that I think it is important to separate the art from the artist Now this doesn't mean I think Kevin Spacey should keep getting hired for movie roles or that Michael Jackson should be held up as a hero But it does mean that Spacey's performance in American Beauty is as good today as it was the day that film released It does mean that Michael Jackson's best work is just as good as it would have been if he'd never molested children The molesting of the children has nothing to do with how good Billy Jean is Picasso has come under increasing attack in the era of me too And yes Picasso was not a good person and was certainly terrible to the women in his life But I can simultaneously hold the thought that Picasso is not a great person and also that Guernica is a great piece of art This is probably a strangely controversial hot take these days But I can't think of any other way to approach art the art and the artist are separate entities The artist belongs to him or herself the art belongs to me and you I Firmly believe that failing to separate the art from the artist lies at the heart of many of the negative reactions to the game But there were a few other angles that complaints have been fired from there were complaints about the subject matter complaints that the game was both liberal propaganda and Simultaneously that the game was exploitative of trans people finally the game's been criticized for what I would describe as this story Wasn't what I wanted it to be about complaints I've seen people reduce the themes of this narrative down to violence and revenge are bad I've seen criticisms that the story and themes were too blunt and simple I've seen complaints that the game was full of itself and hypocritical We're gonna go over all of these complaints and show that most of them are the result of people failing to Approach the game in good faith This is gonna be a long one. So feel free to watch it in a couple of sittings I couldn't get it any shorter because I have a lot to say both about this game and Especially about the reaction that many players seem to have to it This video is late because I really struggled with how to lay this all out My first draft went through the whole story. But like I've said before I think that's kind of pointless I'm not really interested in plot synopsis. I'm not Joseph Anderson or one of those guys I'm not gonna sit here and tell you the whole game so you don't have to play it Like I always say if you've played it you don't need me to rehash everything And if you haven't I don't want to spoil every little thing for you So I had real trouble figuring out how to talk about this game story without actually doing a whole plot synopsis until one day at Work I figured out what interests me about this game isn't necessarily the individual plot points What interests me is the way the game and the narrative are structured the immense Quality of the writing and the themes the game addresses. So that's what we're gonna do right now with all that out of the way Let's actually talk about the last of us to story and how that story is told We'll touch on the gameplay and how the gameplay interacts with the story and finally we will address those critiques Especially Jim Sterling's because I think mr. Sterling is a perfect representation of the kind of sloppy criticism that this game has gotten storytelling and perspective I'm often very critical of storytelling in games and films because I find much of modern media to be too simple Too easy too in a word boring Video games are still a relatively new medium that have the potential to push storytelling forward as an art form Instead most games are basically shitty movies For every Edith Finch or Tacoma. There are 20 destiny twos The reason I always say that I'm most concerned with gameplay is because most games stories are bad The last of us to is a tour to force of storytelling for a variety of reasons All of which we will talk about but one thing the game does better than anything else I've ever played is perspective games very rarely use a multi-point of view structure And I never expect to see it so when I found myself playing as Abby early in the game I was completely surprised and the way the game handles this perspective switch between two different protagonists is so brilliant It deserves to be looked at in isolation for a bit one story two perspectives The last of us to is an exceedingly complex piece of fiction and I'm not just talking about the thrust of the narrative Which despite some ridiculous reductionism from people like Sterling is actually incredibly nuanced I'm talking about the complexity of the story's very structure One of the game's most impressive accomplishments is its use of nonlinear and multi-point of view storytelling The game does these things and still manages to be clear succinct simple direct and easy to follow Nonlinear storytelling meaning like stories that are told out of temporal order can be very tricky to get right An example is the new Witcher series on Netflix Now in total I thought the Witcher TV show was great But its nonlinear elements were often confusing because the show sometimes failed to clearly establish different timelines Leaving the viewer only able to piece things together in retrospect Or if you're my mom only after asking me what the hell was going on the last of us too However is very clever in its use of this technique Things are clearly laid out at the beginning of each scene and more importantly The visual appearance of the characters always lets you know what period of time you're in In reality the aging and de-aging of ellie and joel aren't really fully realistic I mean the first game only takes place five years before the second and joel appears to age like 20 years in that time But this is actually an example of effective storytelling Making joel this aged works to make it immediately apparent to the player What time period we're currently playing in It's effective storytelling Over strict realism. It's quite common for games and films to use this technique in a purposefully opaque way It's used to keep crucial plot information from an audience so we can have a big twist reveal at the end But this is not what the last of us two does These flashbacks are rarely major plot points that change what we think happened Instead almost all of the flashback cutscenes and gameplay sections or vehicles from providing additional context to character motivations The story is told primarily but not exclusively from two points of view You play first as ellie and then as abby following each of them through a few blood soaked days The writers went to great lengths to really drive home that these two people are singularly focused on their own need to heal from tragedy Even as the world falls into chaos all around them Even as the ones they love and care for fall by the side they remain laser focused on their goal And we'll get to that in greater detail in the next section But while the game is played from the point of view of these two characters It is not singularly concerned with them Instead it does everything it can to show that every significant character is on their own mission Even if that mission is only helping a friend or completing a military task or repairing their relationships It's clear that all of the named characters are people Nobody in this game feels like a static NPC Joel may only be in the game fleetingly But he's written so well and the moments that are chosen are so powerful that his presence and his struggle is still a huge part of the narrative One of the last sections before switching to abby when the game first goes from dark to painfully darker Is an amazing callback to the famous giraffe scene from the first game It's almost impossible to understate how impressive the game is at seesawing from absolute depressing gravity To moments of love and hope and every time the game feels like it's starting to focus in one particular character A scene will expand that narrative outward to make clear that nobody is an island unto themselves And the game's very structure does a great job of driving the story The order the player encounters certain events works to consistently up the emotional ante Every time the player thinks they fully understand each character's motivations A scene will be revealed that takes you even deeper into ellie or abby's pain and suffering The last of us two could have made the flashback sequential at the beginning of the game It could have started with ellie's birthday Then moved to her getting increasingly suspicious Then moved to joe teaching her guitar then to her running away to colorado and finally into joe's murder Instead it whipsaws back and forth through time One moment is covered in rage and violence and then it will fade out and back into a memory of ellie's birthday at Wyoming's natural history museum even within each of these scenes. There's a tremendous depth to the story This scene at the natural history museum is one of the most beautiful and touching scenes in the game But even here there's the risk of death There's constant reminders of the danger and the horror of what people have had to do to survive This structure serves to constantly surprise the player and keep them guessing But it also serves to only slowly illuminate the true reason ellie can't let joe's death go Finally when we switch over to abby for the second half of the game It maintains this precise structure for a different purpose Instead abby's section shows us the cost of the story not just on ellie and abby But the collateral damage Along the way playing as ellie the game revolves almost entirely on you attempting to track down the people Involved in joe's killing as a way to get to abby Most of this ends up with those people dead Either because they fought or because they're killed by another faction or because they won't give you the information you want Or because the new world is chaotic unjust and dangerous It's already stark and disturbing to play as ellie Then to play the game again as abby and watch how the plot points sink and weave together It takes on a whole different level of horror Near the end of ellie's chapter you track down one of your targets at the seattle hospital You chase her you make her talk and ultimately you doom her to infection She uses her final moments on earth to gloat over joe's death Which makes the player feel justified for having done whatever was necessary to get her In abby's campaign. She's revealed as a human being a medic a good friend She's shown now as a person who does good things and bad things Someone who's a caring friend to abby but also willing to say the most terrible things to someone she doesn't know In abby's section you encounter several of the people who are killed almost as an afterthought on ellie's quest A dog you stab to death in the climactic chapter as ellie is a dog You will play catch with under a giant whale when you're abby Owen and mel who end up killed almost by mistake when you're ellie are revealed as deeply conflicted people People who were along to kill joe not out of malice but mainly an effort to help abby heal herself It's just devastating man. This manner of storytelling this complex interwoven structure is almost completely unique in gaming It plays like the visual equivalent of a novel more than a game I'm sure there are other games that have attempted this narrative structure Though I can't really think of an example at the moment, but I am quite willing to say that it has never been done this well It's very important to realize that this structure isn't just telling two stories It's not telling the story of ellie and then the story of abby It's telling one story that intersects with itself It's telling one long story that impacts the lives of dozens of people as they cross paths And lay waste to things around themselves without ever pausing to realize how much their lives intersect with everyone around them There's a saying that the best antagonists should be the protagonist of their own story And this is especially true with the last of us too There is no protagonist antagonist split in this game There's simply one story with many people all profoundly affected by each other without ever realizing how intimately their lives are intertwined It is so powerfully excellent I think it's safe to say it's the most effective piece of storytelling that has ever been in a game And it will probably remain that for many years to come There's only so much I can really say about the story However without getting into the themes that the game is reaching for and ultimately achieves Violence is bad In the last section we'll get to some of the crazy reviews that arose from artistic misrepresentation And from political ideology Ironically from both the left and the right but understand that the theme of this game was one of the major Saucers of criticism from the few who didn't like it Many of those who criticized the theme either willfully or subconsciously misrepresented the game's themes And that's mainly because this game doesn't have one singular theme It is a complex mixture of several themes If you've watched or read criticism of The Last of Us 2 I'm willing to bet you heard some version of the following Violence in revenge or bad got it naughty dog how profound and yet you gamified violence with all these animations What hypocrites now I'm not going to say that the game doesn't ultimately pass some judgment on violence But the game isn't nearly as simple as that criticism implies When you boil it all down The Last of Us 2 is less about violence itself than it is about four interwoven threads one Lies and failure to communicate lead to pain two trauma and pain lead to violence three People are not just props in your story, but are also the center of their own story and finally four Violence whether justified or not has a cost And that last one is the true central theme of the game Now listen, is that a totally new never before addressed theme? No The history of art is like five thousand years old. There are very few remaining unused narrative themes But The Last of Us 2 is so subtle and smart about how it drives this home that it deserves all the praise man Like all of it the themes here are so cleverly mixed together that it's very hard to isolate each one So let's just go to explaining why they are so well done The central animating plot points of the game each are centered in these themes and each theme is Complexly interwoven with the others The conflict between ellie and joel is entirely based upon their inability to actually say what needs to be said Joel can't because he's afraid of losing ellie ellie can't because she's afraid if she knows the truth. She won't have anyone left Over and over in the game ellie or abby will be talking to someone in a situation where the right words can avoid catastrophe But those words never come In fact, this even goes back to the previous game In The Last of Us 2 we get the colorado hospital scene from the fireflies point of view When the decision to sacrifice ellie is made marlene asked the doctor if he'd be willing to do the same operation If it was abby his own daughter who was being sacrificed He never answers that question. It's not that he doesn't answer it satisfactorily abby's father who will be doing the operation on ellie Literally cannot bring himself to even attempt to answer that question If joel and ellie had been told the truth if they'd been comforted and offered a choice Everything might have ended differently Almost certainly ellie says yes if offered a choice and in that situation It's almost certain that joel grieves but does not kill everyone yet. That's not what happens Nobody communicates with them ellie isn't given any choice at all Marlene presents joel with a feta complete and then when joel reacts as any normal person would When being told that someone they love is in the process of being murdered Marlene puts on the tough guy act inflaming the situation even more The very origin of the cycle of violence in the current game All leads back to failing to communicate honestly with people and failing to respect that other people And their lives and desires are just as important Just as worthy of respect as you and your desires are Now that is an interesting and subtle enough theme to hang a game on but the last of us too does not stop there It takes that central premise as the animating principle and pushes it out further Once this original sin happens It's all tied up in the next most important theme of the game that these failures to communicate Will always end up leading to suffering and trauma Failing to tell joel and ellie leads to the death of the fireflies and the dispoiling of joel and ellie's relationship The next brilliant thing the game does is ask okay, but what about everyone else? That original failure means abby's father is killed her friends and organizations are destroyed The hope for a cure the hope for a better future is gone Abby has nothing left to live for but herself and a small band of friends who now need to move on and start over But they can't Abby simply cannot move on Instead her life becomes a five-year mission of vengeance Even her body is transformed into a weapon of death as she spent years Honing herself for this mission that she hopes will end her trauma and pain by causing others trauma and pain It's the myth of closure. That's one of the other core parts of the game's narrative the circular nature and brutality of trauma Let me tell a small little personal story to ease into this Nearly two decades ago. I was working on a construction project I was scraping concrete splatter off of windows on a two-story ladder That required me to climb up and down over and over and over Now gloves are a pain in the ass as any construction worker can tell you your hands get all sweaty And you can't get the proper grip on your tools and everything feels wrong So my heavy leather gloves have always led snugly in a little cave on my tool belt Climbing up and down a ladder with a razor scraper in your hand is also annoying and inconvenient I would just put the blade in the back of my tool belt as I climbed Now I'd reach back and grabbed that razor a hundred times without it ever being a problem Until the one time it suddenly was a problem I felt a pinch brought my hand up and thought wow, that's crazy. Look at all those gnats flying around my pinky. That's strange Then I realized that the gnats was blood literally spraying and misting from my hand I opened and closed my hand twice and watched in a kind of Transfixed hypnosis as the blood stopped when I clenched and sprayed like a hose when I opened my hand Then I freaked out and jumped off the ladder from my 12 feet up I had sliced my pinky open from the tip to the base It had slashed all the veins and completely laid it open like a butterfly shrimp At the hospital I made the mistake of watching as my finger was squeezed open to the bone And a needle of novocaine was injected deep into the pulpy muscle, which was excruciatingly painful Then I made the mistake of watching as they sewed 15 stitches inside the pinky And then 15 on the outside of the pinky by which time the novocaine had worn off And I asked the doctor to finish up as quickly as possible because the shot had been unbearable Why have I just told that story? Because for years and years afterwards. I was plagued by reliving that moment I consistently saw the blood misting and could not get the image of my pinky flayed open to the bone out of my head I was often at strange times taken back to the terror. I felt as I realized holy shit. I won't be able to work Holy shit. We'll fucking star. Holy shit. I don't have health insurance or money Even to this very day almost 20 years later when I think about it I cringe and get a sick feeling in my stomach That injury literally traumatized me and it took nearly a decade to overcome And that was my pinky dude Just my pinky if you read enough history of warfare You realize kind of quickly that every person has a breaking point and there's no telling what will push you to it Sometimes it's a big sudden thing like a friend's death Other times men lose their minds because of a constant state of stress Or they could no longer deal with the mud or they were driven over the edge by lice People can only handle so much before they aren't really in control anymore And once that point is reached, it's too late to get over it or just move on Something in the mind has changed and you're not driving anymore You're simply being swept along with the tide and events Almost every single character in the last of us two is being swept along in the tide of trauma Joel's refusal to tell ellie the truth and thus risk losing her is because he has never been able to deal with the horror of having his daughter die in his arms Ellie cannot get over all of the people she's lost even at the start of the first game By the time she's forced to watch joel beaten to death with a golf club She is broken the game features a ptsd panic attack when you play as ellie She cannot stop reliving watching joel beaten to death Abby likewise can't move on from the dissonance of having lived an idyllic life with her friends and her father Only to have it snatched away in one moment She's tormented by memories of walking the hall of the hospital and opening a door to find her father laying in the pool of blood joel caused She went from a day she remembers as a perfect day to one where every single thing she lived for disappeared in an instant And the pain of this trauma is never constrained only to the sufferer Ellie's pain is the pain of those who love her Abby's inability to move on drives those who love her to support her mission of vengeance even when they think it's wrong Ultimately the trauma that these two have caused and lived Spirals outward to affect every single person they come into contact with Trauma takes over your life and because our lives are social That means your trauma ends up affecting me and my trauma ends up affecting you and perhaps the things that happen As a result of you dealing with your trauma end up causing me trauma and on and on and on Which brings us to the final and most powerful theme in this game Blood is expensive This is the game's other greatest narrative achievement Other people are people too might not seem like a profound statement, but it really is It is a very rare theme in mainstream media Especially in games because games require you to do a ton of violence because it's fun How many times have I made fun of the villain in games because I have no idea who they are Goal is a hilarious example from destiny 2 Only the very best games even make the barest effort to try and contextualize their antagonists The last of us too goes beyond humanizing your enemies instead It straight up makes you play as your enemy even little things like killing faceless NPCs and having the other mobs shout David no they killed David is pretty fucking effective As for the supposed brutality of the violence here, it's simply not true Wolfenstein 2 has someone that was brutal and graphic violence anywhere in gaming But nobody complained about how lovingly animated it was except ironically me watch my video about it here In fact, the last of us too is relatively restrained in its gore and violence People responded with discomfort to the violence in the last of us too not because it was graphic or realistically animated They responded with discomfort because it's against humans Real humans with names Not nazis or evil people or monsters or commies or whatever They felt discomfort because it was against real humans This does indeed end up being pretty fucking disturbing at times The end of the first half of the game has you fighting against ellie as abby and to be perfectly honest It is brutal and difficult and I didn't enjoy it because it was raw and disturbing The game ends with fighting abby as ellie and as I played it I thought if this game makes me kill abby I will probably end up writing an angry review because that will have tipped over into cynicism I was on board for the realism and pain but by the end Making me kill abby or ellie would have crossed over into narrative cruelty But for all the pain and awful violence and death against characters you are forced to love The game doesn't tip over into cynical cruelty It goes right to the edge of what an audience can handle before yanking it back The game is almost perfectly restrained and manages to push and probe as far as it possibly can Without losing the humanity of its characters Your rampage as ellie is already very disturbing The violence is extreme and there are several killings that leave you feeling deeply disturbed And then the game turns around and has you play as abby and all those people you were fairly disturbed about killing You end up getting to know each and every fucking one Including the goddamn dog the end of ellie's chapters at the aquarium have you kill owen and mel And it's clear from early on that owen isn't a total bad guy, but rather a conflicted one During the scene when they're killed It's obvious that mel is an ordinary person trapped in a terrible situation caught between her friends and your gun It takes something awful and ramps it up even more When playing as ellie owen comes off as a guy who might have been okay Who you could maybe regret killing who you might think twice about after he's dead and wonder if it was actually necessary Then you play as abby and see he's a good person struggling with his past Who is in the process of leaving it all behind and running from the horror of the wolves It's 100 clear by the end that he did not deserve to die at your hands Because the people who oppose you in your life are also the center of their own lives People aren't props or obstacles in our way They're other people very few games even bother acknowledging this and listen that is fine, man I generally want to rip demons in half without worrying about how hard it is for a kaka demon to make his mortgage payment But when a game commits to something this good and powerful It doesn't deserve to be knocked for being art this practice of not fully recognizing the humanity of our enemies is all around us And it has to be Wars happen You can't reasonably expect a man on iwo jima to both kill japanese soldiers and also recognize their humanity It would destroy the psyche of everyone we sent to do violence in our name And for all its horror the truth is that violence is sometimes needed Hell i am a big believer in violence and i've solved more problems than i like to admit using it or kind of solved Still this dehumanization of our foes is understandable And often a needed tool to allow us to do things we otherwise couldn't but that doesn't change the facts of the matter People we kill were people People you or i have beaten up or humiliated or bankrupted or killed were people Up until the moment we used violence to beat or thwart or even kill them They were the star of their own story not the opponents and ours It's important that we occasionally take a minute to recall that simple painful fact Now let's talk about that last theme that's inextricably linked to the theme that other humans are actually humans Even when they get in our way we live in a world And our great great great great great grandchildren are likely to also live in a world where some problems can only be solved with violence This isn't an artifact of our supposedly decadent and decaying society It's been the core of human society for its entire history Our laws are enforced with violence theft is prevented with the threat of violence It is punished with violence if i decide that i want to live in the republic of plinney And make my yard a sovereign nation and stop paying taxes and repeatedly refuse to appear in court Eventually people with guns will come to my capital and drag me away with violence When nation states can't settle on a leader or a political system a contest of violence ensues If two nation states can't agree on borders or trade Violence the modern nation state is built on just as much violence As the first warring clans in the stone age were the differences We live in an age where the average person has given up any right to use violence themselves And instead has agreed to give the state a monopoly on that violence This is so obvious and ingrained it seems like the kind of thing that isn't even worth pointing out But in truth, this is a massive part of our lives Let me give you a little example Imagine if tomorrow someone breaks into your house and murders your wife and children Your security camera captures the scene and the police are able to quickly catch him There's dna evidence. They're a fingerprints. He's caught with your kid's bloody coin collection in the trunk of his car Now imagine that somehow the police Bought it and this happens by the way They beat him don't read him as Miranda writes refuse to give him a lawyer They open his car and house without a warrant etc Imagine a budget so badly that the charges are dismissed with prejudice and he can never be tried again for the murder of your family Because we live in societies where the state has a total monopoly on violence You cannot do anything to this man He can move in right next door to you and put up a sign in his yard that says How's your family doing and if you go over there to his house and so much as punch him in the nose You are going to be arrested for assault and battery now Maybe you'll be acquitted a trial, but that's a bug not a feature The law demands that you be jailed for punching your wife's murderer You as an individual have absolutely zero right to violence Any act of violence you do that isn't direct immediate self-defense is illegal by definition Because the state and only the state can legally do violence This state of affairs has far reaching effects on us as people and how we relate to violence Because we're told from the time we're young kids that violence is always wrong and always illegal Unless you're wearing a uniform that the state gave you people are very uncomfortable with personal violence these days Of course, it still exists and many people risk their freedom to engage in it But for the most part our everyday lives are scrubbed of it There are no more public floggings No crowd gathers for hangings in the town square and you will never be rounded up to join your clan for the raid on the next village We've got people whose job is professional violence And you should just watch your sit-com and not worry your pretty little head about that Our warfare has become highly Depersonalized there are people sitting in an air conditioned office in phoenix And they drop ordinance from drones on tiny specs displayed on their computer monitor These office pilots can see the explosions, but not the bodies because our lives are enforced by violence But that violence is hidden from us and only the state can use it We don't need to worry about what it means when violence solves our problems And again, it is a simple Inarguable fact that our society still solves many if not most of its pressing issues with violence Still even though we don't see it Violence like anything else Always has a cost The violence of the criminal justice system doesn't need me to comment on it The violence that upholds my rights to call my house mine means there are people who don't have anywhere to live I'm not saying that violence in these systems is good or bad. What i'm pointing out is that violence Always has a cost the finest piece of storytelling that the last of us to pulls off is making clear this Truism while many tried to reduce the story to a simple statement that violence is bad Those people failed to understand the deeper narrative Joel's killing of the fireflies Wasn't and still isn't presented as being immoral or bad. Instead what the game says is that act of violence was complicated Joel permanently ended the fireflies. He risked his relationship to ellie He killed people both good and bad and when the game finally gets around to literally asking in the question of what all that means Joel says this Somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment. I would do it all over again And so would I the cost of that violence ultimately led to Joel's own death And yet even then we can only imagine he still would have done it all again If to save my wife's life, I have to kill someone else and traumatize their wife and kids I won't think for even a moment I'll do what I have to do But that doesn't change the fact that killing that person Does hurt their wife and kids It's a cost and it needs to be acknowledged and examined abby's violent revenge has a tremendous cost Not only does she lose the person she was even down to her physical appearance Her vengeance directly leads to the death of nearly every one of her friends Actually every single one I think This could be reduced to the game saying violence is bad, but it's not so simple The game's scars are initially presented as violent fanatics We're first introduced to them through their creepy religious imagery before finding a bunch of abby's faction strung up and disemboweled This is presented as unforgivable brutal violence Until we discover that the wolves have broken their peace treaty and have been invading the seraphites territory Then we find that the wla refuses to refer to the seraphites as anything other than scars and thinks of them as less than human Finally we find out that it was the wla who imprisoned and eventually killed their profit The game goes from judging the seraphites for their beliefs and their violence to showing us the cause of that violence It never says they're doing the right thing It never says they're doing the wrong thing The violence by and against the seraphites is complicated and it has a cost It may be right. It may be wrong But calling them the scars is a way for the other side to pretend they're killing things and not people Over and over violence isn't presented as something entirely bad It's presented as something that results from a series of choices and something that always carries a high price Ellie's initial desire to find and kill abbey isn't shown to the player as some unforgivable bloodlust It's presented as a perfectly reasonable reaction We as players are fully committed to killing every motherfucker who is in that room and joll died At no point during the ellie campaigns is that change. We're still with her all the way Even when things start getting very dark. We're still rooting for ellie to get what she wants It's just that very gradually the player is confronted with what this violence means in a broader context It takes the dehumanizing and inwardly focused aspect of violence and recenters it outside of the player The game does not judge ellie or abbey for their violence It never does there needs to be justice for joel's murder Just like they needed to be justice for the killing of abbey's father It's easy for us to judge the wla or the seraphites and say they deserve whatever they get for being part of two violent factions But then we stop and think about the violence done in our names and maybe wonder what we do in the same situation It's easy to judge violence when all the violence in our name is done by others But when there's no government to catch and punish killings that violence falls to regular people to carry out And when it's you or me doing the violence the cost becomes clearer than when it's a faceless uniform doing the violence Let's finally talk about what is very likely the most impressive narrative device ever to appear in a video game Like I said this final theme that violence whether justified or not Always always has a cost is the most important thing the last of us to has to say to the player And there are a few ways that this is really driven home There's the suffering and death of abbey and ellie's loved ones as a result of this vengeance And there's watching how ellie's nearly perfect relationship with dina is ultimately sacrificed so that ellie can get the vengeance he needs But the most important thing in the game is this I could not possibly overstate how important this guitar is to the story Nor how brilliant it is as a gameplay mechanic that brutally drives home the game's central themes Early on we have the scene with ellie and joe Uncomfortably getting along without really communicating We're shown flashbacks throughout the game that show us how their relationship had fallen apart When ellie finally learns the truth she rejects joe and tells him she doesn't want him in her life anymore At that moment the only thing she really has left of him Is this guitar the guitar he made for her and the music he taught her to play It's in this light that joe's death is so impossible for ellie to get over Only the night before he was killed did ellie for the first time in months even speak to joe And it came after a fight She finally told him that she didn't think she could ever forgive him, but she was at least willing to try Joel cries and says he'd liked that and that's the last time they spoke ellie has to live with knowing that joe died without them ever reconciling Everything she wanted to say could never be said She had waited a day too long to say what they needed to say anytime over the previous years It's this terrible burden that really drives her rage Her rage is fueled as much by guilt and shame and loss as it is by anger and vengeance Throughout the game you play this guitar as ellie and the actual mechanics of playing the guitar is brilliant Now not to toot my own horn, but I am a pretty damn good guitar player And this is one of the coolest musical mini games I have ever seen For years movies and games have always pissed me off because I'll watch a character play guitar or drums in a movie or a game And immediately see that the actor has no idea how to even hold it Like can someone just show the actor how to fake holding a g chord? It's lazy man, and it takes me out of movies or games Just as a pet peeve The Last of Us 2 is one of the only games I've ever played where the animation is completely correct When you play a g chord ellie fingers and strums a g chord over and over cut scenes start or end With you as the player using the touchpad to make music good music I mean you can strum up strum down you can even do finger picking arpeggiated stuff by like tapping on the gamepad It is amazing and over the course of the game You'll get better and better at it until you can easily write your own cool little songs when the game lets you practice I spent a bunch of time just messing around with this system a stupid amount of time really I even ended up actually playing some of my own songs on this little virtual guitar Many of the most emotionally touching moments in the game happen with this guitar And right before the end of the first ellie section you play this guitar before everything goes to hell This guitar is not only awesome. It's the embodiment of the memory of joel ellie's ability to play is all she has left of him Then after ellie rejects dina and their baby and instead decides to once again track down abby You leave this guitar behind In the final ridiculously brutal fight with abby ellie has two fingers bitten off of her left hand It's almost impossible to really play the guitar without either your ring finger or your pinky You can lose one of them and be diminished but still play But both of them means you will never play the guitar again Incidentally, I can't overstate how real this was for me. This has always been something that terrified me as a worker I've always been like really scared of cutting off a couple of fingers with a sawzall and having like Thousands of hours of practice and work fall off of my hand into the dirt after completing the fight with ellie in the final chapter There's one last section you make your way back to the farm where ellie was living with dina and the baby and it's empty dina has packed up all of their stuff and left You search the rooms and go up to your untouched studio to find everything of yours has been left behind ellie grabs the guitar sits down and the game prompts you to play Just like you've done for the last 20 or 30 hours, but this time you can't It sounds terrible. It sounds like someone who's never played the guitar You can't grip any of the chords with only two fingers You make an effort for a few seconds and then you're outside standing alone and then the game ends ellie is over her PTSD and her trauma because she's gotten some measure of closure But the full cost of that closure has become clear. She's lost her wife And her child she's lost the ability to play music She's lost her connection to joe through the guitar This as the ending is what proves that the game isn't about violence being bad This ending is crystal clear. The game is actually about the fact that violence Even when justified Even if righteous even if necessary and even if it ultimately heals you has a cost For ellie that cost is joe her friends Deena her community and even the memory and connection to joe that she had through that guitar It's fucking devastating man, but in the end it's at least somewhat hopeful She packs up and heads out presumably to jackson to try and reclaim her life But she will never get the guitar back. The music is gone forever It's probably the best ending ever in a game Everyone's a critic Okay, let's get to those criticisms now. Listen if you played this game and you didn't like it It's totally valid I totally understand that but i'm going to try to defend the game against several criticisms I saw and say why I think they're unfair I'll start with the one that I started this essay with Separating the art from the artist over the last several years There's been more and more criticism of the video game industry's labor practices Naughty dog in particular has been criticized for totally abusive amounts of overtime As an aside, I relatively frequently have to work 56 or 64 hours and my wife routinely Does 15 or 16 hour days when I was roofing full time. I worked 12 to 15 hours a day six days a week Modern game companies like roofing contractors tend to pull that bullshit where you're on salary Or you're an independent contractor, so you can be made to work 70 hour weeks for nothing extra This makes companies like rock star and naughty dog at best incompetent in their scheduling and at worst Pieces of shit for exploiting people with that said creative work can often be demanding If you've ever written fiction or poetry or played in a band, you know But it's like to work thousands of hours on end and search for that elusive perfection So while I am against the exploitation of workers I'm also willing to admit that at least some of these people in the end Probably think the end product was worth it Further as a manual laborer who has almost certainly had years taken off of his life after being exploited myself I admit to having difficulty feeling all that sorry for artists making very good money in an air conditioned room working 70 hours When I did years working 70 hours in 130 degree roofs I was making 600 bucks a week when things were going good and much much less when they weren't And I groan a bit inside when I hear about the trauma and mental abuse that video game developers suffer When I don't hear many people talking about the literal trauma of broken bodies and stress induced mania That actual working people suffer every single day in this country Still I agree that these people should be paid overtime I agree it is shitty that anyone needs to work that much But your criticisms should be directed at the place where those problems are decided Your government It's your government not naughty dog that lets companies get away with 70 hour weeks It's your government not activision that decided companies can pretend regular employees are independent contractors And it's your government not sony that decided people on salary don't need to be paid overtime Or that huge corporation should get tax returns or that they can have all their employees in california Put a peel box in jamaica and then pretend that they're a jamaican company But let's even leave that aside Let's pretend that naughty dog is the one who actually writes the laws and regulations that lead to their workers exploitation Let's pretend that naughty dog controls the labor regulations in america even if that was so None of this has anything to do with the quality of the art Again, I wouldn't want my daughter dating woody allen I would not hire michael jackson as my babysitter, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of their art Should we ignore their personal failings and not talk about them? Of course not by all means continue agitating for naughty dog to treat their employees like human beings But the last of us too is a work of art Naughty dog is a company talking about naughty dog is reporting or activism talking about the game is art criticism They are separate things People and companies should be judged as people and companies and films and paintings and games should be judged as films and paintings and games When jim sterling allows his labor activism to influence how he relates to work of art He is no longer doing art criticism He's engaging in a kind of logical fallacy where everything reinforces his preconceived notions And he's no longer able to meet a piece of art where it is He can only approach it from the angle of his political beliefs beliefs, which again I mostly agree with and I like jim sterling usually Now there are examples where art and labor criticisms can intermingle If the last of us too had been about ellie working in a sweatshop and the problems that arise from being exploited as a laborer Certainly pointing out the delicious hypocrisy of the studio and its subject matter would be fair game But the last of us too is not a game about labor rights or corporate abuse Those issues are nowhere in the work itself bringing them in does nothing to illuminate or critique the work of art And in fact it actively obscures the work of art On labor day when naughty dog inevitably tweets how much their employees mean to them sterling should absolutely Be furiously pointing out what shits and hypocrites they are Or if he wants he can devote a section of his review to reminding his viewers of naughty dogs labor practices and recommend his audience Not by the game as an act of protest But by conflating his criticism with his activism he does neither any justice Let me end this part by saying sterling was not the only critic who fell into this trap Almost all of the negative reviews let their disgust at the company's labor practices creep into a review of a story That has fuck all to do with that issue the next major criticism of the game I saw was a reductive argument about the hypocrisy of blending a story that says violence is bad With a gameplay loop that's lovingly devoted to animating violence so it feels good Sterling and others used this quote as some kind of a gotcha moment Aha You guys say you want the game not to be fun because it's violent But actually the game is fun because it's violent. Therefore your story makes no sense This is a non sequitur First of all that quote shouldn't matter It doesn't matter what the artist intended or how they think of their work or what he or she thinks it means I have always Firmly believed that the artist owns the work until the moment he lets someone else see it At that point what I thought my story was about or what my poem was trying to evoke Or what my song meant goes right out the fucking window The moment I let you see this video or hear the song in the intro I lose control of the work Now my idea of it and your idea of it are both perfectly equal and important In fact, every time I see an interview with a writer or a filmmaker where the interviewer tries to ask What a certain work means I fucking groan It doesn't matter what the artist thought it meant. It doesn't matter in even the tiniest slightest way Asking that question can only fuck shit up. All that matters is what you thought it meant because your reaction Is in no way less valid than what the artist thought you should feel in many ways It's more authentic because the artist has his or her ego and hang-ups and insecurities all tied up in the work Only the audience can fully appreciate a work of art The people who create it are less able to appreciate it than anyone else in the world Literally anyone else in the world. This criticism boils down to judging the last of us too by judging the artist's intent Why does that matter at all? The work is good or it is not good what gnarly dog meant doesn't mean shit Moving beyond even that the idea that the game is some simplistic condemnation of violence is so absurdly false That I have trouble understanding how anyone could have played this game and come to that conclusion I just went over pages explaining how that's simply not the case and I won't rehash it here I hope I've at least shown that criticism to be either an artifact of the audience's inability to separate the art from the Artist or from a deliberate effort to misrepresent the work. The game is indeed Mostly fun to play the graphic violence is indeed Enjoyable whenever you're not cursing at the ridiculous amount of reticles way But the game revels in that violence not to show you that violence is bad It does it to show you that violence is real There's a difference between examining our ability to revel in violence and the cost that entails and just saying violence is bad The entire game is about making the player kill and then turning around and saying look all those people were people That's pretty awful, isn't it if the game was making a simplistic judgment that violence is bad It wouldn't be so loving and understanding of joel ellie and abby These three characters engage in Horrendous violence that ripples out and destroys most of those they touch but the game absolutely positively Never judges them if anything it mourns with them It loves these characters It makes you love them and it makes you ask hard questions like when is enough enough At no points the games say joel did the wrong thing or ellie or abby did the wrong thing at no point at all Does it pass judgment instead the game only shows you the impossible choices? We all have to make and it pauses to acknowledge how terrible it all can be It might be the best work of art dealing with this topic. I've ever encountered precisely for that reason It doesn't condemn violence Instead it asks Is this worth it and that makes all the difference in the world I'm going to briefly touch on the political responses that led to criticism ironically from both conservative and leftist positions Some people on the left complained about the brutal level of violence and said the game was glorifying that violence Including exploiting the persecution of a trans person as a narrative device Certain lgbt activists condemn the representation as transphobic or problematic Conservatives complain that the game was left-wing propaganda for literally the exact same reasons Here we go one Trans people are like all people People they exist and things happen to them good things happen to them and bad things happen to them Not only are they fair game for art their persecution in a religious system is so common and long standing I don't understand how writing about that issue is somehow liberal propaganda Does joel being a straight white guy make the first game straight white propaganda? This is so absurd. It almost doesn't deserve a response furthermore Liberals do not have a monopoly on believing that trans people are human beings Certainly the most vehement opposition to trans rights are from religious conservatives But many very conservative libertarians Firmly believe that the world should mind its own fucking business and that the state shouldn't be in your pants from the left The exact same thing is true Violence guns persecution of trans people Happens it's real making art about those things Even if the writer isn't a trans person is valid and reasonable If you have an issue with specific ways some minority is portrayed by all means speak up But nobody owns suffering Walling off entire sections of people from artistic exploration through an identity litmus test is a catastrophically terrible idea You will end up with the worst possible outcome works by white straight people would be scrubbed of minority points of view Or at best exhibit bland vanilla tokenism that asks nothing of the audience Works by minority groups would be fringe works with a tiny audience because majority populations Like minority populations want to see their lives represented in art and art if it's to represent society Needs to focus less on individual identity and better represent the messy banana strawberry smoothie that is our culture Beyond that art is literally an exercise in empathy Fiction and poetry exist to let us live the lives of others to see the world from their position trans people make up a Vanishingly small percentage of our society which necessarily means that their stories are already very hard to find And writers and musicians are an even tinier portion of the population as a whole If we limited works that deal with trans people only to those written by trans people You would be left with a tiny slice of a tiny slice of possible artists Further transphobia and family and cultural rejection of trans youth is at the root of much of the violence against trans people I don't see how art that looks at this is problematic Are artists to be restricted to only telling trans stories where everything is fine? Both of these preconceived political criticisms are a flavor of judging the artist and not the art They're both misguided as criticism and we're moving on The last thing I want to discuss is the most valid of the criticisms that I saw of the game This would be things like skill up and the washington post and slate There was a criticism that can best be described as good but not right now The idea being that in a time when things are getting particularly disturbing Violent and unstable certain parts of the audience just didn't want this story right now They weren't in the right space mentally Ideologically or emotionally to deal with the intensely fucking grim narrative of this game This seems like a fair enough criticism on its face, but i'm going to push back on even this one gently though This criticism falls under the mistake of not liking something because you were expecting something else Here's where we talk about me Which is one of my favorite subjects because I like to flatter myself as being something of an expert on me I think my fairly recent speck ops videos was one of my best from a technical standpoint I liked the editing and performance and I enjoyed mixing in a bunch of stuff about colonialism and heart of darkness Which is one of my favorite works of art ever If you haven't seen it and you have like 45 hours to spare here. It is up here Boom I got an email from a viewer after this video went up that said something to the effect of this I almost always agree with your criticisms, but I think you're wrong here in the email He broke my one and a half hour video into three or four main points He or she I guess said they disagreed with my assertions that the quality of art improves over time By saying that his or her girlfriend still actually loves nosferatu and that older films and games hold up just as well today They said it wasn't fair to judge speck ops in relation to gears of war or other third-person shooters Because they were different games doing different things And they said basically that I'd let my love for apocalypse now and heart of darkness Improperly taint how I received speck ops Let me briefly say that I think he misunderstood my position about art improving over time I started nosferatu is one of the few examples of a film that is still good today Yes, mario is a perfect game that is just as good today My point was that the average game or film gets better over time from a purely technical standpoint So the very best games of the 80s stands with the very best games of today But the average platformer or action film from the 80s is not as technically proficient as the average of today But fair enough. We can agree to disagree there. It's the other criticisms that are for the most part correct My visceral distaste of speck ops came from two places a I think it is a terrible shooter and I stand by that my dude And b that the game is based upon heart of darkness and apocalypse now But is so bad in comparison to them that it's a massive failure This is wrong. I was wrong there. Do I like speck ops now? No, I think it's awful But it's almost certainly true that the reason I hate speck ops Isn't because of an objective review of its narrative though. I think it's only decent on its own and I still think that Really, my hate of speck ops is a result of my inability to separate the game I played from the game. I thought I was going to play I'd heard the game was a masterpiece and heard it was based on one of my favorite books ever There was no way I was going to be able to give the game a fair shake coming in like that I didn't critique speck ops. I critiqued the game. I wanted speck ops to be and that's not fair Most of the people whose criticism for the last of us two was based around how grim and depressing the game was Were not critiquing the last of us two They were critiquing the fact that in their current emotional state They weren't ready to have joel killed before their eyes or to have abby's friends killed Or to be forced to murder a sweet little dog. They played catch with they wanted and expected something else For these people they will now likely never be able to appreciate the game They got because their reaction will always be tainted by what they wanted I understand this as I've shown I recently did the same thing myself Though these two games are not even remotely close in quality Jaeger's most recent game by the way is this It's all right. It's decent enough It's impossible to come into a work of art completely objectively There was no way I could ever have fairly reviewed speck ops Middle eastern history imperialism colonialism I spent a stupid amount of time reading and thinking about those things I wanted speck ops to be about those things and when it wasn't There was no undoing my preconceived ideas about the game people who thought the last of us two was too brutal Or depressing when in fact the game ends somewhat. Hopefully Simply we're never going to be able to meet this game on neutral ground of all the criticisms This is the most valid because I think there's no way to prevent it No mental gymnastics or acts of rational logic can change how a work of art makes you feel But holding one's personal emotional readiness against a work of art Isn't fair either If you were at a point where you can't really deal with a game That's an unflinching look at brutality and the cost of trauma and violence I implore you to hold off on playing this game until you feel differently The last of us two is too good to spoil because you weren't ready to play the game you got and instead Wanted the game you wanted wrapping up Okay, this got pretty well before signing off I think I should probably at least acknowledge the gameplay in the last of us two The game like the first can be a bit frustrating early on because the amount of sway in the guns is just ridiculous And it insists on survival horror level of ammo scarcity and you have to use the ps4's crappy controller I'll let you in a little secret as many of you know, I almost always play games on the hardest difficulty I refused to run destiny 2's dungeons anything but solo for instance But I didn't do that here. I played on normal and halfway through I adjusted the setting that decides how scarce ammo and materials are I put it to the light setting which is the second easiest once I turned the game down to there I actually found the combat extremely satisfying The levels and level design the last of us two are unbelievably good Graphics as always with naughty dog are impossibly excellent at least the emotional trauma of overtime paid off As a narrative experience the last of us two is one of the finest works of art ever made in any medium at all As a video game, it's above average in every way Progression is tied to level exploration and the levels are a step up for naughty dog Levels detail progression combat creature and enemy design It's all the very best that naughty dog has ever made in their studios history To quote druckman. I agree the game isn't fun per se It's too grim to be called fun But the combat and exploration is satisfying and engrossing It's a fine line to walk to make a game feel good to play without making the combat cartoonish But they did it my only complaint is the knockdown and qte's when being shot or grabbed those can be annoying And the animations when you're working on the gun is pointless and annoying and time wasting If someone worked 300 hours to animate le cleaning the gun it was time wasted that emotional trauma was indeed pointless But the game is so polished and powerful and impressive It's very hard to complain about anything that was done at the studio I'm not really an ends justify the means kind of guy, but you know The ends justify the means dude All right, thanks for coming. I'll see you next time. Bye