The Last of Us Part 2 review: A less confident, less focused sequel

From a narrative perspective, there’s no real need for The Last of Us Part 2 to exist. The gripping, tightly paced, very human tale told by the first game is an almost perfect example of self-contained video game storytelling. That game’s ending—where the “hero” condemns the world to continuing disaster out of love for a companion he has slowly grown to love like a daughter, all while betraying her wishes and shielding her from the truth—is a deeply affecting and thought-provoking moment that has resonated with gamers for seven years now. The idea of adding anything to that quietly confident, freestanding narrative package feels superfluous at best and gratuitous at worst.

But the difference between a happy ending and a sad one often depends on when you decide to stop telling the story. And it would admittedly be something of a waste to condemn The Last of Us’ top-notch world building to a single short game. Thus, we now have The Last of Us Part 2, a game that can't seem to decide if it wants to continue the core story of the first game or pull the camera back to provide a wider view of a fallen world still ravaged by the threat of the zombie-like Infected.

Nothing good can last

Things pick up four years after the events of the first game in the amazingly calm settlement of Jackson, Wyoming. After the almost overwhelming death and decay of the first game, it’s a shock to be thrown into a thriving community full of electricity, commerce, gossip, food and drink, and even happily playing children. Small groups still regularly patrol the perimeter to keep the Infected at bay, but humanity, it seems, has gained a bucolic foothold.

The sense of a slowly returning normalcy is made all the more bittersweet because we know Ellie is fated not to enjoy it for long. The Ellie we see here is no longer the sweet, energetic, eager pre-adolescent who forged an endearing bond with gruff Joel through the first game, either. Time and knowledge have made her harder, more reserved, and more unforgiving than ever. By the time external circumstances and a drive for vengeance force her out of the comfort of Jackson and into a dangerous, murderous trek to Seattle, it’s not exactly a surprise.

We do get occasional glimpses of the old Ellie, especially when she’s taking her first tentative steps into a truly adult relationship. Love interest Dina is a gently teasing foil for Ellie’s developing affections here, and their extended casual banter during the trip to Seattle brings to mind some of the best bonding moments between Ellie and Joel in the last game.

These conversations take place amid the beautiful desolation of a city that has quickly been retaken by the nature surrounding it—a “Nature is healing” meme made vividly real. The environmental design in Part 2 is top notch, with every single location feeling like an actual, inhabited place that was fully built and then slowly left to rot. I could aimlessly wander the beautiful desolation for hours, picking out ominous touches of environmental storytelling even if I wasn’t scrounging for materials to ensure my in-game survival.

Out of focus

For roughly the first half of its run time, Part 2 provides an engaging and emotional ride that also makes some good progress in unpacking the events of the first game (thanks in part to some wonderful playable flashbacks). Unfortunately, about halfway through, the game quickly starts to lose its focus.

Developing bonds between characters struggle for space to breathe as the game makes frequent changes to the characters’ circumstances and perspective. Without giving too much away (and with plenty of intentional vagueness to avoid spoilers), there’s a sudden mid-game twist that takes this idea to its extreme, creating a parallel narrative that quickly saps any story momentum that had been building to that point.

In the place of that momentum, the narrative takes a left turn into a largely unrelated side story about former enemies turning into unlikely allies. In the process, the game leans heavily on dramatic irony, giving a winking nod to an audience that often knows the result and coming consequences of a scene before the characters involved. This occasionally lands with the genuine impact of new perspective and understanding. More often, though, it hits with the wet thud of unsubtle emotional manipulation.

By the time the game attempts to reconnect its disparate plot threads, any semblance of structure or connective, overarching themes has been ground into dust by a meandering lack of direction. After the extremely focused and relentlessly paced story of the first Last of Us title, it’s a shame to see a sequel that can’t seem to figure out what it wants to be.

A muddied message

Through its overly ambitious story structure, The Last of Us Part 2 is plainly trying to impart some sort of universal message about the painful cycle of trauma and revenge in a violent and uncaring world. No one in the game is truly good or bad, the game seems to be screaming at the player, but people are all simply driven by circumstance to take what seems like the best action for them and theirs at the time.

That message never fully lands. Partially, that's because the game still relies on groups of shadowy antagonists that are effectively “othered” into nothing more than an unsympathetic, malevolent threat. But it’s also in large part because major characters seem to change their motivations on a dime—full of murderous rage one second, defaulting to mercy out of what appears to be exhausted resignation the next.

The narrative by and large doesn’t do the necessary work to sell these abrupt changes of heart, so these moments often seem constructed for plot convenience rather than to stay true to the nature of the characters as they’ve been presented. The player is left having to do too much work to fill in the blanks to make pivotal moments make some kind of logical sense, even from the characters’ own point of view. This holds true right up until the ending, where some baffling decisions and a truly unnecessary final fight scene seem to exist just for the sake of padding the game out a little extra bit.

That’s a shame, because in between the plot problems, the game has flashes of some of the best interpersonal relationship building in gaming. Naughty Dog is still the master of the quiet, slowly developing cut scene, letting subtle facial movements or non-verbal tics do the work that lines and lines of dialogue could never hope to.

Part 2 offers plenty of moments of genuine relatable humanity to be found in the long, lingering conversations between two characters simply inhabiting space together, searching for a way to the next area or a solution to a simple environmental puzzle. There are also a few truly thrilling action set pieces, which borrow heavily from the tradition of the Uncharted series to make for some quick, fast-paced thrill rides.

In the end, though, these moments never build into a satisfying and cohesive whole, much less anything like the impactful conclusion of the first game.