The Last of Us 2: An Infuriating Disappointment (Gore and Spoilers!)

This site will serve as an in-depth explanation to why the videogame, The Last of Us 2, became a controversy and has garnered many negative backlash from its initial fans.

The Last of Us 2 is a story-driven, post-apocalyptic, action, drama, horror, thriller videogame produced by Naughty Dog which is a sequel to the 2013, award winning videogame, The Last of Us.

On December 3, 2016 The Last of Us 2 was first announced at the PlayStation Experience event which triggered an enormous hype across The Last of Us fanbase. On February 21, 2020, Naughty Dog revealed that it would be released, but later got cancelled due to problems that occurred. However on June 19, 2020, The Last of Us 2 was finally released and millions of people worldwide bought and played it.

Although it seemed successful at first, at second it received many negative backlash from its own fans and separated the fanbase into two: the ones that loved it, and the ones that hated it, which formed controversy. And I will tackle on 3 of the many reasons why others hated it.

Death of a Beloved Character Controversy

Joel and his brother, Tommy saves a new character named Abby from a horde of infecteds, later on, Joel dies in the hands of Abby cause we later learn that she did this out of revenge. Abby was the daughter of a doctor that Joel Killed in order to save Ellie, his figurative daughter.

This made people furious, not because Joel died at all, but because of his decisions to the previous situations that led up to this doesn’t stay consistent with his character.

Joel was known to be uncaring for survivors, untrusting, he doesn’t trust the survivors of the pandemic due to an incident that caused his biological daughter’s life years ago. He would even go as far as running a survivor over rather than risk being betrayed by one. And The Last of Us fans knew this, yet, its sequel ignores it which ultimately led him to his death.

His change in personality rather comes off as forced, many fans view Naughty Dog’s decision in changing Joel’s character as an unfair way to perfectly fit within the plot of the story. If it would have gone on a more realistic and fair route then Joel would have avoided the mistakes he made, thus, prevented his death.

And seeing that Joel has died, fans were suppose to accept the fact that relationship of Joel and Ellie would be discontinued. That instead, most of Joel’s appearances and interactions with Ellie will mostly be only limited to flashbacks from thereon. Which is really daunting and is an exact contrast to the original plot of The Last of Us which moreover focuses on their relationship as a figurative family, as a father and daughter.

The Ending Controversy

For the most part, the controversy revolves around Ellie suddenly letting Abby live despite the journey she’s gone through and everyone Abby has killed. Ellie all of a sudden decides to not kill Abby cause of a vision that slipped right in a very convenient moment. Her sudden change in aggression towards Abby due to the vision isn’t very well explained, and hasn’t been very well established throughout the story which led people to believe that this was just a flaw in writing, an awfully bad one.

Some fans are simply disappointed that they didn’t get to kill Abby after she killed Joel. Which I also agree with and supports the idea that some fans wanted a much more straightforward sequel complemented by a bloody conclusion where Naughty Dog unfortunately chose not to deliver.

The whole moral of the game’s story is basically revenge is bad but fails to deliver a message so simple which made its story rather vague.

Other fans also cite that the ending was too depressing and unsatisfying. The last part of the ending shows Ellie walking towards her farm-like home. She soon notices that she got abandoned and attempts to play a song Joel made for her with a guitar to calm herself down. She attempts to play the song but unable to properly do so since her two of her fingers were bitten off by Abby during the fight scene. As she accepts that she can’t play the song, she slowly puts down the guitar in a standing position, beside a window upstairs and the camera zooms in on its headstock as Ellie walks out of the barn-like-home then after which the credits roll.

The ending was unnecessarily tragic and depressing, not only did Ellie got abandoned but she was alone. Her greatest fear was being alone. Many fans were unsatisfied of the ending therefore ended up disliking it. The story doesn’t end with a satisfying solution to the problems but only added more problems to the mix.

The Abby Controversy

In the game, you get to play as Abby, Joel’s killer for about half of the game’s campeign. Some fans protest against this because, as said before, she was Joel’s murderer. They would even let her die in the game in hopes that it would make a difference to the story.

Abby not only had an athletic and jacked-up body that rivaled most of the game’s male characters, but she was also responsible for the death of a significant character only a few hours into the game. This made her an obvious target for the series’ fans, and the enmity was heightened when it was revealed that players will spend the most of the game playing as Abby rather than the much-adored Ellie.

Others believe that Abby’s character falls short. They say that The Last of Us Part 2 doesn’t give them the chance to really care about Abby’s Character as they do about Ellie, which kind of ruins the concept of witnessing the story from two different perspectives. Similarly, many claim that they were eager to see Ellie and Joel’s narrative come to a satisfying close. But instead, resented to having too much time spent on a new character, Abby.

All this being said, The Last of Us 2 built a huge reputation and lost it. The writers of the story in the game were either oblivious or careless to why The Last of Us was very well received and adored by its fans, which is the very reason why The Last of Us 2 didn’t live up to most of its fans expectations, thus, was despised by most of them.