Did They Change Ellies Face In Last Of Us 2 Trialer 1 And 2
'The Final of Us: Part Two': I Year Later on and the Worst Takes Withal Remain
Some people still have "Opinions."
1 year ago today, Naughty Dog'southward long-awaited sequel The Last of Usa: Function 2 debuted. What was briefly a glorious moment in the gaming community at large speedily devolved into a mud-slinging mess. Reaction ranged from the totally appropriate thwarting and demand for refunds to the wholly unhinged death threats and series of multi-phobic slurs aimed at the Devs, the actors, and journalists. Anyone remotely involved with The Last of United states of america: Part II was fair game, and information technology was open season, especially if someone dared defend or praise whatsoever attribute of the game on websites or over social media channels. Surely the stress of the COVID pandemic and the stupor of the game's brutal narrative had a function to play in all this. Surely a year'due south worth of time has helped to heal all wounds and now cooler heads have prevailed, right?
I'g pitiful to say that the globe of The Terminal of United states of america: Part II isn't all that different from ours when it comes to the depths to which we humans will sink simply to hurt each other, even if nosotros're ultimately hurting ourselves. So despite the fact that the game won hundreds of awards in 2020, some folks are however so upset past the game's very existence, the fact that Naughty Dog dared to tell the story that they did in the mode that they did, that they're nevertheless taking aim at its legacy one year subsequently. Unfortunately, that says a lot more about the supposed fans than it does the game itself. We've written extensively about the game's focus on empathy, the uncomfortable shift into the enemy's perspective that was a trailblazing approach to storytelling, and its perfect catastrophe. Alas, all that endeavor wasn't plenty to bring some folks around.
So, with that in mind, we've put together the worst of the worst takes on The Last of Us: Part Two that are still being fired off a year later on.
Spoilers Ahead
"It's the Worst Game Ever and No, I Haven't Played It"
This category of criticism is my absolute favorite of the agglomeration. Nothing saps the credibility out of your argument faster than the words, "I haven't played it, but..." You need to take laid hands on a video game, or, at the very least, watched a thorough playthrough to get a sense of information technology earlier you have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticism. 2nd-paw noesis, making assumptions based on the rumor mill, or just repeating what you've heard from others with no thoughts of y'all're own, aye, that's not cutting it. And nonetheless "I haven't played it, only..." remains ane of the virtually common phrases I hear out of the rima oris of haters when the conversation turns to this game.
Admittedly, near of the people who started a playthrough of The Final of U.s.a.: Office Two and then gave up did so later one particuarly specific point. You know the indicate I'm talking about, but I'll lay information technology out here anyway: It'south Joel'southward death at the hands of Abby. That'south it. That'southward the moment that caused untold numbers of people to put the game down out of anger, hurt, sadness, frustration, whatever, and never pick it upward again. Withal, that moment as well apparently gave those same people carte blanche to trash the rest of the game, sight unseen, often without whatsoever specifics for fear of admitting their own vulnerability.
I get being angry at that moment; y'all're supposed to be. I become being upset with developers for that specific determination; I wasn't too pleased with it either. But to deprive yourself of the rest of the game and lock yourself into a screw of hate not only misses the point of the game itself but does needless irreparable harm to you, dear thespian. Because the rest of the game asks merely, "What if we had met Abby offset? What would our perspective look like then?" y'all are missing literally one-half of the story if you lot opt out at the start sign of unpleasantness. Ironic, that, considering Joel, widely seen as the hero of the series, wouldn't have quit, he would have soldiered on.
"Joel Never Would Have Made That Fault"
Office of the issue with TLoU2 haters is the most deification of Joel. To be fair, in The Last of Us, you're presented with a playable character who'due south not invulnerable but is a total badass. Joel survived the initial wave of Infected, but sadly his daughter did not. That hardened the human, turned him contemptuous, the better to weather condition the fell new reality that is the post-apocalypse. Along with Joel's brother Tommy, who's kinder by intentional comparing, and Tess, a ruthless hardass equal to Joel himself, the hero of our story becomes a smuggler, ferrying just about anything (and anyone) across the inhospitable landscape. That's where we encounter Joel when he agrees to spirit Ellie off to the Fireflies, only it's non where Joel'south journeying begins nor ends.
In one case upon a time, Joel and Tommy were members of the Hunters, a brutal survivalist group known for ambushing, killing, and torturing "tourists" in their territory for supplies and information. Dandy group, that. And yet it'due south Joel'due south fourth dimension in the Hunters and the Smugglers that'due south given him the tools of the trade he'll demand to go on Ellie condom on their trip westward. At the end of that trip, Joel, unchanged, would accept but handed Ellie over to the Fireflies, nerveless his payment, and returned to the life of a smuggler. The entire betoken of that journeying is that Joel came to care for Ellie as a surrogate girl, to the extent that he killed damn near everyone in that hospital -- armed or non, militia fellow member or not -- just to go on her safety. Sure, that's heroic from the point of the player who just spent untold hours escorting both Joel and Ellie to safety, just in the wider earth of The Last of Us, Joel is a straight-up villain.
Joel has, through the players' hands, murdered tons of folks past the time The Concluding of Us: Function II rolls around. Indirectly, by depriving the world of the potential cure locked up inside Ellie, he'southward responsible for countless more deaths. That'south the crux of the conflict between Joel and Ellie throughout much of the sequel and in the spaces outside of it; we only learn how Ellie found out nearly this fact, and how she felt nearly it, towards the end of the game. Sure, getting the cure would have killed Ellie but saved humanity; Joel chose to save Ellie instead, even if that's not what she would take wished for herself. Just the point of the sequel is that Joel is a human who has anile, who has softened, who has come to grips with his violent by and hopes to discover a way towards a more than peaceful future. You can sense as much by exploring Joel's room, taking in the hand-carved guitars and sculpted depictions of nature, done with an creative person's paw that'southward been washed free of blood, every bit best as it can be anyhow.
Only the hopes of becoming a better person doesn't mean you lot can escape the sins of your by forever. Abby's final confrontation with Joel at the showtime of Role 2 is the directly result of Joel's ain actions at the finish of Office I. Does Joel make a error in letting his guard down effectually Abby and her political party? Yes. Does information technology cost him his life? Yes. Was it still the correct determination made past a man hoping to foster community and aid out people in demand, with the aim of washing his prior sins abroad? Yes, once more. Simply that's not what people stuck in the past, in their ain version of The Last of The states, want to hear. If yous want a version of Joel who never learns from his mistakes, who never grows, or ages, or matures, who never tries to practice better, I kindly invite you to selection up Naughty Dog's own Uncharted series and boom abroad space enemies every bit the perennial super-soldier Nathan Drake.
"Only SJWs Praise This Game"
First of all, imagine thinking that and then-called "social justice warriors" praising a game is a bad affair. That likely means that the game in question features positive portrayals of people outside the typical norms seen in pop civilisation, people along the LGBTQ spectrum, people of colour, people at diverse points of the spectrum of mental wellness, and folks whose disabilities prevent them from fully accessing and enjoying most games. If ever there was a complaint that was actually bald-faced praise, it's this one.
And yet, I could see critics having a point if The Concluding of United states: Part Ii had shoehorned in "wokeness" merely for the sake of doing and then in an endeavor to stay relevant within socially progressive communities. Except ... the story doesn't do that at all. Ellie, who's in a same-sex relationship with Dina, goes on a encarmine quest for revenge, leaving behind everything she should hold safe and sacred in gild to exact vengeance on those who have wronged her. If you swapped out Ellie and dropped in any directly male person protagonist from any number of video games, Boob tube shows, and movies over the terminal century, the aforementioned people who decry the and so-called "SJW agenda" would be all well and good with the revenge story; they'd probably even praise information technology. But concur on, information technology gets worse.
When the game's character Abby was revealed, her advent, coupled with some leaks that revealed the existence of a trans character within the game, brought the transphobic folks out of the woodwork. Abby's not your typical female video game character. She's congenital like a truck and hits just as difficult, her babyhood portrays her equally more of a stereotypical tomboy than anything more classically "feminine," and even her sex scene didn't, how shall we put this, "ostend" annihilation one way or the other. Just it's after revealed that a completely unlike character, Lev, is really the trans character. The Last of The states: Part II goes out of its way to include a trans man'due south story as function of the narrative, folding in specific cultural and community stigmas to that consequence, but Abby took the brunt of gamers' transphobia just considering she looked the role and was an easy outlet for their anger over Joel'southward death. And while it's perfectly valid to argue the merits and shortcomings of the manner Lev's story and the character himself are handled in the story, the fact that Lev exists is not grounds for dismissing the charcter or the whole game in general.
It'southward unfortunate that the characters who most speak towards breaking out of the cycles of violence, which are either cocky-inflicted or forced upon them by external factors similar militant groups, are as well the ones nearly targeted past those looking to spew hate wherever they can. But when people stop listening to your criticisms, such as they are, what's left to do but but ignore reality in general?
"TLoU2 Isn't Canon"
Not that I'yard ranking these "arguments," but this one would have to exist my second favorite. Whole subreddits have sprung upwards effectually the idea that, because a certain subsection of the fanbase disagrees with the decisions made in The Last of Us: Part II, the sequel no longer exists inside the franchise's established catechism. I'm all for fans keeping their own head-canon and even sharing information technology with others; fan-fiction is also a artistic way to get involved with some of your favorite IPs. Only to pretend a whole-ass game no longer exists because you're mad at it is not only childish, it'due south a habitual do that besides has dangerous real-earth implications.
We humans are an odd sort; my fellow Ameicans, odder even so. We take a habit of ignoring what's happening effectually united states of america as long as it isn't in our faces or straight impacting our daily lives. Once that switch flips and nosotros're inconvenienced past that very same thing we've been ignoring, information technology's of a sudden all we can talk virtually and someone else needs to fix it immediately. We will make up imagined realities out of whole cloth if it just makes our day-to-mean solar day a picayune smoother for us, fifty-fifty if it inconveniences, impacts, or impedes others. Living in a fantasy world seems similar a harmless enough idea when information technology'south only a few people who are outside the norm, but when it'southward thousands, millions, teeming masses who opt for ignoring the obvious, blind to what's literally happening in front of them ... that's about as scary as it gets. Information technology'south ironic that that mob mentality can be seen in the obvious corollary in zombie pop culture, from Night of the Living Dead to The Walking Dead , and from the Freakers of Days Gone to the Infected of The Last of U.s.a., the mindless followers traveling in hordes, lashing out at the slightest provocation, and doing as your neighbour does without a moment's thought. I honestly wish I was exaggerating the similarities between these fictional monsters and their real-globe equivalent, but the very existent COVID pandemic has shown that we're not all that far off from the postal service-apocalyptic fantasies of our gimmicky culture.
If it makes you experience better to believe that Joel is still out there killin' and grillin' and tunin' guitars, that'due south cool. I don't want to take that from yous. Merely at the same fourth dimension, your head catechism doesn't give you the right to target members of the community who are interacting with the globe as it actually exists.
"The Worst Ending of Whatsoever Game. Ever."
This criticism gets leveled at a lot of pop culture productions: Movies, Tv shows, video games, books, yous name information technology. It's as if at that place'southward a race to the bottom for so-called fans to tear things down and label them in the extremes of the 1-star worsts and the ten-star bests. The reality is, of course, subjective, and the finall tally will exist somewhere in the middle in one case information technology's all averaged out. Game endings are as well entirely personal; what might accept impacted me in a meaningful way might have been a snoozefest or a cheezy copout for someone else. But anyone who seriously considers the ending of The Final of Us: Part II to be "the worst ending of any game always" either needs to play at least a few more games or is deep into their own aforementioned delusions.
If we never see The Concluding of Us: Part Iii , I for one will exist a happy camper. Part II concluded pretty much the only fashion it could. If the intent was to show two women who were ii sides of the same money, both of them caught in a never-ending cycle of revenge, both of them realizing that that pursuit was a expressionless cease, then it would have been disingenuous to have either Ellie or Abby emerge "victorious" at the end of it all. Both of them suffered Pyrrhic victories of their own making. That ending, seeing each of them walk away to their divide corners, their own versions of sanctuary, is certainly not a happy ane, but information technology is a satisfying i.
Imagine for a second that Ellie had "won" and killed Abby. What would that get her? She would still arrive habitation to discover Dina and JJ packed up and gone, and she'd all the same take two fewer fingers left to play her dearest guitar. Would fans who hated Abby have been happy with this outcome? Peradventure, but the truth remains that nix else would accept changed for Ellie, and Joel wouldn't magically return to her. In fact, with the weight of the sin of yet another expiry on her soul, Ellie may non have been able to think back on her final conversation with Joel in a way that let her find some peace at long concluding. And if Abby had killed Ellie? Forget about it. The fandom would however be on burn down to this day. And yet, zip in the game would take changed; Abby and Lev would accept rowed off into places unknown with just a little more weight on their consciences than earlier. Does that really sound like a improve selection?
I've written enough almost the ending of The Concluding of Us: Function Ii and no amount of arguments, well-reasoned may they exist (though I've yet to see whatsoever), are going to sway my opinion much. I rarely liked what Naughty Canis familiaris was asking me to do in the game, exist it delving into the depths of ruined buildings to fight hordes of monsters and the Rat King or stepping into the shoes of a brutal murderer to larn her life's story, but I count myself better for giving myself over to the experience. The ending of The Final of United states of america: Part Ii is the culmination of all those fiddling moments throughout the game(s), throughout the franchise. It'southward profound, it'due south provocative, and it volition stick with me for a long, long time; it simply couldn't have ended any other way.
Thankfully, the hate for The Last of Us: Part Ii has been reduced to a few shadowy corners of the net. It seems to lurk in the same areas as the folks who wake upwards screaming virtually Star Wars: The Last Jedi on a daily basis. I'grand happy to say that the vitriol, though information technology notwithstanding exists a year later, is quieter now while it'south just as hollow and baselss as ever. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find an outpouring of praise and support when Naughty Dog shared their own ceremony celebration for the game over Twitter:
Maybe in that location's hope for humanity subsequently all...
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Source: https://collider.com/last-of-us-2-controversy-explained/
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