The Last of Us 2: Dividing a Fanbase

2020 has not been kind to the world. Wildfires in Australia. A global pandemic. Racial discrimination and civil unrest. We’re just barely at the halfway mark for the year and these are the issues that plague the minds of millions of men, women and even children across the globe. And when the troubles of the world become too much to bear, what do these people do? They escape in a sense. More often than not, they escape into entertainment. They escape into a world of mystery, or fantasy, or even a story grounded firmly in reality like Chernobyl on HBO. They do this to get just a brief reprieve from the world and for maybe an hour at a time forget about the hardships of humanity.

All of that goes out the window when the thing entertaining them is shrouded in as much controversy as the political arguments they were seeking to escape from. Such is the case of The Last of Us 2, or TLOU2 as I will refer to it in this post.

One word comes to mind when describing the reception of this game; divisive. Its a word that carries a lot of weight in society today, and can effectively sum up the attitude a lot of people have about the issues that we deal with on a daily basis. Its even a word that Naughty Dog VP Neil Druckmann used to describe TLOU2 in an article written by Games Radar.

This strategy to be divisive and to “subvert expectations” has been a common thread in popular media ever since Game of Thrones. Star Wars is another prime example of “subverting the expectations of the audience”. What many don’t seem to grasp is that this technique fails when applied to a franchise that is already established and beloved. At a bare minimum, it divides the fan base, which does not bode well for their creative work. In this particular case, it has resulted in a whole lot of bickering and name calling to boot.

Discussion about this game has become a polarized debate and has resulted in the labeling of fans as either “snowflake SJW’s" or “bigots” depending on your view. Moreover, everyone seems to have some form of disagreement on what the actual problem here is. For some, its the “toxic male gamer bros” who are here just to shit on a game that is daring to try something new. For others its the "blatant pandering to SJW crowds and Anita Sarkeesian-ites” that for them, takes precedence over quality storytelling and well-written characters.

How did it come to this? Buckle up boys and girls, its about to be a long and winding ride.

The Story So Far

Our tale begins seven years ago, on June 14th 2013. The Last of Us, a third-person action adventure/survival horror game from Naughty Dog Studios launched to nearly universal acclaim. Its story about Joel and Ellie, a pair of survivors who are travelling across the post-apocalyptic remnants of the United States, struck a chord with millions of gamers. To date, the game has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and is ranked 48th out of 50 in most copies of a video game sold. No small feat for a console exclusive.

Naughty Dog would go on to finish out their other incredibly successful franchise, Uncharted, with their 4th game in the series in 2016. Then, at Playstation Experience 2016, the world was rocked with very exciting news. A sequel, TLOU2, was in production. Gamers went bananas for the news, which you can see here. The hype train was immense and it seemed that this would be yet another slam dunk for Naughty Dog Studios.

Fast forward to E3 2018, and Naughty Dog was ready with a new gameplay trailer. Fans were excited by what they saw, but the trailer also managed to raise a few eyebrows as well. It featured a very drawn out kiss between two women, one of them being the main protagonist of the game. Whispers about pandering and SJW themes began to circulate, fueled by Naughty Dog VP Neil Druckmann’s close ties to Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency.

Still, the hype train was going strong. Naughty Dog finally set a release date for the game in late 2019, slating it for release in February of 2020. However, this would turn out not to be the case. Naughty Dog postponed the release until May of 2020, stating that the game needed some more work. This slowed the hype train a bit, and annoyed fans who had waited nearly a decade to play the sequel.

Then along came Jason Schreier, a former Kotaku journalist who now is employed by Bloomberg. In March of 2020, Schreier released an article discussing the working conditions he found at Naughty Dog Studios. And what he found wasn’t good. I won’t get into the specifics (you can read the full article here), but suffice it to say that being employed at Naughty Dog is not all sunshine and rainbows according to their own staff. As a matter of fact, they say it can be a rather hellish experience.

Shortly following this bout of negative PR, disaster struck the world in the form of COVID-19. I don’t think I need to explain to you the impact that has had on the world. For Naughty Dog, it meant even further delays, as they were (allegedly) unable to “provide the experience of the Last of Us 2 to everyone at the same time”. Whether this is true or not is open to debate, especially given the massive shift to an online marketplace for virtually every game available today. With that said, shipping complications and supply chain interruptions are a reasonable excuse to postpone a multi-million dollar project.

Its at this point that the unthinkable happens. In late April of 2020, 95 minutes of gameplay and cut scene footage from TLOU2 was leaked onto the internet. These cut scenes and gameplay moments contained incredibly pivotal story moments and plot details for their game. For a game that is heavily story driven, this is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster, even if the response to the leaks was excitement and anticipation. Which in this case, was not even close to how fans actually reacted.

A massive wave of outrage and backlash hit Naughty Dog and VP Neil Druckmann like a ton of bricks. The studio tried quickly to contain the situation, but it was far too late. The footage was spreading like wildfire, and fans around the globe were weighing in on social media to give their two cents about what they witnessed. This quickly turned into a large-scale online battle, with defenders of the game on one side and critics on the other. It got ugly. Fast.

YouTube personalities quickly began weighing in as well. Staunch supporters like Breakthrough Gaming and Tajae defended the title, claiming that fans didn’t have the full picture. Detractors such as Heel vs. Baby Face and Geeks and Gamers claimed that this was just another franchise to fall to politicization and pandering in our entertainment, a la The Last Jedi. And this is where things went from ugly to illegal.

In an attempt to contain the situation, a group known as Muso LTD began issuing DMCA Takedown notices on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog. Some of these DMCA’s targeted content creators like Jeremy from Geeks and Gamers or Az from Heel vs. Baby Face, despite their content containing none of the copyrighted material in question. This added further fuel to the fire, and resulted in the leaks gaining more press attention rather than less (a phenomenon known as the Striesand Effect).

Now here we are, less than a week from the release of the game. Currently, the game is getting overwhelmingly positive reviews from outlets like IGN and The Verge. The game’s aggregate MetaCritic score currently stands at a 96. That said, there are people who are not so positive. Outlets like Polygon and Kotaku have been rather critical of the game’s narrative, and have effectively summed it up as rather uninteresting revenge plot.

My Take

I feel that it is unfair of me to give my view of these events without providing you with some context on my bias. I loved The Last of Us. I maintain to this day that it is one of the greatest gaming experiences I have ever had to pleasure to behold. It was not a new idea, or a fresh story that had never been told. But it was a human one. It was one that dove deeply into the relationship between two people, and the actions one might take in the name of love. It was morally ambiguous and dark, managing to show both the best and worst that humanity has to offer.

As a result, I am passionate about this subject. I try to write about things that I am passionate about, because otherwise what’s the point? Write about that things that you care about and people will listen. The folks over at MyBabyCare.org understand the importance of writing from passion. They do it every day, delivering advice to mothers and fathers who only want the best for their children. I can tell because I get the same feeling from their articles as I do when I am writing mine; they give a shit.

That is why it pains me to see this fan base divided like this. People who I used to see as like minded individuals have called me a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, and many other labels because of my opinion about the leaks and the controversy surrounding TLOU2. On the other side of that coin, people who support the game are being called simps, boot lickers, shills, the list goes on. People who universally loved the first game are now at odds with each other over the second, in an ugly display of hate.

The reasons for this fight are ultimately muddied by the politicization of the issues. The people who are upset about the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters and leftist ideas for the sake of them alone are a minority. Likewise, people who are praising this game solely to turn a profit and inflate their bottom line are also a minority. The real issue here is the deconstruction of characters who were established in the first game into something they are not. That is why people are upset.

Joel’s final decision in the first game is grey. It is meant to be morally ambiguous. The impact it has on Ellie, and the final interaction we see between them is indicative of that. That would seem to no longer be the case in TLOU2, at least based on the leaks and information I have seen (and yes, I have seen all the leaks).

Instead of making it a morally gray decision, it is painted as an overtly evil act in the second game, which sets up basically the entire plot and provides the motivation for Ellie to go on her quest for vengeance. So already, within the first 5-6 hours of a 25 hour adventure, we have changed the way in which the player is supposed to see Joel’s actions from the first game. What’s more is that the events that allow Joel to meet up with a certain playable character and set events in motion are directly contradictory to what we know about Joel as a person. Joel has survived in this post apocalyptic world for 25 years now. He is not a nice guy, and we are told as much in the first game. He is actively distrustful of new people, he is cautious and calculated when dealing with a threat, and he isn’t afraid to kill to preserve what he holds dear. Why then do he and his brother Tommy rattle off their names and the location of their settlement to a total stranger within literally a minute of meeting them? The obvious answer is to advance the plot.

And then we get to the big kahuna of it all (SPOILER ALERT).

Joel’s death and the way it is handled is just flat out disrespectful to the character. This is a man who has overcome incredible obstacles, all while under our control. This is a man who has taken uncountable beatings, suffered more gunshot wounds than I can even fathom, and was impaled by a piece of re bar through his abdomen and lived to tell the tale. How then is he not only duped by a group he doesn’t know, but then proceeds to be beaten to a bloody pulp with zero resistance? A scene that is not played once, but TWICE for the player, the second time from the perspective of Abby, the other main “protagonist” of the game.

Which brings me to the problem of Abby as a playable character. In my opinion, it doesn’t work as a narrative device, at least not in TLOU2. You see, Abby’s father was apparently a character that Joel kills in the first game. You wouldn’t know it because the weight of that decision isn’t revealed to the player until a cut scene in the second game. This is the reason that Abby comes to find Joel, and also the main driving force behind the plot of the game; vengeance for Joel’s death.

The purpose for Abby’s inclusion is painfully obvious. Players often relate very readily to the character they play as in a game, simply because in a sense you are them in this moment. You are controlling their actions, and as a result form a connection with them. So, the reason to play as Abby is to ultimately empathize with her and at a bare minimum understand her motivations.

Here’s the problem. I already understand Abby’s motivations. I don’t need to play 10 hours as Abby to understand why she kills Joel. That doesn’t make me despise Abby any less. She just brutally murdered a character who I loved dearly. A character who I spent an entire game learning about. There is no amount of development for her that can make me sympathize with her apparent struggle (which by the way, for a group in the apocalypse, she doesn’t seem to be struggling all that much compared to other groups we’ve seen).

This whole narrative is designed to make the player understand that the cycle of violence and revenge gets us nowhere. A narrative beat that, according to Polygon and Kotaku, is constantly shoved in the players face, while simultaneously forcing players to engage in overt acts of violence in a quest for revenge. So in short, its a game that actively makes you feel bad for the choices you are forced to make. Did they subvert your expectations?

Which brings me back to the thesis of this post. This subversion of the expectations of the fan base, and the decision to deconstruct beloved characters to effectively further the plot don’t work. This is not to say that TLOU2 will not sell well. We can already see the fallacy of that argument. But if we examine other franchises who have gone in similar routes, we can see the end results. The Last Jedi was a divisive movie. Disney’s next Star Wars film, Solo, was a massive financial failure. Even The Rise of Skywalker didn’t hit its projected sales figures. Game of Thrones Season 8 is considered by a massive portion of the fan base to be a complete disaster, and sours the taste of the entire series to the point where Googling “bad writers” brings up an image of Dan and Dave, the writers of the show.

In summation, TLOU2 will not fail. TLOU2 will not destory Naughty Dog or result in the firing of any of the major staff members who made this game happen, nor should it ultimately mean that. They have the creative freedom to write the story they want to tell. But it does set the stage for them to fail in the future. If Lucas Films and Disney can fail on the same count, so can Naughty Dog.