James Anderson

This review contains light spoilers. Please disregard all one star reviews. They were written by whinging alt-righters. There are certainly worthy criticisms to be made of the game, but they are not represented in these single star reviews. They did not play the game. They are simply wailing into the void about not playing as the big tough guy and the main characters being women and the presence of a transgender character. That’s it. This is quite simply put, one of the most impactful pieces of media I have ever consumed. The plot is subversive in that you can call the events to come pretty quickly, but this only serves to ratchet up the dread you feel as the stories of Ellie and Abby merge. What you will not be able to predict is the sheer brutality and horror of having your hand forced to commit sickening acts of violence, and the game holds you to account for all of it. The game play itself is fun and while not especially challenging, it keeps you engaged the entire time. Where the game challenges you is in how uncomfortable all of it feels. The NPCs will shriek horribly as they die in agony and terror. They gurgle and sputter as you kill them. Their deaths are greeted with grief by their friends who call their names when they find their bodies. They beg for their lives, and if you wish for the game to progress, you, the player, have to decide to take it away from them. The story is told from the point of view of two young women, Ellie and Abby. Ellie who was introduced in the first game, is seeking revenge against Abby, who commits a horrific murder in pursuit of her own revenge. We play as Ellie, whom we already know and love from the first game, as she sinks deeper and deeper into the cycle of violence. She does horrible things to people and all the while you desperately want her to stop. The narrative then changes to Abby, who we are prompted to hate for her crime early in the game. However, as we get to know her, we can’t help but sympathize with her. She is the villain in Ellie’s story, but the hero of her own. She is deeply flawed, but shows her humanity. She has friends who love her, and in some ways she serves as a mirror to both Ellie and Joel. This makes the inevitable showdown between the two that much more tragic and unbearable, as we know the goodness as well as the callous violence of both characters. We are forced to meet the people who we killed as Ellie and get to know them. We spend time with them, grow to like many of them, even though we already know what lies in store for them all. In the end, this game is a profound indictment of hatred, with the grand irony being that the hatred is what fuels the narrative. You kill countless people, but you often can’t help but feel uncomfortable with what you’ve done. The people who lose their lives to acts of violence are not faceless drones, they are people who lived full, complex lives until the point where you made the choice to kill them. The characters themselves pay heavy prices for their hatred, as the cycle of violence spins out of control. If you can stomach the violence and the moral grey of the story, I cannot recommend this title enough. You will be thinking about it long after the story reaches its conclusion.