The Last of Us Part 2 is receiving hate on the Internet. You can ignore it

Less than two weeks before the June 19 release date of The Last of Us Part 2, its director, Neil Druckmann, said he expected the game to divide players. He was prepared for some fans to hate him. I came across this prediction as I was preparing to write CNET Review for Part 2. I remember being struck by his pessimism.

Sure, between a gay and female lead and a set of ethnically diverse characters, The Last of Us Part 2 had the characteristics of a game that would provoke one of the most sensitive and volatile segments of the Internet. But I naively thought the game was engrossing, exciting, and even deep enough to mitigate much of the predicted vitriol.

The last few days after the game launched showed me that I was spectacularly wrong.

Take a look at Metacritic and you will see that The Last of Us Part 2 has a score of 94, based on 108 critical scores. The user’s score? 4.8, of just under 100,000 people. Take a look at the game’s hashtag on Twitter, and you’ll find tweets marveling at its intensity and storytelling, wedged between tweets that call The Last of Us Part 2 a hoax, insult, or, surprisingly, the worst game of all time.

Why are people so angry? It’s unfair to say that everyone who doesn’t like The Last of Us Part 2 is a closed-minded troll. But the game hadn’t been out for a full day before 0/10 reviews started, so many it is Offending. Some of this is more complicated.

Getting into it requires you to speak spoilers. So please, stop reading now if you haven’t played the game yet and don’t want it to spoil. Seriously. Final warning!

Die a hero

During the first hours in The Last of Us Part 2, you will alternate between two different characters: Ellie, one of the two protagonists of the original, and Abby, a completely new character.

Abby has the physique of a professional CrossFit competitor, which made me reflect on how she got enough protein in the post-apocalyptic world of Last of Us to gain and maintain her muscle figure. She travels with an organized group that is clearly on a mission. I was wondering if the meaner members of your community teased you for taking extra servings of chicken and meat.

That line of thinking was interrupted when Abby, in a scene during an Ellie game segment, hits a golf club on Joel, the other main character in the original game, and crashed into her skull.

You play as Joel during the first game and within hours, he’s dead. Ellie is the hero now. This, according to a vocal minority of apoplectic fans, is the problem.

It is not just that the protagonist is a woman, or that he is gay (although there is much objection to that). It’s not just that Joel dies. It is that Naughty Dog promoted a sequel starring Joel, but is replaced almost immediately. To make matters worse, you play much of the second half how Abby, Joel’s killer.

All of this is unacceptable in the minds, tweets, and metacritical reviews of some angry gamers. Some accuse Naughty Dog of sacrificing Joel for no reason. Others suggest that it was so the study could promote its values ​​of social justice. Except for his blunt, blunt anger, he overlooks an important detail. If you play The Last of Us Part 2, you will see that Naughty Dog killed Joel for good reason.

Live long enough to see you become a villain

The Last of Us Part 2 is a story of revenge. Revenge not only progresses in the plot, this is a video game about revenge itself.

After Abby kills Joel, her motive becomes the immediate question. She doesn’t seem like a bad person. Usually, if a game makes you play like someone, it means they are a hero. Abby is a hero? Was Joel’s death justified?

Yes, we learn. Yes it was.

The last of us follows Joel’s journey to deliver Ellie to the fireflies, a group of militias that arose from the Cordyceps infection. Ellie is immune to the infection, which turns everyone else into zombie-like creatures called The Infected, and the fireflies want to study her. When Joel takes Ellie to one of her hospitals, she learns that they will have to have brain surgery. She will die in the process. In response, she kills everyone from dozens of Firefly Army guys to the doctor preparing for surgery, and “saves” the day.

That surgeon preparing to operate on Ellie? That was Abby’s father. You find out during the second half of the game, where you mainly play as Abby. Here you will learn that Abby’s motives for hunting Joel are as legitimate as Ellie’s for hunting Abby.

At the end of the game, both Ellie and Abby have a chance to kill each other, but they end up letting the other one live. This is another key complaint: Joel died to provoke a story of revenge, but in the end Ellie does not take revenge. Therefore, Joel’s death is meaningless.

However, the characters do their best to take revenge, sacrifice personal relationships for revenge, and their moral values ​​are distorted by the lure of revenge. The game tries to make you scrutinize motivations, characters, and redemption in a remarkable way for a AAA video game.

That’s why Naughty Dog killed Joel.

Many of the people who leave 0/10 comments on Metacritic or express their frustration on Twitter are unlikely to appreciate it. Much of this activity occurred within 24 hours of the release of The Last of Us Part 2. The game took 29 hours to complete.

The pleasure of being wrong

I entered The Last of Us Part 2 hoping I didn’t like it. Naughty Dog’s modus operandi for her Uncharted series, dreaming up decorative pieces and then crafting a story around her, always bothered me. I don’t like when video games borrow Hollywood visual language to tell stories.

It took me about a dozen hours to play the game to reverse my position, and it only got more absorbing from there. The Last of Us Part 2 rules.

The game is not perfect. Some say it may seem awkward. I agree. It took me about 5 or 6 hours to get used to the character’s movement, which continued to be difficult to handle at all times. And as inspired as the story is, there are questionable moments where the characters behave in ways that contradict their motives.

But Naughty Dog did so much good, among the complex characters, the thoughtful storyline, and the exciting gameplay. Dwelling on imperfections would be absurd.

While there are some honest gamers who just didn’t like the direction of the story in The Last of Us Part 2, many of the people who stagnate the game score on Metacritic or tweet abuse on Twitter aren’t interested in honest evaluation. This is obvious to the thousands of people who spit fanaticism against women or against homosexuals, but it is also sadly true for the thousands more who claim to be offended by the bait and the change that Joel’s death represents, but which is unlikely who have played enough of the game to see where that path leads.

So that’s the bad news. Tens of thousands of people are taking advantage of the anonymity of the Internet to translate The Last of Us Part 2. The good news? The Last of Us Part 2 is the best-selling game on PlayStation 4, sell 4 million units in just three days.

Millions of players have no problem with diversity. They want to play games that take risks with their stories, even if thousands have a problem about it. The Last of Us Part 2 takes those risks, and its 4.8 metacritical user score is sure to ignore.