What the hell is going on?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Hurray! More controversy within a hobby meant to de-stress and unify people amid increasingly stressful times. That's just what we need these days. It's like people aren't allowed to have escapism anymore and must wallow in constant conflict, despair and stress until they die. But enough pessimism! Let's talk about a game that everyone's fighting over for some reason.
This time, there was and still is a lot of vitriol and hate surrounding the release of The Last of Us Part 2 for the PS4. A highly anticipated sequel to the acclaimed PS3 original The Last of Us, this game was meant to be a swan song for the PS4 before the PS5's release. And even before it's release, the game was increasingly becoming a minefield of controversy and inevitable conflict.
From what I've been told, researched and seen, the blame for this crisis falls equally on certain fans and the developers alike. I'm going to try to set up a logical sequence of events before I actually lay out my perspective on the matter.
WARNING: I will be discussing spoilers for both The Last of Us and the Last of Us Part 2.
The Last of Us
The Last of Us was a post-apocalyptic action survival game released in June of 2013 for the PS3 and released a year later on the PS4 in July 2014. Gamers loved it, critics loved it and a lot of people regard it as one of the best games of its generation. I personally didn't play it because it wasn't something I was interested in, but I can certainly see why people love it based on my research. My sister also had a PS3 and I recall that she enjoyed the game when she got it.
The game takes place in a dystopian near-future where humanity has been nearly wiped out by a fungal infection loosely based on a real life parasitic fungus that targets and wipes out ant colonies. If the fungus doesn't kill you, it will take over your body and mind and turn you into a fungus-infested zombie. In-game, the unfortunate infected are your primary enemies as you fight the zombies in various stages of infection that mutates and distorts their bodies more and more so that they look more and more monstrous and grotesque.
In this game, you take the role of Joel and Ellie. Joel is a jaded, cynical and somewhat ruthless old man doing whatever he can to survive. His outlook on life is bleak due to his grief over his daughter Sarah who died in his arms and this is not helped by the dark stuff that he's seen people do and that he himself is mentioned to have done. More specifically, Joel and his brother Tommy were part of a loose collection of aggressive survivors called Hunters. Hunters were known for murdering and brutalizing anyone that they came across or who entered their territory to take their possessions to increase the hunter's chances of survival. In fact, he doesn't have a higher purpose to surviving other than just not to die and had chilled his own heart so he would feel nothing after his daughter's death.
That changes when he's hired by an underground resistance group called the Fireflies. They hire Joel to escort a teenage girl named Ellie to their hidden research facility. It turns out that Ellie is a very special girl who has an immunity to the fungal virus and the Fireflies want to study this immunity to create a cure to end the outbreak.
Initially, Joel only took the job because of the promise of a big payment and to get away from the increasingly draconian military. However, Joel and Ellie gradually form a deep parent-child bond over the course of the game as they let down their defenses and open up to each other. Joel starts to care about Ellie and to actually find a reason to live for hope rather than just to survive. Ellie in turn admits how lonely it has been to lose everyone close to her and latches on to Joel as her new family and protector.
Cruelly, this dynamic is tested in the game's ending when Joel brings a nearly-drowned Ellie to the Firefly researchers. The researchers determine that Ellie's immunity is based in her brain and will need to perform surgery to see how exactly she's protected from the virus. Needless to say, such a procedure would kill Ellie and Joel was not going to let that happen.
In a stunning and shocking conclusion, Joel murders every single Firefly member in the compound and takes away Ellie. Later, Joel lies to Ellie and tells her that the Fireflies didn't need her and that they let her go. Ellie reveals that she would've been willing to die to make a cure if that's what it took. But Joel insists that Ellie find a reason to live rather than give up and throw it away. Ellie then asks Joel to affirm to her that he's telling the truth and he lies again.
The game is ambiguous about rather Ellie believes Joel or not and that ambiguity goes further. The game leaves it open for players to decide if Joel was right or wrong. Did Joel selfishly condemn humanity by taking away their last chance to survive? Was he justified for saving Ellie and then lying to her? Is it morally or ethically right to kill an unconscious teenager even if it could save humanity? Would the Fireflies have actually created the cure considering their past record? Was it fair for Joel to make that call? Is Joel a murderer, a father or both?
These and other questions were left for the player to think over for themselves. This uncertain and perhaps divisive ending is one more reason why the Last of Us was great. Great gameplay; great atmosphere and setting; great tension, horror and bleakness; an original interpretation for the zombie genre; and best of all, great nuanced characters in a character driven story all struggling on a moral and ethical level to survive in body and in heart.
Naturally, people wanted a sequel.
Previews for Last of Us 2 and Leaks
For a long while, we didn't see anything about the Last of Us Part 2. Then in 2019 we started seeing trailer footage and gameplay previews. All of them focused on an older Ellie as she clearly struggles with anger and a vague desire for revenge. She has a new love interest named Dinah, but beyond that we don't know what the story is about.
We also got a very dark and brutal E3 trailer where a character who would later be identified as Abby has been captured by some assholes trying to kill her and her friends. A woman's arm gets hacked off and a fight breaks out with the bad guys all dying. So this trailer shows off that this game's going to be a bit more bleak than the previous game and may even have us fighting humans more than zombies. But beyond that, we didn't have any context to understand whats going on or who these people were.
Then the leaks happened.
Two days before the game's cancelled release date, an anonymous 4chan poster released a list of major plot details for the game. Then later that month, another poster put out youtube videos showing off major gameplay sections and cutscenes. Some of these scenes debunked the earlier leak, but some scenes confirmed them. Naturally, these leaks were all eventually deleted, but there are some who allege that the second leaker was a former employee who wanted some revenge over a pay snub.
Leaks happen all of the time and a company has a right to stop them. However, Sony and Naughty Dog took things a step too far. It appears that they not only took down videos showing the leaked content, but they also went after anyone simply talking about the leaked videos. It didn't matter if they said or showed any leaked content, discussing the leaks was enough to get your video canned.
I can certainly understand going after the leakers and those sharing the leaked content. But Sony and Naught Dog are going to far by throwing around copyright strikes against innocent targets. Discussing the fact that a leak happened or even if the leaked content is true is not grounds for being silenced. Furthermore, it sets a dangerous precedent that could intrude on people's right of free speech if they can be silenced on the suspicion of wrong-doing.
So that's Red Flag number 1.
Game reception, Backlash, Review Policing and Broadstroking
The game came out after much delay and it's sold very well despite all of the controversy up to this point. Most mainstream reviewers have given the game a positive score. But many gamers reportedly hate the game to point where metacritic was review-bombed on the User score section.
Most agree that the graphics have been improved, the voice-acting was amazing, the gameplay was solid, the atmosphere was well presented and that there were some good scenes in the story here and there. However, a lot of criticism has been heaped on the portrayal of characters both old and new and the direction of the story. Additionally, the game's handling of its' "revenge is bad" theme has been looked upon as inconsistent, poorly portrayed, contrived or hypocritical in light of the plot.
A lot of contention was especially drawn to the death of Joel and that prior to this, the bond between Ellie and Joel was shown in a very negative and broken light. Further stroking hate was the fact that the game placed into the perspective of new character Abby who had killed Joel to avenge her father. In a series of flashbacks, the player is shown that Abby's father had been the head surgeon for the Fireflies whom Joel killed to protect Ellie.
The hate was so bad that some idiots have decided to send death threats and uncalled-for insults towards voice actors and the director. Which is being indirectly used to guilt/quill criticism and hate for the game by placing critics on the defensive. It's the same tactic used during the Last Jedi backlash.
Don't get me wrong, threatening people's livelihoods and making insults about their ethnicity, gender or race is just wrong. Especially over a game. Drunkmann, Laura Bailey and other harrassed individuals have done nothing to deserve that level of hate. As gamers, we have to be better than that. Especially since they will use the vocal minority of assholes to broad-stroke the rest of us in the same color and silence our criticism rather right or wrong. In a sense, this already happened. Apparently, a few outlets gave the game mixed reviews and have been getting flack for it.
For example, Vice's Zacny had given a mixed review criticizing the game's story on the lines of "no one ever rethinks their decisions". In response to his review, Sony and Naughty Dog directly contacted Zacny to discuss his criticisms. While cordial, the companies disagreed with his criticisms and requested clarity. Zacny found this act to be highly unusual though he was not forced to change anything about his review.
Angryjoe has been very open about his dislike of the story's direction. Yet, I found his review to be fairly blunt while also constructive and insightful. He actually proposed a way that the theme and story that the game was trying to convey would've worked better. His criticism of Abby was more about how she was presented and portrayed rather than her motive or even her physical appearance and evidently enjoyed her gameplay sections because of her strength. Yet, his review's are being hand-waved as being sexist and misogynistic without any real proof apart from his open dislike of the game's writing.
Furthermore, it's been reported that reviewers were only allowed to play a certain portion of the game before making their reviews. Which potentially means that a lot of the reviewers who did play the game and gave it high scores may have done so with an incomplete picture of the game's content. Since Last of Us is a story driven game, you can't really make an accurate picture of the game without playing through the whole story.
I'm counting 4 red flags. Do I hear 5?
My thoughts
Naughty Dog.
What the fuck did you think was going to happen? You pulled a Patroklos!
Did you really think people would like Abby after introducing her viciously and sadistically murdering a character that the audience already knew and loved? Did you really think that a sob story would be enough to quell people's shock and sorrow over Joel? Did you really think that Abby would be excused for killing Joel after learning about her father? Especially since said father wasn't exactly an innocent victim as he was going to murder a child to create a cure that may not have even worked or made a difference? Or that Joel saved Abby's life right before she violently murdered her?
I personally have no bone in the ring here. But I can see bad writing from a mile away and this is just the perfect recipe for bad writing. Yes, any story can be interesting if it is told properly. But Naughty Dog clearly bet on the wrong horse in this bold gamble. To that end, I sympathize with the haters of the game's story.
Also, a revenge is bad story is terrible when the pendulum is completely one-sided. Abby is allowed to have her revenge and is allowed to be a character we're supposed to sympathize with even as she's threatening to kill a pregnant woman. Meanwhile, Ellie is FORCED...FORCED to kill people to protect herself and her actions are painted in the worst light possible.
Basically, Abby is allowed to have revenge on Joel while Ellie isn't allowed to have revenge on Abby.
It's also a waste of a perfectly good story. Here we have three characters with a grudge against each other. Joel and Ellie have a strife over Joel's decision in the last game and that he lied to Ellie over it. Abby hates Joel for killing her father regardless of the reason. As much as she dislikes Joel right now, he's still a father to Ellie and she isn't about to let Abby kill her. As an outside observer, I believe that the reception would be better and the story stronger if Joel had died closer to the middle of the game instead in the beginning.
I also have the impression that creative director and writer Neil Drunkmann is something of an egoist up there with Uwe Boll.
To those who don't know, Uwe Boll is a controversial film-maker known for making horrible adaptations of beloved video games. Alone in the Dark; House of the Dead; Bloodreyne; Postal; In the Name of the King; and Far Cry. All of which were box-office failures and overall critically panned earning Boll an infamous reputation as a schlock maestro.
Worse is that Boll admitted in the dvd commentary for Alone in the Dark that a loophole in German tax laws allows him to get paid by the government 50% of whatever you invest in making a movie. Which means he has no incentive to try to make a good movie as he'll get rich regardless and some have accused him of making bad movies on purpose. A writer who formerly worked with Boll said that Uwe steals ideas from prior movies and often didn't care about accurately representing the game he was adapting.
To dig the ditch deeper, Uwe has challenged critics to boxing matches which he won because he's an amateur boxer for a hobby. But instead of silencing criticism, the stunt only made Uwe look like an insecure jackass whose punching people for not liking his movies. Needless to say, this latest bizzare episode is a clear example on how NOT to respond to criticism.
As far as I know, Neil isn't challenging critics to a boxing match. But there have been allegations against him in regards to poor working conditions, plagurizing from former writer Amy Henning as alleged by director Joe Carnahan and that he had an inordinate amount of control over the game due to the departure of 70% of the veteran staff including Bruce Straley co-director for the first Last of Us.
I'm also of the belief that Mr. Drunkmann has something of a victim complex due to his petty immaturity when addressing criticism. It is a fact that Drunkmann said that Last of Us Part 2 would be Ellie's story, but it more or less focuses on Abby instead and blackwashes Ellie. Trailers inferred that Joel would be a companion in Ellie's quest and instead, he's killed for shock value. Drunkmann promised that we wouldn't have to kill dogs and not only is Ellie forced to kill a dog in self-defense, but its used as yet another way of making Ellie look bad compared to Abby.
It also doesn't help that Drunkmann is a fairly political game developer in the wrong way. He wears his beliefs on a sleeve and is blind to how his actions are hurting the causes that he claims to stand for. I understand being passionate about your beliefs, but its never okay to broad-stroke and strawman critics bringing up valid criticism as just “hate and bigotry”. Nor is it okay to manipulate professional critics to give your product a good score or you and your company will black list them. All of this gives off the impression that you're using feminism and etc as a shield rather than trying to get it right to uplift your causes.
So if this was just about a bad game, then that's one thing. But the more I research into Sony and Naughty Dog's questionable actions and responses, the less impressed that I am with them. Why should gamers support a company that's going to treat them like crap and gaslight them when they're not kissing Naughty Dog's ass?
This is an important question for you to consider Naughty Dog. You do want people to watch the HBO adaptation of the Last of Us right? If you're going to keep treating your customers and critics in an unprofessional manner, why should they give you their money? Think very carefully or you'll dig a hole for yourself deeper than Uwe Bowl did and no one will help you climb out of it.
The End
Disclaimer:
Last of Us and Last of Us Part 2 is the property of Neil Drunkmann; Naughty Dog and Sony
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