The Last of Us 2 should not exist despite its near universal acclaim

[Redaktion]

In a perfect world where hunger and poverty do not exist, Naughty Dog doesn't end up making The Last of Us Part II. In this rather unperfect world where corporate greed exists, we as the consumer have to deal with the hot mess that is The Last of Us 2 (TLOU 2).

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Last-of-Us-2-should-not-exist-despite-its-near-universal-acclaim.797782.0.html

[Misunderstood]

First of all, spoilers? Any article like this should have a BIG DISCLAIMER that it contains spoilers. Not everyone has played the game!

Secondly, the author completely misunderstood the story of this game. Last of Us 2 is even more about the story than the first one. You could even say the first game didn't have any twists and turns, it was a pretty linear experience.
The second game, however, has narrator switches, flashbacks, fast forwards...

The CEO of the company said "The first game is about love. The second one is about hate."

People aren't black and white beings. We doubt ourselves every day, we reconsider our decisions very often, and sometimes even we keep doing things that we know are wrong, or are useless and won't help us. The first game has very little of this, but the second... it's a masterpiece of the human psyche.
I recommend playing Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice (sequel coming soon) to see another game that invoques negative feelings in the player, yet it is still awesome.
Get over your grief for Joel. Just take the story, and you can dislike it, but it doesn't mean it's bad. We all can dislike good things, but denying it's good just puts us in a permanent state of denial and we never process our grief.

Also please, ntbcheck, add there a spoiler disclaimer.

[Off the Mark]

While I don't think the Last of Us 2 was that great of a game gameplay-wise... it seems from the article that your only reason for TLOU2 being a cash grab is because Ellie doesn't kill Abby in the end.

I think that opinion totally disregards the effort and budget that Naughty Dog put into making the game as well as the overall story.

While of course it is up to the player's own conclusion, the story is about Ellie letting go of Joel and her baggage and contributing to stopping the cycle of violence.

I wouldn't also consider a sequel that is released 7 years after the original a cash grab considering there are other franchises that release far more often with minimal changes in gameplay like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed.

TLOU2 is also barely a zombie killing rampage - there's a lot of padding in between set pieces and you're mostly taking out humans in a methodical manner. A better example of a zombie-killing-rampage game would be Dead Rising.

And yes, spoiler disclaimer please.

[Any research?]

I feel like the author of this article did almost no research (or has almost no personal experience) with the two games and the reception around them. While Last of Us Part 2 REMASTERED* came out this year to near universal acclaim (almost certainly because people knew what to expect vs the original release), the original release of TLOU2 was met with EXTREME division among critics and communities.

I may disagree with the authors feelings about the second game and their lack of supporting arguments for it, but the biggest issue for me is that while reading I thought to myself "does the author even know what they are writing about?"