It’s difficult to talk about all of this a week before most of you reading can play the game for yourself. In a recent fawning piece in British
GQ, Druckmann is quoted as saying, “There were people [at Naughty Dog]—a minority of them—that were just stuck on how violent it [the game] is and how dark and quite cynical it is about mankind.” That even the people who made the game are divided about it is a clear sign that players are going to have radically different experiences. The first game’s story was polarizing; this one’s will clearly be as well. So many people worked on this game for so long, and at
such cost, that I want
The Last Of Us II to be more than the experience I had. It’s a visually beautiful game that feels distinct to play, and the story it tells and how it tells it, at the most basic level, certainly pushes the edges of what games have done before. None of those accomplishments elevated or redeemed it for me. Like the nature consuming Seattle, or the outbreak consuming humanity, its ugliness overshadowed everything else.