I want to talk a bit about the story, so spoiler tags.
I complained about the game being long, which it is, but actually I think it needed that length to tell its story. Everything hinged around you caring about Abby and her friends, and getting you to buy into that was crucial. You’d had a game and a half to fall in love with Ellie, they had to illicit similar feelings for Abby (Ellie/Abby getit?). I came to like and appreciate Abby as a character, which is crucial to the buy in for the finale.
Abby is basically the mirror of Ellie. Motivated to the same actions for the same reasons, because get father was murdered. Ellie is arguably worse than Abby, as at least Abby left Tommy and Ellie alive, something Ellie was unable to reciprocate.
There are some cool tricks the game uses to make you like Abby, and a big one is Alice the dog. People fucking love dogs and having Ellie kill a bunch of them, you never get a choice, then to have Abby spend a lot of time with a friendly one has to be intentional. I initially put the inability of Ellie to deal with dogs gracefully as a failing of the game, but looking back it feels intentional. Another piece of the jigsaw. Having you go from killing Nora, Owen, Mel, and Alice, straight into a section where you play and joke around with them, then adventure with them, was deftly done. Returning to the aquarium the dead dog is immediately the sign to Abby and a reminder to the player that things aren’t right.
There is a section I want to pickup on, also involving dogs. At one point mid game I killed a dog and its owner shouted “BEAR! NOOO!” as it died. Pretty grim. Then later as Abby when you pickup Alice there is another dog you can play fetch with. The dog is refereed to as Bear. You are playing fetch with another dog Ellie killed. 😬
That was a small detail you might miss.
Looking back I tried to see if there were any areas the game could have cut, as some of it at the time felt self-indulgent. But really, everything seems relevant in some way. The relationship with Dina was important to show what Ellie was giving up in her quest for revenge. The flashbacks with Joel were important to remind us of his relationship with Ellie and back her motivation for revenge. The bits with Abby and the Wolfs, important to humanise her. The bits with Abby and the Scars, important to show her as someone who will go out of her way to help others. Her flashbacks important to show her motivation in killing Joel.
It’s really difficult to see where things could be removed without affecting the whole. Maybe Jessie didn’t need to be there, but he played into the whole Dina pregnant thing, which is mirrored by Abby and Mel. Perhaps the late game section with the Scar island didn’t need to be there, but provided some of the most visually stunning sequences and gave a nice big final battle for soldier Abby.
One criticism is the Scars, who are really not fleshed out at all. There are just evil for evil’s sake, the whole disembowelling thing left unexplained beyond some hand waving stuff about getting sin out of you. I’m pretty sure they only existed to give Abby someone to save (in Yara and Lev) and they ran out of time and inclination to develop beyond cliched death cult, a trope which is frankly standard for post-apocalyptic games.
It wasn’t until the Abby section in the late game where it became apparent what they were doing. That they were turning Abby into a fully formed and human character that you cared about, in order to make what happens later really hurt. And it wasn’t until the very end of the game, where Ellie finally hunts her down, that it pays off. You hope in the final sections that Ellie will turn hero and rescue Abby from the hellish prison she finds herself in, but actually Ellie doubles down on the revenge.
That last fight with Ellie fighting Abby next to the boat. As she slashed at her with her knife, I just felt so awful. I felt sick. I just wanted Ellie to stop but the only way to do that would have been to turn off the game. I was begging it to please for the love of god stop! Eventually it does. Ellie returns to the farm to find Dina gone. And her worst fear is realised. She is totally alone.
The message to me seems clear. And a good message for our times. Violence only breeds violence. Sometimes forgiveness is harder than revenge. The cycle will spiral out of control until someone has the courage to stop it.
I’ve started NG+!