Love and hate are separated by an invisible barrier. The world of, The Last Of Us, makes this clear. These feelings we all have are seemingly polar opposites but in reality, they are boxed in with nothing but tissue paper. Love and hate are both irrational feelings that we cannot completely control — no matter how hard we may try. We learn to live with both of them and make the best life we can. Some of us are taught to give in to love while others are taught to be led by hate. The quicker we realize the lack of control we have over life, the quicker we can exist peacefully somewhere in the middle. Life is not easy and the only thing we have to hold onto is that precarious ledge our emotions keep us tap dancing on.

I played TLOU2, weaving through a post-apocalyptic landscape, while also playing hide-and-seek with my feelings. To sum up, it was a harrowing and unforgettable experience. I finished, put down the controller, re-joined the world, and then immediately returned for a second run. I wasn’t done sorting through myself and what this story had to offer. I was always going to write about this game but I’ve realized that I need to do this now because I cannot function as a writer with this story still churning up my brain. There is no way for me to properly discuss this story without diving into ***MASSIVE SPOILERS***, so be warned: I am going to talk about it all. I urge you to return to this post at a later date if you have any plans to play this game. This post will still be here.

Again, MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

Okay

You’ve been warned — let’s dive in.

FIRST, SOME CONTEXT

The story of the original was about a fourteen year old girl, born years after society fell to a destructive virus, journeying across the country in order to reach a hospital. She was immune to the virus and was the only person known to be immune. This girl, Ellie, grew up without much of a family. She was entrusted to a smuggler named Joel for this journey. Joel was a man who watched his young daughter get murdered at the onset of the outbreak. This event broke him and forged an armor around him. Over the course of their journey, Ellie and Joel became a family — the first ever family for Ellie and the first in decades for Joel. Upon reaching the hospital and finding out that Ellie would have to die in surgery in order to potentially create a cure for the virus, Joel snapped. He could not abide losing another daughter. Joel, through grief, slaughtered the entire hospital in a bid to save Ellie. He left with her and when she asked what happened, he lied and told her there was no cure — that everything was a failure. That story ended with Ellie sighing and saying, “okay.” You could see in her eyes that she knew Joel was lying about something but she let that hang for the time being.

That game was revolutionary in the way that it flipped our perception of the hero, Joel. The player ended up complicit in Joel’s despicable acts. His actions were borne from love and grief with a heavy dose of selfishness. To this day, I don’t agree with Joel’s actions but I know that I would have done the same.

ONWARD TO THE MAIN EVENT

I could also spend thousands of words discussing the game mechanics and how they’ve evolved in the years since the first game. I could write about the verticality of the environments, the free flowing combat, streamlined crafting, and the beautiful guitar mini-game (you should YouTube what some people are doing with this mini-game, it is extraordinary).These are all used effectively to further immerse us in this world. The camera is visceral and only shows us the bare minimum at any given moment, which keeps the tension at a maximum. The world is dangerous like I have never experienced before. Every single enemy interaction is brutal, nasty, and leaves the player feeling at sea. The 3D audio, ratchets everything up further, with creaks, clicks, groans, gurgles, roars, gasps, screams, gunfire and the like coming from all, yet singularly specific, directions.

WE BEGIN WITH A GUT PUNCH

The sequel begins in Jackson, the rebuilt town Ellie and Joel returned to at the very end of the first game. They’ve settled into a routine and life is mostly peaceful. Through dialog, we understand that Joel and Ellie aren’t on the best of terms. Ellie, now nineteen and very much her own person, is still grappling with the fallout from the events at the hospital nearly four years prior. She heads out on patrol with her girlfriend Dina when they get waylaid by a snowstorm. They soon find out that Joel and his brother Tommy aren’t responding to radio calls and so Ellie heads out to find them. This is when we change perspective and begin playing as a new character named Abby. We don’t know who she is or what she and her group are doing here but we quickly realize they’re here for Joel. We can infer that she must have a connection to the group from the hospital and we begin to fear the worst. At the same time, this make sense because when you flip a coin, there is always a tails to the heads. The people Joel killed out of his love for Ellie would also have their own people willing to do the same for them. Abby is quickly beset by a horde and is rescued by, of all people, Joel and Tommy. They escape the horde and end up at an abandoned mansion Abby and her group have been holed up in. This is where things get dark. Joel realizes these people know who he is and there is no good reason for that. Before either Joel or Tommy can react, they are attacked — Tommy knocked out and Joel taking a shotgun blast to his legs. Abby then proceeds to beat Joel with a golf club.

We regain control of Ellie again as she reaches the mansion, sneaks in, hears the commotion in the basement and rushes into action. We expect to save the day but are horrified when Ellie is immediately bested and held down as Joel’s torture continues. She calls out to Joel and begs him to get up. And then Abby kills him. It made me sick to my stomach. I wasn’t upset that Joel died because in this harsh world, it’s not exactly surprising when someone doesn’t die of old age. The thing that got to me was Ellie’s pain — it was primal in the most horrible and wrenching manner. Abby leaves Ellie alive because her mission is finished and because, as we will learn later, the cycle of love and hate demand it. Now, I’m not going to rehash the entire plot of this game because that would take forever and also it’s not necessary. The plot is secondary to character and I’ve spoken at great length on my site about my preference for stories told this way. It’s not the what but the why.

THE HERO OF ONE STORY CAN OFTEN BE THE VILLAIN OF ANOTHER.

This is an obvious theme and one we get dosed with early on in the game. What none of us expected was how this story would deepen our understanding of this theme as the rest of the events unfold. We play the first half of the game as Ellie on her odyssey of revenge. She is going to punish those responsible for Joel’s death. We find out quick that Joel’s brother Tommy is already on the same quest for his own satisfaction. What we’re shown over the next dozen hours or so of game is Ellie losing the rational and human pieces of herself. She falls down the rabbit hole because of love and drowns in a pool of hate. She has no room for anything else. She is vicious, cruel, and undeterred by anything. She’s joined by her girlfriend Dina, and later, her friend Jesse. We watch as Ellie begins to unravel and even lose sight of the relationships she holds so dear — the same feelings and connections which bore so much love and happiness to begin with. Ellie kills her way all over Seattle as she fights the militarized group known as the WLF, (aka wolves), the group Abby is a part of. Ellie also has violent encounters with another group of “enemies” known as the Seraphites. They are a group of religious zealots who mainly fight the WLF over territory and philosophy of life. By the time Ellie and Abby confront one another again, we are numb to the killing and exhausted from it. We are in desperate need of catharsis.

BONDED FOR LIFE

Leading up to this point, the story is broken up by sections of Ellie remembering past events with Joel. They are mostly tender moments of the two of them strengthening their bond. Ellie never had a family and even though it isn’t biological, Joel is very much her father. They love each other like only the truest sense of family can love. Through these flashbacks, we begin to appreciate how Ellie could succumb to hate so fully. This in no way excuses her actions but given our perch and availability to be objective, we can be honest with ourselves in understanding that we could easily follow in Ellie’s footsteps. Like I said at the top, it is an invisible barrier. There’s further context that some later flashbacks reveal. Ellie always suspected Joel had lied about something. She revisits the hospital and finds out what happened. She questions Joel and later doesn’t let him off the hook, demanding the truth. Joel gives her what she asked and she hates him for it. Their relationship is seemingly severed. It’s just about the most upsetting thing I could think of, how irrational love can lead to equally irrational hate. Except Ellie finds the bond between her and Joel unable to be severed. We learn why guitars mean so much to her, Joel taught her how to play and it was something they both cherished. The guitar keeps her tethered to him and the love they have for each other. She needs this not just to fuel her rage but also as a lifeline protecting her from being completely consumed by the hate she feels. We don’t have to agree with her actions in order to empathize with them. She is in so much pain and it it hurts to see her like this. At first, we think her revenge is fueled by guilt because she wasn’t able to reconcile with Joel but we later learn that she went to Joel and told him she wanted to try and forgive him. They had reconciled. It then becomes obvious that guilt plays a different part in this story. Ellie wasted so much time hating a man she loved more than anything in this world. Ellie thought they had more time and was robbed of the only family she ever had. When Abby killed Joel, she killed a piece of Ellie’s heart.

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

After Ellie and Abby confront each other, we’re left with a cliffhanger. Abby has killed Jesse, Tommy is possibly dead on the floor, and her gun is trained on Ellie. Cut to black.

We then pick up with a flashback scene of Abby and her father. By the end of this flashback we learn that not only was Abby a part of the group at the hospital (the Fireflies) but that her father was the doctor responsible for creating a cure through Ellie. Joel killed him. This moment flips the entire story on its head. We suddenly have so much more insight into who Abby is as a person and what fueled her own rage. Abby spent the subsequent years with the WLF, receiving military training, and preparing for the day she could avenge her father’s murder. Like I said, the hero of one story…

What we learn over the next dozen hours, playing as Abby, is that she has her own family of friends. They care for each other. They are not that much different from the people of Jackson. Love leads to hate and the cycle continues. Abby becomes embroiled in a fight against the Seraphites and is nearly killed in horrific fashion by them until being saved by a couple of Seraphite outcasts. They bond, especially Abby and the young boy named Lev. This closely mirrors the relationship growth of Joel and Ellie from the first game. We begin the game hating Abby and end the game loving her because we understand her motives and pain. There is enough pain and suffering in this world that one’s sun could be blotted out by it. Abby gives in to her hate but as her story unfolds, love creeps back in and begins to take hold. We learn about her relationships with her friends, namely Owen, Mel, Manny, and Alice the dog. She lets Lev into her heart and begins to care about him as well. So when she finds out most of her friends are dead, the switch is primed. She watches Manny die right in front of her, killed by a revenge-fueled Tommy. She finds Alice, Mel, and Owen dead — then finds evidence it was Ellie. This sets Abby off once again on a quest for vengeance. She is now at odds with the WLF because she’s become so protective of Lev, a Seraphite. Abby is beset on all sides by people attempting to cause harm to her and those she loves. We also see that she cannot quite shake a bit of humanity because Lev has had such a remarkable influence on her mindset. She’s forever changed. These two women, Ellie and Abby, are so full of pain, it hurts us to see them bested by these feelings. Pain lends itself to hate by holding your hand and walking you to the threshold. Some find the strength to turn back while others give in to the false promise of catharsis.

We end up back at the cliffhanger moment and, playing as Abby, engage in a boss fight of sorts against Ellie. It puts us in a rocky boat as we’re fighting against the one person we’ve always fought for. Abby defeats Ellie but lets her live. This is different than the encounter early in the game because this is Abby again fueled by hate except she doesn’t allow it to fully consume her. Abby chooses to go live a peaceful life and warns Ellie to not come for her again. At a glance, this seems like a typical warning but when you dig deeper, it is more of a recognition of oneself in another. Abby now sees that her and Ellie are one and the same, sees the same hate but also the love. We come to realize that Abby’s warning is more philosophical. By the end of this section, the wolf has become the shepherd.

This all requires a mature understanding of life, what we hold dear, and the limits we are required to exceed. The only way out is through and when you’re walled in by love and hate, that particular hallway is a precarious jaunt. The game exemplifies this by repeated journeys down the same hallway as Abby and staircase as Ellie.

YOU GO. I GO. END OF STORY.

We can’t go further without discussing some of the side characters. This is part of what makes this story and world so rich and rewarding. Dina is Ellie’s girlfriend and after Joel, the most important person in her life. Dina supports Ellie but is also there to try and keep Ellie from being consumed by vengeance. In fact, Ellie’s darkest moments are when Dina is not around. There’s a saying: No man is an island. This is another theme TLOU2 deals with in depth. We are all made up of our friends and family. What I mean by that is that left to our own devices, each of us are not at our best. We are taught and continue to be taught, every day, by those we surround ourselves with. Dina teaches Ellie to see light in the darkness — she helps Ellie be the best possible version of herself. Where Ellie has Dina, Abby has Owen. This is particularly evident in Abby’s flashbacks where Abby and Owen run the gamut of blossoming love. In the present, they are no longer together, mostly because they remind each other of their hateful actions against Joel. They still have love for each other but it’s no longer enough to hold them together as a couple. Ellie relies on her loved ones to keep her away from the dark side while Abby shuts them out in order to protect them from her own darkness. It’s different but both women operate from a foundation of love. We then spend so much time with Lev. He is a stand-in for a younger Ellie. Abby becomes Joel and her change is brought about by a new understanding of what she, like Joel, would do for someone she primally needs to protect.

CATHARSIS

Ellie heeds Abby’s warning and is satisfied to live peacefully on a little farm she and Dina have set up. They’re raising a little boy together and also a flock of sheep. Ellie still suffers from PTSD over what happened to Joel. She doesn’t feel whole but is still willing to try and live this new life. A visit from a still alive but handicapped Tommy changes everything. Tommy has lost most of himself to hate. He is even angry with Ellie because she is unwilling to finish the job against Abby. We don’t want Ellie to listen to Tommy but she does and sets out one more time.

Ellie is desperately searching for the closure she can’t find — it is like an open wound. She tracks down Abby in California, only to discover she and Lev have been captured by a sadistic group of people who call themselves the Rattlers. They enslave anyone they find in order for themselves to live in comfort. They torture and crucify those who disobey. By the time Ellie reaches Abby, it’s been months. They travel along the beach together with Lev until they reach two boats. Abby and Lev are emaciated from their months of abuse while Ellie is in bad shape do to her being impaled earlier by a trap set by the Rattlers. They at first seem content to go their separate ways — Abby and Lev to Catalina Island and Ellie back home. Ellie sets her pack in the boat and sees a flash of Joel dead on that basement floor. She gives in to hate again and tells Abby they need to finish it. Abby says no because she’s seen what the cycle does and has made it out the other side. Ellie threatens Lev’s life and Abby capitulates in order to protect the only person she has left to love. They fight in the surf, brutally and ugly, until Ellie pins Abby’s head under water. It is then that another image of Joel flashes in her mind — Joel on his porch with his guitar. It’s the same moment when Ellie says she wants to try and forgive him. Ellie finally lets go and lets Abby and Lev go while she sobs in the water. The cycle is finally broken. We last see Ellie back at the farm, now abandoned, and she plays Joel’s guitar once last time before setting it down and beginning her trek back to Jackson — back to her family and back to love. She let the guitar go and with that she let Joel go. By being able to do this, she let the hate go and gave herself a better foundation to rebuild her life. It is an astonishing moment in a game/story brimming with astonishing moments. And it’s here where we gain further understanding of what the story has been telling us all along with some of its imagery. The opening screen is a boat in the water, we at first think this is representing the calm before the storm but ultimately reveals itself as a metaphor for the two leads being at sea. Once the game is finished, the opening screen changes to the boat beached on Catalina Island. Following this thread, we also realize that every loading screen we see is a lesson in searching for the light. Most of the screen is shrouded in darkness while a group of moths gather around the lone light source. We are all like the moths, desperately trying to flee the dark.

LOVE IS STRONGER THAN HATE

By the end of this story, we are left loving characters at odds with each other because their stories are largely like our own. Everyone has a story and everyone begins a new story every day. Most of us get the opportunity to change our lives for the better and try and leave this world better for it. I played the first game in a world where I had no children in my life. I still found it engrossing and one of the best stories ever told in a video game. There is a reason HBO has secured the rights in order to make it into a new series. Shortly after, my family began having children. I am now an Uncle to five girls and one boy and my entire world is different. Being around children is like being a time traveler — I get to watch them experience millions of things for the very first time. It reminds me of how I grew up and I am in constant reflection of my own experiences. I didn’t know I could possess the love in my heart that I now possess and both stories now hit harder. My understanding of this world has deepened and more importantly, I better understand the person I am and the person I want to be. I love Ellie and Abby because I see myself in them. I see them with people they love and who love them back — people they would go to the ends of the earth for and vice-versa. They are awkward around those they don’t know and can be easily consumed by their own feelings. These two brave and powerful women each found their light and I try every day to follow their lead. Great art cannot make the world a better place on its own, it can only take our hand and lead us to the threshold. It is up to us to choose the proper doorway. Just because love and hate share an invisible barrier doesn’t mean we’re destined to be lost.

Next week, it really is DEVS time. Until then, love each other.