There it’s finished. At the end of more than 23 hours accumulated in small sections we have reached the end of “The Last of Us – Part II” on PlayStation 4 (Pro), exclusive sequel to the admirable Part I which ended the era of PS3 with fanfare. The trip was trying and got our nerves stewed. And it is not difficult to attribute the responsibility to Neil Druckmann, the great architect of the saga, so much his choices and those of his team were radical.
Joel’s choice
To put it in context, “The Last of US – Part I” narrates the journey of Joel, a middle-aged widower, and Ellie, an orphaned teenager, in post-apocalyptic America, ravaged by a plague that turns affected humans into bloodthirsty monsters.
Approaching the conclusion of the first part, Joel must make an impossible choice: save humanity or Ellie, And of course, the surrogate father prefers selfishness to general salvation… The end, in halftone, leaves Joel with his secret and Ellie with doubts about what happened in the hospital or should be extracted from his immune body enough to develop a life-saving vaccine. Without knowing that it was at the cost of his own life.
Journey to the end of …
“The Last of Us – Part II” begins a few years after these facts and will mainly focus on the consequences of Joel’s choice. What remains of humanity is trying to rebuild itself in fortified camps built on the remains of Western civilization. The infected, in wild horde or hidden in dark corners, swarm. The mind is for survival and survival in times of scarcity imposes a barbarism that the game can make unbearable …. while forcing us, poor player who wants to know the end of the story, to observe it and especially to practice it.
During its 20 – 30 hour duration, “The Last of US – Part II” – once the preamble and its enormous drama have been completed – combines two great narrative arcs, one with Ellie, descending towards her inner demons, the other, in parallel, with Abby, a girl with a truck driver physique. A final part ties the sheaf. The present time is absolutely dark, only a few flashbacks allow the warrior to rest.
The rule of I
In good big narrative game, “The Last of Us” leaves even less the illusion of choice than other more open games: we eliminate threats – human or infected – either in front, with fists, rifle, pistol , with the arc, or behind, most often with the knife. We can certainly try to avoid it, but all the key moments, the narrative knots, are nine times out of ten characterized by an explosion of violence from which it is impossible to escape. The realism of the game is such, by the extraordinary quality of its realization and its direction of “actors”, that this violence is trying. Basically it is not “Fortnite” with its dead without consequences. Do not offer this game to your teens.
All this is assumed, it is the vision of the great architect and this vision is, let’s say, of an absolute misanthropy where reigns “everyone has his reasons” which lead to tragedy. Still happy that the fun mechanics allow, it is their nature, to put a certain distance between us and the terrible acts that we have to perform, well protected behind our little controller.
At this point, you are probably wondering how can you love a game so unlovable? Let’s say, in the same way as “Apocalypse Now”, the now great classic of the hopeless war film. In both cases, the narrative takes us beyond good and evil. In both cases one wonders if it is absolutely necessary to look at the bottom of the hole. And then, on reflection we say that the journey, even imperfect, even sometimes tinged with convenience, is much denser than the comer, the sanitized. From time to time, it is worth rubbing.
Beautiful technique
From a more technical point of view, we recognize having been confronted with some bugs, but too rare, too negligible, for it to affect our judgment. But we also recognize that our confrontation with the largest and most dangerous of infected in the hospital in Seattle has particularly annoyed the president that we are from the “Association of enemies of end of level bosses”. We also easily admit to having found the second part of the game, that of Abby, more laborious than the first with Allie, mainly because the playful mechanics are hardly renewed. Yet it was during this part that we experienced two of the most magnificent moments of the story. Finally, we can never thank the developers enough for having designed the most complete difficulty adjustment options ever imagined for a video game.
Like the white wolf
“The Last of Us – Part II” is a game apart. Expected like white wolves by fans of the first hour, the production tried, during its promotion, to send the message that it would be rougher and would not be content to repeat the most consensual recipes of the first episode. In short, he was not going to stroke the gamer in the direction of the hair. This is not entirely successful, the game is not in our eyes the summit proclaimed by some of the critics, but it is certainly a work among the most ambitious ever released on PS4, without equivalents on certain key points, including artistic direction and dramaturgy.
Created: 01.07.2020, 10h47
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