The Last Of Us Part II: A Depressing Yet Relevant Tale

Spoilers for The Last of Us and its sequel follow

The Last of Us Part II was controversial for many reasons, and the timing of its release didn't help. With the world in the midst of a global pandemic, some people did not find the idea of playing a game about a zombie apocalypse caused by a disease to be all that entertaining, especially when the second game manages the improbable task of being even darker than the first. Over a year after the second game's release, and with no end in sight to the pandemic, I will talk about why The Last of Us Part II is a harsh but relevant story for the COVID-19 pandemic, due to making no bones about how calamities like the Cordyceps outbreak do not bring out the best in people.

The First Game: Setting The Scene

Before we begin, let's look at the original game, which helped establish the post-Cordyceps United States of America and showed how bleak the situation had become.

While escaping the initial outbreak with his daughter Sarah, our protagonist Joel drives past a family with a child while evacuating, mainly concerned with the safety of his brother and daughter, and only becomes more hardened and ruthless after that. He then becomes a ruthless man who has done some less-than-moral things that are only vaguely alluded to, and while his friend Tess says that they're "shitty people," Joel emphatically insists that they're "survivors." Joel comes to care for Ellie through the course of their long and difficult journey, but only Ellie. When the Fireflies plan on extracting the fungus from Ellie's brain to make a cure, a process that will kill Ellie, Joel kills everyone in the hospital, including the only surgeon who has the skill to do the procedure, rather than lose Ellie.

As morally ambiguous as Joel is, the Fireflies, a militant revolutionary group that rebels against the government, are likely no better. Their decision to extract the fungus from Ellie, killing one girl for a cure that could save all of humanity, sounds good from a utilitarian perspective, but the decision to immediately vivisect Ellie is scientifically unsound, and the decision to do so while she's still unconscious is ethically questionable, to say the least.

It's also worth pointing out that even if the Fireflies ended up with a usable vaccine that actually worked (see the mutations for the COVID-19 vaccine for why it might not), it would be difficult to distribute it given the destruction of America's infrastructure, as well as the Fireflies' status as an outlaw organization. If not enough Americans are willing to get vaccines in order to achieve herd immunity, then the prospect of the Fireflies producing and distributing enough to the cure to make a difference is a pipe dream.

Much of the rest of the cast consists of criminals, cannibals, fellow survivors wandering the ruins of the United States of America, and a surprisingly functional community in Jacksonville, but at their best, most people tend to keep to themselves. It's far from the most flattering depiction of human nature, but given the highly partisan nature of modern American society, which has only gotten worse in recent years, this sort of tribalism and violent conflict seems like an inevitable consequence of a harsh future in which few can eke out an existence.

The Second Game: From Bad To Worse

In the second game, the infected play less of a role than the first game, and much of the focus is on conflicts between the human factions. Some people dislike the shift, but I personally find that it works well, especially since much of the second game deals with the consequences of Joel's actions in the first game.

Joel's decision to stop the operation on Ellie in order to save her, then lie about it, ends up driving the plot of the second game. Ellie learns about this two years before the start of the story and cuts ties with Joel over it, although they are starting to reconcile at the start of the game... when Abby, the daughter of the surgeon Joel killed tracks him down and brutally murders him.

Ellie, accompanied by Dina, goes to Seattle(coincidentally, the site of protests in 2020 in real life, as well as ground zero for the Cordyceps outbreak) to seek revenge on Abby, and bring back Tommy, who also went out to get revenge. In the process, Ellie finds herself in the middle of a war between Abby's faction, the Washington Liberation Front(aka the WLF or "Wolves"), a paramilitary organization that overthrew the military and became just as bad as those they'd replaced, and the Seraphites(aka "Scars") a backwards cult of religious fanatics. The two sides are locked in a struggle to annihilate each other, which makes the current partisan divide in the U.S. seem tame. Still, the way the WLF and Seraphites ruthlessly punish their members for sympathizing with the enemy is uncomfortably reminiscent with the lack of love between both sides of the U.S. political spectrum.

The conflict also negatively affects the personal relationships of the cast, including those who are on the same side. Both Abby and Ellie's quests for vengeance end up affecting ending their relationships, and results in the deaths of most of their friends. In Abby's case, she ends up befriending Lev, a runaway transgender Seraphite, but ends up having to kill her former comrades, while Lev kills his mother and loses his sister. After reports of U.S. citizens disowning friends and family on the opposite side of the political spectrum. In the end, Ellie chooses revenge over staying with Dina, although she doesn't actually go through with killing Abby, and the ending is rather ambiguous as to the state of her relationship with Dina.

Conclusion

Video games may be seen as escapism, for better or for worse, but as video game writers have become better at their craft, the stories have become able to touch upon complex themes and be relevant to real-world problems. The Last of Us Part II is by no means a pleasant story, nor is it one with a very happy ending, but it's an excellent work that effectively follows up on the first game's vision of a post-apocalyptic America. In the end, both games go to show that no matter how severe the threats facing us get, we're usually our own worst enemy.