You will breathe a sigh of relief when the credits finally arrive on The Last of Us Part 2.
In just under 30 hours, it's twice the length of the original. But length is not the only thing amplified in The Last of Us Part 2. It is more difficult, heartbreaking and thoughtful than its predecessor. As the final scene turns black, you will feel the satisfying fatigue that comes from the fact that your emotions are indeed stirred.
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It is not a feeling that could apply to many video games. The last 20 years in the game have seen means of narration progress - the visuals improve, the voice acting reaches Hollywood quality and the playing mechanisms become more sophisticated - but without proportion will tell stories. AAA budgets are sometimes used to spin a meaningful tale, but rarely.
One of these exceptions is The Last of Us Part 2. Just look at the character models of Ellie and Joel, for whom the adjective "realistic" is more literal than figurative, to appreciate where the seven years have gone and who knows how many millions Naughty Dog has invested in this game. But as you play, it becomes clear that the true ambition of Naughty Dog does not lie in cutting-edge visuals or sets (although both are present), but in the story it attempts to tell.
In this regard, Last of Us Part 2 is a winner. It is an intense and exciting game, but its real success lies in its provocative narration.
Can I have a light?
We are in 2038. Twenty-five years ago, a cerebral fungal infection spread around the world, transforming a large part of its population into "The Infected". Zombies, by and large. Five years ago, during the events of the first game, Joel traveled the country with Ellie, 14, immunized against infection. Joel was supposed to hand Ellie over to a researcher who could study her to create a cure, but after discovering that Ellie would not survive the process, she kills almost everyone in the hospital to save her from the table. surgery.
As The Last of Us Part 2 begins, Ellie and Joel live in Jackson, Wyoming, in a colony (reasonably) free from infection. We discover that their relationship is no longer what it used to be. The mishap strikes soon and you, as Ellie, end up in Seattle to fight back.
The Last of Us Part 2 is dark - this figuratively and literally. As you travel through Seattle, torn apart by the apocalypse, you will visit sites plagued by unimaginable horror and read written accounts of people who were there when it happened. Like its predecessor, Part 2 creates a ruthless atmosphere of "kill or be killed". He asks questions about our worst features, without resorting to cliché.
Much of the game takes place in the shadows, from underground environments to abandoned buildings without any lighting. To make matters worse, Naughty Dog fills these dens with just the right amount of danger. Not as many people infected as you would expect on every street corner, but enough to let you know they might be present all corner.
It's much worse. You will think twice before entering each building, opening each door and crawling through each crevice. This is a problem, as you will be getting most of your essential recovery supplies - that is, entering buildings, opening doors and crawling through crevices.
As a wuss describing myself, I was surprised to play through the first Last of Us without suffering any real and lasting psychological trauma. Part 2 is much more tortuous.
Consider me traumatized.
Kill them all
While The Last of Us Part 2 is certainly a journey, the game itself is less an adventure and more a question of survival. But finding supplies is only half of what survival means. It also means killing a bunch of infected people and a bunch of other humans.
There are several types of each: the infected can be runners, stalkers, clickers, bloating or shamblers, representing humans at different stages of infection. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Clickers are blind, but kill instantly. Stalkers deal relatively little damage, but don't appear in listening mode (which lets you see enemies through walls). Bloating and Shamblers are tanks: slow, but difficult to kill.
Humans, on the other hand, are either wolves or scars. The first is a Seattle-based military faction that will use dogs to scent you and guns to kill you. The latter is a religious cult that uses bows and arrows, as well as heavy tanks carrying giant axes.
The fight takes place as an improved version of the Batman: Arkham game system. You are given a sprawling area and dare to see how many enemies you can kill before you, or one of your corpses, is spotted. You will collect pills throughout which you will be able to unlock new skills and screws that will allow you to upgrade the weapons, which slowly define your playing style.
The shooter is often awkward, but in a thoughtful manner. You are not meant to knock down a door and knock down everything in sight. When you are photographed, the camera will shake and the red will splash in the faint direction of the fire. It's disorienting in a way that discourages you from being surrounded, because you can't always get away with it.
A big part of the fight is crouching behind the blanket, watching or listening to discern the location of your many enemies. One of the most subtle strengths of The Last of Us Part 2 is its ability to differentiate enemies by sound. The scars communicate with each other through strange whistles, whose specific meanings elude you. Wolves react to corpses in a way that implies familiarity ("they killed John!"). The most effective and most worrying, however, are the infected. Runners scream and scream as their brains account for the spread of the infection, while the harmful whistles of a Shambler and the sudden clicks of a Clicker are more than enough to let you know you are in trouble.
The most disturbing sound is silence. You will often roam in cavernous environments, lit only by your flashlight. You know the infected are there, but you don't know where. You will listen to them, but hear nothing but the creaking of a door or the rustling of neighboring debris.
Like I said: consider me traumatized.
Beat the tropes
The fight is not without problems. Many battles take place in immense environments, with several levels. You will sometimes be left with an opponent, which you will have to search up and down to find and kill before you can continue. As mentioned, the shooter is not conducive to heroism, but there are occasions when the game requires you to rambo waves of enemies, creating a square peg / round hole scenario. Elsewhere, you'll get plenty of stealth killings - which will force you to crawl, grab, and stab an opponent - in the line of sight of other human enemies who, oddly enough, don't see or react to you.
This last point seems small, but it is the most shocking. For a game on the monsters that eat your face, The Last of Us Part 2 has an admirable sense of realism. These are little moments like the one that crack the suspension of disbelief.
There are also examples of this outside of combat, mainly in the form of remarkable video game tropes. Your journey through a stage is often lengthened by artificial means; with the end in sight, the ground will fall under you, or you will jump for a ledge, not quite get there and dive into an infected area. Get used to hearing Ellie complaining about the locked doors, which of course requires a longer journey.
Although these mishaps seem formal in the second half of the game, they precipitate intense combat sections and amplify a feeling of peril. But it all smells right video games.
It is not necessarily a bad thing. These tropes, easy to accept in most games, stand out because part 2 rises far above them. It's a compelling story told through video games, not a compelling video game with a slapped story. It could have worked like a movie series or a Netflix original. The fusion of game mechanics and story is so fluid that even the slightly rough spots come off.
But it's not fair to assess Last of Us Part 2 as some sort of futuristic hybrid. he East a game - exciting, heartbreaking and thoughtful. Prepare to be riveted, surprised and, yes, traumatized.