"Holy fuck! Holy fucking fuck!"
It's a post-zombie-apocalypse game, so of course it will be full of this just like in the predecessor. Some are downright traumatizing, though...
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Pre-release footage
- In the trailer, we see Ellie, alone, in a house full of dead bodies playing a guitar and singing. The song is basically a Then Let Me Be Evil song about choosing evil over good. Then Joel enters and asks her what she's doing and if she really wanted to go through with her Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Her response? "I'm gonna find... and I'm gonna kill... Every. Last. One of them." The look in her eyes shows a cold, remorseless killer. It seems the cheerful, kindhearted Ellie we knew from the last game is long gone...
- Now that the game is out, the context behind that scene is even worse; Ellie's having a Dead Person Conversation with Joel, who's perhaps representing some small part of her that knows he wouldn't want this, but Ellie immediately shoots him down; Joel was the closest thing Ellie ever had to a father, and she's going to make the people who took that away from her pay for it, even if it costs Ellie her soul.
- The Paris Games Week
trailer definitely doesn't paint a very good picture of Joel and Ellie's adventures this time around. While they aren't in the trailer, we get to see what appears to be some sort of post-apocalyptic cult attempting to cut a woman's stomach open because it's "full of sin", and we see them use a hammer to break a woman's arm (hearing every impact and the poor woman's every scream). The fact that the entire trailer is very dark and we see nothing outside of the immediate area doesn't help at all...nor the fact the trailer cuts to black just as a shrieking horde of the infected come charging out of the woods, drawn by the noise and the smell of blood. - The E3 2018 Gameplay Trailer shows us that the world has not improved since Ellie and Joel’s last adventure with Ellie facing off against a cult of some sort who she witnesses gut a man to death as he pleads for his life.
- Ellie herself shows that witnessing the worse of humanity many times, nearly being raped, watching countless of friends die, and nearly being killed herself numerous times (all at the age of 14 no less) hasn’t had the best effect on her mentality as we see her pick off the cultist members in brutal ways. Dina does not know how right she is when she says people should be terrified of Ellie.
- The improved Artificial Brilliance in Part 2 make the stalking scenes look genuinely terrifying now. In the first game, it was fairly easy to just run for cover and wait around for a few seconds before non-infected enemies would lose track of you and give up. In Part 2, enemies are far more efficient at finding you, and it seems you need to be prepared to fight back or run regardless if you've hid for a while or found a good hiding spot. A new feature has Ellie being able to hide underneath cars, but this doesn't guarantee safety either as your enemies will just do the logical thing and bend down to look for you, and they effectively signal and cooperate with each other a good amount of the time. Suffice to say the E3 trailer gives a feeling of dread and excitement at how challenging these sections can and will be.
- During gameplay, if you look closely at Ellie's wrist, you can see she's wearing Dina's bracelet. So it's safe to say that the safe space she and Joel had at the E3 trailer definitely isn't going to last.
- The Outbreak 2019 gameplay footage gives us nightmare fuel in the form of Ellie herself. Much like Joel in the first game, she's fairly well adapted as one can be in a post zombie outbreak world, but to her enemies, she is very much their personal Grim Reaper! Namely, enemies will react with grief and horror as you kill their friends. Sure the people Ellie's mowing down may very well deserve it, but like the first game at certain points, Naughty Dog is here to remind players that the human enemies in The Last of Us aren't just villainous factions out for your blood.
The Game
- As Abby, you have to explore the hospital's lower levels for supplies. You reach the Trauma door, only to find it blocked followed by a low guttural growl. Creepy, right? Go ahead and turn on Listen Mode right after and point it at that door. (Don't worry, you get to meet it later!)
- Joel's death, which starts with him receiving a shotgun to the knee that leaves his leg barely holding together. He's then held in place as Abby thrashes his skull with a golf club repeately, and by the time Ellie arrives and tries to intervene, she's held down and forced to watch Abby delivers the killing blow.
- Near the end of the game when it had appeared that Ellie is moving on from her revenge quest with Dina in a farm, she suffers a PTSD episode where Ellie seeing a falling shovel suddenly cuts to a vision of Joel screaming with blood on his face as he's bludgeoned to death, causing her to relive the trauma of Joel being killed in front of her.
- After the Jump Scare, Ellie tries to pull herself together, only for the barn door to slam close and leave her and JJ in darkness. Ellie has a hallucination of herself in a dark, barren staircase with a locked door—Joel is on the other side, crying for help. Considering how well-composed Joel always was, even while he was about to be killed, hearing him scream is just bone-chilling.
- And right after that scene, we're suddenly cut to a shot of poor Ellie screaming and panicking until Dina arrives to try and calm Ellie and JJ down. The agonized expressions on Ellie's face is also unsettling for some due to how visceral her screams are.
- The creators wanted to make sure that none of the killing or violence done in the game comes across as clean or easy to deal with, in both the gameplay and the cutscenes. The director went as far as to cite actual footage of violence for the animators to make this happen, and it shows.
- For those who went through the first game with the relatively sweet and innocent Ellie, watching her transformation into a brutal, rageful killer in the pursuit of vengeance can be a nightmarish and saddening sight.
- The "game over death" scenes are even more gruesome and graphic than in the first game. When being pummelled into a bloody pulp by Clickers is the better way to go...
- Perhaps one of the worst is when a Shambler grabs either Ellie or Abby and spews its toxins right in their face, leaving them looking like a horrific burn victim.
- The Rat King has some incredibly horrific death scenes, including covering Abby's skin with mycotoxin, snapping her neck and even one where it violently rips her limbs off.
- During Ellie's birthday in a flashback, it starts nice enough, but eventually players come across the fact that someone has turned the museum visited into a relatively low-key Room Full of Crazy with an Apocalyptic Log written on the walls of an apparent former Firefly who has long since had a Heel Realization at the end, there is a skeleton with a suicide note and a bloody smear behind the head, making what happened obvious. It gets steadily worse and creepier as it goes on until the very end that luckily has just a corpse instead of a living psychopath."I killed for them"
"The 4 soldiers at the gate. The last one cried"
"The woman we tortured choked on her own blood"
"The stragglers who snuck into camp they just wanted food"
"The People in the van we locked them in and doused it with gas"
"the kid who ran into the blast i couldnt stop him"
"there is no light"
"LiARS"Underneath... - The conclusion of Ellie's encounter with Nora. Bathed in red lights, she slowly walks toward the infected woman, coldly asks where Abby is, and, under player control, slowly beats Nora to death with a pipe, effectively torturing her to death until she gives up Abby's location. The camera angle shows the latter from Nora's relative perspective, showcasing how far Ellie has fallen. The event is played out not unlike Abby's slow murder of Joel. In the end, even Ellie is traumatized on coming back to her base of operations, her voice and hands shaking severely.
- Abby fights against a newly discovered infected: The Rat King. It's an entire blob of coordinated Clickers that will have some of its entities break free and attack. The thing is an absolute behemoth that came straight out of Resident Evil.
- As bad as the Rat King is, it could have been a lot worse; one piece of concept art shows what looks like a horrific, spore-spewing blob of bodies just congealed together, which bears more than a passing resemblance to William Birkin's final form.
- At one point while Ellie is making her way through Seattle alone, you make your way into a building that seems deserted and a safe spot. You find one of the work benches and set to upgrade your guns then one of the WLF members jumps you from behind completely out of nowhere! To which after you fight him off, you're thrusted into a fire fight with the rest of his group. Way to turn one of the few saving precious relaxing moments against us, game. Won't blame anyone for being cautious around the work benches after this.
- During an early part of Abby's section in the middle of the game, she reaches an apartment building and has to slide through some debris. Halfway however a Clicker suddenly slides in from the opposite direction in which you have to quickly shuffle back or be instantly killed if it reaches her.
- Afraid of heights? Well you're gonna love the sequence in which Abby and Lev have to make their way across two rickety sky bridges the Scars used to circumvent the WLF high, high above Seattle across two skyscrapers. The thing's barely holding together, has gaps in it and required to make their way across some very narrow section where Abby can actually fall off if you don't keep tabs on your balance. Even Abby utterly hates it and actually does fall off it. Luckily Lev and she crash into a skylight and into the pool area of the building they were heading to which is, mercifully, still filled with water to break their fall...
- ...That said however, they're forced to go through uncharted territory since they're out of reach from their original path (that Lev points out later would've taken them around the outside of the building) which, naturally, is filled with Infected. But the scary part is that some of the Infected were growing out of the walls and will pry themselves from it to ambush the duo when they get close. At one point, the pair have to get through a hallway connected to several hotel rooms with Stalkers, Clickers and a Bloater as well as masses of growths on the walls that hide more Stalkers. If you reach this area with barely any ammo to spare, chances are you'll be having an Oh, Crap! reaction.
- The lead up to the Rat King itself: A section of a hospital the WLF have yet to clear out and was said to have been ground zero for the infection concerning Seattle. It's dark, foreboding, a good majority covered in spore growth that likewise hide a few Stalkers who come out the walls to attack, and a few corpses of infected victims and FEDRA agents who were trying to destroy the place. As you get near the parking lot, you see some of the doors have been ripped off making Abby nervous to what can even do that. And then you reach the ambulance and the monstrosity appears in all its Body Horror glory. Abby absolutely "nopes" the heck out of there leading into a chase sequence with the beast right on your ass (yes, despite its size, it's surprisingly fast) and crashing through walls to get to you. Eventually once you're forced to fight it, do enough damage and a Stalker actually splits off from it (in a rather gruesomely painful manner too, its leg and arm are skinned off during this) to likewise attack you. After finally putting it down, if you haven't killed the Stalker yet, it'll ambush you in the vents right near the exit of the area and takes some doing to put down. Just, yeesh all around.
- The Boss Fight with Ellie while playing as Abby is a chilling Call-Back to the first game's battle with David, except arguably even more intense and stressful. During the fight the player as Abby is completely unarmed and trapped in a room with nothing to use except a few bottles and bricks in the surrounding environment, while Ellie is armed to the teeth with every single weapon that she's had at her disposal during the game so far. The overall formula for the battle is the same concept as the cat-and-mouse fight with David in the first game except Ellie is far more competent and dangerous than David ever was. Attacking Ellie head on is completely out of the question and if you try all you'll get is a Non-Standard Game Over of Abby either getting her brains blown out with a shotgun, sliced open with a machete, or impaled with an arrow. Ellie is hard enough to get the drop on since she's quick on her feet and difficult to detect in listen mode, but she'll also use Molotovs to flush you out of hiding. Also, one wrong step and you might just run into a trap mine Ellie left for you as a present. One last thing, even if you do manage to get behind Ellie she still might sense you and deliver a deadly counterattack with her machete. The whole fight gives the player a terrifying look into what it felt like for the dozens of WLF Mooks Ellie slaughtered during the entire game up until this point.
- The ending to the boss fight isn't any better as ultimately you have to have Abby win to continue the story. She nearly beats Ellie to death then does the same to Dina who tries to jump in and save her, almost slitting her throat even when Ellie reveals she's pregnant. She's only stopped when Lev calls out to her and she grudgingly does so, warning Ellie she better not see her again. So not only does Ellie not avenge Joel there, but is left battered and beaten after everything they went through up to that point. Made worse by the fact that it cost Jesse his life who was killed by Abby when he and Ellie tried to come to Tommy's aid after Abby confronted him.
- Abby and Lev trying to flee from the Seraphites' island. The whole chapter is just one big escalation as the WLF and the Seraphites go to war with each other with the pair trying desperately to stay out of both groups' way, culminating in having to ride through the colony while it burns around them. They witness combatants on both sides being shot dead, set on fire, and hacked to death with machetes, all while blood-curdling screams (some of which sound decidedly young) echo in the background. The series was always known for showing the worst of humanity during an era of lawlessness, but compared to the first game which just kept it down to depraved scavengers and cannibals, this game makes that look like child's play. What's worst, is just after the pair escape they head back to meet with Abby's friends...only to find them slaughtered, leading into the fight with Ellie above.
- Special mention goes to the Giant Mook who Abby fights at the end of the sequence in order to save Lev. She starts the fight by burying a sickle in his back and carving him across - and the guy gets angry. The ensuing brawl sees him get slashed several more times - including one across his face so bad it splits his cheek wide open in a horrifying Glasgow Grin - and he still keeps going. Even Lev shooting him clean through with an arrow and a fall onto the docks below doesn't stop him; what finally does him in is Abby pulling the arrowhead out of his shoulder, clawing at his lower jaw for leverage and burying the pointy end in his neck and face. Multiple times.
- In the climax of the game, Ellie finds out that Abby was captured by a group of scavengers holed up in one of the mansions in Santa Barbara. Naturally the group are a sick bunch, when Ellie enters their area, she's snagged by a snare trap that slams her into a spike on the side of her body and barely is able avoid capture when one of the scavengers, who've come to check the traps, get mad at her when she mocks him and tries to get her bitten by one the infected they captured only for her to turn the tables. As Ellie continues on, sees an escapee get cornered by some of the group and takes his own life rather then be captured, then hearing the crowd mention something about "The Pool". As you fight your way inside, you see that they've captured a few of the infected and chained them up like rabid dogs, including two in said pool giving a good idea what these bastards were doing with any survivors not their own. Eventually Ellie frees some prisoners who point her to where Abby and Lev are: tied to some poles near the beach and left to die of heat and starvation. You see a few fresh bodies there, but a few rotted corpses as well. Just, damn. If Ellie hadn't wanted to settle things mano-a-mano with Abby, she could've just let her stay there or shot her right then and there.
- If you're stealthy enough, you can always undo the chains that hold the Clickers prisoner and watch them wreak satisfying havoc on the Rattlers. Shooting the chains off from a distance also works (28 Days Later, anyone?).
- The climax of the ending, where Ellie still wants to kill Abby to avenge Joel's death. Abby wants no part of it, she's weakened and broken, having been starved and tortured for months, and all she wants to do is leave with Lev to Catalina Island, but Ellie threatens to kill Lev if Abby doesn't agree to fight her. She does so only out of obligation and not any real desire to want to do anything with Ellie at this point. It's very realistic and very brutal: Ellie and Abby both deliver equally powerful beatings towards each other; Ellie slashes Abby with her switchblade (which she then loses), Abby bites off one of Ellie's fingers and maims the other one which Ellie is forced to amputate offscreen. The scariest part is when Ellie lets her rage overtake her and tries to drown Abby. It isn't quick or "clean" like a lot of drownings are in media. You actually see Abby struggling to get her head above the surface to breathe, she thrashes around trying to pry Ellie off of her and Ellie even slams her knee down on Abby's leg to stop her from moving, until she changes her mind at the last second and lets her go with Lev. If you look at Abby after she comes up for air, you can see her vomiting up water. The voice acting by Laura Bailey throughout the entire attempted-drowning sequence is incredibly realistic and disturbing at the same time.
- If you like dogs, this is not the game for you. Dogs are often used to sniff you out and get sicced on you. So naturally you have to take them out. It's not too bad if you do so by gunfire or arrows. By going in via melee is just wince-inducing every time, especially with weapons like axes or long hammers. And then there are your explosives....
- When Abby and Manny visit the FOB, they walk past several imprisoned Seraphites who recoil at their presence, curling up in the corners of their cells and cowering like beaten dogs. Given the brutal torture they experience at the hands of the WLF, complete with sleep deprivation, and it's hard to imagine a more appropriate response.
- A dying Yara, who is barely an adult, is mercilessly gunned down by the WLF while she sacrifices herself to shoot down Isaac before he kills Abby and Lev.
- Some of the letters you find are downright chilling, particularly the ones you find on an abandoned ship which detail how after a crew member was thought to be seasick turned out to be infected, someone killed a dozen more seasick crew members in their sleep out of paranoia, except it turned out the crew members weren't infected at all. Another in the hospital section (Naughty Dog's own take on Resident Evil's "Itchy...tasty..." note) tells of a man who got bitten and was held in a room demanding to see his wife. However hours later, he comes down with a splitting headache and can barely keep his thoughts. The last of the note barely has coherent sentences and ends with talk about hunger, giving you a good insight to what those infected go through. The last word he wrote was just his wife's name.-You cannot treat us like this. I understand that many people are sick, but getting shoved in here and separated from my wife is unacceptable. I've been sitting here for over three hours without an update. The doctor put some ointment on my bite mark and then vanished. This thing hurts and seems to be getting worse.
Please deliver this note to your supervisor immediately.Sincerely,
Don Carter-Woke up starving, but can't keep anything down. Not even water. My head is fucking pounding. The screaming outside doesn't help. Why did you lock me in here? Someone needs to come. I want to see Sasha. I want my wife.
-sAsha, HELp! Can'T keEP mY ThouGhTs. BaREly wrITE thIS. CAN't sLEEp, too hunGRy. geT Me oUT!
-hUNGRY. EYeS huRT. SAshA.
- As the first game strongly implied, and the sequel basically confirms, humanity is a dying species with - at best - a future as pseudo-medieval primitives scratching a living on the shrinking edges of a dominant fungal biosphere to look forward to.
- 1) The modern ammunition won’t last forever, and the enclaves that can produce it are mostly FEDRA, so are themselves dying off as their civilians revolt or the military governments themselves devolve into feudal tyranny. In a few generations it’s very likely that the surviving human tribes will be back to sword and bow technology, with maybe some smatterings of black powder weaponry where resources permit.
- 2) The Infected are going in the other direction, with mutations producing more Clickers, Bloaters,and Shamblers for the Runners to gather around as time goes on. There are most probably hundreds of millions if not billions of them worldwide, concentrated in the decaying urban necropoli where the bulk of the easily available pre-forged metal and construction material are also to be found. Tommy mentions that the Infected have started moving in migratory waves, what if this is because they’re leaving the cities following their fungal urge to find more hosts to infect?
- 3) Where humans have maintained a functioning society with safe-zones, this has almost always come at the cost of becoming militarised militias or apocalyptic cults, and from what we’ve seen they are more than willing to wipe each other out in pointless wars for dominance - all while the Infected are still around and more than capable of taking advantage of any chink in humanity’s defences to infect everybody.
- 4) Even if - and it’s a big if - humanity could somehow maintain large enough safe zones to allow for the big populations required for specialisation and modernish civilisation, the Infected are a fungal species who produce infectious spores and seem functionally immortal. How long before they infect every single thing and start to congregate outside of the human safe zones, merging together like huge Rat Kings and producing spore-clouds like mega-Shamblers? A generation? Two? Five? They’ve got time on their side before the infection wipes out humanity entirely.
