Ellie gets the story she deserves

Since it’s announcement three years ago, there’s been a lot of hand wringing over whether or not The Last of Us Part II is even needed. Understandably, people worry a continuation of the story might dilute the first one, particularly the layers of complexities in its iconic and devastating ending.

But based on the hands-on three-hour demo we played, Last of Us II isn’t just a serviceable sequel. By switching the narrative reigns to Ellie instead of Joel, it aims to tell the other side of the story that’s absolutely essential to completing this overarching masterpiece.

In the game, it’s been four years since we last left Joel and Ellie and his unspeakable betrayal on top of that hill overlooking the Jackson community they now call home. The demo contrasts an early slice-of-life chapter of Ellie’s new life there, to a later combat-heavy chapter following a catastrophic “event” that sets her on a blood-thirsty path for revenge. 

Naughty Dog remained vague on exactly what happens, along with most concrete story details. But there are hints of a war between the FEDRA (remnants of the Marshall Law military from the first game) and the new “Washington Liberation Front” (aka WLF or Wolf) described as a xenophobic group that kills non-conforming people on sight. In the second half of the demo, Ellie finds herself in Seattle, fighting through the Wolves to meet back up with Joel’s brother, Tommy.

“Ellie isn’t a kid anymore. She is a young woman, and we want to honor her as an independent adult  — outside of dad’s shadow,” said narrative lead Halley Gross, who branched into games for the first time with Last of Us II after writing on Season 1 of Westworld.

But despite Joel’s near-total absence in the demo, his influence (or almost PTSD-esque effect) on Ellie looms large.

The first section introduces a matured 19-year-old Ellie as she patrols the perimeters of Jackson with her newfound crush Dina, who we met through that historic kiss in the 2018 E3 trailer. Taking place the day after, there’s an anxious yet excited chemistry crackling between them. They pry into each other’s past relationships, Dina teases Ellie about her high tops, Ellie teases her for being insufferable, and they both toke up some dry ass weed from a secret grow house.

“We want to honor her as an independent adult — outside of dad’s shadow.”

We’ve never seen this Ellie before, or rather only glimpses. She’s more sure-footed, but also hardened — confident whether just flirting or dealing with the infected like a “pro.” 

But whenever Joel comes up in conversation, insecurity creeps back into her voice. Dina asks if they’re doing OK, hinting at a rift between them. Ellie says yes. But momentarily, she’s that much more passive 14-year-old from the first game again, the surrogate daughter who needed to believe in her father figure to survive, no matter what lies he told.

“This new game is about the evolution, the strain of an adult-child relationship,” said Gross. “She’s making decisions for herself now. He doesn’t get to just dictate what is right for her, what is safe for her, what is best — like he did making that call at the end of the first game without her consent.”

I’ve spilled many words since the first game’s release untangling the complicated dynamic between Joel and Ellie, and the path it paved to tell young women’s stories in games. Six years later, it feels like Last of Us II is making good on those promises by giving Ellie the story she deserved all along.

The demo delivered everything I wanted from a return to this world, and everything that felt missing from our first introduction. By shifting the focus away from Joel’s paternal perspective of Ellie, it immerses you in what’s it’s like to be on the receiving end of his fatherhood. 

That’s clear not only in the main narrative, but also environmental storytelling. The first game was littered with letters and side stories revolving around guardians and their young charges, particularly men as father figures (remember the beloved story of Ish). Now many letters are written by daughters, eerily glorifying their violent protectors. “Happy birthday Dad, the best clicker killer in the world,” reads one letter alongside a drawing of a hulking man holding a weapon with hearts around him.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a struggle, being a young girl raised by a man who teaches you brutality above all else, alienation from others, and to distrust in your hope for a better world. In Ellie’s case, that’s tinged with the added guilt of being that father’s justification for the unforgivable act of potentially damning all of humanity to extinction.

The demo ends with the same moment depicted in the latest trailer: After Ellie’s made it through being hunted by the Wolves in Seattle, Joel steps out from the shadows. 

“You think I’d let you do this on your own?” he asks, after she questions his arrival with vitriol.

My first immediate reaction at finally seeing Joel again was to melt, relieved that dad was back, here to make the bad things go away, and keep me safe. Immediately after that, though, anger flared up in me. “Let me” do this on my own? I thought. He doesn’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do on my own. And by the way, I already did it on my own before you got here.

The new game leans into this inherent tension between our simultaneous love for Ellie and Joel’s relationship, and the suspicion that he’s probably not the best moral or parental influence on her. There’s a fine line between a father that’s cautiously protective, and unhealthily controlling — one Joel clearly already crossed.

Maybe, the demo implies, Ellie’s crossed a line too though.

How do you reconcile with paternal love that’s as needed as it is oppressive? 

“She’s figuring out her independence, but we are always impacted by our parents, defined by our parents,” said Gross. “We want to explore how those two things wrestle with each other.”

A central question the series is continuing to explore is: How do you reconcile with paternal love that’s as needed as it is oppressive? From the first game, we know Joel’s answer to that is denial, control, and betrayal. But we never learned Ellie’s real answer, other than that inscrutable “OK,” given right before the cut to black and credits.

The presumption that this is the only ending we ever needed — that a Last of Us couched in Ellie’s perspective is unnecessary or redundant — fails to reckon with how central her perspective, her evolution, and her worldview is to telling this whole story. 

Even as Ellie finds hope by learning to let people in through her developing relationship with Dina, Joel’s bleak outlook on the world hangs over it all like an ominous cloud. Notably, Ellie pretends she’s not immune to the virus around Dina, a precaution likely imposed on her by Joel.

“She’s living a lie. She’s hiding parts of herself. There is this distance she’s putting between herself and other people that she didn’t as a kid,” said Gross. 

What’s so relatable about Ellie is how her strength often comes from a place of vulnerability. Despite all she’s suffered, despite watching almost everyone she’s ever loved die, she continues to seek out and risk the consequence of human connection in this inhuman world. 

That stands in complete contrast to Joel, who shut down after losing his first daughter. The worst part about his fatherhood is his insistence on imposing his bleak worldview on Ellie, teaching her to view her capacity for empathy and love as a weakness rather than a strength.

In Last of Us II, it appears he’s at least partially succeeded in infecting her with that perspective, though it’s unclear how deep the infection goes.

“She has to learn how to make mistakes for herself.”

“Ellie is still growing up,” said Gross. She’s wiser, more rebellious, more autonomous. But that comes at a cost. “She has to learn how to make mistakes for herself.”

Her arc in Last of Us II revolves around this push and pull between being a person who fundamentally believes humanity is worthwhile, that this apocalyptic society cannot be the last of us — versus the part of her that is Joel’s daughter, who believes that this should be the last of us.

At the heart of this struggle is her seeking justice for what happened in Jackson, which propels her into a darkness and anger that’s uncomfortably close to Joel’s.

“As a child, so much of the world happened to Ellie. Now she’s in a position to impact the world back on her path to finding closure and justice,” said Gross.

But Ellie’s darkest impulses still come from a place of love, a love that the pain of loss has twisted into an avenging hatred.

“We want to show the impact of Ellie’s justice. Not only on the universe or the baddies she’s facing — but on her own soul,” she said. “How much of her identity is she willing to risk for this? How has growing up in a world of systemic violence and hard choices had a long term impact on this girl we fell in love with as a 14-year-old?”

While criticized for gratuitous violence after the E3 2018 gameplay trailer, what these critiques of Last of Us often miss is the series’ insistence on forcing us to confront the disturbing brutality its world elicits from us.

We’ve seen countless ultra-violent revenge quests in games, films, and TV before, many of them far more gratuitous (hello Quentin Tarantino). Few capture the uncomfortably relatable human motivations behind those unthinkable acts of violence quite like The Last of Us. 

Few capture the uncomfortably relatable human motivations embedded in unthinkable acts of violence quite like The Last of Us. 

“What we’re interested in is the ‘why,” said Gross.

This focus on character motivation makes the violence inherently more personal, shocking not for the sake of shock but for the sake of self-reflection.

The combat — while updated with more vertical traversal, new enemy types, and more strategic options and customization — remains at its core the minimalist, panic-inducing, horribly intimate scuffles from the first. During these high-stakes moments of violence, we (much like the characters) are faced with realizing exactly how far we’ll go to survive. Or in Ellie’s case, to exact revenge. 

Indeed in my desperation to survive wave after wave of the Wolves in Seattle, I audibly whimpered when, without thinking, I full-on hacked an adorable dog to death with a machete, since he would’ve given up my position. In my interview with Gross, I was devastated to learn I could’ve made it out of the level without ever killing the dogs, or probably even any humans.

But I didn’t think of that. I didn’t have time. And I didn’t want to.

I’ve been warned many times that running away is always a viable option for encounters in Last of Us. But instead, I painstakingly murdered every living thing keeping me from my goal. And with horror, I realized I was much more like Joel than I ever let myself see before.

According to Creative Director Neil Druckmann’s opening remarks at the demo event, the story of Last of Us II is one that could only be told through the medium of video games. Presumably, he’s referring to something like the discomfort of how we identified with Joel throughout his final, brutal, unforgivable rampage in the first game’s ending.

Now, we’ll have to inhabit the inner world of the young girl who must live with the blood he spilled on her hands.

“What we value showing is a diversity in both characters and perspectives — why people do what they do, their drives. We don’t want to depict only good people with the ‘right’ drives, or the ‘wrong’ drives,” said Gross. Ellie is driven by a twisted sense of justice and love, Joel by a nihilistic narcissism. 

But for others, it could be pure hate, the need for religion or family, or just survival of the self.

“What we want to do is create a multifaceted world of characters where you find something to relate and connect to, even if at first it feels completely other,” said Gross. “We love the challenge of: How do I connect to somoene’s humanity that seemed so foreign to me? How can we make the othered feel familiar?”

This approach to diversity — the ability to let players inhabit Ellie as a person in her own right rather than as Joel’s daughter — is precisely what gives Last of Us II the potential to once again deliver on of the most powerful stories ever told In games.

In the first Last of Us, it was obvious that Naughty Dog was forced to do a bit of a bait and switch in order to make everyone, from players to marketers, comfortable with the idea of playing as a young girl in an action video game. But after its wild success, many others followed.

Coming from a different medium, Gross believes wholeheartedly in gaming’s potential to continue pushing the boundaries on what kinds of stories media can tell about young women.

“Games have an opportunity, potentially more so than Hollywood, to put you in alignment with a character, to incite empathy through the choices you make as them,” she said. “It brings you in fully and completely with her. So even if someone’s playing and saying, ‘I don’t relate to a 19-year-old female character.’ Well, you already did.”