tlou ii ramblings
Feb. 24th, 2023 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dontlisteninsecretI think that I have to write this out in order to just let go of this anger/disappointment or else it’ll manifest itself in petty “twd washes everything” tweets LOL. But how am I supposed to get an angle into a video game that does not offer me an opening? How should I objectively criticize something that purposefully emotionally manipulates its player into feeling guilt or investment into its storyline and characters? And what am I supposed to do if I felt neither? The absence of love does not equate to the presence of hate. Instead, it opens up an avenue for indifference.
It took me a while to understand why is it that, despite feeling no semblance of attachment to the cast of characters and their small and big griefs, I still felt bad. Physically and emotionally strung - constantly teetering over the precipice of dread. Dreading less for the inconsequential deaths but rather for those who'll stay alive at the end of their pyrrhic victories. Because what the Last of Us II essentially did was punish love for existing. It punishes the player for allowing love to exist within their limited options. I've seen several people twist Neil Druckmann's intentional glamorization of the Palestinian genocide (which I will delve into later in the post) into a story about forgiveness. And it begs the question of where exactly was either of Ellie or Abby's forgiveness shown? Both of their (anticlimactic) showdowns are not cathartic to either the characters or the player. You're either forced to harm Ellie from Abby's point of view (which does NOT aid in making her any more likable than she already is - especially after her pointless side quests that ended in either ungrieved, unmentioned deaths or flashbacks within flashbacks that served no purpose other than being 'redemptive' fillers) or almost-drown Abby.
These two women are forced to haunt each other's peripheries to the point where they're exhausted to do so. There is no forgiveness. There is just blue numbness. Ellie lets Abby leave with Lev and our penultimate scene ends with our protagonist's hunched back facing us. The subdued blueness hangs heavily. The water - which was so prominent in the first game for its marker of Ellie's trust in Joel as she jumps into it expecting him to keep her afloat - does not bring forth the idea of hope or rebirth or forgiveness. This body of water is unforgiving, unchanging and we are left with a close-up shot of a guitar leaning on the windowsill post yet another flashback. This is where I started to hate it. This hatred wasn't marinating, it came at me with a piercing intensity. As much as I cried (the mortal coil of a cancer rising) at the last flashback where Joel and Ellie reconcile and move towards the aforementioned forgiveness, it's fucking disheartening and disingenuous to sandwich that in between the two scenes that offer nothing but bleakness. I am not against depressing endings/character arcs/stories - I actually gravitate towards them. But the sole reason why they work for me is because they offer a morsel of love amidst the hopelessness. In the end of the day we are marked by those that we love and love us. And this is why the original the Last of Us was emotionally capable of balancing the macabre, the moral ambiguity, the cruel, all-devouring nature of post-apocalyptic environments with the very idea that being alive is directly connected to the love that you feel. Joel and Ellie were re-shaped by their love for one another. What the Last of Us II did was mutilate love into an unrecognizable vessel used for enacting revenge. and some more revenge, and just when you thought that you were done with it: final revenge of all revenges that the word revenge starts losing meaning and you're left with a guitar that won't be strung again.
I won't go into the story or the character arcs (or the glaring lack of them) as I am sure that everyone else has already done that for me in a more cohesive manner. I also cannot care less about it because it's obvious that the writers did not care for it either. I would rather focus on the two factions and how their conflict veils colonial violence. If anyone spent a mere couple of minutes perusing through Neil's interviews where he details his inspiration for the creation of the sequel, you'll come to realize two things:
Majority of the gameplay was spent being both passive and active participants in media res of WLF-Scars' schism. And you would like to think that however many hours you spent in the filth of the dispute would resolve in some form of an equivocal middle-ground. To those who are keeping up at home, it doesn't. The game's operatic tone weaves us through the different perspectives of both parties at war and at first glance it would seem that they are both equally implicated and, in return, equally in pain. The Last of Us II's shtick of pushing its "cycle of violence" agenda onto the overarching conflict presents a digestible interpretation. It allows for the player to gloss over the trauma porn and gore galore. It does not allow for conversations to take place. Neil's political outlook in relation to centrist inaction bleeds into the core of why the conflict never feels personal to the player and even to the characters themselves (e.g. Abby abandoning her post/found family without a hiccup). The game's centrist position to violence negates any form of resolution (much less a conclusion) to the brutality that exists outside of Abby and Ellie's interpersonal vendettas. Through the storyline's incessant rhetoric that pushes the notion that it is congenital in human nature to fall victim to cyclical acts of violence, the player is forced to surrender to the path that is predestined before them by Neil's centrist position. This mirrors the performative centrism that is ubiquitous in the Internet (and, again, Neil's views) in relation to the "Israel's" genocidal ethnic cleansing. By ascertaining that both parties are in moral equivalence, it allows for the conflict to drag on. The origins of the contention are never investigated hence it is all left to the cynical worldview that both of the communities will meet their mutual, visceral end.
This fixation on engaging with morality by suggesting that both sides are on the same playing field fails to consider the fact that one side is able to walk away from the conflict. WLF can dub their actions as being entrapped in the "cycle of violence" solely because they can survive the status quo. Scars, on the other hand, are Othered, and whatever portion of the game that is devoted to humanizing them is lost to cliche "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" agenda. Despite the game's appeal to portray the symmetry in violence that both groups perpetuate, it (sub)consciously lets us know that it favors the fascist, paramilitary rule over the other. One is able to walk away from the contention, one is able to continue prospering, one has land and "nuanced" characters whilst the Other is left with burnt land and a God of the past. To portray this cruel, tedious process as some kind of an "eye for an eye" cyclical bullshit benefits only the oppressor, and allows it to continue. Every single character in the game acts under a vindictive compulsion that refuses to be remarked upon or examined. There is not a single dialogue in the 30-hour gameplay that allows for the characters to reach the root of the problem because there isn't one. The fatalistic nature of the game exists without being justified for it. It is merely just that: inevitable.
Neil Druckmann's drive to base an entire sequel on his reaction to a captured video of two IDF soldiers getting lynched by a mob is juvenile. The aforementioned reaction being anger and a desire for vengeance (he went into a tangent about how he would've liked to "push a button and kill the people who've committed this horrible act, [...] to make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people"), and then to later be ashamed of those impulses, is downright insane. By failing to examine the problem, and in doing so masking the conflict by making it appear as evenhanded, the Last of Us II celebrates the same cycles of violence that it warns us about.
The Last of Us is foremost a survivalist horror game that examines the social discourses relating to the relativity of morality. The horror was eminent as was the monster culture. The parasitic Other served as a backdrop to the monstrous acts of horror that the cast of characters enacted upon themselves and others. Because when horror is unable to quell the object that it attracts, it calls for a dissolution of societal barriers. It calls for conversations/questions to take place both in-game and critically. The original game utilized the aspect of post-apocalyptic "rotting" horror to complement the discourse and love that it weaved within the edifice of its foundation. The Last of Us II forgoes its genre for pretentiousness and in doing so, it loses its appeal. It is so preoccupied with making a statement, that it says virtually nothing by the end of one's play-through. It is less of an exploration of Ellie and Joel's relationship, of grief, of how we handle our grief. How we look at grief and think of it in terms of how heavy one's grief is. As if we are determining how long we can carry it for, what else we might be able to carry, or put down, along the way. And more of a discombobulated product that comes from a place of (Neil's) self-examination and introspection in identity politics. This sequel failed the moment that it started because it was manipulated into accepting the idea that "intense hate [...] is universal" when so much of the original game was built on love and how we navigate through the love that is wanted from us to reach one another. I hope that it reached you. I hope that it'll reach me, too.
(There are several facets of the game that I did not delve into e.g. treatment of POC bodies because thinking about it makes me physically repulsed. Also pink washing. Also ... you lot get the gist of it. This review is tautological enough. Thank you for reading this LOL.)
It took me a while to understand why is it that, despite feeling no semblance of attachment to the cast of characters and their small and big griefs, I still felt bad. Physically and emotionally strung - constantly teetering over the precipice of dread. Dreading less for the inconsequential deaths but rather for those who'll stay alive at the end of their pyrrhic victories. Because what the Last of Us II essentially did was punish love for existing. It punishes the player for allowing love to exist within their limited options. I've seen several people twist Neil Druckmann's intentional glamorization of the Palestinian genocide (which I will delve into later in the post) into a story about forgiveness. And it begs the question of where exactly was either of Ellie or Abby's forgiveness shown? Both of their (anticlimactic) showdowns are not cathartic to either the characters or the player. You're either forced to harm Ellie from Abby's point of view (which does NOT aid in making her any more likable than she already is - especially after her pointless side quests that ended in either ungrieved, unmentioned deaths or flashbacks within flashbacks that served no purpose other than being 'redemptive' fillers) or almost-drown Abby.
These two women are forced to haunt each other's peripheries to the point where they're exhausted to do so. There is no forgiveness. There is just blue numbness. Ellie lets Abby leave with Lev and our penultimate scene ends with our protagonist's hunched back facing us. The subdued blueness hangs heavily. The water - which was so prominent in the first game for its marker of Ellie's trust in Joel as she jumps into it expecting him to keep her afloat - does not bring forth the idea of hope or rebirth or forgiveness. This body of water is unforgiving, unchanging and we are left with a close-up shot of a guitar leaning on the windowsill post yet another flashback. This is where I started to hate it. This hatred wasn't marinating, it came at me with a piercing intensity. As much as I cried (the mortal coil of a cancer rising) at the last flashback where Joel and Ellie reconcile and move towards the aforementioned forgiveness, it's fucking disheartening and disingenuous to sandwich that in between the two scenes that offer nothing but bleakness. I am not against depressing endings/character arcs/stories - I actually gravitate towards them. But the sole reason why they work for me is because they offer a morsel of love amidst the hopelessness. In the end of the day we are marked by those that we love and love us. And this is why the original the Last of Us was emotionally capable of balancing the macabre, the moral ambiguity, the cruel, all-devouring nature of post-apocalyptic environments with the very idea that being alive is directly connected to the love that you feel. Joel and Ellie were re-shaped by their love for one another. What the Last of Us II did was mutilate love into an unrecognizable vessel used for enacting revenge. and some more revenge, and just when you thought that you were done with it: final revenge of all revenges that the word revenge starts losing meaning and you're left with a guitar that won't be strung again.
I won't go into the story or the character arcs (or the glaring lack of them) as I am sure that everyone else has already done that for me in a more cohesive manner. I also cannot care less about it because it's obvious that the writers did not care for it either. I would rather focus on the two factions and how their conflict veils colonial violence. If anyone spent a mere couple of minutes perusing through Neil's interviews where he details his inspiration for the creation of the sequel, you'll come to realize two things:
- For a video game that prides itself in calling out and ending the cycles of violence, Neil, an autofellating Zionist/centrist/moralist, decides to favor what type of violence is acceptable i.e. state violence versus decolonial violence
- The crux of why the entire storyline felt out of character for everyone involved is because it was Neil's way of externalizing and projecting his Israeli politics into an environment that does not reflect his "universal hatred"
Majority of the gameplay was spent being both passive and active participants in media res of WLF-Scars' schism. And you would like to think that however many hours you spent in the filth of the dispute would resolve in some form of an equivocal middle-ground. To those who are keeping up at home, it doesn't. The game's operatic tone weaves us through the different perspectives of both parties at war and at first glance it would seem that they are both equally implicated and, in return, equally in pain. The Last of Us II's shtick of pushing its "cycle of violence" agenda onto the overarching conflict presents a digestible interpretation. It allows for the player to gloss over the trauma porn and gore galore. It does not allow for conversations to take place. Neil's political outlook in relation to centrist inaction bleeds into the core of why the conflict never feels personal to the player and even to the characters themselves (e.g. Abby abandoning her post/found family without a hiccup). The game's centrist position to violence negates any form of resolution (much less a conclusion) to the brutality that exists outside of Abby and Ellie's interpersonal vendettas. Through the storyline's incessant rhetoric that pushes the notion that it is congenital in human nature to fall victim to cyclical acts of violence, the player is forced to surrender to the path that is predestined before them by Neil's centrist position. This mirrors the performative centrism that is ubiquitous in the Internet (and, again, Neil's views) in relation to the "Israel's" genocidal ethnic cleansing. By ascertaining that both parties are in moral equivalence, it allows for the conflict to drag on. The origins of the contention are never investigated hence it is all left to the cynical worldview that both of the communities will meet their mutual, visceral end.
This fixation on engaging with morality by suggesting that both sides are on the same playing field fails to consider the fact that one side is able to walk away from the conflict. WLF can dub their actions as being entrapped in the "cycle of violence" solely because they can survive the status quo. Scars, on the other hand, are Othered, and whatever portion of the game that is devoted to humanizing them is lost to cliche "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" agenda. Despite the game's appeal to portray the symmetry in violence that both groups perpetuate, it (sub)consciously lets us know that it favors the fascist, paramilitary rule over the other. One is able to walk away from the contention, one is able to continue prospering, one has land and "nuanced" characters whilst the Other is left with burnt land and a God of the past. To portray this cruel, tedious process as some kind of an "eye for an eye" cyclical bullshit benefits only the oppressor, and allows it to continue. Every single character in the game acts under a vindictive compulsion that refuses to be remarked upon or examined. There is not a single dialogue in the 30-hour gameplay that allows for the characters to reach the root of the problem because there isn't one. The fatalistic nature of the game exists without being justified for it. It is merely just that: inevitable.
Neil Druckmann's drive to base an entire sequel on his reaction to a captured video of two IDF soldiers getting lynched by a mob is juvenile. The aforementioned reaction being anger and a desire for vengeance (he went into a tangent about how he would've liked to "push a button and kill the people who've committed this horrible act, [...] to make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people"), and then to later be ashamed of those impulses, is downright insane. By failing to examine the problem, and in doing so masking the conflict by making it appear as evenhanded, the Last of Us II celebrates the same cycles of violence that it warns us about.
The Last of Us is foremost a survivalist horror game that examines the social discourses relating to the relativity of morality. The horror was eminent as was the monster culture. The parasitic Other served as a backdrop to the monstrous acts of horror that the cast of characters enacted upon themselves and others. Because when horror is unable to quell the object that it attracts, it calls for a dissolution of societal barriers. It calls for conversations/questions to take place both in-game and critically. The original game utilized the aspect of post-apocalyptic "rotting" horror to complement the discourse and love that it weaved within the edifice of its foundation. The Last of Us II forgoes its genre for pretentiousness and in doing so, it loses its appeal. It is so preoccupied with making a statement, that it says virtually nothing by the end of one's play-through. It is less of an exploration of Ellie and Joel's relationship, of grief, of how we handle our grief. How we look at grief and think of it in terms of how heavy one's grief is. As if we are determining how long we can carry it for, what else we might be able to carry, or put down, along the way. And more of a discombobulated product that comes from a place of (Neil's) self-examination and introspection in identity politics. This sequel failed the moment that it started because it was manipulated into accepting the idea that "intense hate [...] is universal" when so much of the original game was built on love and how we navigate through the love that is wanted from us to reach one another. I hope that it reached you. I hope that it'll reach me, too.
(There are several facets of the game that I did not delve into e.g. treatment of POC bodies because thinking about it makes me physically repulsed. Also pink washing. Also ... you lot get the gist of it. This review is tautological enough. Thank you for reading this LOL.)
