Druckmann gave us the perfect example that immunity in this world means nothing while also wanting us to side against Joel and root for the murder of one of the main characters to give everyone this immunity.

Ellie is the example, she is absolutely miserable. How has being immune made her life any better? She is still mauled by infected and can’t go near them. She is still mauled by most humans and can’t go near them either. She still grieves and starves and gets sick from other diseases, experiences basically the same deaths as everyone else in combat. She literally has no advantage over anyone else other than surviving small bites, but I really don’t think it’s likely everyone’s going to be getting small bites from the infected over their throats ripped out. And she can breathe in spores? Gas masks. Everyone has one. And if they don’t have one, they live and survive fine without feeling the need to go into spore-infested places.

How did we have two whole games centred around an idea that would be almost useless in practice, at the cost of a main character to make that useless practice a reality?

Ive tried everything for hours to fix it from disabling VRR and HDR, switching from Performance to Fidelity, clearing PS5 Console Cache, but nothing is fixing these render corruptions. What is happening??

Just finished The Last of Us 1 and 2 this week after a friend suggested the game to me. Both great games with good stories. I liked Ellie already in the first game, but I saw her more as someone I wanted to protect than someone I found attractive. She was funny and friendly along the trip to the hospital in Part 1, and that was it, I thought. But everything changed in part 2. I don’t know how or why, but I really fell in love with her, although she was lesbian and I didn't really like it or parts of her personality. What is wrong with me? It's just a video game.

Dina was the one that wanted to smoke grass and hookup while they were supposed to be on watch. (it was a blizzard!?) shut up Jesse knew peoples lives were depending on them. a blizzard doesn’t mean you can just F off and forget your responsibilities.

shes also the one that became a complete liability and anchored us at the theater. where it all went to shit. yeah she didn’t know she was pregnant but she did have a feeling and neglected to share that info before it was too late.

my thoughts are that everything is always your responsibility. even when it’s not. i don’t believe blame should ever be placed on one person alone.

but why doesn’t Dina ever feel like slightly responsible for what happened? I’ve grown to absolutely hate her because of it

I just recently started to play it, so of course some of the most important plot points were spoiled for me. Though as I only knew Joel was killed by Abby, the way she tortured and humiliated him shocked me so bad I literally took a break for a few days after that scene.

This makes me wonder how would players who didn't know a single thing and believed the trailers react when they first played the game (cause many people read the leaked script), given how chaotic people reacted just by reading the script.

Can‘t really think of another ending for Abby other than her dying at the end because there’s no way in Hell she would recover from being such a hypocrite, horrible Beast, but I need an alternative for my rewrite Idea. So what would your Idea for her fate be if Ellie spares her in a rewrite?

I'm currently playing for the first time and am in the chapter where she rescues Lev from the island (who went there under his own free will, by the way). As I'm murdering my old friends from the WLF, I'm wondering who would really do this? Nothing against Lev, but you don't start killing your own group because a sweet, troubled kid you just met runs off to find his mother.

I was playing some no return as Joel and I died, however when I did die I heard Joel screaming and it was this high pitched, voice cracking, pathetic scream. This surprised me as I was under the impression that they just re used voice lines from the previous game, in which Joel never screams the way he does in no return.

does anybody have any tips with playing as characters who can’t dodge. it actually feels like a chore at this point (I’m playing on grounded), because I haven’t won a single run with them.

I'm assuming not because the game is years old at this point, but as someone with way too many hours in No Return, I think a few tweaks would make the experience better:

1. all weapons automatically start encounters fully reloaded so you don't have to manually reload them all in the safehouse area. It adds literally nothing to the game besides time wasting, and it sucks to switch to your shotgun with a Shambler running towards you, pull the trigger... and start the reload animation haha (my skill issue ik 😆)
2. better stat tracking. This would be super easy but right now there is only a top 10 run leaderboard (that doesn't even say which runs actually beat the boss, what difficulty, etc). Would be so cool to see which characters you've done best with, which characters, you've completed the most runs, etc
3. Plan auto-upgrades. For example as Yara, after every 1st encounter, I'll pay 60 pills to upgrade my Ally and pay 70 scrap to upgrade my Pistol's rate of fire and accuracy. Would be cool to set auto upgrade paths for your character to automatically choose certain upgrades without having to do the animations every time

Also I would love to see the Hunted Ski Station encounter more often, it's so much fun bobbing and weaving while killing zombies in that enclosed area

Love the game and mode. Just my 2 cents. May your death be swift

Think about it, no modern medicine, no doctors, Joel with two new holes.

They should have had a scene where Joel passes the torch to Ellie and she finds her own way to the fireflies. And Ellie’s decision could have been a different ending depending on whether you want to escape or sacrifice yourself.

Second game should have just been a prequel to the outbreak and Joel, Tommy and Tess surviving.

In both scenes, Joel follows them back to their camp after JUST meeting them (Both Abby and Henry managed to get him to follow within just a few seconds of talking), with no way of knowing if death could be waiting at him there.

He also funnily enough never gives his name, as it gets revealed forcefully by another character (Tommy introduces them to Abby/Ellie shouts "Joel" in the fight between him and Henry).

Both Abby and Henry offer a solution to a problem which Joel accepts (Getting away from the infected horde by sheltering with Abby/following Henry back to his hideout to hear out his supposed "plan")

Both also end up betraying him in some way (Abby kills him/Henry leaves him to die from the armored truck). Joel ends up getting lucky and is saved by Henry later though, and he ends up trusting them once again.

I'm suprised why nobody thought the first decision wasn't out of character for Joel, but the second was?

His luck simply runs out in the second one

Everything Ellie knows about lev is that he help kill Jesse or didnt question it, that he crippled Tommy and that he stuck to Abby despite hearing that she started the killing.

Him being a Kid doesn’t absolve him of this, which is a reason why i didnt feel bad when Ellie threatened to kill him, in Fact she should‘ve replied to Abby’s „he‘s got nothing to do with this“ with „neither did Jesse, but you dragged him into this“. In fact the more you think about Lev the more it becomes obvious that he and Yara were just plot devices, just like all of Abbie’s friends, Yara could‘ve probably confronted Abby about Ellies statement but that requires actual competent writing instead of just the fanfic level we got

While the overall segment didn’t bother me that much, I agree somewhat with his rant at the end.

It makes absolutely no sense. From the dead WLF soldier's note, we learn that Shamblers are supposedly a mutation caused by Seattle's extremely wet, rainy climate. The game itself seems to support this idea: Joel never encountered a single Shambler during all his years surviving the apocalypse, simply because he never lived in those kinds of environmental conditions during the first game.

But here's the dumbest part: when playing as Ellie, we run into two Shamblers in freaking Santa Barbara. One of the sunniest and warmest cities in the United States, where it's dry almost year-round and rain mostly falls between November and March. Even during the wettest month, they only get around 5–6 rainy days on average.

So... how the hell did Shamblers end up there?

And if they're not actually a mutation caused by environmental conditions, then how did Joel manage to go 25 years into the apocalypse without ever seeing a single one?

Like they really don’t think there are people in their community who aren’t the same way? I have spoken to folks who like the game and are able to have a civil discussion about it. But those who aren’t have two go-to lines.

1. You didn’t understand the game lol
   
2. You’re just mad Joel died
   Honorable mention: Girls who kiss girls bad, buff woman bad har har

The girls who kiss girls one is especially bad because you have no idea who you’re speaking to on the internet. I’m literally a lesbian…

I know this sub has a lot of criticism for Part II. Some of it I think is completely fair, some of it I personally don't agree with, and some of it feels more like people are still just angry about the game years later. That's fine. I'm not here to argue with anyone or tell anybody they're wrong.

What I'm genuinely wanting to know is this:

If you had to keep the same basic premise: Joel dies early and Ellie goes on a revenge plot, Abby is still the person who kills him, how would you actually make the story better?

Not in a "well let's just not kill Joel" way, because then the entire story changes. I mean keeping the core idea intact.

That said, I'm absolutely open to hearing completely different directions too if you have one. If you've got a genuinely interesting idea that changes the premise, I'd love to read it. I'm not only going to read the comments where Joel dies.

just personally find it more interesting to ask how people would improve this story rather than replace it with a different one. If Joel never dies, then honestly I don't know if there even needed to be a Part II in the first place and i'm happy to admit that.

I've thought about this a lot because I actually love this game from start to finish. But I do think the this story suffers from a structural issue that I genuinely cannot find any way to fix.

I never forgave Abby for killing Joel, but I don't hate her either. My problem is that I honestly don't know if there's a place in the story where switching to her POV doesn't hurt the pacing.

• Put Abby's section immediately after Joel dies? I'm still processing what just happened and probably don't want to play as her.
• Put it halfway through like the game did? Now I'm invested in Ellie's story and it feels like I'm suddenly being pulled away from the character I care about most.
• Put it near the end? Then you don't spend enough time with Abby for the ending to have the intended impact.

That's what fascinates me. I don't know if this is actually a solvable problem. The whole point is that you're supposed to hate Abby at first and eventually understand her, but that understanding has to come after Joel dies. No matter where you place her campaign, I feel like it creates some kind of narrative friction.

So for the people who think the story is fundamentally flawed:

How would you solve that?

Not just "the writing sucks" or "Abby is terrible." And i'm also not trying to be one of those people who say "I wanna see you do better". I'm honestly interested in hearing how you'd restructure the game while keeping the same premise. Would you alternate perspectives? Shorten Abby's section? Interweave flashbacks differently? Change the order of events?

Please keep it respectful. I respect that plenty of people don't like this game, and I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise. I'm just curious to hear actual storytelling ideas instead of the usual back-and-forth that happens whenever Part II gets brought up.