The Last of Us Part II and the potential story conflicts

In Uncharted, the lighthearted tone gives Naughty Dog a chance to play with the rules of believability, Nathan Drake can have a funny cutscene with his friends in one moment and go on to murder a whole army during the next 10 minutes. This is just how games work.

However, The Last of Us does not play by those rules, Joel was a mercenary and Ellie was a sidekick, there was a realistic touch and a backstory that tried to support the violence and the world. Now that Ellie has taken center stage i must say i expected an older more seasoned women, but she's still almost a teenager. Even though seeing her murder giant bandits with a knife is borderline ridicules, it's a game and i can go along with it. However, the violence on display here must be reflected in Ellie. She is a psychopath at this point, she is gutting and stabbing people to death in the most horrid way. There is almost a Manhunt type of vibe to the ultra-violence they are going for.

The problem i have is the scenes in town that seem to portray relationships without taking into account the actions of the characters. She is standing there talking with a guy about a girl he used to be with and then continues to make out on the dancefloor. In the next moment they show her hiding in the woods and going "jesus" when she sees the guy getting gutted, and then she proceeds to bow and arrow murder and stab everyone to death. The brutal nature of the game does can't be looked past, they can't feature this type of sitcom like drama storylines on one hand and have her gut humans by the dozen in the next. They must address her psychological issues on a deeper level than just having her being somber or crying alone in a room or some generic emotional response. In this world under these rules, she would most likely be a mess of a human being that barely functions with others considering what she do and what she's been through. You can get by in games like Tomb Raider with the "she's just surviving" storyline, but i expect more from Naughty Dog and The Last of Us.

What i'm trying to get at here, is i feel like they can't have both ways. The violence they are going for is too brutal, they gotta justify their design decisions through the story. If they are gonna feature Ellie as a one women murder machine they gotta approach her as such, and not a remorseful sad girl that tries to get by.

That said, obviously this is only a snippet of the game and Naughty Dog is so good at this they might pull it off. I just hope they don't make this into One Tree Hill in a zombie world type of situation.

I don't really see what you're getting at. What we've seen so far is really out of context and we don't know exactly why she is taking on these people. They obviously seem like a hostile group, so of course she's going to kill them if they get in the way. It's brutal, sure, but it's not like she's doing it for fun. She is certainly not a psychopath. I'm sure she is still very much human and doesn't lack empathy for those who deserve it.

I feel her character hit a turning point toward the end of the first game, with her encounter with David. I think it's already clear by the end of the game that she is suffering from all the trauma she experienced. I think it would make sense at this point if she is mostly desensitized by extreme violence. She spent a lot of time with Joel, who was ruthless to enemies he encountered so I'm sure that rubbed off on her too.

But I dunno, I just can't make sense of what you want from this game.

It's about videogame rationale versus realism. This has always been one of the big problems with videogame stories, how can you possible make it feel realistic and relatable when the actions the players perform are so absurd. The first game featured a pretty decent take on realism compared to most games, the way they went out of their way to show Joel as a violent guy early on, and had him being assisted most of the time in some capacity so it didn't feel too unrealistic and foolish on how he was able to always survive and win. Or how they didn't spam the bandit attacks but rather had a storyline that gave them a reason to hunt down and fight Joel and Ellie.

Ellie is definitively a psychopath at this point, as she needs to be if shes gonna be a protagonist in this world. Videogame logic dictates that they deserved it and she can go on like that throughout the whole game, but the first game tried to elevate some of this, tried to tell a better story.

A good example is the ending, Joel would rather see the world burn instead of losing Ellie and ending up killing the fireflies and truly showing how much of a sociopath he truly was. It was a great touch that was built up subtly throughout the entire game and made his mannerism more clear and understandable in hindsight.

With the level of insanity in Part II, if they wanna evolve their storytelling they can't play the same old fiddle. By the looks of it, this is gonna be a more visceral experience than the first game, they have highlighted torture in both their major trailers. They risk going down the Django Unchained road, where Tarantino featured so much senseless violence that it felt like a shock factor gimmick. If Naughty Dog wanna continue the trend towards realism and better storytelling, they can't go down this road of interactions and relationships that ignore the actions of the player. Especially since the violence is gonna be so thick in your face at all times.

The scene in the barn and the trailer in general had no hint at a more mature advanced take on Ellie and her story, it was a classical story of her trying to "survive" (or attack) and standard relationship building. Which, in my opinion, clashes heavily against the ultra-violent backdrop, the realism building from the first game and her insane story that carries over.