What happens in The Last of Us Part 2?

Ellie embarks on a journey of revenge and trauma

The Last of Us Part 2 begins 4 years after the first game, where Joel and Ellie now live in a large settlement in Jackson, Wyoming. They are both integral to society: Ellie has a healthy relationship with a woman named Dina where they face some homophobic bullying, and Joel is seen as the good grandfather of the community. However, you may feel that their relationship has become strained over the years. While Joel and his brother Tommy are on patrol, they rescue a woman named Abby from some infected; she leads them to the nearest outpost. It turns out the outpost is full of Abby’s associates, who are members of a Seattle-based militia group called the Washington Liberation Front (WLF). Abby wants revenge on Joel for killing her father, who was one of the surgeons Joel killed while saving Ellie. By the time Ellie finds Joel, she is being held captive and forced to watch him being beaten to death and left for dead.

Some time later, with Ellie and the Jackson community mourning Joel’s death, Ellie vows revenge on Abby. Tommy tells Ally that he is going to Seattle to find Abby, which prompts Ally and Dina to take a trip to Seattle where the WLF is located. On this journey, Ellie and Dina explore downtown Seattle and share an incredible musical experience. Ellie later reveals to Dina that she is immune to the virus, and Dina in turn reveals that she is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend Jesse’s child. Due to Deanna’s increasing pregnancy, Ellie leaves her and continues her journey alone, where she meets Jesse, who is revealed to have been following them the whole time. On the subsequent journey, Ellie finds information about Abby’s friend named Nora and tracks her down.

While searching for the Burrow, Ellie encounters a religious cult called the Seraphites who are in an ongoing battle with the WLF over a territorial conflict. Ellie eventually finds Nora and tortures her for information on Abby’s whereabouts, and this inflicts Ellie with massive trauma, from which Dina helps her heal. The notion of how much trauma Ellie is willing to inflict on herself and others in order to get the emotional closure she needs is one of the most important themes of this story. Ellie then heads to the place she was told about, where she finds two of Abby’s friends, Owen and Mel. She then kills both of them and then gets even more traumatized when she realizes Mel is pregnant, but didn’t notice it until she shot her (in Ellie’s defense: she was wearing a big puffy coat which is very easy to hide in ).

We then get flashbacks showing that two years earlier, Ellie went to the Fireflies hospital and found out that Joel lied to her about preventing her surgery, which was the source of their eventual tension. Flashing back to the present, Abby suddenly appears in the building where Ellie, Dina, Tommy, and Jesse are hiding. She shoots Jesse and severely wounds Tommy, knocking him unconscious. A sharp transition to black, and here everything really changes.

The Last of Us Part II will have a second main character in the face of Abby

We went back three days and now we’re following Abby. We see her relationship with her father, the bonds she had with compatriots in the WLF like Mel and Owen, and how she had an intimate relationship with Owen going back to their late teens. This is one of the key elements of the story: how the story makes you feel not only for Abby, but for the people we already know Ellie will eventually kill. It makes you wonder how and why you empathize with certain people and demonize other people purely based on how you first met them.

Somehow, Abby learns that her now ex-boyfriend Owen has gone missing while he was investigating the Seraphites. On her own journey to find him, she is captured by the Seraphim and then rescued by her siblings Yara and Leo. They were formerly members of the Seraphites, but were branded as traitors and kicked out because Leo “betrayed their traditions” (which actually means that Leo is a trans male, and the Seraphites don’t respect transgenderness). After helping Yara and Leo escape from a Seraph attack, Abby leaves them to find Owen, who she learns is on his way to Santa Barbara, California as he is tired of fighting in a territorial conflict and wants to reunite with the Fireflies. In response, Abby decides to return to Yara and Lev.

Once she finds Yara and Lev, she realizes that Yara’s arm is broken from a previous attack by the Seraphs, so severe that it will have to be amputated. Abby and Lev drive to the WLF hospital in Seattle to get proper surgical equipment. They get equipment and amputate Yara, from which she survives. After that, Leo runs off to convince his mom to leave the Seraphs, so Abby and Yara have to go after him. When Abby and Yara catch up with Leo, they discover that he killed his mom in self-defense.

The trio leave to escape the Seraphite village just as the WLF arrive to start an all-out turf war. As the trio are cornered by WLF soldiers, Abby formally disowns the group and Yara sacrifices herself so that Abby and Lev can escape. Abby and Lev arrive at the WLF hideout where Owen and Mel hang out, but find them both dead and the nearest map leading to Ellie’s hideout (very handy that Ellie just forgot about it). Abby and Lev go to Ellie’s hideout and Abby shoots Jessie and incapacitates Tommy, all in a seething rage. This leads to a giant fight with Ellie which ends with Ellie being beaten up and Abby threatening to kill Dinah knowing she is pregnant. The only reason she doesn’t kill Dinah is because Leo talks her out of it, so they leave Ellie and Dinah, telling them both to leave Seattle for good.

It’s not about choosing between Ellie and Abby

This is where the sequel’s central narrative concept pays off: the player is in complete control and empathy with two characters diametrically opposed to each other, and then the two characters crash into each other in inevitable conflict. Do you find yourself more interested in Ellie’s bloodthirsty and smug quest for revenge? Or are you more interested in Abby’s life with the consequences of her actions and then having to protect Yara and Lev in a manner that reflects Joel’s path in the first season? If you thought feeling conflict because Joel made one difficult decision was bad enough, you’re not ready.

In any case, a few months pass after Ellie and Abby meet, and Ellie and Dina are living on an isolated farm, taking care of Dina’s baby. Everything is as peaceful and happy as can be, even though Ellie struggles with PTSD on a daily basis related to both Joel’s death and all the chaos she’s caused. Tommy (madly thinking he actually survived the dome shot) arrives and tells Ellie that he found out where Abby is, in case she’s still interested. Dina insists that this is a bad idea and she doesn’t need to pursue her selfish need for a forced closure. Ellie, however, cannot shake it off and decides to go to Catalina Island in California, where Abby and Leo were being held as slaves by a group of degenerates called the Rattlers.

Ellie destroys the Rattlers’ headquarters and saves Abby and Leo, but then forces Abby to fight her by threatening to kill Levi. Abby and Ellie get into a nasty, uncompromising fight where they roll around in dirty ocean water and dirty sand, eventually Abby bites off two of Ellie’s fingers. Ellie has a right to Abby and actively drowns her, but she stops because she has a flashback of a conversation she had with Joel before he died where he admits he feels justified in his actions and Ellie plucking up the courage to start. on the road to forgiveness. Ellie releases Abby, exhausted and defeated, and Abby and Leo swim off into the misty distance.

Ellie returns to her farmhouse, realizing that Dina has moved out and taken the baby. Ellie goes up to her room and tries to play Joel’s guitar but finds she can’t due to missing two fingers (oops). She reminisces more about the last hours she spent with Joel before his death, leaving her guitar, and leaves the house towards an uncertain future. That is The last of us, part 2.

One can only guess how closely the HBO show will stick to this massive two-tier plot, especially considering they were willing to make changes during the first season. Recreating all the latest atrocities and mining every last sickening moral quandary can be too much of a challenge for an unfamiliar mass audience. with the game, even in post-Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones world. For that matter, some of those who played Part II will be very reserved about experiencing it again, whether for positive or negative reasons. The show will indeed gamble with household money depending on whether they can pull it off. But then again, Naughty Dog has already done it by making Part II, and it has worked for them once before. Why not take another chance?