Is The Last of Us Part II too Violent?

We got another look at The Last of Us Part II when Sony took the stage at Paris Games Week 2017 last week. It was our first time seeing the game since its reveal at PlayStation Experience (PSX) 2016, and though everyone who saw it had different reactions and several theories about the five minute trailer, we all agreed on one thing: that trailer was violent, even by the first game’s standards. 

It’s been four years since The Last of Us released on PlayStation 3. In that time, we’ve grown to know Joel and Ellie’s story and have taken a somewhat odd sense of comfort in the post-apocalyptic world in terms of what we can expect from it. We know the living are just as (if not more) dangerous as the Infected that roam the streets. We’re quick to pull out Joel’s shotgun or throw a few molotov cocktails to take out several enemies in one swoop. Sneaking up behind people and killing them silently just comes with the territory.

I mention all that to say, spend an hour with The Last of Us and you quickly become de-sensitized to the realities of Joel and Ellie’s survival, as crafting weapons and killing their enemies soon becomes instinctual.

Violence, in some form, has been a part of video games since the early days of the medium’s inception; but it’s the quick progression of graphics, which is making each game more life-like than the last, that seem to be churning a few stomachs. Shooting virtual enemies as 8-bit blood trickles down your screen is one thing, but seeing a woman get her arms bludgeoned, while another is strung up by her neck in 4K HDR is quite another.

When The Last of Us  came out in 2013 it didn’t, by any means, shy away from the violent, gasp-inducing moments. I’m not even talking about the basic premise of the game or the harsh, day-to-day methods of Joel and Ellie’s journey.

The death animations in The Last of Us are pretty gruesome, as Joel and Ellie practically get their faces ripped off each time they are caught by a clicker. Joel shoots Marlene point-blank without thinking twice about it. Henry shoots his young brother, Sam, before shooting himself in the head; and in the “Winter” part of the game, Ellie butchers David several times over with a machete after he attempts to rape her. 

Let’s not forget how we actually started The Last of Us. We played as Joel’s daughter, Sarah, only to have her shot and killed right before the main credits rolled. That moment was so quick and unexpected that it immediately set the tone for the rest of the game and paved the way for Joel’s hardened attitude and outlook on life to drive a large portion of the narrative.  

One of the great things about The Last of Us, though, was the brutal and life-threatening moments were offset with the wonder of seeing the world through Ellie’s commentary, and eventually, through her actual perspective. During the first game, Ellie was only fourteen and was experiencing the world for the first time in all its beauty and, of course, its danger. From her petting giraffes, to seeing monkeys for the first time, to whipping out her joke book at just the right moments, it all served in crafting a memorable gameplay experience that contributed to a much larger story rife with moral ambiguity, but most of all, hope. 

The Last of Us Part II looks fresh out of hope. It’s a complete counter of the first game, and as Naughty Dog’s writer and director, Neil Druckmann has stated, “it’s about hate” from Ellie’s viewpoint.

We’ve only seen ten minutes of The Last of Us Part II, which was split up into two trailers that came out one year apart; but in those glimpses, it’s clear the game looks to be changing what we’ve come to expect of Ellie, Joel, and the world in which they live.

When we put the two trailers for The Last of Us Part II into context with the events that took place in the first game, it still looks every bit as violent and dark. Just in a completely different way. For one, the world of The Last of Us is expanding, with new characters being introduced that have their own motivations and unknown backstories. It also takes place five years after the the first game. Ellie is now nineteen, and she’s in a much darker place. We’ve never seen her so driven by revenge or so hell-bent on “killing every last one of them”.

It also feels different because in The Last of Us, Joel was the one inflicting a majority of the violence, and it was mostly other men who were on the receiving end of it. I’m not saying it makes it any better that we were creeping up behind other survivors with obvious intent to choke them to death, but Joel had a clearly-defined reason for his unforgiving actions. The world took his daughter and, in turn, he felt as though he owed the world nothing. That idea was planted within us as well the moment Sarah was killed. 

From what we’ve seen of The Last of Us Part II so far, it’s women who are inflicting a brutal amount of violence on other women for reasons that have yet to be explained. Violence in The Last of Us, though, doesn’t really need to be explained. The harsh realities of the world were already well-established in the first game, but there’s still a level of uncertainty that awaits us in The Last of Us Part II that makes us uncomfortable, as we’re watching characters we don’t know, in a place we’ve never explored, attack and be attacked. 

PlayStation Experience 2017 is coming in just a few weeks, and hopefully we will see more from The Last of Us Part II like some gameplay. What do you think about the little we’ve seen of the game thus far? Sound off in the comments!