This is part one of a three-part deconstructive analysis of The Last of Us: Part II. Find part two, about how this game fails to utilize its mechanics to tell its story, here. Find part three, about how horrible the story is as a whole, here.
Ellie Rocks
Everyone loves Joel, and for good reason. Joel is an excellent character. But I've always been of the opinion that The Last of Us is really about Ellie, and although Joel was literally assassinated at the start of Part II, I think this heinous murder has nothing on the absolutely contemptible character assassination that was performed on Ellie throughout the game's 30-hour playtime. So let's jump into how Neil and Halley completely ruined one of video gaming's best and most interesting characters.
To Begin:
Ellie is a survivor. She was taught by Joel, who’s the best there is around (or he was, before a few years in a hippie commune gave him an extra chromosome). Ellie makes it through Winter and saves Joel while 14 years old and utterly outnumbered and totally outgunned. She is impossibly badass. This is who Ellie is. If you've played the first game, you know this already.
Her character is difficult to work with, in part because she’s so good at everything. She straddles the line of “Mary Sue” in places. She is infinitely charismatic, extremely empathetic, enormously clever, endlessly smart, and a good shot to boot. So why does she work so well in the original game?
An amazing performance, tons of personality, and a lot of baggage.
Because Ellie is not hard to understand. Her motivation is pretty simple. She struggles with survivor’s guilt and she’s afraid of being alone. She literally tells us this much multiple times throughout the first game. Going into Part II, I had expected these threads to continue. There was a lot more to explore in terms of her psychology. This was where a sequel had so much potential.
This potential was wasted.
Ellie’s survivor’s guilt is a non-factor in Part II's story. It is never mentioned explicitly. I can't point to anywhere it even manifests in the subtext. It may just as well have never been. And as for her fear of ending up alone—well, I guess she got over that in those four years in Jackson, because in this game she has no problem with being alone at all. She goes out to do stuff alone all the time! She abandons Joel because she finds out he lied to her, then goes to live by herself! She’s even willing to give up her only family, despite the fact that it guarantees her eternal loneliness, in order to get revenge! So, all in all, I guess she wasn’t so afraid of loneliness after all. Her conversation with Sam on the night of his infection was a big fat lie. Sorry!
Because Ellie’s two actual character nuances have been eliminated by the writers, they had to invent some new ones. Somehow this manages to be worse than doing nothing at all.
Ellie in Part II
So, first off, Ellie is now a total psychopath.
WAIT WHAT?
That empathetic little girl who carries around Sam’s toy transformer, years after his death? The girl who has no problem talking about her feelings with Joel and wants total honesty? I mean she’s killed people, sure, but this is a fundamental character trait. Ellie isn’t acting like a psycho at the end of the first game. She doesn’t do anything immoral at all!
…and yet here, Ellie tells Dina that she’d be happy to torture an innocent person rather than see them at a trial. She becomes obsessed with vengeance. She actually does torture Nora. In the end, she gives up everything she has to take vengeance, in direct violation with her fear of being alone, and despite having failed to beat Abby TWICE. She’s clearly obsessed with Joel, and they give her a pretty good reason to be obsessed. While on the farmhouse, she has PTSD. It’s pretty effective stuff. I imagine the death of a father figure would be a pretty traumatic, personality-shifting event…
Except for the fact that Ellie ALREADY HAD PTSD at the end of the last game. You know, from when Nolan North tried to RAPE AND EAT HER WHEN SHE WAS 14? That’s the kind of thing that usually leaves a mark on a person. This is the character's whole tragedy from the first game. She's made it to the end, but she doesn't know how she can survive. Hence why Joel tells Ellie that, "[he] struggled for a long time with surviving..." right after she has lost what she was fighting for.
This is a fascinating aspect of the character to explore. I personally think that Ellie would be unable to settle down into a ‘mundane’ life after that—she’d be desperately in search of some new purpose. She would need something new to fight for. But that’s not what’s in Part II. In fact, Winter is never mentioned once. Instead they contrive some new reason to traumatize my poor baby girl, and then explore that instead. WHY? HER TRAUMA WAS ALREADY RIGHT THERE IS AND IS NEVER ONCE REFERENCED IN THIS GAME. DID YOU PLAY THE LAST OF US NEIL? WHY MAKE UP SOMETHING NEW AND UNNECESSARY?
In fact Ellie seems to be entirely over her trauma from 4 years ago. Riley is never mentioned, period. Birthday Ellie at the natural science museum acts just like 13-year-old Ellie from Left Behind. Everyone loves that flashback, and it was great to see that character again, but it rings totally false. That isn't who Ellie is after the end of the first game. She's more sober, more mature, and less care-free. Did Neil just forget about that final sequence in Salt Lake? How different Ellie acts there than in the rest of the game? Because it kind of feels like he did.
From here on out, I want to distinguish between the Ellie from the first game and the Ellie from the second, because they are not the same character in any meaningful way. So when I say "Ellie," you know I mean Real Ellie, from The Last of Us. When I say "Fake Ellie"--well, you get the idea.
Oh well. I guess Fake Ellie got over all of her neuroses off-screen, just in time to earn them back again in this game. One must wonder what the point was.
But worst of all is the degradation of Ellie from brilliant little girl to complete fucking idiot who deserves what’s coming to her. 14-year-old Ellie is so smart. She's like the smartest person ever. She makes all of the right decisions. She's good at everything. She expertly navigates David and the cannibals and overcomes all of her obstacles with brains rather than brawn. Dumb people don't make it in the apocalypse. Ellie earns her survival with her incredible intelligence.
So why did five years turn her into a fucking moron?
Let's take inventory on all of Fake Ellie's stupid decisions in this game. Bear with me, it's a long list.
She walks through a doorway toward Abby instead of just shooting her in order to get captured and progress the plot
She circles her secret hideout on her map for no reason, despite the fact that she's been captured TWICE by the WLF and doing this grants her literally no advantage whatsoever, and her pregnant girlfriend is hanging out there like the useless piece of baggage she is
She stands around while Jesse comes through the door toward Abby and does nothing before dropping her gun, even though she easily could have shot Abby in the fucking face a thousand times
She forgets her map on the ground of the Aquarium like a fucking idiot (the worst sin of all IMO)
She blames Joel for his saving her despite the fact that this makes no sense and she should be able to perfectly empathize with him
She's stupid enough to go back to the hospital in Salt Lake City despite the fact that she must have known she wasn't going to like what she found
She leaves to go find Abby for a second time, even after Abby has defeated Fake Ellie in a fight that Fake Ellie should have had every advantage in (Abby was unarmed, Fake Ellie had her entire toolkit)
She can't figure out how to play the guitar minus two fingers despite the fact that it wouldn't even be all that hard
She shows no mercy to a million hapless NPCs, despite the fact that they're generally easy to avoid and that they surely all have families too, but does show mercy to a psychopathic murderer who doesn't deserve it and she knows nothing about
She utterly mishandles her confrontation with Mel and Owen in the stupidest way ever that makes no sense
This is like Prequel-level stuff. The whole story rests on Fake Ellie acting like a moron. This is already bad in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, in which the plot is largely propelled by stupid main characters, but at least we can say that some people, in real life, are actually really stupid. Ellie isn't stupid! Ellie's whole thing is that SHE'S SUPER DUPER SMART!
It's evident that the writers felt the need to push Ellie in the psycho, Fake Ellie direction in order to balance out Abby’s introduction, and that she needed to be less competent in order for her not to simply kill Abby and end the story at the midpoint--which is what should have happened.
If that was the story they wanted to tell, I’m not opposed to it on principle. Taking an established character like Ellie and writing her a Heart of Darkness story, her own descent into insanity, is interesting, and it’s ballsy. But Neil forgot the core of the character in the process. Fake Ellie doesn’t feel like the same person AT ALL. She acts like too much of a psycho from too early on; she has entirely different baggage; she has completely lost her brains.
Ashley Johnson sells it via performance, because she’s great as always, but the writing misses the mark so wide that it hits Jupiter. Fake Ellie just doesn’t behave in the way that a more mature Ellie would. She’s written entirely differently. She behaves in a manner that gets her to the game’s conclusion, rather than in a manner that actually fits what she would do. It's infuriating.
Sad People Can Still Be Funny
Let's pretend for a moment that none of the above is as offensive as I've made it out to be. Let's take Fake Ellie as she is in this game and act like this is a truthful evolution of the character from the first game. Have you done it? Okay. Now I want to ask you...
Where is Ellie's sense of humor?
This is a character who had lost so much by the time of the first game. This is a character raised in the post-apocalypse. This is a character endlessly beaten down. She still has a sense of humor--a very dark sense of humor. She never gets offended, except when Joel tries to betray her. She speaks her mind. She loves puns. She makes jokes all the time.
But not in Part II.
It's as if the assassination of Joel has made Fake Ellie so depressed that she has, as of late, lost all of her mirth and forgone all custom of exercises.
Smart people reading this might recognize that line from Hamlet. After all, Hamlet is THE archetype for depression in fiction. I would compare Hamlet to Ellie in a lot of ways: they're both great warriors, they've both lost people they love, and they're both amazingly witty. And, of course, they're both depressed.
But here's something about Hamlet you might have forgotten about since your 12th grade English class...
HAMLET IS FUNNY. HE HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR. Yes, even after he's "lost all his mirth." He's still a witty person. Depressed people aren't always so fucking moody all of the time. Fake Ellie may be sad, but that does not mean she has to lose all of her personality. She can still find humor in dark places. Depressed Hamlet makes jokes all of the time, just like a real depressed person!
In fact, lots of sad and disturbed revenge story protagonists possess vivid senses of humor. Leaving Hamlet aside, Sweeney Todd and his love for puns comes to mind. Ellie already HAD a vivid sense of humor. WHERE DID IT GO? WHY IS SHE SO SERIOUS ALL OF THE TIME?
I sometimes wonder if Neil has ever read a book or seen a play before.
This comes down to personality. Fake Ellie has no personality. Her traits are that she’s traumatized, sad, and gay. That’s it. Oh, and psychotic. There’s nothing else. She has no voice. She's little more than a caricature of a revenge story antihero.
Somehow Ellie went from one of the deepest characters in the medium of interactivity to one of those most shallow. No other sequel, not even the god-awful Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, has ever maligned a beloved character so horribly.
Spunk
Briefly, let's compare and contrast the dialogue of Ellie from the first game with Fake Ellie from the second.
Part I
Ellie saves Joel's life and kills her first human being.
ELLIE: Man, I shot the hell outta that guy, huh?
JOEL: Why didn't you just hang back like I told you to?
ELLIE: Well, you're glad I didn't, right?
JOEL: I'm glad I didn't get my head blown off by a goddamn kid.
ELLIE: You know what? No. How about, "Hey Ellie; I know it wasn't easy, but it was either him or me. Thanks for saving my ass!" You got anything like that for me, Joel?
JOEL: We gotta get going.
ELLIE (sighing): Lead the way.
This scene tells us so much about this character.
#1: She won't be pushed around
Ellie is tough and spunky. When she perceives something to be wrong, she stands up for herself. She won't let Joel be a hypocrite.
#2: She has personality even when things are fucked up
Note that Ellie's first line in this scene is effectively a joke.
#3: She is fundamentally loyal and obedient
Even after Joel has been an enormous asshole to her, Ellie knows that she needs to trust him to survive. She'll make her dissent clear, but she will--usually--follow orders. Her line, "lead the way," is so fundamentally important to understanding who this character is. She's intelligent, loyal, and obedient. She isn't an asshole who starts fights just to be rebellious.
Part II
Seth has called Ellie a "dyke" and makes her a sandwich to apologize.
MARIA: Seth has something he wants to say to you.
FAKE ELLIE: I don't want to hear what that bigot has to say.
MARIA: Do it for me. Please.
FAKE ELLIE: Fine.
...
SETH: Hey. Look, last night, I was drinking...
FAKE ELLIE: Sure.
SETH: I'm trying to say I'm sorry. Maria tells me that you and Dina are heading out? I, uh, made you some sandwiches.
FAKE ELLIE: Okay.
SETH: They're steak.
MARIA: Thank you, Seth.
SETH: Yeah, well, uh, you be safe out there.
ELLIE: Yup.
...
JESSE: What have you got there?
FAKE ELLIE: Bigot sandwiches.
JESSE: Mhm. Smells good.
FAKE ELLIE: They're yours.
This is one of the earliest scenes in the game and I knew they had Ellie wrong immediately. Everything about this is off.
#1. Real Ellie would have said...
"Fuck you, man, it's none of your business who I kiss."
As evidence for this point, I'd like to cite this scene:
#2. Real Ellie wouldn't have given a fuck
This girl has gone through more than almost any elderly adult alive today. She wouldn't give a fuck about Seth, and on the off-chance she did, she would have been fine with his apology. Real Ellie isn't vindictive. She doesn't hold a grudge--as evidenced by the above cited scene from Part I, in which she forgives Joel once he finally concedes that it was "either him or me."
#3. Real Ellie would have eaten the sandwich
When she's imprisoned and starving, David feeds Ellie what is potentially human meat. He says it's deer, she says, "With a little human helping on the side?"
And then she proceeds to eat it anyway. Because Ellie is practical and pragmatic. She doesn't care if it's potentially human; it doesn't matter. She may as well just eat it. It'll help her survive.
So you're telling me that, four years later, this same person refuses to eat a nice, well-meaning steak sandwich, in the winter, made at no doubt a great cost to Seth, because he said a mean thing to her the previous night?
I don't think so.
#4. Real Ellie isn't a boring moper
Ellie is sometimes mopey in the first game, but she's never boring. Note that when triggered by Joel, she gets ANGRY, not sad. Why does Fake Ellie just get fucking quiet and sad in this scene? Why doesn't she stand up for herself?
Oh right, because it's not really Ellie.
In summary...
The entire game follows this pattern. Even on the most fundamental level, Ellie is written like an entirely different person. If you can somehow contest my above premises, fine, but you cannot possibly contest this one.
And One Last Thing
More than anything else about Fake Ellie, I fucking hate that they made her taller. This is a profound betrayal of the character. I know the reason for this is because she wouldn’t be able to grab NPCs and use them as human shields if she was still 5’4, but it's an absolutely despicable cop-out. 14-year-old girls are as tall as they will ever be. She wasn’t going to get any taller. Short is part of who Ellie is, and it’s just as much a part of her identity as anything else about her appearance. It is MORE a part of her character than the fact that she likes girls.
I find it infinitely ironic that in this supposedly progressive game, one of interactive media's only short female characters has been made the height of an average man. You hear that, short women? You're not allowed to be badass! Only tall women can be cool and tough!
This backstab from Naughty Dog, this betrayal of the physical reality of both Ashley Johnson and Ellie's actual bodytypes, is indicative of a far more insidious issue at work all throughout this game. The designers had no interest in aligning narrative with the game's mechanics. They just did whatever they wanted to do, consequences be damned. That would be bad in any game, but it's far, far worse in a sequel.
(Yes, I know that some girls hit puberty late and that maybe Ellie possibly could have become taller. I reject this counterargument for two reasons: #1, and most importantly, Ellie in the first game is the same height as her actress, Ashley Johnson, a grown woman, is in real life; and #2, Ellie wasn't even particularly short for a woman, all things considered, and the game would have been more interesting anyway--far more unique--if they had kept her at Ellie, rather than Lara Croft, height.)
All this to say...
One positive thing about Fake Ellie in Part II is that she's so unlike the character from the original game that it's very easy to pretend she's someone else entirely. So that's what I recommend we all do. Real Ellie is out there somewhere, and the end of her story is still left ambiguous. Whatever it is, it sure as shit ain't what we got.