I didn't realize I wanted to play this again until this remaster was announced (and the cheap upgrade + bonus features helped). When I finished TLOU2 back in June 2020 I wasn't sure if I ever wanted to go back into this world - we all remember those rough first few COVID lockdown months and TLOU2 came out on a sunny and hot Friday when the sun was shining and I spent that day after work swimming with friends (when social distancing was still encouraged and expected). I was ecstatic to get to jump into the game that night, and ended up playing it for almost 12 hours straight on the Sunday of that weekend - I even had the curtains closed because the beautiful sunshine was causing a glare on the screen. It felt surreal to be sucked into a game about a virus destroying humanity, filled with disgusting creatures and death, and playing it during such nice weather.

When I finally finished the story a week or so later and experienced that crushing ending, I felt accomplished but drained. I hopped back into a few combat encounters for a quick action fix, and even played a couple hours of NG+ to try and mop up some collectibles and upgrades for some trophies, but didn't get very far. I wanted to be done with the game and scrub clean that feeling for the time being.

My feelings on this second playthrough about the story haven't really changed, and despite reading and watching tons of critical takes and analysis on this game, only a few have really made me change my thoughts - and only in the way that certain points were brought up that I hadn't thought about, or picked up on. A few ideas of what the plot could've been instead which would've been interesting to see, and a few opinions of the morality and themes that I also agreed with, but didn't neccessarily feel myself. I tried to avoid the absolute dog shit takes, which was near impossible, but any complaint of this game being "woke" for including trans or gay characters... it's easy to forget we still live amongst neanderthal-brained people in this day and age.

The critical points about the actions of Ellie, Abby, and the dozen other characters that kill or are killed here, and the cycle of revenge/who is the real villain/who deserved to die/is violence always the answer, those are the interesting and thoughtful takes that are worth reading about. Nakeyjakey's video, while I didn't personally agree with all of it, is one of the better criticisms, and I also just love that goopy goblin brained boy.

TLOU2 never lets you choose what happens during the story, and that's what it wants you to remember every step of the way. This isn't a game with a morality system, or player choices that affect who lives or dies or triggers one of seven different endings. Every quicktime event during a cutscene, you're not the one stabbing someone or bludgeoning someones head in with a pipe, Ellie is. Abby is. When you as a player have to fight or kill someone you don't want to, it's not your decision. You're just guiding these characters along through their story. You sometimes feel their emotion, but most of the time, you want them to stop, turn around and go home.

The climatic fight is horrible for a reason; I've read some takes saying that it's overbearingly brutal and torturous to the characters and that participating in these characters suffering through this brutal fight is too much. I agree with this, but it's the final act of fury that shouldn't be happening and we all understand this. So should this be how the story ends? For a moment you think everything's okay, they're both going to escape. But Ellie just can't fucking let it go. And it kind of surprises me to know so many players still wanted her to kill Abby in this moment. After spending so much time with her, you still want this person to die a horrific death. A game filled to the brim with horrific deaths, and they think Abby dying is going to make Ellie feel better - that her quest for revenge is complete, Joel's death is avenged. I think it's painfully obvious that nothing Ellie could do here will make her feel better, and she is long past that point. She made the worst possible decision ever to go after Abby again, and a moment of clarity when you think she's going to just let Abby and Lev go peacefully, she sees Joels bloodied face and remembers her goal.

Throughout this game, Ellie is empty and cold. But at the end, she's fucking gone. A completely broken husk of a person. TLOU2 took a bubbly, spunky teenager, a fully realized character with a great sense of humor, artistically talented and full of life, and hollowed her out like a pumpkin, who now looks like a jack o'lantern a week after Halloween, rotting on the front porch. Is this upsetting? Of course it is... but who am I to say that's how she shouldn't end up? I'm not saying Ellie didn't deserve a happy ending, she definitely did, with Dina and JJ on the farm, hell even with Joel alive and in Jackson. And you could easily say that this ending is just to cause controversy, guarantee talking points and criticisms, and even guaranteeing damage to some players wellbeing who get very attached to these characters by manipulating emotions using this poor girls grieving. But... I dunno, it's fiction, and it can be whatever you want, and the freedom to end this in such a way that they did is what makes art and fiction and writing fun in the first place. How many endings do you think they had done up for this before they ended up here is what I want to know.

My last bit about the morality/death/emotional manipulation is how much humanizing of the enemies they do here - naming all of the killable enemies so that when you kill them their friend calls out their name in agony works because they want you to feel like a monster. They want you to think, oh shit, that Joey guy I just turned to red mist might've had parents that are gonna be bummed, hey maybe they'll hunt me down for revenge after this. They really, really want you to understand that anyone can be given a bloodthirst to avenge someones death, and that everyone has an emotional core behind their NPC brain. While this is a major "hey isn't this deep?! see what we're doing here?!" thing that they bash you over the head for the entire game, it at least does something new with it I've never seen before that made me think about mostly everyone I was killing (except the Rattlers, who are just evil for the sake of evil). I still ended up killing everyone though, so does that mean it fully works?

I however did NOT kill a single dog during this playthrough - except for that one quicktime cutscene in the aquarium - and I felt way better about it. It still bummed me out seeing them paw at their dead comrades after I headshotted them, but it was actually more fun and tense to sneak around and avoid the dogs using bricks/bottles to throw them off my scent, or using smoke bombs to confuse them.

The only thing I wanted to say about this video game-wise, is that this game is built like a brick shithouse. Not that I got any, but I couldn't even imagine getting a glitch or hiccup or bug of the sort here - it runs so perfect 100% of the time that it doesn't even seem possible. Playing performance mode is a technical marvel, and the graphics that blew my noggin off in 2020 still look fucking insane here. They are doing some kind of witchcraft over at Naughty Dog, if they and Sony Santa Monica colloborated on a project someday it might make your PS5 explode.

I haven't mentioned or played much of No Return, which is kinda already proven fun based on how wild and intense TLOU combat is, but it does feel strange jumping into a rogue mode laying waste to hordes of enemies after the main storyline hammers home its points on violence. But oh well... BANG! BANG! SPLAT! Headshot! I'll play it some more eventually.

TLOU2 is kind of a 5 star game in every way for me, especially for how much I could sit and talk about the story and everything about it for hours - which kinda feels like trying to stand out as a singular grain of sand on a massive beach considering how much this single game has caused the ripple that it did. Does this game need another voice talking about it? Definitely not. But I had to write something for this in this lil box for my own thoughts, and if you're still reading, I think it's obvious this one had a big effect on me.
Realistically, the more I talk about it and really truly look deep down into my soul, it could be less than 5 stars, but in the same way, for how it's wormed its way deep down into that same soul and still resides, it's an all-time video game experience.