It has been much longer than it should have been before I played the sequel to The Last of Us, especially when you consider how very much I love that game. I’m not sure why I didn’t get it in the first place, but not long after that it was Playstation 5 time, and I waited until I had one because why play it on the old busted graphics? ….and that turned out to take maybe longer than one would expect. But when I got one for Christmas this year, I also knew the second season of the show was coming down the pike, and I had to hurry up if I didn’t want spoilers[1].

The Last of Us Part II is (mostly) set about 5 years after the events of the previous game, which I will continue to not spoil, even though it perhaps hamstrings me a little for this review. It is, as the last one was, an intensely character driven narrative, with themes of parenthood still present, but being replaced by themes of… there’s not a word for this. When one says parenthood, one envisions the responsibilities of the parent to the child. This game is first about the responsibilities of the child to the parent.

The second thing it is about by chronology, and the first thing by weight, is vengeance. There’s a Chinese(?) proverb that advises if you embark upon a quest for revenge, dig two graves. Whoever said that I think underestimated the volume of digging needed by possibly more than one order of magnitude, but then again, many video games of this type are violent by nature. Still, there is an obligation and a cost associated with revenge, and the narrative provides an exemplary portrayal of both.

Also: it’s beautiful. This may of course be my review of the PS5 more than of the game qua game, but nevertheless. Also, the controller is the best game controller since the XBox 360.

All in all, it was a great story and a great experience, and I look forward to watching it play out on the small screen over the next few weeks via HBO as well as to any future game sequels that I think I expect to be coming sometime soon in the next year or two. Of course, at some point I’ll be obligated to talk about these in terms of plot, lest I get too abstracted. But not today! …unless forced, which seems unlikely.

[1] As it happens, I got spoilers, but nothing too intolerable. A scene in the first episode of the show was a flashback from the last 2-3 hours of the game, which, well.