The long wait is over. The Last of Us Part 2 dropped on Friday. Then within a few hours, thousands of negative reviews started to post to Metacritic. Despite The Last of Us Part 2 having earned a Metascore of 95 from nearly 100 reviews by actual critics, the game now has a User Score of 3.7 out of 10 from nearly 43,000 users at time of this article being published. What is going on here?
We don’t have exact figures yet, but the presales for the game broke previous records, according to Sony. The Last of Us, the first game in the series released in 2013, is one of the best-selling PlayStation 3 games of all time. Between advance reviews and additional articles posting over the weekend, reviewers and gamers like the game overall.
The gameplay itself is not the issue here despite the tens of thousands of negative reviews on Metacritic. There are several possible reasons, and one of them is most likely the culprit. Let’s start with the unlikely reasons.
PLOT SPOILER LEAKS
In late April, videos were uploaded to YouTube that contained footage from The Last of Us Part 2 that revealed major plot points, including the ending. Even though the videos were taken down, the clips were reposted to other gamer sites and continued to live online.
If gamers choose to watch leaked spoilers from the game (including the ending), that’s on them. If they don’t want to game ruined, all they have to do is not watch. It’s not that hard. And the leaks shouldn’t be blamed on game developer, Naughty Dog. Sony even confirmed to Polygon the leaks were perpetuated by third party actors. No employee of Naughty Dog or Sony had anything to do with the leaks.
GAMEPLAY
As pointed out above, The Last of Us Part 2 has received “universal acclaim” from video game critics. No game is perfect, and reviewers took issue with some elements of the game, but nothing that stands out as deserving of a low rating.
Some reviewers and gamers had some issues with the plot – mainly tied to a key character death, but in a game where fungi-infected cannibals and murderous humans roam freely, that’s to be expected. But trying to tank the game for this is not logical. That’s like trying to destroy Game of Thrones after Ned Stark got beheaded. To not have deaths, The Last of Us Part 2 would just be an episode of the A-Team with bullets flying everywhere and cars blowing up, but no one ever dies.
Another factor working against the game play reason, is that Metacritic received thousands of negative reviews within hours of the game launch. The game, at a minimum, takes around 35 hours to complete. There’s simply no way so many gamers could have finished the game that quickly.
LGBTQ REPRESENTATION
That leaves the most likely issue, which is LGBTQ representation. One needs to look no further than Twitter to find haters posting sh*t about Naughty Dog and The Last of Us Part 2 having a “gay agenda” or “SJW agenda,” or similar complaints about having to play as a woman (especially a lesbian) or that there’s multiple gay characters in the game.
What most people want is realistic games, movies, TV shows, books, etc. Only having straight characters and heteronormative narratives is unrealistic. Including LGBTQ characters is a realistic representation of our society. We included Ellie and Dina’s kiss in our 2020 Valentine’s Day Top 10 Kisses in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Some estimates of the LGBTQ percentage of total population are as high as 20%.
There are more gay characters in the game than Ellie and Dina, but that wasn’t the start of the overreaction by the anti-LGBT haters. There’s been anger in certain segments of the gamer community ever since The Last of Us Part 2 trailer premiered at E3 back in 2018, which revealed the kiss between Ellie and Dina.
It seems unlikely the majority of people complaining about the game actually played it. The attack on The Last of Us Part 2 on Metacritic is more organized than could be accomplished by so many individuals who all just happened to play 35 hours of the game within a couple hours and decided to post a negative review.
No one is expected to love every game (or movie, TV show, book, etc.), but to actively engage in trying to hurt a game or company over LGBTQ representation is wrong. Just don’t play the game. Don’t give the company your money.
If the haters think their hostile acts will change LGBTQ representation in future games or other media, it’s not going to happen. Just accept it and move on already.
The game is awesome. Anyone who doesn’t play The Last of Us Part 2 due to LGBTQ representation is missing out on a fantastic game.
