The Last of Us Part II Storyline Controversy Over LGBT Characters Prove Why the Story Is Necessary

The Last of Us Part II (2020) is the highly anticipated sequel to the massively successful 2013 masterpiece, The Last of Us. Developed by Naughty Dog and published with Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game was a PlayStation exclusive, meaning it could only be played on a PlayStation 4 of PS5 with backwards compatibility. The Last of Us Part II is also the winner of over 300 Game of the Year awards and is both praised and criticized for its groundbreaking representation.

The overarching message of The Last of Us Part II was about empathy, but in doing so, has revealed that many people of the gaming world lack just that. After the DLC of The Last of Us revealed that Ellie was gay, there was a bit of uproar from some people complaining or just in denial that Ellie could be gay. So, when it was revealed that there would be more LGBT characters in the sequel, uproar was expected. However, what’s worth noting in this controversy is the amount and attention the complaints attained, and even people’s explanations and reasonings for the complaints.

In 2020, a few months before the scheduled release of the game, there was a huge leak on many aspects of the game, but the two worth noting is that there was going to be a main character that was transgender, and pictures of the character, Abby, were leaked to the internet. Now, anyone who has now played the game will know that Abby cisgendered, but at the time, many haters took one look at Abby’s non-traditionally feminine look and assumed she was the transgender character. This caused many debates not only on the inclusion of LGBT characters in video games, but also brought up discussions and arguments about masculinity/femininity and the physical look of transgender people.

Now, we know now after the game’s release that Abby is not the transgender character, but a little boy named Lev is. However, this being unknown at the time brought out many transphobic comments about Abby’s appearance since she was designed to be very muscular with not very large breasts. People automatically assumed that because she was not the traditionally feminine female that she was “a guy trying to look like a girl” said one tweet.

Figure 1: Abby is very muscular with broad shoulders and small breasts.  

Written by Bonnie Ruberg, “Empathy and Its Alternatives: Deconstructing the Rhetoric of ‘Empathy’ in Video Games”, the article discusses what exactly empathy is and how it is used in video games. Ruberg says that video games can be considered “by nature, political” (Ruberg, 2020). She explains that often the values that are argued in political conversation. I think that the goal of Naughty Dog was to bring representation and empathy to gender-nonconforming people, but because it is such a highlighted political conversation as well, critics were quick to call it a “political stunt”.

The game was criticized as an “SJW game” and was accused of being a tool to force a certain agenda on players. However, an interview by TLOU creator Neil Druckmann explains that there was not much thought about the result of not following a cis-het formula. “We didn’t say, ‘Let’s get diverse just to stand out.’ It was more like an option to give us a richer story.” (BBC, 2020). “That doesn’t automatically make the story better.” Druckmann continues, “But there is something magical when people see themselves in games, it broadens our audience and I think that’s important.” Ever since Ellie was revealed to be gay in 2014, Druckmann has defended the decision claiming it was not one made because of anything political, but they thought the two characters in the DLC would be a cute and natural fit.

Another thing that Ruberg highlights in her article is the fact that many games teach empathy because they force the player to basically walk in the character’s shoes. Well in The Last of Us Part 2 we play as both Ellie and Abby and literally walk in their shoes. We learn to understand the characters and why they are the way they are. Although we meet Abby under not-so-great circumstances, we still eventually start to feel something for the character because we see the other side of the story.

Another way the game teaches us empathy is we meet a brother and sister when we play as Abby, and she takes them in and becomes a sort of protector for them. We later learn that the brother, Lev, is trans and was forced to escape his home because he would have been killed otherwise. Because unfortunately homophobia and transphobia still exist in the apocalypse. So, we see from Abby’s perspective how these two kids are affected and what they have gone through even besides trying to survive the infected. As a player, we spend time with these characters and learn to love them too. We begin to empathize with them whether we know it or not.

Figure 2: Abby and Lev form a bond like Joel and Ellie from the first game.

In conclusion, this game can teach us a lot about empathy by showing us several sides of the story. The creators place us in the shoes of these people who are not considered the “standard” so to say. We can examine this game as a new method to teach others about different walks of life. But even through the controversy, we can learn too. We can learn that not everyone will learn empathy, and sadly that is just a fact in our world. But we can learn from the hate's consequences to fuel our desire for change.

References

Glennon, Jen, et al. “The Rest of Us: 'The Last of Us Part II' Trans Controversy, Explained.” Inverse, Inverse, 14 May 2020, https://www.inverse.com/gaming/last-of-us-2-trans-controversy-explained-abby-tlou.

Powell, Steffan. “Last of Us Part 2: Creators Say Diversity in Games 'Essential'.” BBC News, BBC, 17 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53080982.

“R/Thelastofus - [Spoilers](#s ‘I'm Queer, and I Have Something to Say about Riley and Ellie.").” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/1y13n1/spoilerss_im_queer_and_i_have_something_to_say/.

Ruberg, Bonnie. “Empathy and Its Alternatives: Deconstructing the Rhetoric of ‘Empathy’ in Video Games.” Communication, Culture and Critique, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 54–71., https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz044.

“Video Gaming's Latest Breakthrough Moment.” Kotaku, 17 Feb. 2014, https://kotaku.com/video-gamings-latest-breakthrough-moment-1524555480.

Featured image from: https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/how-the-last-of-us-2-redefines-lgbt-storytelling-in-gaming-4037842