How 'The Last of Us Part II' fails its women protagonists

Get the Full StoryThis article contains spoilers for The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II, and Left Behind.

With two daughters starring as the lead protagonists, you d think The Last of Us Part II would be a game about daughters. But it isn't. Instead, it only purports to be about Ellie and Abby, all while reducing both women's lives to revolving entirely around their fathers.

Far from revolutionary, Last of Us II reads more like a veiled retread of the dad game an old trend from 2013 that often stripped its daughter characters of their agency and personhood.

At the time several aging game designers often experiencing new fatherhood started trying to tell more mature stories, leading to a slew of titles about dads and their daughters that released to near-unanimous praise. But unlike BioShock Infinite, Walking Dead Season 1, or Dishonored, the original Last of Us was different, subverting expectations by actually giving its daughter some autonomy. Ellie wasn t just a non-playable mechanic used to make her father s decisions more narratively interesting. She was a playable character in her own right, with her own interiority, abilities, worldview, and convictions independent of her father figure. Read more...More about Entertainment, Feminism, Video Games, Naughty Dog, and The Last Of Us 2

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