Naughty Dog recently released a documentary about making The Last Of Us Part 2. Now, one segment from the two hour documentary is getting attention – and generating outrage.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Laura Bailey, who played Abby in the video game, revealed that she received a torrent of abuse from the game’s so called fans.
Laura details what happened like this:
“The worst of it, the really hardcore death threats got past alone and they made sure they weren’t anyone who lived close by.
They were threatening my son who was born during all of it and yeah, it was rough. But, you know, more than anything it just kind of like taught me to keep a distance.”
Clearly, there is no justification for this behavior, especially for what is essentially an actress playing a role in a work of fiction. To understand why they did this is not to rationalize or justify it, but simply to understand the thread of logic they used, as erroneous as it is.
And their sense of logic here was they were looking for an outlet to blame for events in The Last Of Us Part 2. Abby is no doubt, one of the most disliked characters in video games, because of her actions in the game. Spoilers in the next paragraph.
In the opening minutes of The Last Of Us Part 2, Abby kills Joel, who was the player’s character in The Last Of Us Part 1. And then, the game makes the player go through the game as Abby for a significant part of the game.
Now, this was certainly an unusual direction for the story to go, but there was a sense of logic behind Naughty Dog’s decisions too. In this case, Naughty Dog used this unusual narrative shift to force the player to reexamine Joel’s actions and perspective in the prior game.
Naughty Dog sought to actually undo the identification that fans had with Joel, and recognize that many of his actions were not moral. Naughty Dog created that sense of identification fans had with the way the story of The Last Of Us Part 1 was told, down to the way the game was designed. The Last Of Us Part 2 even goes so far as to try to make us identify with Abby, at least to some extent.
To that end, The Last Of Us Part 2 is one of many titles where you can feel the influence of the now-unavailable military FPS classic, Spec Ops: The Line. While going in a different direction, Naughty Dog also made its players question themselves and the reasons for their fandom in this franchise.
But much like Spec Ops: The Line, The Last Of Us Part 2 was sure to find players who wouldn’t get this message, or reject it entirely. It is understandable if some players are angry about the game, and the way their old playable character, Joel, left the franchise. It echoes the sentiments of gamers shocked by the recent spoiler in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
Of course, none of this justifies any real life action taken against the performers for these games, at all. If these people saw Laura Bailey discuss her experiences, we hope that they reflect on their life choices and if they can even call themselves real fans after crossing that line.
For the rest of us, that this sort of thing happened again is a stain to gamers as a community, and we continue to be harmed by the poor reputation we earned because of people like them.
