One of the most powerful tools in any writer’s box is the complete mastery they have over time. While real life trudges along in a doldrum routine of cause and effect, stories can arrange their happenings however they’d like. Storytellers have spent centuries finding and developing effective structures. Naughty Dog, however, has better plans. Plans that I am about to be entirely too crotchety about. Nevertheless:
Ask yourself—who needs the potent hand of authorial intent? Why would you generate mystery? What’s the point of meticulously challenging a desire for vengeance after spending hours stewing in it? That kind of thing might lead to people having to think about a story’s themes and messages and analyse it, or critique it, or something. Ugh, gross.
Introducing the cure to what ails ye: The Last of Us Part 2 “Chronological Experience”, a truly baffling alternate mode recently released for the remastered version of the game on both PC and PS5.
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“Those who have already played will know its story is told non-linearly,” a blog explains, “As Ellie and Abby’s motivations, realizations, and emotional stakes unfold across myriad flashbacks and present-day storylines.”
But what, instead of all of that, you simply didn’t? Naughty Dog is brave enough to ask that question: “While this structure is very intentional and core to how our studio wanted Part II’s themes and narrative beats to impact players, we always wondered what it would be like to experience this story chronologically. And now finally, we can answer that question.”
The blog then posits that players will be given a “deeper insight into Part 2’s narrative”, before reaching so hard you can hear the joints pop: “Players will be able to see how Ellie being gifted a guitar flows so neatly into her learning to play.” This is great for me, someone who cannot parse the concept of someone having a hobby when I’m not looking at them.
In fairness, it does make the somewhat-salient point that seeing Ellie and Abby nearly bump into each other might be interesting: “You’ll see just how close they come into running into each other, how their actions impact each other, and more.”
Except, uh. Naughty Dog. Buddy. Pal. That already happens in the base game, provided you have a functioning long-term memory. You just need to recognise a familiar area, then access your mind palace to remember that, oh, hey, I was here a few hours ago playing as a different character. It isn’t hard!
Look—I’m sure that this is a kinda-neat restructuring of the game’s narrative, a fun little alternate universe jaunt. If you play it and enjoy it for a second playthrough, I wouldn’t blame you at all, and the blog does, to its credit, say you should go through the game normally first. But I can’t imagine it’s a valuable exercise, other than an idle thought experiment. A shower thought that somehow made it into a production line.
Even if you’re dim on Part 2’s story, there’s a lot else that gets thrown in the grinder—pacing, for one, which in videogames applies to more than just narrative. I’m confident calling the shot here and now that this chronological mode doesn’t just make the story worse, it’ll make the game worse, too.
I just… I don’t get it, man. Maybe I’m being overly cynical because of the slow, steady slide of previously complex series dropping anything that’d otherwise challenge their players, or the seemingly pervasive, AI-driven hunger to punt writers out of their rooms. But I will dig my heels in and argue that Naughty Dog is being pretty condescending here.
Did you know that interviewees in a 2024 article published in the International Journal of Communication alleged that Netflix instructed showrunners and screenwriters “to both show and tell” and “say much more than you would normally say” so that people watching a second screen wouldn’t get lost?
This whole mode smacks of the same corporate cynicism, and while you can enjoy your videogames any way you want, it personally makes me feel babied. We can probably, just maybe, take stories seriously enough not to chop them up and repackage them just to get a few more play hours in the bank.
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