Look, I’ve been through a lot of gaming controversies in my forty years of playing video games. I lived through the console wars, watched Sega systematically destroy themselves with terrible business decisions, and I’ve seen fandoms tear themselves apart over everything from difficulty spikes to character redesigns. But man, The Last of Us Part II in 2020? That was something else entirely, and as someone who’s felt genuinely betrayed by game companies before, I actually get why people were so upset.
Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t part of the angry mob on Twitter. I’m a forty-five-year-old high school teacher, I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense. But I watched the whole thing unfold from the sidelines, and honestly? It reminded me way too much of how I felt when Sega killed the Dreamcast. That same sense of “wait, you’re just going to throw away everything we loved about this thing?”
The original Last of Us came out in 2013, right around the time my kids were getting old enough to appreciate story-driven games. We played through it together – well, I played while they watched because some of those scenes were pretty intense – and it was one of those rare games that just clicked with everyone. Joel and Ellie felt real, you know? The relationship between them was the heart of the whole experience. By the time we finished, my daughter was asking when the sequel was coming out. That’s how you know you’ve got something special.
Seven years later, Part II finally drops, and within days the internet was on fire. Now, I’ve seen fan outrage before – remember when Sonic got redesigned for that first movie and he looked like a terrifying blue goblin? But this was different. This wasn’t about graphics or gameplay mechanics or even the usual culture war stuff that gamers love to fight about. This was personal betrayal, the kind you feel when something you care about gets fundamentally changed by people who seem to misunderstand why you cared about it in the first place.
The marketing leading up to release was typical modern AAA stuff – bigger, bolder, more immersive, all the usual buzzwords that make my eyes roll. After watching Sega promise revolutionary gaming experiences with the 32X and then deliver Star Trek pinball, I’ve learned to be skeptical of marketing promises. But the trailers looked good, and honestly, how do you screw up a Last of Us sequel? Just give us more Joel and Ellie adventures, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
I’m not going to spoil anything specific here because some people still haven’t played it, but let’s just say the narrative decisions Naughty Dog made were… bold. And by bold, I mean the kind of bold that makes you wonder if the writers actually played the first game or just read a summary on Wikipedia. It was like if Sega had made Sonic 2 and decided halfway through that what players really wanted was to play as Robotnik while he systematically destroyed all the Green Hill Zone animals. Technically well-executed, but completely missing the point.
The leak situation made everything worse. A few weeks before launch, major story beats got spoiled online, and the reaction was immediate and visceral. I actually avoided most of the leaked content because I’m old enough to remember when surprises in games were actually surprising, but you couldn’t escape the general mood shift in gaming communities. Suddenly people were canceling preorders and declaring the franchise dead before the game even came out.
When it finally released, the backlash was swift and brutal. Social media lit up with angry fans feeling like their beloved characters had been disrespected or worse. Review bombing became a thing – the user scores on Metacritic were hilariously disconnected from the critic scores, which told you everything you needed to know about how divided people were.
Now, here’s where my experience as a longtime Sega fan gave me some perspective. I’ve felt that kind of betrayal before. When Sega announced they were discontinuing the Dreamcast in 2001, I felt personally attacked. Here was this amazing system with incredible games, and they were just… giving up. Walking away from hardware forever. All those years of loyalty, all that money spent supporting their consoles, and they couldn’t even be bothered to fight for the Dreamcast’s survival.
The Last of Us Part II controversy felt similar, just from the fan perspective instead of the corporate one. People had invested emotionally in these characters and this world, and suddenly the creators were making choices that felt hostile to that investment. Whether those choices were actually good or bad from a storytelling perspective is almost beside the point – what mattered was how it felt to the people who cared most about the series.
Naughty Dog’s response was… well, let’s call it corporate. Lots of talk about artistic vision and taking risks and pushing boundaries, which is fine, but it didn’t really address why so many longtime fans felt alienated. It reminded me of Sega’s tone-deaf responses during the Saturn era, when they kept insisting their console was great while completely ignoring why consumers weren’t buying it. Sometimes you need to acknowledge that your creative choices have consequences, even if you believe those choices were correct.
The whole thing also highlighted something I’ve noticed about modern gaming culture versus the 90s when I was growing up. Back then, if you didn’t like a game, you just… didn’t play it. Maybe you complained to your friends or wrote an angry letter to GamePro magazine that nobody published. But now? Now you can organize global outrage campaigns in real time, review bomb games before they come out, and turn personal disappointment into a cultural movement.
I’m not saying that’s entirely bad – companies should be held accountable when they make bad decisions. But there’s something exhausting about how every gaming controversy now becomes this huge cultural battle where you have to pick sides. Sometimes a game just doesn’t work for you, and that’s okay. You don’t have to burn down the entire franchise because of it.
My kids, who loved the first game, had mixed reactions to Part II. My daughter appreciated some of the technical achievements but felt like the story was “trying too hard to be shocking.” My son bounced off it entirely and went back to playing Fortnite with his friends. Neither of them felt the need to post angry rants online about it, which honestly made me proud of how I raised them.
Looking back now, a few years later, I think The Last of Us Part II will be remembered as much for its controversy as its actual content. It’s become this weird cultural artifact that says more about gaming fandom and social media than it does about storytelling in games. Some people still consider it a masterpiece, others think it ruined the franchise, and most players probably fall somewhere in between.
What strikes me most is how the whole controversy revealed the disconnect between creators and fans in the modern gaming industry. Naughty Dog made the game they wanted to make, which is their right as artists. But they seemed genuinely surprised that many fans rejected their vision, which suggests they either didn’t understand their audience or didn’t care what their audience wanted. Both are valid creative positions, but both also have consequences.
As someone who’s watched beloved gaming companies make baffling decisions for decades, I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to let go of your expectations and accept that the things you love might change in ways you don’t like. Sega taught me that lesson the hard way, and The Last of Us Part II taught a lot of other gamers the same thing. It’s not fun, but it’s part of being a longtime fan of anything.
The controversy matters because it showed how passionate people can get about fictional characters and interactive stories. That’s actually pretty amazing, even when it gets ugly. These games mean something to people in ways that creators don’t always anticipate or understand. That’s worth remembering, whether you loved Part II or hated it.
Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
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