spoiler (click to show/hide)
I was actually pretty young when I first played the last of us. I remember playing the DLC where it confirms she was a lesbian, something I was already a little hopeful for with her final conversation in the base game, the way she talked about Riley and her "being all poetic and losing our minds together" or whatever. Anyway, it meant the world to me at the time to see someone like myself in a video game like that. This big budget AAA game from a studio I loved. Even if it was just a DLC add-on. I had never seen someone like myself represented in a game, and certainly not as a primary character.
So then they announce the Last of Us 2, and they announce that Ellie is going to be the protagonist. Four years ago. And young gay me is so happy. I already loved Ellie, I was a huge fan of Naughty Dog between uncharted 1/2 an the last of us. And here they were announcing the first AAA game ever made to have a lesbian protagonist. It was going to be the first full AAA game where I could play through it as someone like me, and it was coming out from a studio I knew I loved.
So I spent 4 years thrilled about this. I was so happy knowing this game was coming. When I got my hands on it and Ellie being a Lesbian was immediately a like... real factor in the plot that informed who she was, her relationship with people in the town, etc. I continued to be really happy. They didn't just make a game with Ellie where we knew she was gay but it never really came up, it was a real core part of who she is. You can read her journal entries where she talks about Dina asking if she is going to the dance, and Ellie is freaking out about how Dina touches her arm when she asked, clearly into Ellie but Ellie is going "She's like that with everyone, Don't fuck up your friendship." Which I think is an extremely relatable experience to a lot of young lesbians like myself. In general, as the game went on I saw a lot of myself in Ellie, and for sure some of that was projecting I'd been looking forward to this game with a lesbian protagonist for 4 years, I was bound to look for the things I can relate to. But yeah, Ellie felt a lot like me, including her faults, in a way that was really making this game a super special experience for me, even during non story scenes I was juts happy being her. Her relationship with Dina is really sweet too, and honestly I think one of the best handled lesbian relationships in any media I've personally seen. I'm even okay with how their relationship ended, it felt very real and earned by the characters involved.
And then you clear Seattle Day 3. And suddenly I'm playing as this fucking straight girl. And it goes on and you realize with a sinking kind of feeling "this is the rest of the fucking game, its not just going to be a cutaway like the brief Ellie section in TLOU1. I realize that Naughty Dog intentionally spent 4 years deceiving me into thinking I was getting the first game where I could play through as someone like myself, them knowing the whole time you were actually going to spend half the game as Abby. They could have marketed the game honestly. "You are going to spend half the game as Ellie and half the game as this new character you will meet during the events of the game". Would have not spoiled the plot, but would have reasonably tempered my expectations instead of lying to me.
And like of course right? Of course the first game to feature a lesbian protagonist would have her secretly lose half the game to a straight protagonist. That shouldn't even be a surprise, its just fucking typical of the way gays are exploited by companies. Queerbaiting. But I let myself believe in naughty dog, and it honestly broke my fucking heart. Which sounds melodramatic or whatever, but I'm sitting her getting emotional typing this all out again weeks after the game came out. Abby get's the back half of the game too, which means she mostly gets the climaxes. You DO go back to ellie for the last tiny stretch of the game, but the big exciting scenes like the burning scar Island, the big Rat King fight, all that shit is abby stuff.
Like I've said in the spoiler thread, games don't exist in a bubble. Taking completely onto itself with no outside context there is nothing wrong with spending half of the game as Abby. The storyline they want to tell is good, TLOU2 is a great game. But the game doesn't exist in a bubble, it exists in a world where there isn't a single other AAA game with a lesbian protagonist, and they intentionally spent 4 years deceiving people into thinking this one would be that game.
