the boat scene is better than you think | Scene Analysis - The Last of Us Part II

thanks for bearing with this reupload and excessive censoring yall, youtube demonetized the original😢

It genuinely never occurred to me that both of the sex scenes that we saw in the game were Ellie and Abby’s ‘first time’ before it was mentioned here. That was a really good spot!

"Sex is a normal part of being an adult" She said while censoring the word "sex" because youtube has taken censorship, way too far and are now actively hurting the content on the site. But that's nothing new with youtube.

I figured this scene was included to contrast how happy Ellie and Dina were as a couple having sex vs. Abby's unhappy relationship, further illustrating how killing Joel didn't heal her trauma. Abby doesn't necessarily look happy having sex, and she's faced away from Owen so it's less intimate too. Your analysis is wonderful, it adds so much more depth to her character and this scene!

How people react to this scene is a great litmus test on someone’s level of maturity.

My jaw hit the floor when you brought up Owen struggling to kill the older Seraphite comparing him to Joel! How did I never piece that together?! I have watched TLOU2 full playthrough many times on different channels and I never even considered that! Thank you for a different perspective of things in the game. I subbed so I can be notified of any new TLOU content you post in the future🙂

I never considered how it could have been their first time with each other, or Abby’s first ever. It makes so much sense after everything we’ve seen with them, the years of tension broken in an aggressive, passionate, extremely emotional moment, a touch. Amazing video, thank you for understanding the real meaning of this story; seeing all the people who wrote off the entire game for choices they don’t approve of (in turn proving the point of the game as you said) continues to dishearten me. So thanks for seeing the humanity in ALL of the characters!

Holy shit I never realised the parallel that Owen saw the Scar as Joel

I can't believe how actually difficult this game is to comprehend... I'm still finding new things out about the plot after 2 years of having accomplished it. The amount of subtext in here is crazy, and so much is hidden behind the scenes, too. Neil did a very good job of getting us confused with this way of story-telling, every vital piece of each character's life is just scattered across the game, and you make the puzzle yourself. This is incredibly unusual for today's level of gaming, really. And your analysis is amazing, made me tear up even.

Okay, the whole analysis was already really compelling and quite needed, but my god, that call to introspection at 27:24 felt like witnessing a knock-out. Many thanks for bringing out all this stuff about this scene (and all the commentary surrounding it) in such a exhaustive and logic manner. First time I see the video, it appears to be a reupload. I hope youtube would leave the video alone this time, and I wish you the rime and ressources needed to deliver more banger like these. Good writing in video games deserves more comentary like this.

When Owen was shot and he dies, it stuck with me when I heard him say "shes pregnant" to Ellie after she had killed Mel. He was dying and he still had his humanity right up until he stopped breathing. It made me tearful... This game is simply incredible 🤷‍♂️

I’m impressed by how thorough this is while still feeling tight and pointed. Well written and also very well narrated.

Owens lines in the scene when he’s talking about how he couldn’t bring himself to kill that old man were acted just as good as you would see in any sort of medium whether it be TV show or movie the voice actor who played Owen and the script that he was given are amazing. Owen is a good person who makes mistakes but in the end he REALLY was trying to “look for the light”. This scene is great and passionate but you need to be an adult with a brain and heart to understand it.

The Abby-Owen-Mel love triangle… to me, at least, is a perfect display of what happens when people jump into relationships without dealing with their traumas first. Abby and Owen almost feed off the pain they cause each other and but recognize how toxic they are for each other. They embark on their own personal missions to move on by preoccupying themselves with distractions; Owen with Mel and Abby with her revenge. But that’s not DEALING with it, it’s ignoring it. That trauma only gets bigger and more painful and destroys everything in its path, ie: Mel

I only played for the first time last year, and now it;s a game that I have 100%'d and played at least 5 times through. I had a lot of people "warn" me about a boat scene, and never really thought of anything aside from a potential boss fight (similar to the rat king crawling up the ambulance) I would never have guessed people were being so immature to talk about a very emotional, gut-wrenching sex scene between two people that have had their entire world flipped in a very quick period of time. It works, and the scene is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, confused, bc that's how Abby & Owen feel.

is youtube letting this banger stay this time ???😢

This was so well written and thought out. Personally, I love this scene so much because it felt so real. You hit the nail on the head when you said Owen cheating on Mel humanized him. Up until that point, Owen has been on a moral high ground over everyone else so far, being the one to let Ellie and Joel live, not being able to finish the old man, opposing war. Him sleeping with abby just goes to show that much like abby herself, he is not innocent.

I said it once and ill say it again, but making the connection between Joel and the old guy Owen couldn't kill still baffles my mind. Youre the first analysts i think I've ever heard made that observation. 💜💜

I truly love how the game transformed me as a person, since the moment I controlled and moved around the game as Abby the first thing I did was try to intentionally k!ll her off, running into infected and jumping out of map, in that anger and disgust I heard how she screams when she’s hurt and it did not make me feel any better, then learned about her fear of heights and how she got strong to take revenge and never let that kind of thing happen to someone she cares about, the fight with the scars and the rat king made me appreciate how physically capable she is of handling shit and not see hir as a monster, I went from hating her and considering not playing the game altogether to the very end crying and wishing Ellie has a change of heart for the sake of Lev and to stop the cycle of violence nobody asked for, in the end I felt a great relief and sadness when Abby got shown how much she is hated by the world, and Ellie was left with nothing and no one crying and bleeding into the ocean while repressed memories of Joel came flooding her with grief. This game was a masterpiece for anyone mature enough to grow and enjoy imperfection and human shortcomings. Love how you put things into perspective in the video this scene was one of the things I didn’t fully understand ❤️

I really appreciate your analysis of these scenes and look forward to more in the future. It's been a big help in understanding the story better! Right now, I'm working on my own analysis just to get a clearer picture of everything.