The Last of Us Part II cleans up at The Game Awards 2020 despite ongoing hostility in regard to playing as Abby

The Last of Us Part II cleaned up at The Game Awards 2020, winning in the following seven categories: Best Action/Adventure, Innovation in Accessibility, Best Performance, Best Audio Design, Best Narrative, Best Game Direction, and the all-important Game of the Year category. It’s an impressive achievement for Naughty Dog and Sony, and also for key players such as the writers Neil Druckmann (who also directed) and Halley Gross, and the actors involved like Ashley Johnson (Ellie), Joel (Troy Baker), and Game Award-winner Laura Bailey (Abby).

It’s another incredible showing for The Last of Us Part II, which also won an armful of trophies at the recent Golden Joystick Awards. However, while the PS4 version of the game sits on a healthy score of 93 on Metacritic thanks to an abundance of glowing reviews from professional critics, it seems gamers have been less appeased by the direction of the game’s narrative. At the time of writing, there were a credible 76,306 positive user scores, but there were also 64,332 negative ones, leaving a user score of a middling 5.7.

Complaints about the game have mostly focused on the storyline, with some players criticizing the required time playing as Abby. In fact, some have disliked this component so much that they have resorted to sending despicable threats to actress Laura Bailey along the lines of “I’m going to find where you live and slaughter you” and “I hope your parents die by a hard cancer”. While “fans” who act like this are clearly doing the whole fanbase a massive disservice, as creators are going to think twice about continuing developing an IP if they are going to receive death threats just for making bold narrative changes, others have spoken with their wallets: Four million copies of The Last of Us Part II were sold within its first three days of release.

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