Dina and Jesse and Tommy, the fractured dynamics of people who came to Seattle for one purpose and are discovering that the purpose is more complicated than the plan. Survival in the post-outbreak world is a solved problem for these characters — they know how to move, how to fight, how to stay alive. What they do not know how to do is navigate each other, navigate what they want from this trip, navigate the grief that brought them here.

The hard part is always after. The Last of Us understood this about Joel and Ellie — that the apocalypse was not the trauma, it was the context for the trauma. Part II extends the argument. Survival is achievable. Living with what survival required is the ongoing crisis that no amount of skill can resolve.