The Last of Us

It's definitely not the "Citizen Kane" of gaming.

It gets praise because they did the material covered a good job. Nothing entirely new; the story IS semi-cliche, but they handled it all masterfully and didn't fumble it.

I'm fine with the characters - they're interesting and well-written.

edited 9th Sep '15 9:33:27 PM by SilentColossus

the main things that last of us does well is the characterization and dialogue.

There's very little Narm that I can remember, almost all of the dialogue is on-point and sounds like something someone might actually say.

the characters don't entirely feel like one-note stereotypes for the most part, even if some of them aren't really all that memorable or interesting. as far as the main two go, Joel and Ellie and their dynamic absolutely works, Ellie is probably the most realistic teenage/child character I have seen in a mainstream western game.

and of course it's arguably the best looking game on the Playstation 3 and the cinematic presentation helps the impact of the game's scenes a lot.

these things by themselves help the game stand out a LOT. most games have pretty mediocre or just bad dialogue for one, and most of the time the writing feels like it's out of a b-movie or whatever.

...but on the other hand, the game's story is really, really predictable and nothing in it is particularly surprising. this doesn't always have to be a bad thing, mind you, but in The Last of Us' case specifically I felt that it was because it took a lot of the game's impact from me.

it's not really surprising that the last of us was received the way it was, it's just that in a medium where there aren't that many extremely well-written games something that is competent or above-average is going to stand out. It's not a masterpiece or anything, it just represents a couple of steps forward that most game-makers should look to and try to build upon.

It's a zombie story in which none of the following is true:

• The end of the world is upon us, humanity is gone forever, everyone is doomed.
• Everybody is an asshole and nobody can be trusted. Might as well shotgun people the moment you meet them because they're just going to stab you in the back or get you killed anyway.
• The zombies are basically completely harmless and can only reproduce through biting, which means there is no possible way the apocalypse could ever have happened and the entire scenario is ridiculous.

That, in and of itself, puts it above nearly every zombie story ever. It avoids the unreasonable cynicism that tends to go hand-in-hand with zombies.

edited 10th Sep '15 8:02:28 AM by TobiasDrake

Everybody is an asshole and nobody can be trusted. Might as well shotgun people the moment you meet them because they're just going to stab you in the back or get you killed anyway.

But most people you encounter attack without saying a word. Its not that you can't trust them, because everyone just wants to kill you and admits it.

edited 10th Sep '15 12:22:41 PM by SilentColossus

Several people you encounter are reasonably helpful. Even the ones who are opposed to you still seem to operate as a community in and of themselves, with efforts made to explain why they're the way they are. And then there's Jackson County, a fine example of civilization beginning to resurface. Unlike most zombie stories, Jackson County is not undermined by Man, The Real Monster nor does it succumb to the inevitability of the zombie horde. It stands proud and strong and remains intact by the end of the story.

"Man is the Real Monster" is a popular element of zombie fiction. The idea being that as soon as society's walls go down, everyone turns into a selfish, murderous asshole. If the people you meet in a zombie story aren't trying to murder and/or rape you, then they're The Load, holding you back and sabotaging your efforts to survive with their incompetence.

As with the other popularly cynical elements of zombie fiction, The Last of Us avoids this. Assholes exist, but they're just one sample of humanity and all they really contribute to the survival situation is getting themselves killed.

edited 10th Sep '15 12:33:40 PM by TobiasDrake

I agree - I just think there should have been more motivation for some of the attacks. There is explanation as to why they're hostile, but when everyone aside from Jackson (and a few other people like Sam, Henry, and Bill) attack on sight seems a little forced.

The bandits are the largest groups encountered.

edited 10th Sep '15 12:41:39 PM by SilentColossus

I'm a huge zombie aficionado, and I do love that it doesn't fall into generic tropes like some other zombie media has (cough, The Walking Dead Comics, cough, Kirkman has no talent, cough), but I don't know if Lo U is good because it avoids some of that.

The zombies do become pretty harmless late in the game for inexplicable reasons. Ellie gets the same treatment Clementine did in Telltale's Season 2 of The Walking Dead. Instead of being a realistic young girl who evades fighting or uses her environment (as Clem did in Ep1 and Ep2), she then becomes as strong as an adult and chops through zombies like they're nothing (Ep3). Ellie becomes too much of a one-man-army because the developers didn't know how to keep writing, or make playable, an adolescent girl. They just decided to make her a femme version of Joel. That realistic teenage girl? Nope, now she kills bandits and the infected with ease. Because reasons.

To me the entire game fell apart at the winter act, honestly. That's when all the magic string keeping the rest of the game together unraveled and it became evident that the devs got lazy. When they got lazy on the world, the plot, the canon, and the characters, there were no longer any smoke and mirrors covering up the highly repetitive combat, frequently brainless AI, and the features promised pre-release that got stripped out of the final product.

edited 10th Sep '15 12:58:04 PM by Jenaiqueserasera

In terms of gameplay, perhaps Winter is the worst. Particularly the part where you have to fight off multiple waves of infected. I did however enjoy playing as Ellie and wish we did so more.

That part nearly made me want to quit altogether.

Winter was definitely the lowest point of the story. Sadly in a lot of fiction the pen-ultimate act is the weakest. You keep building up to the climax, then need a little bit of filler to keep the plot moving so you toss in a random assortment of schlock, then you hit the climax.

Playing as Ellie was neat for sure, but like I said the devs did the same thing Telltale did with Clementine in their Season 2 game. Instead of making you play a realistic young girl, they just made you a reskinned Joel who can somehow kill off bandits and zombies with no problem. It made Joel a massive badass, but for this random teenager to be able to do it felt very lazy.

I dunno, I felt the pain when you couldn't stealth kill like Joel since Ellie has to jump on the enemy and go stab happy, it made trying to go about in a sneaky way a lot more difficult.

edited 11th Sep '15 1:24:35 PM by lycropath

To me, it came across as a bit of character development.

It was totally Character Development, set in motion when Joel had Ellie provide cover fire in the bandit-overrun QZ. He's been teaching her to defend herself and she's been doing so. Winter was her final exam, so to speak; she had to put the skills to use without the safety net of Joel to protect her.

She'd been relying on realistic skills and abilities up until then. By Winter she suddenly became a comic book superhero of tremendously overpowered proportions.

edited 11th Sep '15 5:42:52 PM by Jenaiqueserasera

Eh. As noted above she struggles more than Joel. Beyond that, the player character being able to handle a lot of enemies by themselves is a staple of action games. Realistic or not.

Fair enough point, but I liked that LOU at least tried to bill itself as something more gripping and realistic. It just got too comic-booky for me by the end.

Realistic skills like being invisible and/or invulnerable? When you're playing as Joel, enemies can't attack her and she can't be harmed by anything. She's able to run rampant around the battlefield because it's impossible to kill her prior to becoming a PC.

She just trades Infant Immortality for Action Hero tropes when Winter rolls in. And, as noted, she's still a weaker Action Hero than Joel.

edited 12th Sep '15 7:59:11 AM by TobiasDrake

A possible update about a sequel - Nolan North says he knows that The Last of Us 2 is in the works. However, Troy Baker claims to know nothing.

Seems to me the most obvious answer about why Baker isn't in the loop is that Joel won't be in the game. Neil Druckmann himself has stated that he's leery of risking compromising the ending of the first game with a sequel that features the same lead characters, and I think that's probably the right call. Both Joel and Ellie received a very satisfying, very fitting ending that tied off their respective character arcs nicely, and trying to add on to that further might just end up cheapening the whole thing. They've done all they can do with the duo, time for something new.

That said, I think just an adult Ellie, sans Joel, has a lot of potential. We could see how she was influenced by the events of the game, maybe see her become a littler harder and more "Joel-like." (Granted, we already saw a little of that, but maybe to a more profound degree now). Alternately, we could see her become a different kind of survivor, one that has actually managed to retain her humanity and idealism to a certain extent. It would be phenomenally difficult to pull of writing-wise, but then again, what isn't?

So, what does everybody think? Should there be a sequel, and if so, should it focus on the same characters (whatever form that may take), or is it time for something new?

edited 14th Sep '15 4:36:13 PM by RBluefish

I wouldn't call Ellie and Joel's ending fitting or satisfying. I got the impression that Ellie knew Joel was lying to her and that shit was eventually going to hit the fan one way or another. The Sequel Hook was strong with that final scene.

It was fitting and satisfying for Joel, the Fireflies, and the Cure plot, but Ellie still has more story in her.

edited 15th Sep '15 7:01:56 AM by TobiasDrake

The developershave coonfirmed that Ellie DID know that Joel lied to her. That was fully their intention. However, Ellie is apparently ok with this and that was an intention.

I like the ending. Its open ended and open to interpretation, but I feel like it has a sense of closure to it. It reminds me of the endings for a lot of Zombie/Apocolypse Literture's endings too.

Druckmann said his interpretation of the ending is that Ellie partially resents Joel for taking the choice from her, and that she is probably going to leave him eventually.

I've heard that.

I remember meeting Ellie's voice actress before and I asked her what she though and she interpreted it as the above; Ellie knows he's lying, but she understands why he is and she's ok with that.

I like that the two interpretations can still work though.

i think the ending works for joel and ellie, and it's best to leave that off on its own. the world itself on the other hand still has plenty of potential for unique, singular, human stories.

That's another thing I think people liked about it; The Scale. The story never gets bigger than its own characters. There's no "Evil Bad Guy is going to destroy the entire world" Dragon Age: Inquisition or "Evil Bad Guy plans on invading the Multiverse and making each alternate universe just as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc as he is using the magic powers of his daughter" Bioshock: Infinite kind of plot going on. The plot is really only concerned with the more human aspects of its own characters and their survival (and how those could be put at odd with "The Bigger Picture" logic most games run off of) and... I think that works better.

They could have had Joel let Ellie die and the world gets saved at the cost of her life. And it would have been no different than any other game out there. By having Joel refute that direction, it becomes so much more intriguing and different and it touches on a lot of emotions and traits that other games may not get into; even if this game leaves a lot of those traits up in the air for audience interpretation.

Its an interesting step into new territory and, considering how well the game was received, it arguably marks a point where Video Games can tell more comparatively dynamic and serious stories with "unconventional" endings and for that to work.

edited 15th Sep '15 7:19:44 PM by InkDagger