Reviews VideoGame / The Last Ofus

What the hell is the Last Ofus?

@wehrmacht

Have you seen Errant Signal's episode about the Last of US on youtube? You might want to check it out because I feel like he articulates a lot of the issues you had with this game. Namely, he said the game was kind of a "culmination" of the trends of the XBOX 360 generation and, although it had a good story, it still faced the problem of too little integration between story and gameplay. The player wasn't really trusted to get involved in the most dynamic and emotional scenes. People disagreed, obviously, but I thought he made some good points.

The Walking Dead had it much easier, because it was telling a generally nice story about a good man who loved a girl in a bad world. The Last Of Us was telling us how actually that story can be a terrible thing that strips away our humanity and destroys the world around us. It's message is actively pushing you away because at the end of the story it doesn't want you to like Joel. It wants you to realise that if in The Walking Dead, Lee loves Clementine enough to kill people for it, well maybe that's not a good thing.

It's not ultimately a sentimental story and it doesn't want you to like it's protagonist, but that doesn't necessarily mean it fails.

A story that gets you to care is generally better than a story that alienates the audience. Unless you're Bertolt Brecht or something.

=D for the reference. But I don't agree with this one, audience alienation is very much deliberate. The ending of the game is literally the new audience point of view character standing behind the old protagonist looking lost and isolated. The plot of The Last of Us is basically a series of steps from the beginning, where everything is very pure and simple and emotional, to that ending. Each step feels like 'well okay I can understand why they're doing this but still...' and so with each step you feel less onboard with what the protagonist is doing and more disconnected from him emotionally. In the last quarter of the game they start even switching out protagonists as your opinion begins to differ.

I actually thought the story design was breaking, I thought my disconnection was because the writers couldn't see that they were falling into writing the very worst of the cliche action hero protagonist and then I hit the end of the game and I realised that was exactly how the writers had wanted to make me feel because that was the hidden message of the game. The overt theme is 'survival' but that's actually a fakeout for the real theme of 'possessiveness'. Some critics were talking about the dadification of games in relation to TLOU but that's actually the trope that's being challenged here.

It's weird, only Spec Ops to my knowledge (and Metal Gear Solid 2) have ever before deliberately tried to alienate their audience. Even within films and books it's a rarity, but that was definitely what they were doing here and they were doing it with purpose.

I'm going to write a review sometime, but because it is so rare that we come across this kind of story I'm finding it hard to really capture what I want to say. Because TLOU also has a lot of little mechanical details about improvements to their combat, the slightly wonky balance of individual chapters, the pacing and the mechanics that you could dive into, but it's hard to think of those two elements in the same space (and with 300 words)

Actually it's funny you mention Brecht because the character of Mutter Courage is very similar to Joel and the settings and the way you meet characters has a lot of points of comparison too. They're both crossing war torn landscapes profiting over the people they meet without a care and very possessive of their family but not in a way that actually cares about those family members, they just care what the family members mean to them.

Yeah, I kinda got a couple hours into the game and kinds went to play other stuff 'cause the game was boring me and the characters weren't interesting.

The notion that the game is deliberately trying to alienate me is a bit of a tall order, honestly.

It specifically highlights it at the end. It really is what it's trying to do (although if you not in the first couple of hours, so you weren't turned off by that bit). The ending of the story is Look at what a cruddy guy the protagonist is. And he's never changed and never learned. Joel is one of those guys whose too self-absorbed to ever take anyone else thoughts on. If you don't believe it, look at how deliberately awkward and uncomfortable the very last cutscene is, or how about this: At the start of the game Ellie describes Joel as similar to Captain Ryan in her comic books and she hero worships him in a similar way.

This is the blurb of the last comic book you collect ... Captain Ryan's "sacrifice" has made him a martyr, an illusion Daniela won't dispel. But how long can she keep what really happened a secret?

You're meant to believe that this a story about a cynical world weary man with a rough exterior learning to be kind and love again as he finds hope in a new girl and obviously the story failed to get you on board with that part. But as the story continues you're meant to feel a little uncomfortable, like there's something wrong and then it shows the darker path it was actually telling beneath that.

It's 100% certain they were trying to alienate their audience. Not at the part you got off from the sound of it, but if you played the rest of the game, it would be clear to you as light is day that that was what they were trying to do. I mean Joel shoots Ellie's mother figure and only other friend

^ I don't think any of that is being entirely fair. To begin with, I think you're overstating Marlene and Ellie's bond quite a bit; their relationship would've ended up fraying just as much, because Marlene is Joe's opposite. [[spoiller: She's willing to sell Ellie out for her own sake, whether it be through handing her off to two strangers or killing her for the sake of a cure.]]

Furthermore, to single Joel out as the one specific "cruddy" person in the game is to ignore how bad every other adult except Tommy and his wife is shown to be, and what I think is one of the story's main themes. Namely, what perfectly ordinary people can become under the right circumstances. It's easy to overlook, but aside from maybe being a bit more temperamental than others, Joel was a normal guy when the outbreak hit, someone who could've gone on to be an average father and grandfather. His experiences hardened him, just like they did everyone else who lived long enough to see the main story.

If the goal was to alienate me from Joel, then it didn't work. He certainly didn't come out looking better than the other characters, but he didn't exactly look worse, either. He wasn't different, or special; he was just one guy who'd been fortunate enough to succeed in his goals and survive to the end of the game.

But the thing is it turns out that Ellie would have wanted to give her life for the cure. I agree that Joel is only as bad a person as most of the rest of the people you meet but by the end of the game it feels like Ellie is almost his prisoner right?. I'm not entirely sure, but I feel like they were drawing parallels with the guy who was with Ellie in the last chapter. Not that they want Ellie for the same reasons, Joel has Ellie to replace the feeling of having a daughter, but they're both using her for their own needs.

The thing is, Joel will happily kill someone to protect Ellie, he will kill a lot of people, people he knows, people he doesn't, people already lying on the floor, bleeding and unable to do anything. But he's not doing it for Ellie, because Ellie wants to find a cure and she wanted to be with the fireflies even to death. Joel knows this because that's why he lies to her face. If she wanted to get away, how do you think Joel would react? Do you think he'd let her go?

I agree that the apocalypse has hardened him and made him into what he is, but where I differ is I don't think the games saying he had to turn out like that. Tess, Ellie, his brother, and yes Marlene (And Ish) all faced hardening experiences but managed to retain their humanity. They did bad things, but they realised they were bad and eventually managed to back away from them. But Joel used the hardening experiences like an excuse. He never acknowledges that what he does is bad. He killed a person, he needed to survive. He kills five people, he needed to survive. He tortures two men and then kills them, he needed to survive. He shoots the wounded, he needed to survive. Joel would keep on telling himself he has no other option, that he's not doing a bad thing, right up until the point he became the last person on earth. He even kills a doctor, one of the last people on earth capable of finding a cure

And yes I think Marlene is ultimately shown as a good person. I think the game approves of her choice, which is why Ellie felt the same way. Because I think one of the messages of the game is that when you draw your personally boundaries too closely it can lead you to horrific things. Yes she's a girl, but how many others are going to die of the infection? It's destroying humanity. There are thousands of people who are going to die if they don't get a vaccine, humanity might never recover, and both Ellie and Marlene know it. Marlene knows it's a cruddy thing to do and she knows the people around her aren't aware of the magnitude of the choice, but you have to think of all the little girls who are going to get infected who you can't see right now. Ellie knew three little girls who she watched die in front of her because there was no cure or vaccine.

(Btw I do love that it's a game that you really can have discussions about)

To your first point, no, I don't think Joel would have let Ellie go, even if it'd been what'd she wanted. He would've dragged her away kicking and screaming if he had to, and told himself that it was for her own good.

But there's no reason to believe Marlene wouldn't have done the same thing if by some chance Ellie hadn't wanted to die. If she'd broke down in tears and begged for her life, Marlene would've had someone hold her down and sedate her. She might feel bad, but she'd do it. That Ellie turned out to have a lot of Survivors Guilt that pushed her toward one option seems more like a happy coincidence than anything, and even if it wasn't, if Marlene cared about Ellie's choice that much she would've let her wake up and say so just to be sure. I can't imagine either one of Ellie's "parents" would've respected a choice that didn't serve their own ends. That's what I think is the point.

To your second point, I don't think Tess "retained" her humanity; she regained it after she was given hope for a cure by Ellie, and she didn't really achieve redemption in the fullest sense until shortly before her death. And what if she had survived to get to Utah? Consdering how much she bonded with Ellie just getting her to the capitol, maybe she would've supported Joel's decision anyway.

I think Tommy only turned out as okay as he did because Joel was doing the dirty work, and aside from that, there's still a difference between the Tommy we see in the prologue and the ex-terrorist we see 20 years later.

It's true but what Marlene wouldn't have done is destroy everything around her for her Ellie or for the cure. She wouldn't sacrifice the human race to Ellie. I agree it's a happy coincidence for her that Ellie would have gone along with it, but Ellie is meant to be the guide for the audience, the fact that Ellie did want to go along with it is meant to suggest that it is the right thing to do.

The big thing is, Joel had his chance at redemption. He'd been a horrible person for a lot of his life, just like everyone in the world, but Ellie gave him his chance to change and for a moment it looked like it stuck. But when it became apparent that he would do anything to keep Ellie with him, no matter what she thought or wanted, that was when it was clear he'd missed that opportunity. Hope looked him in the face and he twisted it and turned it into the same evil he'd spent his own life doing.

If he'd saved Ellie and still killed all those people to do it, and killed the few people capable of saving humanity and killed Ellie's mother figure (and Marlene was Ellie's mother figure, she'd been looking after Ellie since Ellie's Mum died and was one of the people Ellie seemed to be talking about when she was mentioning everyone she loved had abandoned her). He was still capable of redemption after all that. It was when it became apparent that he didn't truly care about Ellie, just what Ellie meant to him, that was his moral event horizon.

And Marlene, Tess and Tommy didn't cross that point. Marlene acknowledged what a horrible person she was, which is something Joel would never have done. Tess admitted that she regretted all the things she'd done with Joel even if she'd never told him or never stopped doing it. Tommy was willing to put aside what he had.

Maybe life was either for them, but Joel still had his chance. You're probably a nicer person than I am in that you can sympathise with the situation that made him into who he was more than I do, and that's probably something I should change. But it doesn't stop him from being who he ultimately was and you have to worry for what life will be like for Ellie from now on right?

"but Ellie is meant to be the guide for the audience, the fact that Ellie did want to go along with it is meant to suggest that it is the right thing to do."

I'm not so sure that I can agree with that. Ellie is a character in her own right with her own desires and aims, and she undergoes an arc just like Joel does; to push her as a straight-up Audience Surrogate would mean that the writers were trying to force a particular viewpoint, and I simply don't think that was the case.

I actually agree with you that Joel's love for Ellie is rooted in selfishness, and if you go by Word of God, the last shot is Ellie is realizing it, too (although I still think it a little overly simplistic to say that Joel doesn't "truly care" about her). I just don't think it's entirely Joel's fault, because none of the other characters (not even David, if you agree with his VA) are shown to be completely good or evil, and I don't think it makes sense to assume Joel is any different.

Now, if you personally don't find Joel sympathetic at all, that's an entirely valid response. I just don't think he was written to be that way.

I guess he's not truly good or evil, but I think the fact that he's not very good is portrayed as a reveal. If you look at the arc of the comic books, first they're all about how the Captain is amazing and awesome, and then they transfer over to talking about the girl and then suddenly in the very last one they're talking about the Captain doing some completely awful thing.

And the start of the story is pretty sympathetic to Joel, you see the daughter he loves, you can tell that he's driving people away because of the grief over losing his daughter. He picks up Ellie and we're right on cue for the story about a crusty old man who learns to love again.

But the story doesn't follow that arc, despite them setting it up right? He fails to learn to love. And the events at the end ramp up with the awfulness of Joel's actions. He tortures people and he kills them. The David thing does a neat thing where first they suggest that you just killed a bunch of innocents, and then they justify it, so the idea doesn't take hold but it's planted in your head.

The barks on the NP Cs towards the end of the game start talking referring to Joel as a monster, for the first time you here NP Cs say things like 'that was my friend you killed.'

And then the climax where Joel kills a doctor whose barely any threat whilst his two friends cower in terror. That's not meant to feel heroic. And then it ends with that thing with Ellie.

So what I'm saying is, they left the actual awfulness of Joel as a reveal towards the end, they ramped up with the acts in ways that the player was less and less likely to agree with and left it on a sour note. I'm pretty sure it means that the writers did intend the player to diverge paths in thoughts with Joel (which they did by switching protagonists) and make it so you approve less and less of his actions.

I don't know if the writers intended you to be sympathetic to him as a person. It does make sense that they could be playing it as a tragedy 'look what the cruel fate has done to this man', but I do think this means there was a deliberate attempt to make you unsympathetic towards his actions and that they intended to create a jarring effect as the audience was deliberately disassociated with the protagonist.

He's an asshole at the very start of the game. Doesn't sound like much of a "reveal."

He's an asshole but they're invoking the story about a man who comes to care with the help of a young girl. At the very start he's a honest man who loves his family and has it taken away from him, it's kind of an audience expectation that the story is going to be about him healing from that pain

"But the story doesn't follow that arc, despite them setting it up right? He fails to learn to love."

No, I think it does follow that arc….to its logical conclusion. Joel learns to love again, but not necessarily in the right way, and for the wrong reasons.

"And then the climax where Joel kills a doctor whose barely any threat whilst his two friends cower in terror. That's not meant to feel heroic."

Not heroic, sure, but that doesn't mean it was meant to be seen in an altogether unsympathetic light.

I think the player might be meant to get caught up in it, but not like it on reflection.

And okay, learning to love in the wrong way. That's still the subversion of the story and ending with audience more apart from the ideas of the protagonist than they were expecting to be