The Last of Us [SPOILERS]

Big Knox

Retr0gamer wrote: »

WARNING! There's some major Spec Ops and MGS3 spoilers ahead.

Been thinking about this a lot today and just want to get it off my chest. The more I think about the surgery scene the more I think it was kind of terrible.

My two main problems is that it was a rip off of a similar scene from Spec Ops but the execution in this case was dire and whoever wrote it didn't understand why it was so effective in Spec Ops.

The scene from Spec Ops I'm referring to is the one where you are surrounded by the crowd. When I played it I thought this was one of those scenes where I'm being forced to to do something bad. I thought this because with the white phosphor scene before I realised what was going to happen and found there was no way to avoid it. I shot into the crowd.

It was only later when talking to a friend about the game that I found out that the game actually has lots of ways to approach various scenes in the game it's just that you never think that the these would be possible.

This is what makes Spec Ops so effective. You come to expect that you have no choice over how events will play out. It plays on it's own previous conventions and also MGS3 with it's brilliant ending where it forces the player to shoot the Boss. Because of this you don't realise the choice is there. However it is there and the game berates at the end for the actions you take.

When you put a player in a new virtual environment most often the player will test the boundaries of this new space. Where Spec Ops succeeds is that not only does it fool most players into thinking they have no choice but if a player decides to test the boundaries of the environment the developers have added scenarios for this eventuality. If I thought I was being clever in the above scenario in Spec Ops and shot into the air I would have been surprised to realise that the developers had taken into account this action.

And this is where the Last of Us fails. It tries to do what Spec Ops did so well without understanding why Spec Ops worked. You are put in a similar situation with full control over the character but since, as the I heard the writer say, they wanted to tell their own story, you have no choice in how it goes down.

After my experience with Spec Ops I decided to take a non-violent approach to this scenario. I shot over the doctor holding the scalpel. He didn't flinch. I walked up to him looking for a prompt or expecting him to swing at me, he just glitched and ended up pointing in the wrong direction. Then I shot him in the toe and he went down like he's been hit with a sniper rifle in the chest. My suspension of disbelief was well and truly shattered.

What Naughty Dog did was lie to the player. They put you in a position where you thought you had a choice but there was only one way to complete it, the way Naughty Dog wanted you to. They forgot the cardinal rule of game design that a player will test their environment and ultimately this scene came off far less effective than if it was a cutscene.

What a bizarre post. The game has nothing in common with spec ops and it doesn't try to. It's a set story and there is and was never any thought behind giving the player a choice. You kill the doctor/doctors and advance the scene, that's it. How you came up with the above is hard to comprehend. It's like you're looking for problems that frankly aren't there!

They put you in a position to feel the weight of the kill, to pull the trigger yourself and put the final play in motion of Joels ruthlessness and selfishness. There is no choice and ND never intended the player to think their was. You say you found the scene to be terrible but you're looking for way too much from it and making comparisons which to be honest I doubt anyone else even thought of but you.

Retr0gamer

It's only this scene I had problems with and as I've had to repeat myself many times I'm not annoyed the game gave you no choice. My problem is that in the linear narrative Naughty Dog was going for the scene was a bad choice to make.

Try this if you ever get to that scene again. Try to do anything but kill the doctor and see just how downright silly it is. It's why I think the approach MGS3 took was much better. It didn't give the player any affordances to make it silly.

My comparison to spec ops is to show the type of narractive that such a scene worked in and how it can be done properly.

tok9

I see your point Retro and did notice that you can make different choices in Spec Ops Kind of like Bioshock infinite to a lesser extent (or at least it's acknowledged in that game) but the scene you picked in Spec Ops is the worst example of that imo as I

did not want to fire the white phosphorus and I had no other choice... there is a rope right in front of me if I remember correctly and I couldn't use it till I fired the white phosphorus

This is my issue with your point, it's the most broken scene in Spec Ops imo.

I'm not disagreeing with you regards TLOU, if that is what happens ND should have made it look a bit nicer anyway.

Retr0gamer

Actually the scene I'm referring to in Spec Ops is the one

when the angry mob kill your team mate.

You do actually have a choice to make in that scene on what to do.

I actually think that the

white phosphorous scene

suffers from the same problems as the scene in the last of us since I figured what would happen but the game wanted me to play it out by it's rules.

Then again Spec Ops is such a weird game that I wouldn't put it past the developers that they made that scene that way intentionally.

NotorietyH

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's only this scene I had problems with and as I've had to repeat myself many times I'm not annoyed the game gave you no choice. My problem is that in the linear narrative Naughty Dog was going for the scene was a bad choice to make.

Try this if you ever get to that scene again. Try to do anything but kill the doctor and see just how downright silly it is. It's why I think the approach MGS3 took was much better. It didn't give the player any affordances to make it silly.

My comparison to spec ops is to show the type of narractive that such a scene worked in and how it can be done properly.

I don't know, I thought I remember someone saying that they triggered a second line of dialogue from the first doctor, and didn't shoot him but shot beside him, and he dropped the scalpel and cowered. Someone said it on either this thread or the other thread. I might be remembering wrong. Your point still stands about it though, as it seems too finicky, that you'd almost discover the choices by accident than by design. Didn't take away from the ending at all for me though.

Retr0gamer

Well I tried that and he didn't even flinch.

NotorietyH

YEah I don't know, it's odd. I'm probably remembering wrong. Personally I don't think it would work narratively to have the option not to kill the surgeon. It wouldn't make sense with Joel's mindset being what it is leading up to that. Killing dozens of fireflies to get to the room, and afterwards shooting Marlene in case she followed. That's Joel at his most desperate. I stood there for a good 30 seconds pointing my gun at the doctor, knowing I had to kill him, but really struggling to pull the trigger. So in terms of my experience, it worked really well. You might have to kill the first surgeon alright, but I think having it any other way would undermine the character development up to that point.

I was really glad not to have the choice for once in a game. Not realising I didn't have to kill the two nurses. Which made me realise I was probably just as desperate to get Ellie out of there as I was Joel.

Otacon

While I can see the point being made, it didn't affect me. As soon as I had control, I dropped all three doctors/nurses. At that stage, I was so involved in the game's story and characters that I genuinely wanted to save Ellie at any cost.

Dont be at yourself

Finished this a couple of days ago. It's undoubtedly one of the games of the generation, but for me technical accomplisments far eclipse the narrative ones.

Uncharted 2 was a watershed moment for me in triple-A games in terms of capturing not only believable worlds and characters, but also the many tiny ways that the characters interact with those worlds. In too many games, your avatar seems to float above the world, but the animation and physics in Uncharted 2 really grounded (literally) your character. The way he'd stumble on an incline or reach his arm out to a wall to steady himself, or any of the what must be hundreds of bespoke animations haven't really been bettered by other studios.

The Last of Us combines that same peerless production with some utterly fantastic sound design -- any studio could replicate the menacing clicks and screams of the zombies, but I don't think any other could so vividly create the shaky breaths of Joel as he cowers behind cover, or the gulp in his throat as he recovers from a brutal encounter. It's these tiny little details that add up to a much more convincing whole than even its big budget rivals.

In terms of game mechanics too, it does a huge amount right. The scavenging and crafting aspect -- a micro-management headache for me in most games -- blends perfectly with the setting and story and is the source of much of the tension the player feels. Some are really quite clever: it's not a co-incidence that the health pack and molotov cocktail require the exact same parts, and such stark choices really inform how the player approaches the game. The lift-and-carry plank/ladder puzzles start to get a bit repetitive, but it did add some variety and gameplay flesh on otherwise somewhat thin bones.

It's not perfect, though. For all Naughty Dog pared back the worst excesses of videogames, some vestiges remain and are all the more incongruous because of it. It's not far into the game that the player encounters Bill, who with his larger-than-life demeanour and one-dimensional personality seems more of a charicature befitting Dead Rising than a fully-rounded, believable character like Joel or Ellie. David, too, slips a little too far into pantomime villain, as if they don't trust us to pick up on subtlety and be able to rationalise the brutal violence against him. How much more powerful would that scene have been if we didn't know outright that he was a cannabilistic child rapist, and just merely suspected it?

The ending, for me, was perfect, and showed great mastery of game design. Too often, games offering choices are usually entirely broken, presenting binary black-and-white choices that can't gel to form a cohesive story. The Last of Us unabashedly has its own story to tell, and you're just along for the ride. What made it clever was the way it builds up to the encounter in the operating theatre. The difficulty spikes quite rapidly, and two key things help to get your bloodlust high enough to condition you to kill the surgeon without hesitation. One; you can't simply sneak through the floors of guards, as you normally could throughout the game. You need to kill them. Two; it gives you an assault rifle, the most powerful weapon in the game, with plenty of ammo. You are empowered, and it's hard not to enjoy unloading a clip into a group of soldiers, after spending so much of the game scrimping around with a half-empty revolver or improvised melee weapon. You almost revel in the violence, so when you burst into the theatre, it seems only natural to shoot the surgeon (I instinctively shot two, before the reality of my actions bore down on me).

And overall, how satisfying that the game ends on a real sour note, with the player's character shown to be something of a sociopath, Ellie in a limbo of neither being able to save humanity, but also losing trust in her guardian and only companion. It would have been so, so easy for Naughty Dog to kill off Joel or Ellie, and to have them create a vaccine or cure and save humanity, but instead we get something much less expected, and much more powerful. I hope their bravery holds and these characters aren't revisited for a sequel.

Retr0gamer

I actually liked Bill's character. He seemed one dimensional until I found the note from his partner just before the end of that chapter. That one note made all the difference to fleshing him out.

NotorietyH

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I actually liked Bill's character. He seemed one dimensional until I found the note from his partner just before the end of that chapter. That one note made all the difference to fleshing him out.

That's one thing I think they did a particularily good job with, fleshing out the secondary characters with small little details, that didn't feel crowbared in. Just hints about their past, and what type of character they are with small lines of dialogues or notes. The never over-explained anything. Even with Tess, when she's trying to convince Joel to continue on with Ellie she has that line like "I know there's enough of something between us that you'll do this for me," Or something along those lines. Said so much about their relationship, in just one line. Really solid, economical writing.

J. Marston

Otacon wrote: »

While I can see the point being made, it didn't affect me. As soon as I had control, I dropped all three doctors/nurses. At that stage, I was so involved in the game's story and characters that I genuinely wanted to save Ellie at any cost.

Exactly, I was completely engrossed in the storyline and didn't even think of trying things to test the limits of the game or my control over Joel. I walked up to the doctor and stabbed him with his own scalpel and then turned immediately to Ellie, I didn't even know you could kill the other doctors until I read it on here.

NotorietyH wrote: »

That's one thing I think they did a particularily good job with, fleshing out the secondary characters with small little details, that didn't feel crowbared in. Just hints about their past, and what type of character they are with small lines of dialogues or notes. The never over-explained anything. Even with Tess, when she's trying to convince Joel to continue on with Ellie she has that line like "I know there's enough of something between us that you'll do this for me," Or something along those lines. Said so much about their relationship, in just one line. Really solid, economical writing.

"There's enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me."

That line stuck with me too. It did a great job of letting you know the relationship between Joel and Tess and they did it without being the slightest bit cheesy.

Retr0gamer

David might have been an over the top character but I never felt like he felt out of place in the universe. In desperate times like that you always see the sickos come to the fore.

On the way to college today I saw a kid with a copy of Prince of Persia 2008 and it had me thinking how the ending of that game was similar to the ending of Last of Us. Of course Last of Us did it a lot better (the lack of player choice in this regard worked in favour of tLoU compared to PoP 08) and PoP 08 decided to ruin what would have been a very brave ending with a dreadful DLC follow up. There's also the Nolan North connection

NotorietyH

Retr0gamer wrote: »

David might have been an over the top character but I never felt like he felt out of place in the universe. In desperate times like that you always see the sickos come to the fore.

Yeah they did a great job with David. Any other game or even in a movie, that character could easily have been an over-the-top snarling villain, but they managed to even drop little hints and details of him that fleshed him out, and hinted at how he became who he was. It was interesting too hearing him talking about his mean being killed by a crazy man and a young girl. It gave you a sense that there's not as big a gulf between Joel and David really. Just giving a brief glimpse of how Joel could be perceived if we didn't know him.

bad2dabone

In the 20 years between Sarah’s death and the start of the game Joel had obviously done some dreadful things to survive, the fact that he was on “both sides” of the Hunters reveal that he was a product of the times, either he learned to do whatever it took to survive or you didn’t survive. Somewhere along the line Tommy had enough of doing whatever it took, and found another way. Joel carried on being who he had become - the first thing you do in game is help Tess assassinate a dodgy associate.
On the journey when they come in contact with davids group in the university it’s david’s group who open fire at them. Joel and Ellie are just defending themselves.
David calling Joel a crazy man is a bit rich considering what him and his group have done to survive – preying on other survivors and using them as meat.
But of course David’s group don’t consider themselves Crazy or evil, they’re just doing what they feel they need to do to survive – Unlike Tommy’s community. Or who knows, maybe they have freezers full of bodies too!
I think when joel finds ellie after the david section he’s fully accepted her as his surrogate daughter, and subsequent to the fireflies massacre he’s seen a chance to maybe carry on from where he left off with Sarah before the outbreak and to wipe his slate clean of the last 20 years.
I think he’ll be bitterly disappointed though.

NotorietyH

bad2dabone wrote: »

But of course David’s group don’t consider themselves Crazy or evil, they’re just doing what they feel they need to do to survive – Unlike Tommy’s community. Or who knows, maybe they have freezers full of bodies too!.

I wasn't saying Joel was as bad as David at all, but I thought that it was interesting hearing David say that, not because I agreed with his view that a carzy man attacked all his men, but in terms of some of Joel's other actions, and the stuff he hints at throughout the game, like saying he's been on both sides of an ambush. Our attachment to Joel as a character makes us naturally and by design feel more positive toward him, but hearing him being talked about in a different context by a character not connected to him, just for that second made me consider Joel differently for a brief moment. It adds to he character and the story. It's just great writing. A very effective way of showing different sides of a character by having people with different perspectives of him. As you said David doesn't consider himself crazy or evil, just doing what he has to (in his eyes) to survive. At the very base level of their character, you could use the exact same description for Joel. It's just how far they're both willing to go where you get the distinction. It just goes to show, there's not a wasted character in the whole story. I can't think of one character that didn't in some way show Joel or Ellie, or even the overall theme of the story in a new light, while being distinct, interesting characters in their own right. Which is harder to do than it sounds.

NotorietyH

Just thnking about it more, every character along the way is some sort of reflection or counterpoint to an aspect of Joel's character.

Marlene hands Ellie to someone else, Joel nearly does but doesn't. Henry can't cope with a family members death, and can't go on living, Joel, has never come to terms with his daughter's death (rightly so really considering how she died) but he does on, struggling to survive.

David takes that need to survive by any means from robbing and killing people to its horrific extreme losing all sense of humanity, whereas Joel, despite his past that's only hinted at when he talks about being on both sides of the ambush, still clings on to some sense of honour and humanity, up until that point anyway, you could say he loses that, or a big chunk is taken out of it by the ending.

Can't think of what Tess' would be necessarily off hand. Maybe she's just as smart as Joel, maybe more so. She's careful and very capable of surviving in that world, but still manages to get infected, unlike Joel. I don't know that one could be reaching a bit.

C14N

tok9 wrote: »

I see your point Retro and did notice that you can make different choices in Spec Ops Kind of like Bioshock infinite to a lesser extent (or at least it's acknowledged in that game) but the scene you picked in Spec Ops is the worst example of that imo as I

did not want to fire the white phosphorus and I had no other choice... there is a rope right in front of me if I remember correctly and I couldn't use it till I fired the white phosphorus

This is my issue with your point, it's the most broken scene in Spec Ops imo.

I think can see where Retro is coming from on this one comparing it to Spec Ops. In SO:TL, there are some key moments in the game not entirely unlike the surgery scene in The Last of Us where the game sets up like we have to do something but if you try to do something else, it acknowledges that and is ready for you. The outcome is generally the same either way but at least it is ready for you to try something different.

The example of shooting into the crowd was one. It basically has no effect on the story. The game pressures you into shooting at the crowd in self defence but they're forgotten about shortly after. On my first play I think killed just one person and let the rest run away.

Another point is when Konrad tells you to pick one of the hanging men to execute. You can actually do something else like shoot the rope or the snipers instead. The outcome is the same, both guys die either way (and it's later shown that they were both dead already) but at least they let you deviate without the game doing nothing.

At the WP scene, you can try to fight the enemy soldiers and the second time around I did. It even seems like it might work for a while but the game just piles too many on and if you go this way, you will die eventually.

This was a good way of not giving you any choice but also being prepared for you to actually make a choice, unlike in The Last of Us where the game evidently just sort of breaks if you deviate slightly.

I think the lack of decision at the end makes total sense and allowing Joel to leave Ellie wouldn't have made any sense in terms of character and plot (in fact I think the biggest weakness of Far Cry 3 was

suddenly giving you a choice in the ending even though neither of the options make much sense

) but they still could have put in some other situations that made it clear and sensible that shooting the doctor dead was the only way through. I don't think he should have attacked because I do think there is something significant in him being the first non-ally NPC who refuses to actually attack you but they could have made him actually react in some way when Joel walks toward him, even just by pushing him back. There was also the obvious chance that some players would try shooting him in non-lethal spots to disable him that could have been handled a little better.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

There's also the Nolan North connection

Yeah but you could say that about any game

krudler

Loved the ending, am so, so glad it didn't go down the route of having some giant boss clicker or human character who can withstand tons of gunfire, no boss fight or climactic battle (the firefly soldiers outside the operating room are no tougher than any other fight). The story is the driving force not the combat. It's not the 10/10 best game ever some are hailing it but it's damn close at times. If I had any misgivings about it they'd be:

Not enough times to avoid combat, too many areas where you had to murder a dozen people to trigger a cutscene, I prefered the idea you only had to kill when you were forced to or threatened not hunting down guys you could easily avoid. Ironically the last big collection of infected you can pass without firing a shot, in the tunnel.

Some of the AI is a bit stodgy, wait for guy to walk in door, shiv him, his teammate sees me do it, walks in after him. The odd few times you did see guys scatter and hide which was nice.

Thats about it really, overall I loved it. The world in which it's set is brilliantly realised, the scenery is beautiful at times. Many a time I just looked around some ruined building with trees and foliage in it or stared at some vista on a building roof, the Winter scene is gorgeous looking too. I loved the little character touches like Joel standing protectively around Ellie when you're hiding, or her whistling and fiddling with her backpack straps and keeping herself entertained if she has to wait around. The "float her along on a pallette" thing was overdone but at least she even made a joke about it.

and the bit with the giraffe, punched me right in the feels..

C14N

krudler wrote: »

the firefly soldiers outside the operating room are no tougher than any other fight

The Fireflies were definitely a bit tougher than most enemies, they took a lot more shots to go down. I think by this stage you were supposed to get the assault rifle which is apparently far more powerful than any of the other guns and this allows you to go a bit crazy for the last level but I didn't pick it up and it took me a while to get through plinking at them with the handgun. They were definitely a lot tougher though, a single rifle shot was usually enough to down an enemy for me before that but a rifle with full ammo and getting only headshots only killed two of the Fireflies.

Retr0gamer

Those guys had body armour which made them tougher. A fully upgraded rifle or scoped handgun will make mince meat of them since the had armour penetration that could be upgraded.

C14N

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Those guys had body armour which made them tougher. A fully upgraded rifle or scoped handgun will make mince meat of them since the had armour penetration that could be upgraded.

I neglected to get those upgrades, I kept wondering which enemies were armoured

jebus84

http://i.imgur.com/9ySramj.jpg


A The Last of Us 8-bit fan art piece

jones

I absolutely loved the ending in a word - perfection.
I cant remember the last time a game has affected me in the same way. I got GTA on the release day but i'm finishing my second play through of last of us first (just at the end of winter section trying to get all comics/tags etc) its very rare that i'd play a game twice and even rarer that i'd do it straight after my first play through

richymcdermott

Dunno if its just me but elena looks just like tess if she was bit older :L

Mickeroo

Who's Elena?

C14N

Not sure if anyone has posted this already but Naughty Dog put up an "alternate" ending scene:

Kiith

I loved the ending. Joel's actions were totally selfish, from the worlds point of view, but totally understandable from a human point of view.

The fireflies lost any sympathy i had for them after they decided to go ahead with the procedure, without explaining it to Ellie or letting Joel say goodbye. They took the choice away from Ellie, in the same way Joel did. But they did it in the hopes of a greater good, whereas Joel did it for her (and himself i suppose).

Kirby wrote: »

The thing is, she knows she is being lied to. She's not stupid. The manner in which she says "okay" points to this. She's decided that he's lying to her, but she's okay with it. That's the way her voice actor was told to play it in the studio and I think it came across well.

That's how i saw the scene as well. Ellie know's it didn't happen exactly as Joel said, but here is someone who is willing to do anything to save her. She talked about losing everyone who she had ever cared for earlier in the game, but she didn't lose Joel.

Also, did everyone go on a killing spree in the operating theater at the end. Seems like a few of you did anyway. I didn't shoot anyone, just walked up to the doctor and casually knifed him. Left the other two alive though, even after one nurse called me a monster (which, was kind of true).

Lemlin

Just played through the remastered version of this. I found the ending difficult at the time of play (I didn't want to kill the surgeon, actually googled a walkthrough quickly to see if I could avoid it) but now it makes perfect sense.

To be honest, what is left of society to save? Any person we've encountered through the game wasn't exactly helpful.

Henry only wanted to use Joel to help himself and left him when push came to shove. Barry wasn't the nicest of characters and helped us because he owed Joel. Then there are the Hunters who prey on anyone who comes into Pittsburgh. Not to mention David's crew who shoot first and don't stop to ask questions.

The fireflies also don't even discuss the options with Ellie and Joel. You have to ask how would it have played out if they'd sat both of them down and explained the circumstances? Chances are Ellie would have accepted her fate but they took the short cut and didn't allow her that option.

Just like they didn't give her a choice, Joel didn't. He's had twenty hard years of surviving and he knows the choices that have to be made to continue to do so.

Great post. I played it for the 1st time over xmas and agree with you.

Loved the game. Going to up the difficulty and start again soon.

Bit dissapointed that the dlc was so short but it was a good look into Ellies back story.

Any more dlc planned?