THE LAST OF US Tag-Team Discussion
Warning: While it's been roughly two months since Naughty Dog's The Last of Us hit the market, it's likely that there are more than a few BAD readers out there who haven't quite finished the game. As such, we want to offer a warning: the following conversation will contain massive spoilers about The Last of Us (particularly its back-half and final chapter). If you haven't finished the game yet, bookmark this page and come back whenever you do!
A few days after Naughty Dog released their latest PS3 exclusive, The Last of Us, I wrote a piece here at BAD kicking around a few thoughts about my first few hours with the game. I loved the game's extended opening sequence, its look, the writing and the characters...but I was many hours away from being able to properly review the game. Eventually, I found time to finish Naughty Dog's post-apocalyptic masterpiece, and immediately I set about organizing my thoughts for a follow-up piece.
During that time, I ended up having a lengthy conversation about The Last of Us with fellow Austinite and Zero Charisma director Andrew Matthews. Andrew and I have spent an absurd amount of time discussing video games in the past, and when it became apparent that he had just as much to say about the game as I did, I invited him to help tag-team this follow-up piece with me. In the conversation below, Andrew and I offer up our thoughts (some in agreement, some not) on a number of factors we felt contributed to the game's greatness and memorability: its writing, its voice acting, its cinematic cutscenes...and, of course, that ending.
As it says in the warning above, spoilers abound.
Scott: The last time you and I sat down to talk about The Last of Us, we quickly realized that, well, there wasn't really all that much for us to talk about. This was maybe two weeks after the game hit stores, a period during which I'd only had time to play through the game's first three or four hours. You, on the other hand, had managed to plow through the game's entire campaign in one or two marathon gaming sessions. Obviously, we weren't in a position to have much of a balanced conversation, and so-- ever the gentleman-- you agreed to table whatever thoughts you had about The Last of Us until I had a chance to complete the game, as well.
It wasn't until a month or so later that I finally found time to complete the game. I gotta admit: I didn't return to Joel and Ellie's world with excitement. After a jaw-dropping opening sequence, The Last of Us delivered three or four hours worth of gameplay that just didn't blow my skirt up. The characters didn't gel for me during that time, nothing in the story was impressing me. And while the game was certainly gorgeous enough, the voice acting top-notch, and the dialogue well-written, those early hours hadn't given me that nearly-instant sense of "total immersion" I'd been hoping for. But I had faith, and so I persevered.
As you already know, that relatively bland first quarter is more than worth playing through for what follows. After that stretch, The Last of Us hits its stride in a major way. From there on out, the game never stops building on its own momentum, ratcheting up the tension and tossing one brutal predicament after another at our heroes. If that's all it did, The Last of Us would still be a very, very good game. It doesn't stop there, though. Not by a long shot. Rather than rest on its laurels, Naughty Dog then takes all of that momentum, tension and brutality and blends it with something we rarely see in games: character development. Not exposition disguised as character development, either: The Last of Us' writers give us hours of brilliantly-written conversations, cutscenes and interactive sequences that exist solely to deepen our appreciation, understanding and (ultimately) our attachment to Joel (Troy Baker) and Ellie (Ashley Johnson).
The script is beautifully brought to life by Baker and Johnson's voice acting-- not to mention the gorgeous character animations, scenery and world-building on display-- but I think the commitment to character-building and the quality of the writing are what impressed me most about The Last of Us. I went from being not-quite-bored during those first few hours to straight-up frantic during the game's final level, wherein Joel must fight his way from one part of a Firefly-run hospital to another in order to save Ellie's life. After my fourth attempt to storm through this section failed, I realized that I kept dying because I was playing emotionally rather than logistically: I was-- quite literally-- running straight into a hail of bullets in an effort to save Ellie as quickly as possible. I was scared for her, furious with whoever had her, desperate to keep her alive. The Last of Us made me feel genuine concern-- fear, anger, panic-- over the "life" of a digital character. That was a first for me, and probably something I'll never forget. How about you? What impressed you most about the game?
Andrew: First of all, let me say that I am not the target audience for this game. I’m definitely more of an online FPS/open world RPG type of gamer and the highly linear, cinematic set-pieces that Naughty Dog is known for typically don’t interest me. Knowing that, I felt like my taste was validated by the first hour or so, which, as you said, didn’t quite click. I was drawn to the simplicity of the concept--two people in a hostile environment, with only each other to rely on--and instead you’re inundated with a bunch of very “video gamey” information about militaristic governments, shadowy rebel groups, curfews, rival smuggling outfits, etc.
I was also pretty disappointed that the first encounter with the dreaded “clicker” was in a cutscene! Talk about literally pulling the audience out of the action at a pivotal moment. I have to say I was glad when Tess finally bit it (the continually validated Tropes vs. Women notwithstanding) because I had a good feeling the tutorials would die with her.
And once the hand-holding is done, the game is finally able to do what it’s best at: strong, visceral gameplay. In a medium where a chainsaw attached to a machine gun is practically mundane, it’s refreshing that a simple 2x4 wielded by a desperate man can still shock. Fluid animations, clever AI and excellent sound design contribute to action so immersive, it never got old for me. Yes, some setpieces were still narrow and choreographed, but when the maps opened up into large playgrounds of sneaky, stabby freedom, I was hard pressed to remember combat so engrossing, where the dispatching of every enemy was a story unto itself. (I am adamant that the optimal experience is in Hard or Survivor mode, which seems to offer a more exciting balance of strength vs. vulnerability, aggression vs. retreat.)
While it was the gameplay that kept me from putting down the controller, an attachment to the characters crept up on me in a very organic way. I’m not a fan of cutscenes--even excellently produced ones like in The Last of Us. I’d much prefer a game to find a way to tell its story within the structure of its medium rather than switching to another. And I believe my emotional investment came less from the cutscenes than from the gameplay: the characters' shared struggles, mutual dependence, separations and reunions. The way that Ellie would share cover with Joel, crouched just under his arm, made me feel their connection more strongly than any cutscene.
And boy did it make me mad when someone tried to sever that connection. Like you, I pursued those last couple stages with fiery determination, and when I finally burst into the operating room, the surgeon barely had time to get out two words before I shot him dead with my last bullet. As a testament to how much care was put into the pacing and arc of the game, the most emotional moment for me (not the giraffes!--though that was nice) was literally the last playable sequence: Joel staggering out of the hospital carrying Ellie’s unconscious body. Even though there wasn’t much challenge in that “stage,” I am so glad Naughty Dog allowed the player to be a part of that moment rather than a spectator. It was important to me to see this part of their story with the same eyes through which I had been following their relationship from the beginning. And I didn’t mind Joel’s final decision at all. I would’ve done the same thing in a heartbeat if the choice were presented in-game rather than in a cutscene. Were you cool with the ending? I know some people found it a tad grim.
Scott: I'm eager to answer that question, but first I want to circle back to something you mentioned above: storytelling in cutscenes versus storytelling that occurs during playable sequences. You've mentioned your disdain for this particular mechanic to me in the past, and in most instances I'd agree with you wholeheartedly. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two major franchises (Metal Gear and Final Fantasy) that have turned me off completely due to the overwhelming number of cutscenes I've encountered while playing those games. It's frustrating to move your character ten feet across the screen, get sucked into a conversation with a character whose ten minutes' worth of dialogue boils down to "Go get this object for me," and then be given control of your character again...only to be stopped on your way out of the room by yet another character who initiates an unskippable, five-minute chat about, I dunno, the history of Chocobos. This sort of thing isn't entertaining anyone. In my humble opinion, it's an incorrect usage of this particular game design choice.
To my way of thinking, there's only one time for using unplayable cutscenes: when something extremely important and/or dramatic is taking place, and the game's director wants to frame that moment in a particular way. Maybe they don't want you idly wandering around the environment and randomly pointing your weapon at things while a character's delivering a vital piece of information, or maybe the game's director wants to tip you off to something useful in the environment by incorporating a visual clue into the scene that the player might otherwise miss if he or she were left to their own devices. If there's an understandable intention for these moments existing and they're presented in a truly compelling way (and they're not annoyingly lengthy), these moments get a pass from me.
The reason that The Last of Us gets a pass is simple: Naughty Dog does it up right. The unplayable cutscenes are genuinely cinematic, never overstaying their welcome and always delivering strong character work. These are interspersed with optional, playable dialogue-driven sequences (the giraffe scene, for instance, or the moment where you and Ellie explore the dusty interior of a long-abandoned record store) and playable-yet-scripted moments like the one you mentioned above with the surgeons. I never felt that there was a misstep in any of these moments (an unplayable scene I wished had been playable, or vice versa). Clearly, someone at Naughty Dog was putting serious thought into the player's experience.
A great example of this is one you've already noted: the seconds-long interaction with the surgeons in the Firefly hospital. Like you, I burst into that room and emptied whatever gun I was holding into the bastards that had the audacity-- the nerve!-- to try and take Ellie from me. It was only later, while reading Kotaku's excellent interview with Naughty Dog's creative director, Neil Druckmann, that it occurred to me that not shooting the doctors was an option. The whole interview's worth reading, but here's the pertinent part:
"The ending," Druckman said, "when Joel walks into the operating room, it used to be one giant cutscene. It was quite a bit different. And there was a designer, Peter Field, who advocated for it to be playable. And he argued for it, and we'd kind of wrack our brain for how to do it, and eventually he was right. We scrapped the whole cinematic and made it playable. And it helped even moreso than we had initially, the beginning really mirrors the end."I asked if Druckmann could estimate how playtesters fared when called upon to shoot the doctors. "I don't know the numbers," he said, "it's interesting. Sometimes people don't realize they can shoot all the doctors, and sometimes they don't realize that they don't have to shoot the doctors. And sometimes like, "Hey, I don't care, I just went in there guns blazing, how dare they do what they're doing!" And some people were disgusted that they have to shoot the first doctor."
"We have exit interviews after our playtests in-house," Straley said, "and we ask questions about difficulty and weapons and all sorts of different ramping things, and at some point, we walked through the game linearly. And once they get to the doctor's office, you'll always have, because we'll have like two or three people in the room at a time, and inevitably, there will be an outbreak of an argument between somebody and the other people in the room about like, 'Did you kill them all?' 'I murdered 'em all.' 'No, I let them all go, I wish I didn't have to kill that one,' 'I took out my flamethrower and burned them to a crisp.'
Interesting stuff. I can't imagine the person that wouldn't take those bastards out, but...hey, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, right? The point is, we had the option. If we hadn't, I'm sure people like you and me (who have no qualms about mowing down a roomful of doctors who are-- when ya get right down to it-- trying to save the human species) would've felt a little cheated, either consciously or not. I'm glad that the people at Naughty Dog are putting this sort of thought into their designs, and wish more companies were doing the same. If everyone handled their cutscenes with this sort of attention to detail, I'd be a lot less annoyed with the concept of cutscenes in general.
Now, to answer your question: the ending rocked my casbah. I was left speechless by it. There's so much going on in that final exchange between Joel and Ellie, it took me watching the scene three or four times before I felt I'd properly absorbed it. There's the surface-level dialogue, wherein Joel doubles-down on the lie he told Ellie about what took place at St. Firefly hospital, and that alone is damn powerful stuff. We reach the conclusion of this epic adventure and are forced to think about just how good of a guy Joel really is (for the record, Joel gets my vote), which-- considering how black or white most video game heroics are-- is more than a little subversive. Then you've got the things that are going unsaid in the scene. Here, let's all watch it again (starting at 3:35 or so):
The character animations and voice acting are pulling double duty here. There's a number of moments here worth examining, but in the interest of keeping this thing at non-Infinite Jest length, I'll point out my favorite. It occurs at 4:35, right after Joel tells Ellie he struggled a long time with survivin'. He delivers the line...and then he glances down at his watch, a gift from his daughter, Sarah. Ellie has firmly become Sarah's replacement by this point, and after that glance at the watch, we know precisely what Joel's thinking when he reminds Ellie that we must "keep finding something to fight for." I didn't even notice this the first time I watched the scene, and when I did I was ready to buy all the beers for the people who brought this thing to life.
How about you? Did the ending leave you satisfied?
Andrew: I liked the ending a lot. Clearly the writers at Naughty Dog wanted something more emotionally complex than “He saves the girl. The End.” It was the termination of a well-planned character arc for Joel that made sense, yet wasn’t predictable, and it genuinely kept me thinking long after it was over. (You know an ending is solid when you realize you’ve sat through all the credits and have been staring at the “Press Start” screen for fifteen minutes.) However, there is still a bit of a disconnect to solemnly ponder the nature of humanity after a dozen or so hours devoted mainly to shooting, stabbing and bludgeoning hundreds of people to death.
This game has been compared to The Road, though that comparison seems only apt in regards to the cutscenes. In the actual gameplay, as in the vast majority of games, violence is meant to be enjoyed, and death is never not fun. I’m not moralizing--I played it for the combat and loved it for the combat. I guess that’s just the inelegant result of mashing two media together: you get a Frankenstein hybrid of film and game. One half wants to be a visceral thrill ride of vicarious violence, while the other asks us to meditate on the horrors that man is capable of. The use of cutscenes makes the seam all the more pronounced.
Of course, it’s not like this relatively young medium is going to develop an entirely new narrative vocabulary overnight. As you said, cutscenes are a necessary evil in connecting with audiences, and it’s hard to think of any game that’s done it better. But while Naughty Dog’s aims are high, the kind of video game storytelling that I find truly exciting is not that which best mimics film, but shrugs off the conventions of film altogether. (It’s not that I don’t love film. That’s the problem. Video games are never going to do cinema better than cinema.) Portal is an obvious trailblazer, as well as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. I’m also very excited to try out the new game from the Fullbright Company, Gone Home, which I’ve already heard some people claim has a very engrossing story, told fully via exploration by the player.
Scott: How would you feel about a sequel? I vote "nay".
Andrew: It honestly hadn’t even occurred to me to anticipate a sequel until just now. I feel like Joel and Ellie’s story reached a satisfying conclusion, and the world is not so unique that it demands another visit. What I would love to see employed again (and the main reason that I would play a sequel) is the gameplay mechanic, or rather the particular approach to combat that I considered the true revelation of The Last of Us. As a fan of video game violence (I can say that, right?), I think we’re well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to the scope and badassery of on-screen carnage. I just watched a demo of the upcoming Dead Rising 3, in which a motorcycle crossed with a steamroller and a flamethrower mowed down hundreds of burning zombies in a cloud of blood and fire that filled the screen to its edges and I felt nothing. The goal for many games these days seems to be to offer the most over-the-top and simultaneously casual violence possible (it’s practically the raison d’être for the Saint’s Row franchise).
Naughty Dog has brilliantly gone the opposite direction with The Last of Us, building a combat mechanic that’s intimate but weighty, with a protagonist who (unlike the cold, efficient Sam Fisher, for instance) is continually off-balance, desperate and, most importantly, scared. That’s what got my blood pumping and if a sequel to The Last of Us is the only place I’ll get to experience that again, then so be it (but if Joel has a rocket launcher or a chainsaw or a chainsaw attached to a rocket launcher, I’m out). Are you a connoisseur of video game violence as well, or am I just a weirdo?
Scott: No, no, not a weirdo. I know what you mean. I'm sure hysterical conservatives would disagree, but I think there's a lot to be said for game violence offering a healthy release for pent-up aggression. That said, I would never throw The Last of Us on for this sort of release. As you've noted, the violence in The Last of Us is scary, desperate and extremely jarring. There's this hard-scrabble element to it, something that makes the very exchange of blows feel like the player is just barely making it through the encounter alive.
This isn't a tone I want to revisit if I'm looking to get my pent-up frustrations purged. For that, I prefer something a little more cartoon-y in its execution. Your Grand Theft Autos, your Bullestorms (so underrated), your Gears of War games. If I'm feeling a little more thoughtful, I'll plug Battlefield 3 in. I want to feel just a little overpowered in those gaming sessions, not the opposite...and The Last of Us consistently puts you in a position where you're always just a little (or, now that I think of it, a lot) underpowered.
One of the problems I had with Bioshock Infinite-- a game that, on the surface, strives to deliver many of the same things that The Last of Us does-- is that I always felt a little too overpowered. The bigger problem, of course, was that the combat kind of sucked and that it kept interrupting what was an otherwise fascinating experience, but feeling like I could just lay waste to each new gaggle of enemy types was definitely a contributing factor to my dissatisfaction with that game. Speaking of which, the word on the street is that Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us are the two obvious frontrunners for "Game of The Year" consideration. How'd you feel about the former?
Andrew: Bioshock Infinite is a good example of how, in my opinion, gameplay trumps story. (At least in this moment in this genre of video games.) While I was intrigued by Infinite’s story and setting (metaphysical sci-fi is right up my alley) I just couldn’t get into the gameplay and ultimately sold back my copy uncompleted. The combat was everything The Last of Us wasn’t: noisy, excessive and weightless. Instead of a desperate struggle for survival, it was just a question of how many respawns it would take to chip away at some big cartoon robot’s health bar. No encounter gave me a sense of accomplishment, because it never felt like a smart strategy was possible or necessary, other than catching health potions when Elizabeth throws them at you.
Ironically, I was much more enthusiastic about the younger franchise often accused of being a Bioshock clone: Dishonored. There certainly are some stylistic similarities, but whereas Infinite leans more and more heavily on spectacle to keep players engaged, Dishonored works to expand and heighten gameplay with intricate open worlds, true player choice and terrific combat variety (real variety, not just “Shall I fry him with electricity or fireballs?”) Dishonored also wonderfully, impossibly gives players the option to turn off objective markers, which seems like an inconsequential option, but in practice turns the levels into marvels of exploration and discovery, instead of the narrow, linear trudges towards the goalpost that so many other games become.
Scott: Any final thoughts?
Andrew: Well, I guess my overarching point is that I’m always going to go to books and movies for great narrative and I’m going to go to games for great gameplay. In the case of The Last of Us, both are very, very good, but if the story had been not so good, I would’ve still stuck around for the top-notch action. On the other hand, if the gameplay had sucked, I don’t think the story would’ve been enough to keep me interested. I’d just rewatch The Road and save myself ten hours.
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Special thanks to Andrew Matthews for joining us for this two-headed review. He and co-director Katie Graham's Zero Charisma (read Devin's review here, see the newest trailer for the film here) opens on a multitude of platforms on October 8th, while you'll be able to catch the film theatrically when it opens in select theaters on October 11th. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is currently available everywhere that badass games are sold.
