The Last of Us discussion (spoilers will be a-plenty) stay out if you haven't finished the game

[Docwagon 856]

I finished the Last of Us yesterday.

 

Overall, I liked the story.  The voice acting and animation is good.  The scene were the giraffes bring Ellie out of her shellshock is one of my favorite scenes from any video game anywhere.  You really feel emotionally invested in her at that point, and you're rooting for her to break out of it and return to her former chipper self.  The giraffe thing, and they way its presented, is top shelf.

 

However a few things degrade the story, IMO.  I can suspend disbelief for the whole "shit ton of apex predators with a dwindling prey source still seem to be doing just fine and multiplying" thing common with zombie themed games.  I can suspend disbelief when guards routinely act like Star Trek Red Shirts and wander down dark alleys by themselves to investigate the sound of a bottle breaking, and promptly forget they were in a firefight if they survive.  I can suspend disbelief that there's always a handy ladder or plank right where you need one, and that you never bother to remove them to keep your enemies from having an easy way to follow you.  I can sort of suspend disbelief when you kill someone and can't take their gear (the guy who was just walking around with a shotgun apparently has no shotgun or ammunition once you kill him).  I can't suspect disbelief of "no fucking way" moments in the story line in a game that's primarily about the story.

 

1) When Joel falls on the rebar and it goes through his abdomen.  That's pretty fucking hard to suspect disbelief on.  One, the way they get him off would have torn him up even more.  With as many blood vessels as he'd have torn, he'd have blood out really fast.  That's why EMT's are trained to cut the rebar off and leave it in the body to block the blood vessels up, its not removed until the person is in surgery.  With all the bacteria released into his bloodstream from his digestive tract being punctured (no way that missed his intestines), no way in fuck a single injection of penicillin is counteracting that.  Then there's the fact   de passes out, falls off a horse, and his only help is someone who isn't strong enough to get him back on a horse, yet somehow manages to get him to another neighborhood, while he's bleeding out, and apparently sews him up so good his internal organs are working just fine.  He should have punctured a thigh if they wanted heavy but survivable blood loss, hampered mobility, and a survivable infection setting in.

 

2) Going to the hospital, its apparent you're gearing up for a big fight.  There are more supplies available than anywhere else in the game.  It ruins the surprise of having to continue to fight.  Arriving and having to run what your brung, or only gaining the supplies after the fighting starts, would have preserved the surprise much better.

 

3) Oh, bullshit.  They have to kill her instead of just taking cultures?  That's not only stupid, that's ridiculous.  You're going to kill the one source of new samples that you have?  In a world where refrigeration relies on generators and whatever gas you can find in tanks of abandoned cars that are years old?  I get its a plot device to make a moral conflict (one that, like every other choice in the game is made for you since you are playing  a movie, not an RPG), but that's just too damn dumb to feel real.

 

4) Oh, bullshit, "they stopped looking for a cure?"  How about "they got the cultures they needed, and we left"  How's that going to play out for the relationship with the word inevitably gets back?

 

So really, everything you did was for nothing.  Actually, it was for worse than nothing.  More scientists/doctors who understand the underlying principals of making a vaccine are dead.  One more band of survivors is decimated and stripped of its leader, and for what?  That's incredibly unsatisfying.  I can get futility in the real world, I like to "win" in video games.

 

 

 

[deterioration 443]

I beat it not to long ago. Big ups to Bees for letting me borrow it! 

 

 

 

Preach! Everything you said I agree with. The enemy AI being what it is, the friendlies getting in my mother fucking way all the time, giving my position away, starting fire fights when I'm trying to creep quiet with 3 rounds... all were infuriating. Along with the gaps in reality.

[JsinOwl 644]

I understand all of what your're saying, but none of that bothered me.  With the enemy AI, yes, it is weak, and their dialogue is lame. That said, it's also a function of difficulty. If you crank it up to Survivor mode enemies, are smarter, more aggressive, and harder to sneak up on. Makes them a bit more realistic.

 

Being able to pick ammo off of every enemy would have made the game too easy as would enemies not having guns at all. So, it's an imperfect compromise. Didn't bother me. 

 

The ladder plank thing I didn't think added any value at all. It didn't bug me, but I thought they could have made progressing more of problem solving exercise, as opposed to, where's the plank at, I know there's one around here. Missed opportunity to make the game better.

 

Story stuff:

Honestly, I think the majority of people (including myself) don't really know what sorts of injuries can be heal on their own. I understand that infection (hah) would be a huge problem, but aside from that, I don't intrinsically know whether that kind of injury would be 100% fatal. The one shot of penicillin was weak, but what can you do, the story needs to be moved along. So whatever, I got over it pretty quick. As far her moving Joel, I think that scene was necessary for the suspense. Assuming she was able to slow the blood loss (again, you have way more knowledge of this than joe average) she could have dragged him out of sight until nightfall, fashioned a stretcher and dragged him with horse. It's very much possible that she could have found a way to move him.

 

I honestly never noticed the supplies thing leading up to the hospital. I got there not knowing what to expect. I figured there would be more fighting to go, but I didn't necessarily think it would take place at the hospital. Possibly after leaving the hospital, I don't know, but it certainly didn't ruin my surprise.

 

Number 3 is a just a device to force Joel's hand. I agree that a culture should be all that's necessary, which is why I supported Joel's action. The fact that they needed to kill her showed a significant level of incompetence and callousness in my mind. If they're not even going to attempt to figure out how to do this in a non-fatal way, then fuck them, they lost their chance. So I totally get what you're saying, it just didn't bother me, it didn't snap me out of my being enthralled.

 

Last point, your recommended lie has flaws too, years later when there's still no vaccine being distributed what will she think? Why would word get back? Tommy hadn't seen a Firefly in years and Marlene was probably the only one who would have had a good idea as to how to find them. So, that one didn't bother me all.

 

It wasn't all for nothing because the story isn't about CBI or even finding a cure, it's about Joel, Ellie, and their relationship. All that other stuff was there to add drama and context. I think of the ending as a win because it was the right ending for the characters and their journey together. From the start, where Ellie is cargo and Joel is the smuggler, to Ellie beginning to care for him and Joel rejecting it because he can't let go of survivor mode, then Joel coming around to realizing that he does care and he's got nothing else worth living for. Ellie risks her life to save Joel, and Joel risks his to save her to seal relationship. She has become a daughter to him and he can't lose his daughter again, he just can't, so he finds a way to save her and try to protect her from her own feelings of guilt. It's the perfect ending to an amazing journey.

 

I think this gets into my "What type of gamer are you" thread, go there if you haven't. I think I'm just the type of person feels more and thinks less during a game like this. When I carried her to the elevator at the end my heart was in my throat. During the rebar injury and the slow journey out, my heart was pounding so hard I could practically hear it. When he's consoling her after the final encounter with David and calls her baby girl I started crying.

 

That whole scene, where she kills David and Joel arrives, when the sound fades and you're left to wonder what he's saying and you see her crying but nodding her head because she knows he's gonna take care of her. That shit right there is the single best scene in the history of video games imo.

 

Then there's just so much other stuff. So much of the dialogue throughout the game just makes me smile or chuckle. The scenes with Tess and Sam/Henry were gutting, the story of Ish and the survivors in the sewer I found really moving. Just, so much awesome. But it was all so awesome to me because of how it drew me in and played with my emotions, if it didn't do that for you, then I can see why the game would fall flat.

[Docwagon 856]

The game didn't fall flat, like I said, I enjoyed it.  It was just distracting and annoying with the things I mentioned.  Maybe its like watching The Hunt for Red October with a guy who served on submarines.  Even if he likes the movie, he gets distracted because ladders aren't where they should be, Navy guys are wearing incorrect uniforms, buttons and levers are missing or doing different things, etc.  Things that break the immersion for him, but have no affect on the rest of us.  (Note:  personal experience, don't see the fucking Hunt for Red October with a guy who spent 16 years on nuclear submarines).

 

Its one reason I don't watch Army movies.  When someone salutes an NCO, when officers where garrison rank in the field (shiny vs drab), when someone uses the wrong nomenclature, it breaks the immersion for me.  Don't even get me started on how demolitions is handled by Hollywood.  Fucking timers and cut the red wire?  Gah.  I fully understand its a plot device, just like some of my issues with TLUS, but it distracts me from the story because I know better.

 

However, those are limited to a fairly select group of people with expertise.  I think most folks would guess that ripping a hole in your intestines would lead to death.  The improper way of getting him off of it, ok, select group of people.  Knowing releasing poo into your blood stream = real bad, most people who stop and think about it.

 

The ladders and planks thing serves one purpose. A cheap and easy way to stretch out game play.  If you spend 30 minutes playing chutes and ladders, that's 30 minutes of real game play that doesn't have to be written, voice acted, and coded.  That equals money.

 

Let's compare how you view TLUS ending vs ME3 ending.  To me ME3 ending was fine, because one lone commander doesn't generally shift the entire course of a war.  Your decisions in ME3 matter on the microlevel.  If you get your crew killed, if you save certain civilians, if some people get the supplies they need.  That's realistic.  The war effort doesn't hinge on if one squad lives or dies, but a battalion commander's decisions can be what makes the difference to that particular squad.  In TLUS, you don't get to make any decisions, the game makes them for you.  Your decisions have the chance to potentially dramatically alter society, not just a war but humanity's survival, because you hold the only key known to be possible to make a vaccine from.  The game could easily have been written to let you win, to reason with the doctors, to find another group, whatever, and maintained the relationship building.  Instead you get what you got.  Futility.

[JsinOwl 644]

I don't quite get what you're saying about the ME3 ending, because it's very much one lone commander deciding the fate of the universe with one decision. I would have preferred a united galaxy prevailing without the prothean uber weapon.

But ME3 is an RPG, it's all about choice, The Last of Us isn't. I think for the type of game it is, a strong narrative is preferable to player choice. It's also intended to force you to think about the value of the cure versus Ellie's life. It's supposed to leave you troubled and unsure of what is right and wrong. That may not be what you want, and generally speaking, I prefer all my stories to have super happy endings, but in this particular case, the ending just felt right to me.

*shrugs*

There's really no logic to it, I can't explain a lot of it, I just know when all was said done I felt immensely satisfied and wouldn't change a thing about it, except may the ladders and planks (which no way amounted to 30 minutes ).

[Docwagon 856]

Perhaps I misunderstood the arguments against the ME3 ending, but I thought the complaint was none of the decisions you made UP TO THE FINAL DECISION mattered since you got the same 3 options at the end regardless of what you did.  My argument was that what you decided DID matter, it just didn't affect the end result of the war.  As in all of those decisions were pointless.  To me that's like saying that what one commander did that saved or destroyed some lives is negated because the decision was made to drop an atomic bomb.  Shepherd just happens to be the guy who gets to make all those little decisions, but also gets to be the guy who decides if the a-bomb is dropped or not.  The decisions leading up to that don't affect if he has an a-bomb to drop or not, but don't make the decisions irrelevant, only irrelevant to the outcome of the war.

 

 

Anyway, in the end its likely a product of different experiences.  I liked TLUS, but not as much as I liked Skyrim, and it doesn't hold any appeal to me to replay the campaign.  I don't watch movies a second time very often either, though.

[J4MES OX4D 9,979]

I've just finished The Last of Us Remastered and it's definitely one of the best games I've ever played despite some flaws.

 

The narrative wasn't quite as deep or as interesting as I was expecting but the characters were all intriguing and it made for a wonderful story but just lacked that emotion in the end I found. The locations were absolutely stunning with some beautiful scenery and the atmosphere was often tense but amazing to explore. The gameplay was generally basic with a simple inventory and push-button mechanics but I found this absolutely fine as opposed to some depth-driven, overly-complex games in similar genres. The looting and items were basic but I had fun exploring every nook and cranny to recover gear. The AI was a massive letdown though as were the inconsistent stealth mechanics and this did discredit the gameplay and how you approached some situations as you progressed. Going loud or staying quiet didn't really affect the end-result. Also shooting someone with a handgun who is in possession of a shotgun yet he drops handgun ammo was a bit bizarre and it seemed replenishment was mostly dictated on the weapon you were using which was annoying if you were down to a weak gun and needed the ammo the enemy was using on his more powerful weapon that you were out of bullets with. The game also got stale on occasions; particularly with the ladder situations and water scenes. 

 

The story was very engrossing and it developed from a survival standpoint into something more personal for Joel as time wore on. It wasn't plot-heavy but the gist was simple yet spectacular; save the girl and humanity forever could be wiped out or potentially save the world at the expense of the girl. The ending certainly leaves the doors open for a sequel although it was quite a rapid but dramatic departure to the credits. Joel's lie did impact me and you could feel the bond he had with Ellie was very important to him after what they had been through and what happened to his daughter. A part of me wants to stick up for Joel as I warmed to the character but I also see him as a baddie and a guy that delivered a middle finger to humanity. The fact that Ellie questioned him about what he did shows that she is aware of her importance and knows that the fate of the world is on Joel but her quietness suggests trust isn't all there despite their dependence on each other over the course of the game.  

 

The one thing about the game that really raised my eyebrows was when Joel fell onto the metal bar sticking out of the ground. It went straight through his abdomen and I'm sorry; that would kill anybody especially in those circumstances. The amount of blood lost plus the arteries that would have shredded in that incident would be fatal 99.9% of the time even in state of the art medical care. A towel and some tape which the game demonstrates in the Left Behind DLC would not suffice in the slightest. This somewhat damaged the story for me as I played out the latter stages in disbelief and awaited Joel's death. I'm no medical expert but I find this whole scenario very bad for the writers. I'm sure they could have found some alternative e.g Joel gets shot in the arm or something but the first thing that came to me when the incident occurred was; he's dead.  

 

Despite the ropey AI, occasionally stale parts and simplistic style; TLOU is an absolute masterpiece for me. The slick presentation, gripping narrative, tense and varied locations along with the basic but fun exploration are just some of its strengths. I've just started on the DLC but thoroughly enjoyed the main game as it was something fresh, exciting and very satisfying to play.