There are few games that I follow as closely through their development as The Last of Us. I've always enjoyed Naughty Dog games ever since the old Crash Bandicoot days on the original Playstation, and the Uncharted Trilogy remains my favorite franchise for the current console generation. It's something about the way that Naughty Dog writes their characters, and their dialogue that makes things more relateable than other studios' games. Their characters aren't just plot vehicles, they feel like real people. They communicate with each other like real people would, and without the usual bravado that most video game heroes succumb to.
When I first heard that ND was making a survival adventure game, I was more than a little surprised that their next game was taking such a serious tone. The Uncharted series has its dark moments, but nothing like what they were promising with The Last of Us. To be honest, I wasn't even sure they could pull it off. Nathan Drake was always capable of showing a dynamic range of emotions, but in the end he relied on his own humor to stave off the horrors of his own deplorable deeds. Everything I read about The Last of Us before its release indicated that the campaign is filled with heavy, emotionally raw subject material. Naughty Dog had crossed over into the darker side of story driven gameplay.
My sources weren't wrong. The Last of Us is a pretty grim game so far, and though I haven't finished the campaign yet, it's pretty clear that things aren't getting sunnier any time soon. It's interesting to see how much this game really contrasts with what Naughty Dog did with the Uncharted games. Nathan Drake's exploits were always these grand, sweeping adventures that find their grounding loosely tied to real world mysteries and mythologies. Furthermore, Drake is larger than life in his own right as a character. He can do it all. He's acrobatic, charming, intelligent, and he's merciless as he fights his enemies and the environment.
By comparison, The Last of Us paints a much more relateable picture. It's true that the post-apocalyptic world that the main characters Joel and Ellie must navigate through is well traveled territory, but it feels much more like something we can imagine ourselves living in. The landscape is harsh and unforgiving, and traversal is more realistic. There aren't any convenient hand holds for scaling buildings, and many of the obstacles are either man made or they are a result of the world's natural state of decay. It's brutal, but it probably hits the mark better than most zombie survival games have to date.
Then there's the character interaction. TLOU doesn't offer much in the way of humor, which is a pretty big change for the developer. The story this game is trying to tell isn't some light hearted tale of companionship and compassion. TLOU's characters have grown accustomed to the harsh world they live in, and they act in a way that they feel is required to survive. Joel is ruthless because he has to be, and it's important to understand that he isn't the game's real hero. I haven't finished the campaign yet, so I don't know if Joel ultimately finds his redemption, but it's clear that he hasn't always been comfortable with the moral ambiguity that the world has forced upon him.
Ellie, on the other hand, has grown up without ever knowing the world that Joel and the others took for granted. She's tough, but she has also been sheltered to a certain extent. In the beginning of the game, she talks about how she had never been outside of a quarantine zone before. Instead, she grew up in the relatively safe custody of the rebel Fireflys and under the protection of the military. This innocense is what makes some of the random dialogue so great as Ellie and Joel travel together.
At one point, Ellie starts making odd sputtering sounds with her lips to which Joel inquires whether she is feeling alright. She tells him that she never learned how to whistle, and it makes sense. In a world where everyone is trying so hard to cope with such overbearing hardships, why would anyone take the time to teach a child to whistle? It's one of the joys that has faded from their world. It also makes it all the more comical and triumphant when Ellie later masters the trick taking Joel, and us as players off guard during a later sequence. Little touches like that pull players into the game more than action alone could. Ellie and Joel may not be as chatty as Drake and his cohorts, but they still come to life just as convincingly.
I won't go into gameplay elements at this point since I haven't finished the game, but expect to see the second installment of the game discussion once I have. TLOU is one of those games that you never really want to finish, but once I do, the next installment will be posted.
~Krimmit
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