Why I Stopped Playing The Last of Us
I was really looking forward to The Last of Us. For one thing, the first two Uncharted games are some of the most immersive, rewarding experiences I’ve had on the PS3 to date. With those, Naughty Dog proved themselves capable of delivering huge worlds, memorable characters, and surprisingly engaging narratives.*
Unfortunately, upon getting into the richly-realized world of The Last of Us, I found myself getting bothered by the combination of elements the game had to offer. Ultimately, I wound up selling it after, oh… a couple hours of gameplay. And the things that were bothering me are still on my mind, so I figured I’d just take the time to explain myself.
Also, I’m not here to kill sacred cows or troll or whatever. This is just my personal experience with the game. As always, let’s not get bent out of shape.
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, like most popular narratives in gaming these days, uses violence as its primary way of interfacing with the conflict in the game. The characters encountered lots of engaging scenery, to be sure, and a decent amount of puzzle-solving, but the majority of the arenas that I played through and saw represented elsewhere are, essentially, rooms full of enemies that the player has to clear out. In terms of gameplay structure, the DNA of Naughty Dog’s own Uncharted games can be clearly identified in their newest outing.
On a level-to-level basis, the gameplay also reminded me a bit of Deus Ex in terms of the way you have to size up the opposition in a room before systematically going through and taking it out. I only play a few games a year, so you’ll have to forgive me if these comparisons aren’t the most apt. The point I’m making is that The Last of Us has a lot of mechanical similarities to other high-profile action/adventure titles of the past few years.
And it’s executed EXTREMELY well. This is a slick production from top to bottom; its world realized to a depth that’s almost truly immersive,** boasting design and talent to compete with the best of what mainstream gaming has to offer. In terms of its sheer ability to transport the player out of the living room and into the TV screen, The Last of Us is hard to beat.
And it sinks in instantly, too.
And that’s where the problems came in for me.
I feel like I should reiterate that I’m not here to rile anybody up. This isn’t a finger-wagging “how dare you” rant, it’s simply me trying to articulate what I perceived to be a tone/gameplay issue in a game that I was really looking forward to playing.
Anyway.
Despite the horror stylings of certain parts of the game, The Last of Us seems to fall pretty squarely in the “action/adventure” camp — as I said, it reminds me of games like Uncharted and Deus Ex. The action-adventure template, so to speak, tends to deploy armies of “faceless goons” to provide opposition to the hero character. Aside from the aforementioned games, you can see this in Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Assassin’s Creed, and a bajillion other narratives since forever. It’s a thing.
For this thing to work, though, there’s a certain level of shallowness that has to be met. Is that fair to say? Either the the enemy hordes need to be some sort of lower, nonhuman life or the story itself needs to avoid rendering its characters as serious, realistic people. This is why the Orcs in LotR are essentially oddly articulate animals, and why Temple of Doom isn’t a thoughtful character piece.***
Thank goodness.
The Fallout games have a very similar world and opposition catalogue as The Last of Us: A post-apocalyptic nightmare where you will face enemies both human and inhuman. That game didn’t bother me at all, because its tone was much less intimate. Even the characters you see repeatedly are still essentially shallow archetypes, so it’s hard to ever feel like the violence onscreen is “real.”
In The Last of Us, the violence actually does feel real. From the brilliant opening scene onward, it’s established that this is a world where small (for the medium) acts of violence can have brutal, permanent consequences. Though the apocalyptic scenario can’t be discounted, in the end it’s just one bullet that sends Joel into the dark place Ellie finds him in.
Now, I don’t think that it’s hypocritical to make an entertaining action game where violence is meant to have an impact. I’m a huge fan of Shadow of the Colossus, in which every single death you take in the game is meant to inspire sadness, even regret. The key differences are that in Shadow there are a LOT less deaths than in TLoU, and none of them can be undertaken casually. It can take a long time to bring down the Colossi. Conversely, TLoU contains many sequences where bodies drop fast; a roomful of enemies can be cleared in less than a minute — and then it’s on to the next one.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Uncharted games have a character who decimates the local criminal population everywhere he goes, but those games don’t ever REALLY ask us to invest that much in Drake as a person, and certainly don’t aspire to anything approaching realism. Tonally or otherwise.
I never identified with this.
For me, The Last of Us crossed the line into territory where the violence was meaningful. As Joel, I was a “real” person taking “real” lives. And yet the game didn’t make ALL of the violence meaningful. Shanking somebody in the neck, with blood spurting out as they struggled for life, was just as often meant to be a mechanical solution to a puzzle as it was meant to be anything more significant.
But really, most of these sequences are just roided-up variations on an Uncharted-style action quest. How many people does Joel kill in that opening mission? Roomfuls of them. It’s disconcerting to get to a point where “beating someone’s head in with a brick” becomes a regular strategy, especially when the characters are so “realistic”.
I alluded to the strength of the game’s opening earlier in the article. Part of what made it so effective is the perfect marriage of tone and mechanics. Tonally, it’s so real as to be banal in the opening moments. You feel every bit of the terror and chaos Joel feels. Part of what gets you there is that none of the NPCs feel like expendable obstacles. They’re frightened. Panicking. While you’re certainly most invested in his story, you totally empathize with everybody else. It’s fantastic.
Maybe the game gets there again. I don’t know. Until the level of bloodshed more closely matches the level of realism, you can find me over here behind Nathan Drake, fighting off hordes of enchanted zombies and cracking jokes the whole way.
What about you? I mean, obviously most people on this site seemed to dig the game a lot. What’s your take on the use of extreme violence in an adventure-style game like this one?
FOOTNOTES:
*And with the third, they proved they’re not INfallible. But my point stands.
**Well, except for the usual “helper” graphics that show you how many more swings you have left in your 2×4 and those kinds of things.
***It’s also why it’s kind of awkward to watch old Cowboys & Indians stories where the Native Americans are put in this position. Know a great movie that tackles this issue?
I bought a PS3 for this game and at the moment I’m struggling to finish it.
I think the game is great & the atmosphere is stellar, but the Bad Guys/Infected/Puzzle formula gets a bit (excuse my redundancy) formulaic.
I still enjoy sneaking around & choking people out, with the occasional gun/lead pipe fight, but it’s just not as great as I thought it would be.
I probably got my hopes up too high for this game, but at the moment, I’m glad I rented it.
Very interesting point of view. It’s always good to have some opposition so you know everybody didn’t drink the same Kool-Aid. I’m not sure I agree with or even understand what you are getting at with the whole “violence in a game with actual good characters is bad” thing, but I haven’t played the game yet myself (but will possible remedy this by the end of the year or soon after) so I’ll reserve judgment.
I don´t overanalyze a game that much.
I don´t know, for me it was an EXCELLENT game, I really enjoyed it, it gave me a couple of hours of good entertainment… and that´s it. Game Over.
Of course, I know this is a rich game with many data to analyze, but actually, that is what end up boring me instead of playing a game.
You know, if it bothers you, almost all of the enemy encounters can be avoided using stealth. Don’t know how could I have done Survivor without it.
Hmm, well I don’t think they can add meaning and significance to almost EVERY death in the game. I certainly think that it adds a lot more significance to the people you kill as opposed to Uncharted where you stack a ridiculously high body count.
I tend to look at it this way: That’s the world they live in. Kill or be killed. It’s been 20 years if I’m not mistaken. I think humans for the most part have gotten past feeling sorry for killing someone. That’s the way of life. If you hesitate, you will be at the short end of the stick.
Though I feel bad that you didn’t play this excellent masterpiece (IMHO of course) all the way through to the very powerful ending, I’d make the argument that the game succeeded (at least partially) in what it set out to do for you.
I’m not going to make this post about the ongoing debate of video games as art, but to me, art is about making me feel something. Whether that something is joy, sadness, fear, or in this case guilt and disgust at one’s own actions then there is some level of success.
The game really does cross the line from what you see in the Uncharted series or any other action/adventure game where you have to “defeat” enemies. Face it, what you end up doing to other un-infected humans in this game is murder…and it feels uncomfortable…and it’s supposed to.
This game gives you the driver’s seat view of a broken, border-line psychopath committing horrible acts…you shouldn’t want to agree with it and to me that in and of itself is very powerful, and the fact that you felt that and couldn’t stomach it means the game succeeded at least somewhat.
This game is NOT escapism, at least not anywhere I’d want to escape to, you aren’t supposed to feel like a bad-ass zombie-killer archaeologist/comedian/lady-killer but I’m glad I still played it.
The thing this game actually addresses the violence at several points. Seeing the game through to the end really makes you question if you just played as the hero or the villian. It struck me as a pretty brilliant way to have the player look at what they’re doing.
I think you may have missed the point. TLoU is the master of gray morality. Joel, in the end, is really no better than the people you fight and kill – everyone’s just doing it for survival. However, this is the first game I’ve played where there is no cognitive dissonance, the actions you take in the game don’t in any way contradict what the character should be. In fact every sequence reinforces the fact the Joel is a hardened survivor in an unforgiving world – he’s learnt to shoot first because he knows the enemy wouldn’t hesitate to. He’s not a good guy, but then again no one ever claims that he is.
I had an interesting daydream a few days after I finished the game where I imagined the whole story from David’s point of view. And even though he was the probably the most villainous character in the game, I could imagine a scenario where he was the “good” guy and it was this faceless man and his little girl “sidekick” that were the marauding invaders. Joel even says it himself “I’ve been on both sides”. This subtly brilliant and deep character development is what makes TLoU great.
I get some of what you’re saying, but you should at least complete the game before commenting on it.
Side note, you don’t have to kill every room full of enemies. In the situations where that does arise, you are mainly “required” to kill off the infected. The fact that the killing in the game became meaningless, perhaps says more about you then it does the game or its design.
@Frothy_Ham (and others)
Without getting into an off-topic conversation about the definition of art, I think you’re right to a certain extent… I mean, the design of the game is clearly trying to push buttons when it comes to the way the violence is rendered. For me, the place I felt an actual disconnect were in the room-clearing sequences (like the aforementioned opening against the gun seller and his cronies). In those moments, the side characters genuinely felt disposable to me, in the context of the game. They felt like “Thug #5” more than not. This is where it felt like I was playing a very mechanically similar game to Uncharted/Deus Ex, except one boasting a completely different tone and purpose than those games.
@Pedro (and others)
That stealth is often an option doesn’t entirely mitigate this issue, at least not with the way that I tend to interface with a game like this. Basically, I feel like the ability to avoid a mechanic doesn’t inherently affect the meaning OF the mechanic itself. Maybe the option should matter more? Something to think about for me.
David, how far did you get in the game? Did you make it to Pittsburgh?
Every game has a formula. Sounds like you just had high expectations or thought it was going to be different from every game but that’s almost impossible.
Honestly I felt the games bigger problems were that it was like pretty much all naughty dog games recently, Really pretty but kind of shittily designed. Enemies would pop into existence at weird times wich made stealth a cluster fuck, the whole Ellie being immune to allerting enemies was weirdly immersion breaking. Naughty Dog games always feel like they’ve focused on making these immensly gorgeous stories with great acting and amazing story telling. Then kind of throw the gameplay in as an after thought.
@David R:
I think I see your point better now. Except during the intro of the game, or during cut-scenes, tLoU never really gets rid of that “gaminess” that bothered you. You either are able to look past it and find a way to enjoy the storyline/world in and of itself or you can’t and you stop playing.
There were quite a few times I felt that the subtle story, atmosphere and tone of the game were constricted by the genre. The third-person action/adventure/cover-shooter/puzzle/stealth game genre has pretty much been exhausted of any and all new ideas and even though I’d argue that this game is the pinnacle of said genre, it still showed it’s ancestral age.
I have to admit as a general fan of Naughty Dog games in general the Last of Us did not leave the impact I would have expected or maybe have hoped.
I do get the Deus Ex feel from the gameplay as well. I enjoy shorter games in my busy life but the speed that which it can be completed on normal mode is astonishing for I had it dead in a weekend. Short and sweet. I think the pacing was too fast and the areas were so small I feel that the exploration quality should have been expanded a bit more.
The feel of hollow violence is what I also get from this game. I all for hollow violence but with regards to human pain I feel games like Silent Hill 2 do it better. The Last of Us is a nice pretty short story that really failed to fully engage me. The Jak and Daxter games struck me deeper that this game did. The heart was not fully there.
You just really didn’t understand the game. That happens a lot when the highest expectations are not met. At least finish it before pick on it.
I personally found the voice acting atrocious. the dialogue was unnatural and hacky while the delivery was cheesy and over the top. I was glad you didn’t have to play with Tess the whole game as she was the worst offender with her super serious face all the time. every character was delivering their line all cool and breathy. it just got on my nerves after a day.
I found myself in a similar place. I bought the game, and perhaps played it for a few hours before putting it down out of frustration with the controls. I was really captured by the story though, and made a decision I’d never made before. I went to Youtube, and found a 3 and 1/2 hour movie someone had made of the game. I am so glad that I did. This is the movie I watched (http://youtu.be/GdZjB3KpbeE) It’s really well done. They condense the game down to it’s core narrative but at the same time drop the excessive body count of the action sequences. What I like about it though is that this film is not just cut scene to cut scene but does incorporate game combat footage as well so you do get a really good sense of what playing the game might have been like.
As I said, I am really glad that I chose to watch this film. The story is great. I’d consider this movie to be better then most of what I’ve seen in the theatres this year.
Sooo it’s not a Crash Bandicoot zombie-game? /:
I decided not to play it just from the trailer: The instant I saw the girl and her father, I knew one of them was going to die before the end of the trailer, and given what type of game it was, which one.
(Not that I would have liked it any better if the protagonist were Hitgirl.)
The game engine is a marvel, but the plot is out of a side-scroller.
true
i had also some problems with tlou when it was relased, now grounded mode fixed some of my problems , but yeah there is a reason i like uncharted better because of how fun the gameplay is, because i find the story to be a tad bit better, tlou is basically escort ellie, fine the fireflies and hope for a cure.
I love deus ex tough.
Tlou is great probably a 9 or so from me, back when it was realsed i gave it a 7.
Your explantion about death in shadow of the collosus is good tough, good game .